Michelle McIntosh

A liberal friend (is that an oxymoron?) forwarded this email to me yesterday. I thought everyone may get a kick out of it.

Dear fellow MoveOn member,

I’m James. I’m a MoveOn member, dad to two teenagers, and, until recently, I had a pretty good job in construction. But the company I worked for lost a lot of projects when the economy tanked, and I got laid off, without much notice.

So I wanted to write to ask for your help. Not help for me, but for all the folks who are out of a job or otherwise struggling in this recession. Let me explain.

President Obama’s economic recovery plan just passed in the House—it’s got billions of dollars for education, mass transit, and clean energy. But what really gets me is that not a single Republican voted for it, despite all the efforts by President Obama to reach across the aisle. If the same thing happens in the Senate, it won’t pass. But millions of families like mine need it to pass—it could put me, my former coworkers, and millions of other Americans back to work—and turn this economy around.

We need to get some Republicans on board. MoveOn has ads ready to go in key states—states where Republican senators are deciding right now whether or not to support Obama’s plan. But time is running short. I just chipped in, and I hope you can help, too. Click here to contribute:

A new stimulus might mean a new job for me—weatherizing homes or constructing green affordable housing. It’d give my kids’ school some much needed funding. And it could mean real investments in mass transportation to ease traffic and cut emissions.

This is a big moment, both for my family and for families around the country. If thousands of us act, we can get these swing senators to change their votes. But we’ll need to do it fast—the vote could come as early as next week. I hope you can help out.

Thanks for being such a great community. And thanks for all you do.

–James Spitzer, your fellow MoveOn member