Are you tired of incessant, unhinged Democratic fundraising texts and emails? Well, so are we. Tommy sits down with three experts in the party's digital fundraising space to talk about how this model became the norm, why it may be hurting Democrats more than it helps, and how that campaign — you know the one — got your cell phone number. Blue State Digital founder Joe Rospars joins to diagnose the problem, our own Dan Pfeiffer weighs in on its impact, and ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones explains why Democrats rely on the tactic and lays out what we stand to lose if Trump's attacks against her organization succeed. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.
What are the origins of annoying fundraising texts?
I think also folks who are building organization on the ground, like... It is not easy to be a field organizer, as you know from all these years ago. It is not a lucrative thing to go work on a campaign as an early job or even as a job later in life if you're taking a break from whatever else you're doing. The difference between being able to
hire one more person to just scratch out like a good busy work week for a campaign is such a big deal and just not that much money in the scheme of things. And so folks who are hiring and doing real organizing on the ground, those are the campaigns that I would give the extra dollar to.
Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, and that's a reason to donate early, right? Because that money could be invested in hiring a field staff and not dumping money on TV ads that may or may not work.
campaigns and candidates are living and dying by what they can predict they're going to be able to spend.
And so when you have these moments, even though it's not, well, it's an election year here in New Jersey, but even though it's not an election year for Congress or for Senate yet, the sooner you give and the more times you give to a candidate that's doing something that you believe in, it's so much signal, right?
right to that campaign to invest more in what they're doing that got to you that made you inspired but also that to give them the confidence to build and hire that next organizer or build out the open one more campaign office in order to build out you know earlier and better for the election that's going to be next year so like this is sometimes it feels like you're sort of
on the receiving end of like a kind of the bank teller, you know, machine opens up and it's like, okay, here's this fundraising email. And then everybody goes away inside.
But like, they're really watching and making decisions based on whether you gave today, how much you gave, how many times you get, like all that stuff is getting extrapolated by good campaigns to make their bets about how they can best win. So I would encourage everybody to, you know, when you're feeling it, give to the, give to the folks you love. Anything else you want to share?
The grift on the Republican side is like – I find that Democrats were often not talking enough about these things that are fixable. And when we're engaged in our self-critique, it's a lot of your things that aren't necessarily fixable. and are just the way they are. So I think this is one where we can do things.
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