Dems In Disarray: The DNC Is Broke-Ass as Megadonors Close Their Wallets

I mentioned this in last night's Quick Hits but didn't actually bother to read the article.

John Sexton reports it's full of good stuff.

By "good stuff" I mean the Democrat Party is now basically a slap-fight melee 8th grade girls and their gay besties.

Just months into the tenure of a new party leader, Ken Martin, the Democratic National Committee's financial situation has grown so bleak that top officials have discussed whether they might need to borrow money this year to keep paying the bills.

Fund-raising from major donors -- some of whom Mr. Martin has still not spoken with -- has slowed sharply. At the same time, he has expanded the party's financial commitments to every state, and even to far-flung territories like Guam.

Fellow Democrats are grumbling that Mr. Martin, who quietly accepted a raise after taking the post, has been badly distracted by internal battles. So far, they say, he has been unable to help unite his party against Republicans, who control the federal government.

...

"What they are seeing is headline after headline of incompetence and infighting, and I think that is a real problem not just for the D.N.C. but for the larger Democratic brand," he said. "We need to come together and focus on the issues at hand. That's got to happen now. And I mean today. And if that can't happen, we need to shift course."

...

Part of the bumpy beginning appears to be fallout from a bare-knuckled fight for the chairmanship. With the spoils going to the winner as usual, Mr. Martin has pushed to install allies in some key posts -- and remove supporters of his vanquished rivals.
"Some of the changes will leave people feeling as if they don't have a seat at the table," said Donna Brazile, an influential former party chairwoman and a current D.N.C. member, who did not endorse a candidate or vote in the race for chair. "He has his own inner circle. I'm not in it, and I don't want to be in it."

...

Mr. Martin had offered to keep the two top union leaders -- Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees -- as members of the D.N.C. But he would not renew their plum assignments on the powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee, which controls how the party nominates its presidential candidates.

The Hogg episode also consumed and exasperated party leaders for close to two months.

"This is worse than some high school student council drama," said Representative Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat.

And now mega-donors are refusing to donate.

Six people briefed on the party's fund-raising, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its finances frankly, said big donors -- who are an essential part of the party's funding -- had been very slow to give to the party this year as Mr. Martin solicits contributions.

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Senior D.N.C. officials have discussed the possibility of borrowing money in the coming months to keep the operations fully funded, according to two people with direct knowledge of the private discussions who insisted on anonymity.
Mr. Martin acknowledged those talks.

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[T]he party's total cash reserves shrank by $4 million from January through April, according to the most recent federal records, while the Republican National Committee's coffers swelled by roughly $29 million. A new report is due this week.

The party out of power often falls behind the one holding the White House. Still, the current financial gap is large: $18 million on hand for the D.N.C. entering May, compared with $67.4 million for the R.N.C. Hefty chunks sit in special accounts that cannot be used for operational costs.

In the first four months of the year, only three people gave $100,000 or more to the D.N.C., according to Federal Election Commission reports. The party said it had received three more six-figure donations in May and June from individuals.

...

"People invested more money than they ever had before, they dug deeper than they ever had, and they are quite frustrated by the result," Mr. Martin said of big donors. "They want answers. I don't take it personally. I wasn't in charge."

One recent New York event with Ms. Harris did not bring in as much money as some had hoped, raising roughly $300,000, according to people briefed on the matter who insisted on anonymity to protect relationships. The sum was a fraction of the $1 million price for a single top-end ticket to a New York fund-raiser headlined by Ms. Harris last fall, when she was the nominee.

They're surprised that no one wants to hear this Space Cadet talk about time and Venn diagrams.

Tough guy Marc Elias -- Hillary Clinton's catspaw for funding the fake Steele Dossier and pushing it to the media and Obama FBI -- folded like a cheap suit when Ed Martin told him to stop representing David Hogg.

...

At one point, Mr. Martin directly called a lawyer, Graham Wilson, who works at the firm of the Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias, to express dismay that the firm was also working for Leaders We Deserve, Mr. Hogg's political action committee. The firm subsequently dropped Leaders We Deserve as a client, according to two people briefed on the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. A D.N.C. spokeswoman said Mr. Martin had never instructed the law firm to end its relationship with Mr. Hogg's PAC.

Martin alienated the Democrat-Media Party's billionaire super-donors:

One challenge for Mr. Martin in wooing big contributors is that during the race for D.N.C. chair, his campaign criticized his chief rival, Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, for his ties to some of the party's largest donors, such as the billionaires Reid Hoffman and Alex Soros. Shortly after Mr. Martin won, he told The New York Times that the onus would be on donors to mend any fences.

It's up to the donors to mend fences? Like, they should apologize if they want to give him more millions of their dollars?

Was he absent the day they taught Grifting and Political Grifter School?

Mr. Soros has not heard from Mr. Martin since then, according to a spokesman for the billionaire. Mr. Martin said he had tried to connect with Mr. Hoffman but had "not had a chance to reach out to Alex yet."

But don't worry -- they've got a lot of irons in the fire.

Why, they've started their own Democrat Party Podcast!!!

He added that new initiatives he had begun, including a "war room" to press the party's message and the state investments, would pay long-term dividends. Another early Martin project is a new streaming show on YouTube, "The Daily Blueprint," which is filmed in a studio with high-end production.

The show has drawn a minuscule audience so far, with some episodes scoring fewer than 1,000 views.

Why would they need a podcast? The entire establishment media are bitter partisan activists all-in for the Democrats.

But Democrats and the Media continue pretending the media isn't just the Democrat Party's communications shop, so they have to go through this pantomime of creating a Democrat podcast to get the Democrat talking points to the public.

Sixty one percent of the Democrat-Media Party wants the Democrat-Media Party's leadership replaced.

More than half of Democrats agree party leadership should be replaced amid infighting, according to a new survey.

Thursday's Reuters/Ipsos survey featuring self-identified Democratic respondents found that about 62 percent backed the idea that party leadership should be replaced, while 24 percent did not support the idea, and 14 percent did not provide a response or did not know.

To borrow a line from, I think, the coach of the 70s super-loser version of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers: How do you feel about the Democrat leadership's execution?

We're in favor of it, said 62% of Democrats.

posted by Ace at 03:50 PM

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