Democrat tells his party to “stop bumming people out”

Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, is sick of Democratic fundraising emails. He tweeted:

Who writes these? They really need to stop bumming people out. In order to win we must communicate that we BELIEVE.

Chuck Ross reports that Schatz was responding to a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee email asking for financial support ahead of Tuesday’s special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. The subject of the email was:

Kiss all hope goodbye.

The headline read:

Georgia Democrats’ early vote lead PLUNGES.

The emails I get from Republican organizations and candidates are not quite as grim as “kiss all hope goodbye.” But many are in the same idiom. When they are, I never donate. Rather, I stop reading.

It’s rare nowadays to get an request to donate that isn’t labeled URGENT. Many are even labeled “EMERGENCY.”

As a friend told a prominent candidate whose campaign sent him an “emergency” email asking for money, an emergency is when a member of my family has just been admitted to the hospital. It’s not an emergency when your political opponent has just made an ad buy.

The candidate apologized profusely. But did he stop sending “emergency” fundraising emails to potential contributors other than my friend?

I have assumed that gloom and doom emails bring in good amounts of money. Otherwise, we wouldn’t see so many of them.

But maybe Schatz is right — maybe “bumming people out” is counterproductive. It is with me.

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