From Andy T:

Now this was -- not to brag -- a real "get."

It's not every day you snag an author who's been dead for 72 years.

But the country is in such bad shape, he actually called ME and insisted on coming to our dinner. "I'd do anything to help," he told me, in his folksy twang. "It's that important."

"Can you help us meet payroll for our nearly 200 local organizers?"

"You mean, like, with money?"

"That's how we pay them, Will. With money."

"Well, anything but that. What else do you need me to do?"

I hear this a lot.

In Will's case, there was no further pitch to be made. Apparently -- I had not known this -- "you can't take it with you." The man is, well . . . dead broke.

But here's the pitch I would make to others -- and ask you to HELP me make to others -- as the window on 2007 giving limits rapidly closes:

NOW is the time we need it most, and NOW is the time to give with greatest leverage.

Organizing now, locally, gives time for roots to grow and organizers to recruit others who will recruit OTHERS.

To those not giving because they are just too angry at our own Democrats to want to help right now . . . beg them to consider how they will feel if we lose one more narrow election (or win, but not by enough to keep it from being stolen) because we didn't do the things in 2007 that cried out to be done.

And offer them this template:

Am I angry we didn't prevent Judge Southwick from being confirmed? Yes. Would he ever have been nominated in the first place under a Democratic president? No.

Am I upset we haven't been able to end the war? Yes. Would there even be a war if Gore had been allowed to take office? No.

Pick almost anything we are sick to tears about and it will fit into exactly the same template.

This doesn't make the pain go away or absolve us Democrats of all responsibility; but it shifts focus back to the main event: Winning the White House. And beginning, at least, to get the country back on track.

The DNC has 200 dedicated, and for the most part underpaid, people working every day to lay the groundwork to do just that.

But unlike Will Rogers, they need to eat.

And unlike Will Rogers, you have a valid credit card to help feed them.

"You know," Will told me, as we were wrapping up, "I never met a man I didn't like."

As I started to respond, he continued, "But this Dick Cheney . . . "


Please reply with a pledge. If you can't make our December 5 dinner, that's OK; we'll apply it to an event you can make (and toward the Convention, if you want to go). But either way, we need to win.

THANKS!

Andy