When I was in college, I aspired to actual politics. Not the cerebral stuff, the graphs and regressions and debater's points. But the thing itself. Activism and organizing and eventually running for local office and asking people for their votes. Two things changed my mind. The first I learned in Burlington, Vermont, on the Dean campaign. The process of running for office was excruciating. It wasn't a Lincoln-Douglas debate, or a West Wing episode. It was asking people for money. Usually rich people. It's the irony of the American political system that the country's most powerful men spend their days engaged in the same debasing activity as the country's poorest individuals. I'd be very bad at it.But I'm going to do it anyway. Please donate to The American Prospect.I ask because the first insight wasn't as powerful as the second. I hated working on the campaign. But I loved stealing away to write my blog. It was the first inkling that I wanted to work as a journalist. A year later, I came to DC to intern for The Washington Monthly (The American Prospect, showing good judgment, rejected my application). Two years later, sitting on the paisley couch at the entrance to UCLA's Hilgard Dorms, I was talking online with some guy named Matt Yglesias, a young writer at The American Prospect, who suggested I apply for The American Prospect's fellowship program. Happily, this time, I was accepted. But I didn't shut my personal blog down. Another institution would have asked that, and rightly so. Writing posts took up most of my day. Time they were paying me for. But TAP encouraged the outside work: People read it. It focused on policy. It fit into the mission. This is not, as they say, a profit-making enterprise. It's mission-driven. And part of that mission is finding, and supporting, liberal writers and thinkers. TAP has been the birthplace for not only my career, but Josh Marshall, Matthew Yglesias, Dana Goldstein, Nick Confessore, Mark Greif, Jonathan Cohn, Chris Mooney, and many others. When people talk about developing an ideas infrastructure, when they talk about building institutions, when they talk about pushing progressive voices into the mainstream media, this is the first step. It's easy enough to support demonstrated talent. What TAP does is find talent, and save it from going to law school. The world would be worse off without Josh Marshall, which is to say, it would be worse off if Josh hadn't been plucked from the history program at Brown University and given time and space to develop as a writer. It's an important role. But not a profitable one. Which is why it needs support.About a year ago, I moved my blog onto The Prospect's web site. They didn't ask. I offered. This blog would be a lot worse if I'd never come to this magazine. The health care commentary wouldn't be leavened by reporting. There wouldn't be interviews with Tom Daschle and AHIP, or the sort of historical grounding that only comes when you can spend the time researching a 6,000 word article on the health care battles of 1994. That's all a function of the support the magazine provides its writers, and the guidance its editors offer along the way. As you can imagine, though, it's not the sort of content that advertisers are aching to attach themselves to.Even so, in November, this blog played host to more than 85,000 words, not counting the thousands of comments. Many of them contained recipes. All of them appeared here for free. But producing them, at the end of the day, isn't free. Worse, this isn't a great time for struggling non-profits that need to raise money. And TAP doesn't have a wealthy owner: There's no Marty Peretz or CanWest or CondeNast waiting in the wings. So I'm doing the thing I thought I wouldn't do: Asking you to give money. Not to me, but to TAP. 
