Democratic voters are energized, as we are reminded again and again. But the Democratic National Committee has to be wondering why the resistance’s anti-Trump enthusiasm isn’t translating into better-than-usual fundraising numbers.
The DNC’s coffers are in no serious straits, but financial support from its base has been mediocre at best — and maybe even embarrassing considering the massive hauls the Republican National Committee keeps scoring.
The RNC raised a whopping $14.2 million in July, “bringing its total haul for the cycle to $227.2 million,” CBS News reported Monday. “The RNC raised more in July of this year than it did in 2010 and 2014 combined.”
For reference, these are the greatest numbers the RNC has ever seen for July in a nonpresidential year.
“We’ve used our unprecedented grassroots support to build the biggest field program we’ve ever had to defend our House and Senate majorities,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told CBS. “History might be against us, but we’re making sure every voter knows we’re the party of results. All the Democrats have is resistance.”
The RNC began August with an estimated $41.9 million cash on hand. It also has no debt. And all this after it shifted $4 million in July to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and $4 million to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
“The RNC had more than five times as much in the bank as the Democratic National Committee,” CBS noted, citing Federal Election Commission documents.
Though the Democratic National Committee hasn’t released its numbers for this time period, smart money says they’ve been outraised again by the GOP.
In June, the RNC raised an estimated $14 million, while the DNC reported raising only $8 million, according to FEC data. The month before that, in May, the RNC raised $14.5 million, while the DNC brought in a much smaller $5.6 million.
For all of 2017, the RNC raised $132.5 million. The DNC, meanwhile, raised only $67 million.
In fact, the DNC is on track to do worse or at least not much better in the 2018 election cycle than it has in any of the previous three. And its miserable haul in October was the worst in many years for a comparable month.
It’s important to to note that many of the Democratic Party’s other campaign arms, including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, are doing just fine so far as donations are concerned. In fact, the DCCC announced in July that it had raised a record-breaking $15.2 million.
But why the resistance appears uninterested in boosting the Democratic Party’s governing body is a bit of a mystery. It’s not like the resistance is broke.
Anti-Trump activists have thrown nearly half a million dollars at a GoFundMe account for disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strozk, whose anti-Trump pillow talk with his mistress compromised the bureau’s investigations of Hillary Clinton’s private email server and Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election.
The resistance also dumped $554,520 into a GoFundMe page for former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who didn’t even lose his pension. The resistance flushed $613,705 down the toilet for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg action figures. Anti-Trump activists also raised $23,748 to bring a giant Trump balloon to the United States.
Maybe the DNC should hold a bake sale.
