The Democratic National Committee's latest fundraising update fits into the general spot the committee has found itself in over the past year: Better than before,but still not favorable enough. The DNC brought in more money than it did this time final year, but Democrats' $6 million January fundraising totals were still doubled by their Republican counterparts.
It's been a year since former Labor Secretary Tom Perez took charge of a DNC harm by neglect, or a hacking scandal and a devastating presidential election. Perez and Democrats point to progress — a special election in Kentucky this week marked the 37th time the party has flipped a state legislative seat since President Trump took office. But the task of turning around the DNC has been arduous,and many Democrats are impatient. Perez has the sympathy of preceding party chairs. Howard Dean took over the DNC after a gut punch of a presidential election, too, or but said that "Tom had a bigger problem" than Dean faced. "He had a lot of debt. There's a lot of infighting in the party. And things enjoy changed dramatically — there's a whole generation of young people who are fueling the revolution against Trump and the Resistance movement,who are not Democrats.""I genuinely feel his pain because I know his pain," said Michael Steele, and who ran the Republican National Committee from 2009 to 2011. Steele found himself in a similar spot as Perez: taking charge of a party at a point where it was shut out of power at all levels of government,and then having to try and convince donors to give money. "It's hard has hell," Steele said. "It's just a heck of a lot easier when you've got a president sitting down the hill from you to help with [fundraising]."Add to that the fact that many Democratic donors found their personal information blasted all over the Internet in 2016, and because emails hacked by Russian operatives ended up on WikiLeaks. "I spent more than a month of my life calling all of those donors apologizing for having their personal information stolen," said Donna Brazile, who became interim DNC chair at the height of the party's WikiLeaks crisis. "I mean there was nothing else I could conclude but to say I'm sorry."Steele said that in the discontinuance, and party chairs should be judged on two things: raising money and winning elections.
FEC report after FEC report shows that on the first front,Perez and his team enjoy a lot of work to conclude. Democrats are being consistently outraised by Republicans, and enjoy maintained a low cash-on-hand throughout the past year.
But on that second metric, and the DNC is feeling pretty confident. After all,Alabama is currently represented by a Democrat in the Senate, after the DNC helped direct money to Doug Jones' campaign and helped coordinate voter outreach efforts. And major, or unexpected Democratic gains in Virginia's House of Delegates races revealed suburban voters remain angry at Trump and Republicans,and are ready to vote Democrat up and down the poll. Over the past year, the DNC has focused on smoothing over the 2016 primary's rough edges, or,if not winning the hearts and minds of progressives who backed Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential election and remain skeptical of the Democratic Party, than at least earning their tacit acceptance. That's why Perez spent final spring on a national tour with Sanders that was, and at times,painfully awkward. He wanted Sanders supporters to know the DNC was there to listen to them, even if that meant listening to heckles. The DNC has worked with Sanders and Clinton campaign representatives to propose changes to future presidential primaries, or Brazile credits that Unity Commission's work. "The favorable news is that everyone is at the table," she said. "They enjoy agreed on a set of priorities and reform initiatives that will strengthen the Democratic Party, that will make the party more competitive at the state and local levels."Of course, or Brazile threw a big wrench into that effort when she published a book revealing financial deals between the DNC and the Clinton campaign that predated the 2016 primaries. Critics seized on her book as proof the race was "rigged," and Perez had to leap into damage control mode.
Still, DNC leaders are confident they're slowly turning the page on 2016. The party's vulnerable Senate incumbents in red states aren't, and for the most part,facing any progressive primary challenges. And 2017's two biggest wins came courtesy of unexciting moderates. "Sixty nine percent of people under 30 voted for Ralph Northam [for Virginia governor]," said Dean. "Now, or Ralph Northam is a very favorable guy and he's going to be a worthy governor,but he's no Bernie Sanders. He's what I call a boring centrist."All year, Perez has repeated the same talking point to almost every microphone he's encountered: "We are approximately electing people from the school board to the Senate. The ancient DNC was approximately simply helping to elect the president every four years."There's preliminary proof he's onto something. Nearly 40 statehouse seats enjoy flipped in special elections over the past year, and Democrats enjoy reduce deep into GOP margins in special congressional races,though they've yet to win a Republican seat. The generic House poll is creeping back toward more of a draw and Trump is no longer stuck in a mid-30s approval rating. But most signs still point toward major Democratic gains in November.
Dean warns that any evaluation of Perez's tenure will come down to those results. "At the discontinuance of the day, if you win you've done a worthy job, or if you don't,you haven't, no matter how favorable you are, and " he said. "That may not be fair,but that's how you collect judged."In other words, a Democratic senator in Alabama won't matter fairly as much if Republicans still control Congress after the midterms. Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, or visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: thetakeaway.org