The Washington Post’s Paul Kane reports today in an article today that Democrats are “jarred” by a drop in fundraising. Moreover, Kane thinks he knows why: “complacency among their rank-and-file donors and a de facto boycott by many of their wealthiest givers, who have been put off by the party's harsh rhetoric about big business.” He further adds: “The vast majority of those declines were accounted for by the absence of large donors who, strategists say, have shut their checkbooks in part because Democrats have heightened their attacks on the conduct of major financial firms and set their sights on rewriting the laws that regulate their behavior.” Who would these sources be? Well, we really don’t know and Mr. Kane is apparently unwilling to share this important piece of information with us so that we can evaluate his article.
Now you have to wonder who those Democratic supporters are with the large checkbooks. Are they really a bunch of corporate magnates who just can’t go along with liberal ideas? Wouldn’t that bunch be funding Republicans? My guess is that they are generally liberal in philosophy and are withholding monetary support from segments of the Democratic Party because of its inability to break from corporate lobbyists and establish progressive policies.
Kane, apparently unwittingly, provides support for this hypothesis. Citing the FEC midyear analysis of campaign funding, he noted that the DSCC (the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee) had experienced a 25 percent drop in contributions from the same point two years ago and individual contributions, alone, were down 40 percent. Then he delivers the knockout punch. According to Kane, the FEC numbers say that all of this decline in individual contributions came from rich contributors who gave $10,000 or more. Now, it turns out that the DCCC (the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) is not having nearly the problem raising money. As Kane informs, the DCCC has received a 50 percent increase in small dollar contributors, even though total contributions are 16 percent less than they were at this point two years ago, in 2007. Of course, Mr. Kane surely cannot expect fund raising now to be as great as it was in 2007 when the country was electrically charged for change and the presidential campaign was getting underway in earnest, can he? The contrast in the success of the DSCC and the DCCC, in my mind, is a proxy vote for what is going on in the Democratic Party over health care reform. The House (DCCC) is in favor of a Public Option and the Senate (DSCC) acts as if they can’t vote for it.
The internecine fight is definitely weakening the Democratic Party and a little appreciated fact is that Democrats got 72.6 and 73.5 percent of their funding from individual donors in 2005 and 2007 respectively. This year? They have only received 62.7 percent from individuals. This may simply be a function of big donors forsaking the party, but I don’t think this explains the whole decline. Instead, I think that progressives are becoming much more selective with their contributions and giving only to organizations and candidates who are decidedly progressive and anti-corporate. I know I have been much more selective and I only give to organizations that further progressive causes, like ACTBLUE, Jane Hamshire’s FDL fight for a public option or Robert Greenwald’s efforts.
So I have to ask Mr. Kane and the Washington Post this question: Why do you always take the Politico tact when you analyze the Democratic Party? There is a lot wrong with the Democratic Party right now, but I have a hard time believing that it is loosing its contributor base because the Democrats are too tough on the corporations. First of all, they are not at all tough on the corporations. They have not done a single thing to regulate the banks and the Obama Administration has done nothing but throw roadblocks into any regulatory reform for health care. Second, big donors in the Democratic Party are not corporatists, they are generally successful people who would like a more liberal country. Do you know who I think runs a risk of alienating their corporate support if they actually started to do objective investigations? You guessed it, Mr. Kane and WaPo for two. I guess this answers the question I asked above.