My Campaign Spam folder

I've been getting bombarded by email pleas for political donations. In some ways, I'd love to have the kind of income allowing me to contribute to candidates and causes I support by pouring money their way.

I just can't.

I do plan to send a few - really, a few- dollars onward after the primaries are over. But keep your powder dry, all you organizations out there begging now. It ain't happening now. Period. I've already voted and mailed in my ballot for the Presidential primary. It was for the same candidate I supported the first time I heard that name in the list of wannabes this time around. The debates reinforced my opinion, and opinionated TV talking heads haven't swayed me. Really, though, they never do enough research to spout anything other than what everyone else next to them opines, avoiding all the real issues in favor of the horse race and their attempts to be the first to declare the winner before the country has spoken.

Screw them.

The debates pretty well suck as well. Where do these people find such inane questions? Who cares if somebody forgot a name? Doesn't everybody at some time, perhaps more under pressure? Why should any candidate stoop to answering seriously to frivolous questions? Lets have more questions about policy, both what's going on now and what the candidates hope to change/continue? Try healthcare, climate change, education, tax policies, justice, social security, jobs, minimum wage, environment, immigration, race, election security.... In no way a complete list, it would go a long ways toward making any political discussion meaningful.

I don't mind being surveyed. It's happened a total of once, and that was this year. But I did respond to a quick "which do you support?" online survey. Once. I tried to respond to another from the following deluge of them, but whoever was sending them out had a form that wouldn't go through unless a monetary pledge was made.

Screw that too. If my opinion doesn't count unless I can back it with money, well, I can always blog about it. None of you require payment before reading this.

After that, I started getting perhaps 10 emails per day just asking for money for races all over the country. When those didn't get enough response, aka none, the tone of the bombardment changed. They started trying to alarm me with disasters they claimed had happened due to lack of funding, big headlines that had no basis in fact. So-and-so was Destroyed! Somebody else had already LOST their race. When those got all the attention they deserved, they switched to shaming, headlines like So-and-so was begging for help and I (yes, named) wasn't listening.

My patience for simply hitting the delete button had ended. The two most flagrant offenders have now had all their emails marked for the spam folder. Good thing I just cleared it out. I expect it'll be filling up soon.

And when I do contribute something, it'll be directly to the campaign website rather than via any of those fund raisers.  Oh, and if anyone in that business reads this, go find another job. Turning off people who haven't the bucks you're looking for is not a good way to collect votes.

Bet you failed telemarketing too.