Presidential Campaigns: The Childish Side

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If you are interested in how presidential candidates use silly maneuvers to upstage one another on the campaign trail, check out this blog post from the New York Times‘ very good new political blog, The Caucus.

The focus of the post is how John McCain is trying to distract the Michigan press (and voters) from Mitt Romney’s formal candidacy announcement, which is due today in Dearborn. Admittedly, writing about stuff like this is the worst kind of horserace journalism — covering the process of politics, instead of the substance, and focusing on who plays the game better, instead of who would govern well — so consider it a disclaimer when I say that posts like this one and the one over at The Caucus are for political junkies who enjoy political minutia as the lemon twist on their serious journalism martini.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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