Unpredictability is a Virtue

After my report on my wallet-draining $9 contribution to Kat Abughazaleh, I’ve received one more email from her campaign, right before the Q1 FEC filing deadline. It was a soft ask and an update. She hasn’t filed her Q1 FEC report yet, but she says she hit her 10,000 donor goal.

Abughazaleh is bringing out the nasty primary voters, but LOL this exchange:

The stupidest thing about the opposition to Abughazaleh is the notion that living in a highly gerrymandered district on the north side of Chicago is some massive virtue, and then dinging her for not attending a protest that wasn’t in the district. (I’ll bet money that the district was gerrymandered to include Jan Schakowsky’s residence every time it changed borders.)

Anyway, what Abughazaleh did here was unpredictable. Democrats need a lot more of this. AOC pointed this out in her interview with Jon Stewart earlier this year. It’s in the context of the elevation of 74-year-old Gerry Connolly, who has esophageal cancer, instead of her as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee:

A danger that AOC didn’t mention, but we saw in the CR cave by Schumer, is that if you’re predictable, you also think that your opponent will be. It’s clear that Senate Democrats were completely unprepared for Johnson and Trump quickly whipping a poisonous CR and getting it through the House. The handmaid of predictability, inflexibility, made them unable to mount a meaningful opposition to the CR.

Another predictable thing about the Democrats is that they fleece their donors. The link from reader S that I posted yesterday, which reported that some Democratic consultant took a 25% cut of the fundraising in the Florida special elections, is a great example. This is simply outrageous. There’s no way that these special election candidates would be underfunded — the history of the Democratic base and specials is that we give early and often, because we’ve seen districts flipped in special elections.

To be clear, I have a huge amount of sympathy for the candidates in Florida. Those districts were almost sure losers, the candidates had to act quickly, so whomever gave them advice about fundraising is more to blame than the candidates. My guess is the DCCC recommended that consultant.

Even if that wasn’t a DCCC-recommended consultant, one thing that's tediously predictable is the conservatism of the DCCC when it comes to “maybe” districts. From what I observed, there’s been little more than lip service to expanding the playing field from all of the Democratic establishment campaign committees. Let’s start with the, in my opinion and experience, overhyped 50-state project. The only real, serious 50-state effort that my relatives in South Dakota saw was the 2008 Obama campaign. The campaign withdrew in the Fall when it was clearly hopeless, but he did win Virginia, Indiana and North Carolina. That’s what I’d expect from a real 50-state campaign: recon in a lot of “red” states, and drawing back to the ones that are winnable later in the campaign.

Because Democratic donors feel regularly ripped off, they’ll give money via ActBlue to candidates who have a good story and/or a hated opponent. This isn’t great, either — Sarah Gideon, Susan Collins’ 2020 opponent, ended that campaign with $14.8 million in the bank after raising $75 million.

Today in South Dakota, the Democrats are still trying. They are holding public town halls, and they have a Senate candidate picked. Right now, a million bucks would make a huge difference in the opposition to Sen Mike Rounds, who’s up in 2026. Hell, $250K would be a big boost. But the party would rather put extra millions into the pockets of consultants in big ticket campaigns: Susan Collins’ opponent will probably get at least $100 million in donations this cycle — more money than can be usefully spent in a small state like Maine, again.

One unpredictable thing to do would be for Democrats to put together a consortium of big donors and small donors to guarantee funding for any Democrat who’s going to challenge a Senator in a red state. I’m sure there are others.