Editors’ Blog
Earlier today we hit the $350,000 milestone in the TPM Journalism Fund drive.
You may wonder how we think about this sort of thing internally. How do we talk about the fact that so many people are willing to contribute (generally speaking) over and above their membership fees to a small journalism outfit doing what it can to not just survive, but thrive in uncertain and unprecedented times?
Well it’s very simple: That’s 350,000 votes of confidence in our work. That’s 350,000 votes of confidence in our reporting, our analysis, and our commentary. That is 350,000 votes of confidence in our business model, which has kept us going even while countless other publications have, in recent years, failed or made significant cuts. It’s 350,000 votes of confidence in our belief that journalism can’t be hierarchical, so publications should offer free memberships to those who need them. In short, it’s 350,000 votes of confidence in us.
Look, let me be clear: We know not everyone can contribute over and above the membership fees. We’re thankful and appreciative of each and every member we have regardless of whether you ever contribute to the Journalism Fund. Memberships are the engine that sustains TPM. We thank you. Period.
One of the guiding principles at TPM is preparedness in the face of unexpected change. Change in the news environment or change in the business climate. We don’t always know what the changes will be or how they’ll affect us, but we know they are coming. They always do. That’s why the theme of this year’s Journalism Fund drive is “to help us prepare for what comes next.”
If you have not yet contributed but are able to, please consider doing so. The revenue will help us grow and expand our journalism. It will help us distribute that journalism to more people. And, just as important, it’s a little confidence boost that all the work we put in day in and day out makes a difference in people’s lives. Because the difference between an organization like TPM and many other companies purporting to do journalism is that we care about more than our profit — we care about our impact on the world, and especially our impact on those who help us do what we love to do.
One last thing: Last year, more than 5,000 people contributed. I’m absolutely positive that if we hit that marker again, we’ll hit $500,000. Any amount you can contribute, no matter how small, makes a difference.
Times and WaPo Jump On Board Trump Camp Swift Boating of Walz 
The Post’s and the Times‘ pieces on Tim Walz service record are more egregious and spurious than you’re probably able to imagine. The accusations come from two members of his unit who are clearly MAGA partisans and who floated them during his 2022 reelection campaign for Minnesota governor in coordination with Walz’s Republican opponent. The attacks aren’t just “like” the Swift Boat attacks from 2004. They’re literally the work of the same guy. Chris LaCivita was the strategist who ran the Swift Boat attacks in 2004 and cut the commercials. He’s now the co-manager of the Trump campaign. He started this and then handed it off to Vance. As David noted, even Politico headlined it as a “Swift Boat” attack. Politico!
The accusation, such as it is, is that Walz retired from service just before his unit was deployed to Iraq.
Read MoreHave you been planning to contribute to our TPM Journalism Fund drive but haven’t had the chance? We’re now in the second half of the drive. It’s always the hardest slog, the part when it seems like we may not reach the goal we need to reach. Can you take a moment and make a contribution today if you’ve been considering it? I would, we would really appreciate it. It’s a key part of what keeps TPM going strong. It keeps us ready for whatever is next. It’s super easy to do. You can just click right here. Any amount truly helps and we absolutely put your dollars of support to good use.
UPDATE 4:55 PM 7:23 PM 8:45 PM 12:18 AM 9:25 AM: We’re now just over $334,000 $340,000 $343,000 $346,000 $348,000 (Almost here! LFG!!!!! – 12:19 AM). If we can get to $350,000 by the end of today we’ll be within shooting distance of the pace we’ll need to get to our goal of $500,000 by the end of the drive.
