By Chris Satullo

I’m having a new and not-so-pleasant experience this election season.

It’s the constant bombardment of digital fund-raising messages from Democratic candidates. They’re running for Congress, for governor, for state legislatures – and they want my wife and me to fork over some dough. Somehow, they think the way to get into our wallets is to deluge me with messages that tend toward the hysterical, the negative and the bizarrely punctuated.

A bit of background: I spent most of my adult life as a journalist working for serious news organizations. The ethical restrictions for journalists in such newsrooms are strict and clear. (In fact, a lot stricter than for people like Supreme Court justices, apparently. Looking at you, Clarence.) They are designed to curb even the appearance of bias or partisanship, let alone the actual practice.

So…no donating to candidates. No sporting of political bumper stickers. No candidate signs on your lawn. No signing of petitions. No taking part in marches or rallies, no matter how uplifting the cause. 

Some of my colleagues took their nonpartisan vows even further, declining to even register to vote. That struck me as a purist bridge too far, but I respected the rigor.

Nowadays, though, I’m a free agent and the only journalism I commit comes via the commentaries in this space which, as you may have noticed, are chock full of opinions – by design. The old, and good, rules by which I long lived no longer apply to me.

Given that – and given how the entire democratic experiment launched in my home city in 1787 really is at risk in this year’s election – I decided this fall to go as big as we could afford in making political contributions to candidates. (I’d dipped a toe in that water in 2020.)

After studying the poll results and projections on FiveThirtyEight, I drew up my list of worthy candidates. It was a Venn diagram of politicians whose views I could stand who also have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. No wasting of limited funds on winsome long shots who happen to get love on MSNBC.

I logged onto ActBlue, the Democratic fund-raising platform. Within minutes, about a dozen candidates enjoyed very slightly richer coffers, while my credit card was smoking-hot from intense use.

I closed the laptop and felt pretty good. As weird as it felt to be doing the once verboten – donating to candidates – it seemed like the right time to dive in. This year’s ballots are clogged with “Stop the Steal” plotters and election fraud hypesters itching to position themselves to block legitimate voters and steal electoral votes for Donald Trump in 2024. Making sure they lose is Job One.

Within hours of my ActBlue session, though, the hysterical (in both senses of the word) texts and emails from Democratic campaigns started pouring into my iPhone and my Gmail. They surmised that they’d found an easy mark and would not relent until they’d sucked me dry.

What stunned me was not just the volume (literally fourscore a day) but the frantically negative tone of the pitches. After a lifetime in media, I do know what gains clicks most easily on the Web and social media: outrage, disgust, and anxiety-inducing bad news. Also, I don’t deny that the stakes in this election are big enough to justify CAPITAL LETTERS and EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!! on occasion.

But…every day, several times a day, in nearly every sentence?

In their pleas for cash, even candidates whom Nate Silver’s website assures me are cruising to comfortable wins come across as frantic souls with a hole in the bottom of their boat and no life preserver. The ones who really are trailing sound like they should have all sharp objects put far out of reach.

And the prospect of a loss on Nov. 8? Always described in apocalyptic, blood-curdling terms.

A few sample email subject lines and text message openers from just the last couple of days, with my comments afterward:

There’s no easy way to say it: We missed our fundraising goal last night.

Oh, heaven forbid. Am I the only one who knows that all the fundraising goals and reporting deadlines you prattle on about in your messages are meaningless?

I’m disgusted, Christopher.

And so am I, dear candidate. Why? This is your sixth communication to me since I gave you money through ActBlue. Two words I’ve never seen in any of your texts. or emails: T-h-a-n-k  y-o-u.

Christopher, I have nowhere else to turn.

If that were really true, then you’d be a pathetic, no-hope candidate unworthy of my support.  

This is your final call.

If only…

I’m sorry to text you so late but I’m too damn scared not to. 

That one was from James Carville, the crafty Cajun. His texts show a little more panache and wit than the norm, but they’re usually at DefCon 1 in terms of the supposed threat of political apocalypse.

We were counting on you, Chris. This is a nightmare. We missed our goal.

That arrived three (3) days after I made a $200 contribution to that very campaign.

Raphael Warnock is facing an emergency.

I want you to beat that idiot Herschel Walker as much as the next guy, Reverend, but why you think constantly describing yourself as a losing basket case in your Georgia Senate race will lead me to reach for my Visa, I do not understand.

This is tough email to write.

Not quite tough enough, apparently, since you still sent it. Which does not mean I plan to read it.

We’re straight up losing.

Soooo…you want me to join your losers club, and pay handsomely to do it?  Right.

Tim is plunging, Chris.

It’s impressive you could find time away from your Ohio Senate race to do a little plumbing work around the house, Congressman Ryan, but that doesn’t make me more likely to fork over.

I suppose these Democratic campaigns have some data suggesting that impersonating the Nigerian princes of early Internet lore works to attract donations. All I can say is it absolutely, positively does not work with me. It makes me ashamed of the party that I feel obliged – considering the seditious, corrupt alternative – to support in this and all foreseeable elections.

Here’s the bigger point: In these times, American politics is deeply poisoned by polarization driven by relentless negativity and hyperbole. And by rampaging anxiety fueled by half-truths, conspiracy theories and outright lies.

I’d like my party to offer an alternative, a way out of the morass: sunlight, not toxins; practical optimism, not paranoid hysteria; a build-upon, not a tear-it-down approach.

Maybe that’s too much to ask during this kind of white-knuckle, hair’s-breadth election, with nothing less than the health of our electoral system at stake. Maybe it’s the most alarmed of partisan voters who do the bulk of the donating – and maybe they expect to be fed scary words and red-meat attacks, not uplifting statements of values.

But if, happy day, the Democrats manage to hold Congress and the statehouses in key swing states like my own Pennsylvania, they are going to have to try to govern the angry, anxious, deluded, hair-trigger impatient electorate they’ve stoked with this kind of bullshit campaigning.

It’s almost enough to make me yearn for the days when I was forbidden to donate.

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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia