A new report just dropped — and it’s bad news for the Democratic National Committee.
The DNC’s financial situation is looking rough, and the details coming out of donor circles are even worse. According to the report, major contributors are sounding the alarm, and what party officials are hearing from their donors isn’t pretty. Confidence is collapsing, the money is drying up, and the grassroots enthusiasm they love to brag about?
At one point earlier this year, the DNC reached out to big donors to host a San Francisco-area fundraiser headlined by former Vice President Kamala Harris. Most of the donors rejected the request, according to several people familiar with the conversations.
Upon receiving the invitation, one replied with a profanity-laced rejection. Others said they didn’t want to give to the party until it produced substantive plans to win elections. Those who declined told the national party they had commitments and couldn’t make it work.
They eventually managed to find someone willing to host — but the turnout and donations were far lower than expected.
That’s brutal. And it speaks volumes about what Democrats really think of Kamala Harris right now. She’s been dropping hints about another run, but let’s be honest — the enthusiasm just isn’t there. Even among her own party, the excitement has flatlined.
That probably explains why the Democrats’ bank account looks so anemic compared to the GOP’s:
The RNC had receipts of $10.7 million in the most recent month and $86 million in cash reserves as it started October, compared with $10.3 million and about $12 million for the DNC, respectively.
There’s also growing concern among Democrats about the party’s direction — and whether the DNC is letting the radicals steer the ship:
Rachel Pritzker, a donor and fundraiser who chairs a group trying to push Democrats closer to the center, said many party donors are concerned that the progressivism pushed by such figures as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the self-described democratic socialist favored in New York City’s Nov. 4 mayoral election, will hurt Democrats.
“They’re worried that the way the party looks and sounds can’t really compete and win elections,” said Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune and a relative of the Democratic billionaire governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker. “They’re worried that it needs to reorient toward the cultural mainstream and it needs to basically rebrand.”
And who can blame them? Why should donors pour in more cash after watching $1.5 billion vanish into the black hole of Kamala Harris’s failed campaign? They’re furious — and rightly so. There’s been little to no transparency or accountability for how that money was spent:
A top official at a national Democratic group said some donors remain angry about how their money was spent in last year’s presidential election by outside groups, including on what they see as excessive salaries for Washington, D.C., consultants. The official said the party has failed to complete a public postelection investigation into what went wrong in 2024.
Pritzker, chair of the group Third Way, said, “It is shocking how little reassessment the party and its leadership has done.”
The ongoing internal divide and the party’s refusal to face reality are draining the Democrats both politically and financially. They’re hemorrhaging support, stuck with disastrous approval ratings, failed policies, and a shrinking war chest — yet they keep doubling down on the same losing playbook. It’s a wake-up call they refuse to hear.