A Bar Bet You Can’t Lose

But first, in case you’ve not yet seen it, this leaked video — three minutes of a Trump alum who heads a stealth Heritage Foundation drive to enact voter suppression bills.

Voter suppression underpins modern Republican strategy.  Herewith, a very short history.*

So?  How can we help?

Don M.: “Any thoughts as to when and where to support Democratic causes? I haven’t started to contribute even though I get dozens of requests.  My budget is about $3,000.”

→ To me, it’s a little like investing:

You could spend forever trying to pick the best stocks to beat the market . . . or no time at all and beat 90% of market players simply by investing in index funds.

Similarly — with the worthiest of intentions — you could spend a tremendous amount of time trying to figure out how best to deploy $3,000 . . . or no time at all and be more effective than 90% of political donors simply by (a) investing EARLY each cycle (like: today); (b) avoiding primaries (it’s more important to beat Republicans than other Democrats); (c) avoiding contributions to individual candidates (because so much of that money goes to advertising that tends not to change minds) . . . favoring, instead, the kind of infrastructure that will benefit ALL progressive candidates in a given state by registering and getting folks to the polls.

Not to say no one should give to candidates — most people do, and that surely won’t change just because you don’t.  But the more leveraged (contrarian?) investment is in the overall effort to produce a huge Democratic turnout . . . including efforts to fight voter suppression.

So if you want to be sure you did something smart — and save months agonizing over dozens of worthy choices — time better spent with the kids and money better deployed early — just join me in helping to fund the DNC.  Like index funds, it’s not a very sexy choice.  But also like index funds, it’s smarter than what most people do.

Now, finally, the bar bet:

Boy bets 10 euros his dad can’t pull a bill out from under a beer bottle without tipping it over, but that he can — 44 seconds.  God, I love TikTok.

(Thanks. Mel!)

Have a great weekend.  Have you filed your taxes?  Need an extension?

*The longer history: Before we even had political parties it had been established as self-evident in 1776 that all men are created equal . . . but agreed in 1789 that “all men” did not include women.  Or enslaved men or the men on whose land we built the country or men who did not own property.  We made a lot of progress on that until, with the John Roberts decision in 2013, we began to slip back.