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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / All tomorrow’s parties

All tomorrow’s parties

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There was a big Politico article about how Democratic donors are pouring money into the state parties:

“A lot of donors are looking for the ‘Moneyball’ opportunity, where a dollar has the greatest possible impact,” said Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman…

[….]

“Every discussion I have with donors focuses on what the party, and only the party, can do — building volunteer infrastructure, protecting the vote and doing year-round coalition building,” said Juan Peñalosa, executive director of the Florida Democratic Party.

Money to state parties is an investment not just in the current election but in the future. Here’s the three state parties we are supporting this year — North Carolina, where a flip is possible, Kansas, where negating the Republican supermajority and giving Democrats a role in redistricting is possible, and fan favorite Wisconsin.

North Carolina:

Goal Thermometer

Kansas:

Goal Thermometer

Wisconsin:

Goal Thermometer

Reader Interactions

24Comments

  1. 1.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Wikler has really reinvigorated the WI Dem Party. Money sent to them will not be wasted. I am already directly donating.

  3. 3.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    In the spirit of the post, here’s some local flavor:

    In Ashtabula, Ohio, Young People Fight For The County’s Political Future

    With less than 100 days until the 2020 presidential election, Ohio’s 18 electoral votes are in play.

    The state went for President Trump in 2016, and Ashtabula County is one reason why.

    A Rust Belt county that was once home to a booming coal port, Ashtabula voters supported Democrats in every presidential election from 1988 to 2012. But Trump carried 57% of the vote there four years ago.

    The electorate in this county may be older than the rest of Ohio, but a new crop of political leaders on both sides of the aisle hopes a younger generation will help decide the 2020 presidential election — and Ashtabula’s future.

    “A lot of people just want change so much”

    Longtime residents of Ashtabula have seen the county change a lot in recent decades. Christine Seuffert, 70, says she has even experienced a change in her community since Trump won, especially “in the way that people treat each other. The things that they say out loud that they perhaps were always thinking. Maybe it’s good to know where people stand.”

    For the past 10 years, Seuffert has met up with a group of friends on many weekday mornings for coffee at the Harbor Perk coffee shop in Ashtabula.

    Seuffert and her friends have a lot in common but don’t all agree on who to support for president. She and Donna Rullo, 74, a retired nurse, both grew up in union families and identified as “John F. Kennedy Democrats.” But as the coal business declined in Ashtabula, so did unions that backed Democrats.

    While Seuffert remains a Democrat, Rullo voted for Trump in 2016 and plans to do so again in 2020.

    “Whenever Trump talked about getting rid of the alligators in the swamp, that’s what sold me,” Rullo says. She acknowledges Trump has his flaws: “Trump’s a jackass most of the time. I can see why people don’t like it. Doesn’t mean he can’t do the job.”

    For Seuffert, Hillary Clinton’s loss in Ashtabula County was something of a self-inflicted wound.

    “I felt the Democrats in the county kind of fell asleep at the wheel or took for granted the influence that they had,” she says.

    But in 2020, that could change. Eli Kalil is the 23-year-old Ashtabula County chairman of the Democratic Party. When he assumed the role in early June of 2020, there were 56 vacant Democratic precinct chair positions in the county. Now there are none. Kalil was able to fill the positions mostly with people in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

    He’s been busy trying to help the Democratic Party energize its traditional electorate and mobilize new young voters. When Wisdom Davis, one of Kalil’s classmates from junior high school, decided to organize a rally for racial justice in Ashtabula, he supported the effort.

    Davis, 23, says George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police officers resonated with Ashtabula’s Black residents. Black people make up just 3.8% of the county’s population of roughly 100,000.

    Davis hesitated at first to join the nationwide protest movement, unsure of whether the protests would be peaceful.

    “I said, these protests I feel are going to go really bad. It’s gonna turn into something that it shouldn’t,” she says. But after a few weeks, Davis decided it was time. Though she’d never organized an event like it before, she put together a rally at Lance Corporal Kevin Cornelius Memorial Park in Ashtabula on June 6. Hundreds of people — of diverse ages and races — attended. They counted down together the nearly nine minutes that police knelt on Floyd’s neck while he died. There was music, food, drinks and a voter registration table.

  5. 5.

    Mike in NC

    Stick a fork in Thom Tillis. He reeks of flopsweat. Six years ago I knocked on doors for Kay Hagan, a DINO, to no avail.

  6. 6.

    Yutsano

    @Mike in NC: My understanding is Gardner is a dead man walking. McSally is flailing. Bullock has been consistently ahead. Ernst hasn’t been a profile in courage lately. If Kansas picks Kobach we could have Dr. Barbara Bollinger. We have a real possibility of getting at least one in Georgia. If it’s a true wave we could take out Yertle & Lindsay. And possibly even Cornyn. Is 10 seats too ambitious?

  7. 7.

    CaseyL

    @Yutsano: The bigger our hopes, the more I worry they’ll be dashed.  I’m afraid to think about a clean sweep, as if thinking about it will make it not happen.

    PTSD, not a doubt about it, from watching the wrong people win on too many election nights – starting with Reagan in 1980.  And Trump, JFC, I doubt I got a full night’s sleep for months afterward. (I had weaned myself off the anti-depressants, and had to start taking them again.)

