Democrats outraised and outspent President Trump in 2024, underscoring how money wasn’t the party’s biggest problem in its loss of power last year, according to several strategists, big-dollar donors and aides who spoke to The Hill.
These sources say the party’s problems run much deeper than raising money.
“The challenges that Democrats are having right now you can’t completely buy your way out of,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne. “You can’t spend your way out of the type of political challenge that we’re in right now. It’s going to take more than spending and trying to overwhelm the other side with your bank account.”
Operatives and donors in the party say they’ve concluded their messaging and failures to connect with voters are the roots of their deeper issues.
Yet that could also cause some financial issues.
With the midterm elections inching closer, some Democratic donors say they will refuse to write checks until the party gets its act together.
“Nothing raises money more than winning,” said John Morgan, a major Democratic donor. “When sports teams are losing, even the people with season tickets don’t go.”
Morgan, like other donors interviewed for this story, say Democrats need to take a “specific and granular” approach to the midterms by investing in a dozen specific congressional seats that are up for grabs.
“You got to put your money in those toss-up seats,” Morgan said. “That’s got to be first on the agenda.”
Morgan said if Democrats take that methodical tack, they can win the House and start to put points on the board. “When you win, from that perch, you can raise more money,” Morgan added. “But Democrats have to be patient and not try and eat the whole pie at once.”
Other Democratic donors — who haven’t opened up their checkbooks since their party’s devastating losses in November — say they are feeling frustrated.
“Why would I write a check when we’re losing everything? We’re losing the airwaves. We’re losing the tech battle. We’re losing the ground game. They have yet to prove that they have learned any real lessons yet,” one donor said.
“So either people start to wake up or we lose again.”
A recent New York Times report further exacerbated tensions within the party when it revealed that top operatives had been gathering in luxury hotels as they sought to figure out how to appeal to working-class men.
One recent event was hosted by Future Forward, the super PAC that had been helping former President Biden’s reelection bid, at a Ritz-Carlton resort in Half Moon Bay, Calif. The event included a discussion about lessons learned in 2024. Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, two names frequently mentioned as top-tier candidates for the 2028 presidential race, attended.
The donor calling on his party to wake up also expressed frustration with congressional leaders. Democrats have given up on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the donor said, and they worry that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) “hasn’t effectively stepped into Nancy Pelosi’s shoes.”
“Look, here’s the thing: Both sides are always going to have enough money to compete,” the donor said. “But most Democratic donors think the way we spent money during the last election is dumb, whether it’s TV ads, or bad data and analytics.
“And we don’t have a leader,” the donor added. “They’re going to have more money than God because they have Trump. He’s the leader of the party and they have an unlimited amount of money as long as he wants to put in the time. And he’s not an idiot. He knows his legacy is tied to this.”
Recent polls have reflected the growing frustration among Democrats about their party’s direction.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey conducted in early March showed that just one-third of Democrats felt “very optimistic” or even “somewhat optimistic” about the future of their party.
That sentiment dropped significantly from July 2024, when the same poll found about 6 in 10 respondents viewed the party with a positive outlook.
And as of right now, fundraising appears to be the least of their worries.
First, they have to start with a message to connect to voters, a fault that a number of Democrats who spoke to The Hill said led directly to former Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss.
“The loss to Trump in the 2024 election certainly can’t be blamed on Democrats raising insufficient funds,” said Garry South, a veteran Democratic strategist based in California. “Despite her late start, Harris still raised more than $1 billion, breaking all records for a presidential campaign.
“It brings to mind the old saying, you can’t sell cat food if the cats don’t like it,” South concluded.