Inside the Galactically Over-Determined Story of Tim Walz’s Governing Ideology
Right now we’re seeing a parallel race to define Tim Walz, much as we saw and were seeing with Kamala Harris beginning in the last week of July. The stakes of defining the veep nominee are nowhere near as high as they are for the race to define the person at the top of the ticket, where so far it’s gone all in Kamala Harris’s direction. But I wanted to note some of the dimensions of this battle to define. Paradoxically, it’s going on both between the parties and also within the Democratic Party. The Democratic left and the GOP both seem joined in wanting to portray if not Walz than the Walz pick as a sign of rising left-wing power in the Democratic Party or a de facto veto over any VP pick that would validate or express support for Joe Biden’s policies on Israel and Gaza. I don’t think either point is so much wrong as misleading and a simple misreading of the actual political dynamics which are shaping the current moment or politics going back the last six or seven years.
Let me start with a related observation.
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Kamala Goes Electric and Trump Melts Down
Last Thursday the Harris campaign began offering tickets for a campaign rally in Detroit the following Wednesday (tomorrow, August 7th). Over the first 24 hours they received 47,000 requests for tickets. 47,000. That spurred a multi-day search for a Detroit area venue that could handle the demand to see the Vice President. As Donald Trump never grasped, there’s no straight-line connection between rally attendance and votes. But at that scale they signal enthusiasm and energy that neither campaign (Trump or Biden) has seen at any time in this cycle. They demonstrate a purchase into the larger popular culture that President Biden never had and Donald Trump, for all his greater currency on social media, doesn’t either.
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First Thoughts on the VP Pick
A few thoughts on today’s big news.
My first reaction was shock that it was Tim Walz and not Josh Shapiro. Not “shock,” disappointment, or “shock,” it was a bad decision. But “shock” in the simple sense that I really thought it was pretty much definitely Shapiro for the last week. There were lots of reasons I thought this but what sort of sealed it was hearing that Harris would do the roll out in Philadelphia. Just didn’t add up to me she’d roll out anyone but Shapiro in the state where he’s governor and in what is essentially his home town.
Obviously, that was wrong.
Read More- No way of getting around this: What we’re now seeing in the campaign is at the very outer bounds of what I thought was possible with a Biden-to-Harris switch. We’re now looking at a four-to-five point move in Harris’ direction over just two weeks. My bullish scenario was Harris resetting the campaign to the status quo ante before the big debate — at which point Biden was not in a bad position but was clearly if slightly behind. From there, a more dynamic Harris campaign uses the remaining three months of the campaign to battle its way into a lead. That’s not what we’re seeing. Harris is holding all of Biden’s strength in the Blue Wall states, adding to it and then also moving the southern tier states into contention. Her current popular vote margin is moving into the range a Democrat needs to win the election.
As we move into the third week of this year’s annual TPM Journalism Fund drive, I wanted to remind you of one thing the Fund does. Your membership fees account for the overwhelming percentage of our revenues. But we also give free memberships to readers in financial need (part of our program since we introduced membership in 2012) as well as all registered students, full-time or part-time (since 2017). Your contribution to the TPM Journalism Fund is what makes those no-cost Community Memberships and Student Memberships possible. It’s how we square the circle of funding our operation through member fees while not excluding people whose finances may be under strain. Our annual TPM Journalism Fund drive is critical to keeping TPM vital and moving forward. But our free membership program is one key part of that. If you’d like to help us fund these memberships and keep TPM strong and vital, please consider contributing to the drive by clicking here.
This note from TPM Reader MW made my day …
Read MoreI was reading Josh’s post about No One Left Behind. My wife (now deceased) and I have benefited from your program for a long time. This is something I am very grateful for. It isn’t that we could not get good news somewhere else. It is very much about the quality, the people involved in making it work, the connection you have with the readers, the fellowship between the readers, and even something beyond all of that. The dream Josh and you all have brought forward with this project is infectious.
When I mentioned this before to Josh I am not sure he understood how or why readers would become so involved with what TPM is. TPM is inclusive of all people and not just members. That is the best part. But the quality and drive behind the reporting is unmatched in my opinion. And that certainly is not just my opinion. I am sure since then that others have said the same thing. I think you all realize you have a lot of people cheering you on and if you don’t you should.
If you look at the 538 national average, Harris went from a .2 percentage point lead on July 28th to a 1.9 percentage point lead today. That is a substantial move over one week.