Even in defeat, you have to pay the Clintons. The former first lady and two-time presidential loser is forcing the cash-strapped Democratic National Committee to dole out nearly $2 million for access to their email list through Onward Together, according to The Intercept. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has paid $700,000 to use the same data. It showcases that while Democratic voter enthusiasm is high, the party apparatus is in a terrible state of disrepair. The army of small-donors has collapsed, new donor attraction is lackluster, debts are in the millions of dollars, with the DNC taking out a loan totaling almost $2 million just to keep the lights on. And while the Obama campaign gifted their data, the publication added that Democrats aren’t viewing this as a favor at all since he turned his Organizing for Action group into a direct DNC competitor, further hamstringing the national committee (via The Intercept):
Heading into the 2018 midterms, with Democrats hoping to take back the House of Representatives and even make a run at the Senate, the party has spent more than $2 million worth of campaign resources on payments to Hillary Clinton’s new group, Onward Together, according to Federal Election Commission filings and interviews with people familiar with the payments.
The Democratic National Committee is paying $1.65 million for access to the email list, voter data, and software produced by Hillary for America during the 2016 presidential campaign, Xochitl Hinojosa, a spokesperson for the DNC, told The Intercept. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has paid more than $700,000 to rent the same email list.
Clinton is legally entitled to rent her list to the party, rather than hand it over as a gift, but in 2015, Barack Obama gave his email list, valued at $1,942,640, to the DNC as an in-kind contribution. In 2013 and 2014, OFA had similarly made in-kind contributions exceeding $3.4 million for uses of the list that cycle.
Obama’s list was at one point considered to be the most valuable in politics and raised more than twice as much money for the 2012 Obama campaign as Clinton’s did for hers in 2016. The DNC agreement with the Clinton campaign calls on the debt-ridden organization to fork the money over to an entity of Clinton’s choosing, which wound up being Onward Together, the operation she formed after her campaign ceased to exist.
[…]
Despite Obama’s willingness to gift the DNC with his email list, he is not seen as a savior within the building. After he was elected in 2008, he turned his campaign organization, Organizing for Action, into a parallel DNC, starving the real one of funds. During that time, if a party committee such as the DCCC wanted access to OFA, it had to rent it. When he finally turned the OFA list over to the DNC in 2015, it had been battered like a rental car, and the organization was a shell of itself, mismanaged and neglected to the brink of insolvency. It was in that context that the party committee struck up its secret deal with the Clinton campaign to salvage itself — setting off the charges of favoritism in the 2016 campaign that continue to dog the party today.
Did this go through a budget committee? No. Are stats parties fully funded right now? No. https://t.co/IgMfIRk6mK
— Nomiki Konst ?????? (@NomikiKonst) April 25, 2018
This is an incredible story. Grassroots Democrats are desperate to take back at least the House. The DNC is deep in debt. Yet the Dems are paying Clinton's organization at least $2.4 million for her email list. https://t.co/huMNROu438 by @walkerbragman @MSainat1 pic.twitter.com/lGTwEIe88G
— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) April 25, 2018
We’ll see if this has any impact on the party’s long-term goals, especially their long walk out of the wilderness at the state-level, which will take significant resources. Hillary Clinton promised to rebuild the state parties should she win the 2016 election. The virtual wipeout of Democrats at the state and local level occurred under Obama’s watch and the former president did little to stem the tide. Since 2009 until the end of his presidency, the Democrats lost 1,000 seats. They got walloped.
Now, both Clinton and Obama, the titans of the party, are hamstringing it from becoming financially solvent. Obama for creating a de facto separate committee and Hillary saying, “pay me” for her data lists. So, while the Republicans have their issues (recruiting crappy candidates, gaffes, etc.) the Democratic problems seem to be much more systemic, complicated further by a vampire-like Clintonite element bleeding the virtually bankrupt DNC dry.
Oh, and she's going to be fundraising for the Democrats ahead of the 2018 midterms with a dismal 27 percent approval rating. Democrats want the media and the GOP to stop talking about Hillary and the 2016 election. Maybe that'll stop when they finally get rid of her, but they can't; they don't have any heavyweights on their bench to headline major money haul events. So, pick your poison.
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