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MoveOn announces donor strike in response to Schumer’s Iran position

MoveOn.org Political Action Executive Director Ilya Sheyman had the following statement in response to news that Senator Schumer will try to put the nation on the path to war:

Diplomacy has yielded an agreement between the world’s major powers and Iran that will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The only other means of limiting Iran’s nuclear program is war.

While not unexpected, it is outrageous and unacceptable that the Democrat who wants to be the party’s leader in the Senate is siding with the Republican partisans and neoconservative ideologues who are trying to scrap this agreement and put us on the path to war.

Risking American lives in wars of choice isn’t leadership, it’s small and backward.

Our country doesn’t need another Joe Lieberman in the Senate, and it certainly doesn’t need him as Democratic leader. The vast majority of Democratic voters — the people who elected President Obama in part because of our shared belief that war must always be a last resort — will not stand for it. Frankly, we thought Senator Schumer and other Democrats in Washington had learned their lesson after being misled into supporting a misguided war of choice in Iraq.

No real Democratic leader does this. If this is what counts as “leadership” among Democrats in the Senate, Senate Democrats should be prepared to find a new leader or few followers. This is not what the volunteers, activists, small-dollar donors, and voters who actually win elections spend their time and money to support.

In response to Senator Schumer’s decision to side with partisan war hawks, MoveOn.org’s 8 million members are immediately launching a Democratic Party donor strike. We will organize grassroots progressives across the country to withhold campaign contributions from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and from any Democratic candidate who succeeds in undermining the president’s diplomacy with Iran. Our goal will be to secure commitments to withhold $10 million in contributions within 72 hours after this campaign launches.