Author Topic: Get out your checkbooks Resident LibDerp Nation  (Read 774 times)

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Offline sonofdaxjones

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Get out your checkbooks Resident LibDerp Nation
« on: June 13, 2019, 11:00:25 AM »
Your party needs you your money.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-13/democrats-2020-odds-against-trump-clouded-by-party-finances

Here's the first part for those of you too dumb to use outline.com

The DNC Has Spent More Money Than It’s Raised This Year
BILL ALLISON JUNE 13, 2019
The Democratic National Committee has a money problem. And that could hurt its nominee’s chances of beating President Donald Trump in 2020.

In the first four months of 2019, the party spent more than it raised and added $3 million in new debt. In the same period, its Republican counterpart was stockpiling cash.

Democratic donors overall have been generous, pouring three times as much into their party’s presidential and congressional campaigns in the first quarter of the year than Republicans gave to their national office-seekers. But the DNC isn’t benefiting from the same donor enthusiasm, putting at risk its ability to help the nominee take on Trump, donors said.

Whoever wins the party’s nomination will rely heavily on the DNC in the general election for organizing, identifying voters and getting them to the polls. That will ultimately cost hundreds of millions of dollars by election day, but the party needs to spend early to prepare, which is why it’s been borrowing money. It’s also sending out fundraising appeals under the presidential candidates’ names, something it’s never done before.

"It’s trouble, it’s going to affect us," said Allan Berliant, a Cincinnati-based Democratic bundler, who says the party needs to open offices and get boots on the ground around the country. "All of that starts with fundraising," he said.

Party officials and fundraisers blamed the deficiency on several factors, and chief among them is competition from the 23 Democrats who are running for president and vacuuming up contributors’ cash. Giving to the party isn’t as compelling as supporting the presidential hopefuls, said John Morgan, an Orlando-based trial attorney and Democratic fundraiser.

“Do you want to fix up the barn or do you want to bet on the horses?” he said.

But major donors also pointed to the perception of some contributors that the national party is disorganized -- a hangover from the 2016 election. The growing schism between the old-guard establishment and the younger, activist wing could be discouraging donors, too, they said.

Fundraising Compared
By the end of April, the DNC had collected contributions of more than $24.4 million, but had spent $28.4 million, according to the latest disclosures. It had $7.6 million cash on hand, $1 million less than in January. It posted $6.2 million in debt, including bank loans and unpaid invoices to vendors, Federal Election Commission records show.

That compared with the Republican National Committee, which thanks in part to Trump’s non-stop fundraising since winning the White House had $34.7 million in the bank and no debt. It raised nearly $62 million so far this year, two-and-a-half times the DNC’s haul.

Barack Obama attends a DNC fundraiser in 2011.

Photographer: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Typically the party with the incumbent president seeking reelection raises more money than the opposition, FEC records show. The DNC, for example, outraised the RNC by more than $20 million in 2011 when President Barack Obama was in the White House.

DNC officials said they aren’t worried, pointing out that the party has raised $3.7 million more this year than it had at the same time in 2015. Campaign-finance rules, however, disallow spending most of that on voter turnout or messaging and limit it to legal expenses, the national convention or the DNC headquarters.

‘Fundraising Machine’
Democratic rainmakers said contributions should pick up as the crowded field of presidential hopefuls thins. "We will have the largest and most enthusiastic fundraising machine that the Democrats have ever seen," said Chris Korge, a longtime Democratic bundler who took over the party’s fundraising operation in May. The Miami-based attorney and investor said he’s educating donors on how the party is investing its funds, and said money won’t be a problem, even if Republicans outraise it.

Democratic donors elsewhere have been generous. From January through March, 16 presidential candidates collectively raised $77 million, or $3 million more than Trump’s committees and the Republican National Committee combined. That follows the 2018 midterms in which Democratic committees of every type spent $525 million more than Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.


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