PFAW and Ralph Neas Need to Think Bigger - MUCH Bigger

I received the People for the American Way email appeal on Scalito on Tuesday. It was a good piece, including a $100,000 challenge match from an individual donor, but it thinks too small.

The ask is similar to what's on the PFAW site www.savethecourt.org. Here's a specific quote:

We need to raise $500,000 NOW to get the message out that confirming Judge Alito to the Supreme Court would not be good for America. With your help, we will:

• Get hard-hitting radio and TV ads on the air about Alito's troubling record on civil rights, with targeted ads on African American and Hispanic radio
• Phone bank our members in key swing states, urging them to ask their Senators to oppose Alito - and put organizers on the ground
• Create and deploy Internet campaigns to mobilize hundreds of thousands of Americans

In the world of political advertising, $500,000 doesn't buy you much - Bush and Kerry combined spent close to a quarter of a BILLION dollars in the last election. Even in the current off-year election cycle, here's what Reuters is reporting on the volume of ads on ballot initiatives and the New York mayoral race:

New York led all markets in political advertising with 15,285 spots between August 1 and October 16, but California had six of the top 10 markets and 31,500 political commercials in those markets during that time, according to data released Thursday by Nielsen Monitor-Plus. California stations aired 44,122 political ads during the period in all markets, from Los Angeles to Eureka.

Los Angeles was the second-busiest market in the nation in political ads, with 7,796 spots to San Francisco-San Jose's 5,660 and San Diego's 5,182. Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto had just over 5,000 during that time, while Fresno-Visalia had 4,600.

All those ads cost a lot of money - millions. Just like the fight against Scalito is going to cost millions of dollars. As I said in an earlier post, the public is on our side -- now. Don't think that Conversatives are going to sit on the sidelines and think in terms of $500,000 and $1 million campaigns. Conservatives have been waiting for 40 years for this very moment. This is their all out fight, and we on the Left need to start thinking MUCH MUCH bigger than we are right now.