  8. 8.

    dmsilev

    @Yutsano: 538 did a ‘what if Democrats run the table’ scenario recently, and they came up with 60 as the maximum even vaguely plausible scenario. Not likely scenario, even in a wave election, since it would require victories in Texas, South Carolina, Kentucky, etc., but at least possible.

  10. 10.

    piratedan

    @dmsilev: l like the thought process of workingike its possible.  45 isn’t doing himself or the GOP any favors nor does the party of Mitch apparently have much in the toolbox… i.e. if its not a tax cut or voter suppression then they are flat outta ideas.

  11. 11.

    Raoul

    More Wicklers & fewer Steny’s, and the Democratic movement will be greatly improved.

    Also, great to see the jackal enthusiasm for Kansas. I have several family members in Johnson County, and they’re all horrified by what the past several years were like (esp Brownback, who thank FSM and some decent organizing was booted).

  13. 13.

    Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)

    Building up state parties was one of the best things Howard Dean did as party chairman.  And then after he left, it all just kind of dwindled away.  I got the feeling that it just wasn’t seen as being worth worrying about when Obama was president.

    I never understood that.  Obama was a great presider.  An administrator.  He was born to that, it seems.   I felt like he never really liked legislating much, the backslapping and gladhanding.  What he liked was to just get down to the business of getting shit done.

    And, Lord knows, after eight years of Bush the Younger, we needed that.  But I also got the feeling that he really didn’t like campaigning much–not so much the campaigning everybody knows you need to do to get elected; but the campaigning you need to do once you’re in office so you can get the backing of the country to get what you want done, and then the campaigning once you’re done to keep people on your side.

    It always seemed like he resented that side a little.  He seemed to think that what he and the Democratic Congress were doing was so self-evidently worth doing that he shouldn’t have had to campaign for it at all.

    I remember there was a runoff in Georgia in 2008, a month or so after the general election, and everybody was jazzed, because the Democrat had held Saxbe Chambliss to under 50%, and we all thought we had a shot at taking the seat in the runoff.

    And everybody clamoring for Obama to campaign for the Democrat to get him over the hump, but he just sat it out and said he didn’t want to risk sticking his neck out and then seeing the Democrat lose.  I always thought that was a mistake.

    And then the 50 state thing that Dean had begun just withered away.

    We need to keep it going this time.

  14. 14.

    Mai naem mobile

    @Yutsano: AZ,NC, CO, NH,  MT, AK, IA, GA, SC, TX, KS and KY  is a big stretch and you probably lose Doug Jones . It’s a huge pity neither of Fl seats are up because I think the Dems would pick it up. I think a net gain of 7 is not unrealistic. I know the GOP is crazy but I think a wave election might scare enough GOPr senators to wonder if they can win their next elections with their current crazy positions. I am talking about Rubio, Rick Scott, Grassley and Cruz.

  15. 15.

    Paul W.

    I was just about to come here and link this, it’s very promising and what needs to be happen to taken advantage of a possible wave election.

  18. 18.

    Mousebumples

    Second what Omnes said about donating to wisconsin. I’ve been giving monthly.

    So glad we have a solid state chair to reinvigorate the party, a science believing Dem governor… And hopefully we can knock GOP morons out of the statehouse in November , along with Trump !

  19. 19.

    Mai naem mobile

    @Mike in NC: I have no idea because honestly there are times where he doesn’t appear all that sharp. I am not talking Donny Dumb level but definitely on the aging  should not have an important job level sharpness.

  20. 20.

    Mai naem mobile

    cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2020/01/16/arizona-one-of-seven-state-legislatures-democrats-target-for-takeo…

    I am going to plug my state’s  Dems. The AZ State House is 31-29 GOP tilt and the State Senate is 17-13 GOP.

    Also Congressman David Schweikert(Rump) just paid a  $50K fine for ethical violations.

    cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2020/07/30/schweikert-admits-house-ethics-violations-agrees-to-reprimand-5000…

    It’s a House seat and he’s got some good Dem candidates running against him(we have our primary next week.)  I believe it’s mostly upscale Phoenix suburbs(vs Trumper rural country) so its gettable.

  21. 21.

    Alison Rose

    Found this gem of a comment on a FB post from Vogue Magazine about Obama’s eulogy for Lewis:

    Shame on you for politicizing the funeral of John Lewis to further the Dumbocrats agenda

    I mean, yeah. HOW DARE. How dare we introduce POLITICS and CIVIL RIGHTS into the funeral for a…*checks notes*…politician and civil rights icon. IT SHOULD ONLY HAVE BEEN ABOUT HIS DANCING AND HOW MUCH HE LIKES CATS.

    The commenter’s name is Kathy which is close enough to Karen.

  22. 22.

    BCHS Class of 1980

    I have a bit to give so I like to allocate some to the little-to-no-hopers. For instance does Paulette Jordan stand a shot in hell against Jim Risch? Probably not, but in a wave weird stuff happens; Minnick did represent the ID panhandle for two years.

    Brief plug for my local FL House candidate Jessica Harrington. Her opponent James Grant was the House sponsor of both the loathed poll tax and the “let’s jack the amendment percentage up to 2/3” bill. If anyone wants to screw him, a small donation couldn’t hurt.

  23. 23.

    BCHS Class of 1980

    @Alison Rose: Yeah, I was waiting for someone to kvetch about politicizing the funeral of a man whose entire adult life was spent in getting people access to politics in its most basic form: the vote. