Stop Me Before I Donate Again!

I just gave Obama another $50, blowing my carefully crafted budget for the month.

Yes, I know he already won. But this part of the email yanked open my purse strings:

The Democratic National Committee poured all of its resources into building our successful 50-state field program. And they played a crucial role in helping Barack win in unlikely states like North Carolina and Indiana. We even picked up an electoral vote in Nebraska.

The DNC took on considerable debt to make this happen.

Will you make a donation of $__ or more now to help the DNC pay for these efforts? You'll get a 2008 Victory T-shirt.

Not the T-shirt part (the official T-shirts are pretty boring) -- the 50-state part.

There are some Democrats I seriously dislike. One of them is Thomas Schaller, who had a media heyday in 2006 arguing that Democrats should give up the South. Another is Rahm Emanuel. Like many other lefty progressive Democrats, I think of Rahm Emanuel as sort of an Antichrist figure. It's really not that black and white, of course, but I do think he has been a very negative influence on the Democratic party. He's tied to the DLC and AIPAC, both organizations whose goals I disagree with, and he was very, very rude to Howard Dean.

After Obama hiring Emanuel to be his chief of staff, rumors started flying that the DNC was going to kill Dean's 50-state strategy. This latest email reassures me that Obama believes in the strategy, no matter what Emanuel's position is, and is going to give Dean his due. Good for Georgia, good for me.

Oddly enough, I was recently put in the position of defending Emanuel against a weird attack that questioned his loyalty to America because he'd served in the Israeli civil defense force and used to have dual citizenship. I argued very strongly that the accusation was anti-semitic and also personally insulting. I could have Japanese dual citizenship if I wanted to, and that doesn't mean I'm a potential traitor.