Okay. I get it. Election campaigns take money. And if we don’t want those special interess to buy every election, then we’ve got to dig down and help out the candidates we support.

But does that have to mean a daily barrage of endless solicitations that run the gamut from friendly and chatty to whiny to outright abusive?

Every morning this week started with a text message from Joe Biden’s presidential campaign that included a request for to chip in to the campaign’s coffers. Sometimes it’s asking for $49, or maybe just $6. It doesn’t seem to matter whether or not I’ve donated to the campaign recently. The asks are endless. Sometimes Joe is alone. Sometimes they invoke Elizabeth Warren or Barrack Obama.

Sometimes it’s “personal.” You seen this.
An email received at 6:41 a.m. this morning: “President Obama and I are personally asking.”
Yesterday not long after noon. “Hi there, Ian. It’s Elizabeth Warren. Can Joe and I call you soon?”
Friday, two emails, twelve minutes apart: Joe writes, “Why I’m asking even though I hate this.”
Thursday 7:53 a.m. email from Carole King. “Personally asking, Ian.”

When did the term “personal” lose all meaning?

But despite the faux “personal” touches and ridiculous frequency of these messages, I don’t find these offensive.

The ones that do get my goat are the political action committees that come on like aggressive bill collectors, trying to scare or guilt trip a contribution. There’s the one that repeatedly tells me that if I don’t personally contribute today, right now, candidate XYZ will have to shut down their campaign, or will plummet in the polls, or will have no chance come election day. I consider these to be abusive, using psychological techniques to make potential donors feel personal responsibility if they don’t give, and give again, repeatedly.

The worse offenders in this regard seem to fall in the “progressive” category. There’s something called “Progressive Takeover.” I don’t know who’s running this outfit, but they are about the worst offender when it comes to trying to squeeze money out of you.

This morning’s email from Progressivetakeover.com came in about 9:09 a.m.–“…donations dropped off a cliff… Hawaii Democrats don’t seem to care!”

Then there’s an outfit calling itself “stoprepublicans.org”. “Stop Republicans, an accountability project of Progressive Turnout Project….”

Progressive Turnout Project is about the worst in terms of guilt tripping as a fundraising strategy.

“We’re choking back tears, Ian,” they wrote this morning at 9:06 a.m.

“We have said news,” they wrote a day or so ago. And, in their view, it’s my fault because I didn’t write a check.

There they go, getting faux personal again.

Anyway, I can’t believe this approach is very effective. It turns me off.

And then there’s the sheer chaos in election fundraising. Right now, Democratic candidates and their supporters from all 50 states seem to be competing against each other, and the top of the ticket candidates, for small donations.

My inbox is filled every morning with a bewildering array of campaign solicitations, some for unfamiliar candidates from who-knows-where. Then there are the “offical” campaign Pacs, the DCCC and DSCC (backing Democratic candidates for the House and Senate, respectively). And behind them come the other political action committees which don’t tell us much about themselves except that they too have a desperate need to get into my wallet.

The result is that I typically get up early and quickly go through my email, deleting almost all of the fundraising messages. But don’t worry. The inbox will be filled again by noon, just in case I’ve forgotten that there’s an election campaign underway.