Dear Friend,
First, we want to thank you for reading and supporting Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. We owe our existence to thoughtful people like you.

And now, we’re writing to ask that before year’s end you consider a donation to Democracy. One of our regular donors has offered to match each new dollar we raise between now and the end of the year, so every dollar you give would be worth $2 to us, which would make a huge difference in helping to sustain the kind of policy dialogue that appears in our pages—and which is in awfully short supply in today’s political climate.

As you know, we’re the intellectual foundation for a rebirth of a better politics to come. We’re read by policy experts—the people who actually write the plans that politicians go out and talk about—all over the country. We’re read on Capitol Hill. We’re read avidly by other journalists, who routinely pick up our ideas and disseminate them to wider audiences. We were read in the White House, and we will be again, we hope sooner rather than later.

It’s hard—actually impossible—to quantify a small journal’s impact. We’ve certainly had measurable successes, most notably Elizabeth Warren’s first major article advocating for a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which appeared in our pages in 2007.

But mostly the work of a journal like ours is to lay the intellectual groundwork and to frame the arguments for victories that others will someday claim. So in the last three years, we’ve published many pieces on progressive theories of economic growth to counter the right’s trickle-down arguments as well as on how to build a new social safety net to meet today’s needs—for workers who don’t have one full-time job, for example.

One day, when the circumstances are friendlier, those arguments will become conventional wisdom, and those proposals will become law. All from the seeds planted in our pages.

We know you care about the same things we do. Because of our donor’s generous match offer, any amount you can give will be doubled. It will be of enormous help to us, and we can promise you it will be money well invested. And of course your donation will be tax deductible.

You can go to this page on our site to donate or send a check to us at 818 18th Street NW, Suite 750; Washington, DC 20006.

With Thanks,
E.J. Dionne, Chairman of the Editorial Board
Michael Tomasky, Editor