we’ve talked about this before but i think litman is close to something sharp but not quite getting it. the problem isn’t that voters don’t believe the sky is falling; it’s that they don’t believe Dem leadership believes it, because Dems don’t act like they believe it.
Democratic politicians & campaigns emphasize that this is the most important election of all time as long as it's the sole responsibility of *voters* to solve, whereas they keep emphasizing bipartisan comity & deep respect for their honored, cherished colleagues on the other side of the aisle
We did this through the actual Trump administration - Pelosi, Schumer, and they're surrogates would both use dire, apocalyptic language (correctly!) to describe Trump, the promote their attempt to make policy deals with Trump, and slow walk/squelch the process of going after Trump.
After a while, ordinary, politically engaged people notice this. Even less politically engaged people can observe that the crisis that Dems need donations for now Now! NOW!!! is ongoing for 3,4,5+ years. At some point, people either run out of money or just give up - rationally!
look, it's simple: if we the voters would just do our job and give them 800 senators and 2,700% majority in Congress for the next 12,000 years, they will consider putting together a blue ribbon commission to review bipartisan methods of improving comity and democracy
say what you will about chicken little but that little idiot sincerely believed the sky was falling.
the democrats have made it VERY clear that the only place they're allowed to talk about the sky is donation email subject lines
i cannot for the life of me imagine a person who pays enough attention to politics that they are considering donating to a candidate, but not enough attention that they don't realize that we're already in Biden-Trump race. takes all sorts!
I’ve donated to the Dem candidate for every election since Kerry. I’m not donating this time. I’m very bitter that Biden is the candidate on the ballot after Dobbs. He’ll be lucky to get my vote. A small donation is out of the question. (Please note yelling at me about this will not secure my vote.)
yeah I have conservative democrats who oppose me on almost every issue begging me for $5 while raking in six figures from aipac, sugarcane/cattle/citrus, oil & gas, hospitality industry lobbyists. they hate to hear my opinion but love my money and thanks to them I don't have enough of it.
Love getting a text message every three weeks about Obama breaking his silence. There’s a shit-ton of stuff I’m not supposed to think about; why was he silent when all this was going to shit?
If you replaced “dems” with “televangelists” in that first paragraph, we’d all agree that this elderly woman had been scammed and taken advantage of for a decade. Really not a good look for the democratic party (I know republicans do it too)
I would actually give more $ if campaigns promised not to text or email me anymore. I'm now giving nothing since it just leads to a complete bombardment of text pleas for more more more.
This level of tin-earedness is itself a problem. Dem strategists, if you do not know that getting endless texts from random campaigns I have no association with isn't off-putting as hell, well I'm not sure why you're a strategist.
It has reached the point that I nearly cringe when I hear a text 'ding' if I'm with my partner. B/c if he's here, then theres a 50% chance the ding is a fundraising text.
And *every* campaign abuses the STOP command. They'll text from a new number w/in a month.
It's exhausting and dead-endy.
I constantly get emails from some random asshole running against Ted Cruz or something. Sure buddy, let’s set some money on fire for a state I don’t live in
At this point. If they sent me a not that was like, "we want to put this billboard up" , I'd be all, "sure no sweat" but instead it's only fake urgency in the fundraiser texts.
donated to bernie 16-20 and was happy that he never gave out my info to any other campaigns. at some point he sent out a help the “squad” text and i was like ok sure. from that moment on i get like a dozen texts a day from all sorts of shitty democrats. i guess i should have assumed.
Maybe don't run a campaign that costs you Hundreds of Millions
Maybe your voter bases would empathise with these piece of shit fucking politicians if they also showed they could tighten the belt
It’s not a budget issue, it’s a “I get 40-50 junk emails/day and I’ve only donated twice” issue. I am actively choosing to not donate because I am tired of the junk mail/texts/phone calls.
I’d have easily donated $500-1000 more than I have but I choose not to.
If both parties are facing this, it seems like a good thing? They should lower the budgets and just do cheaper elections. The main reason you need to fundraise is to beat the other guy, so if you have $20 and the other guy also has $20....
feels like if you just made it so you couldn't lobby the govt if you made $$ from the govt or any of its subsidiaries, it'd solve a good % of it, provided you knit it up tight
you can solve a lot by targeting the spigot/trough
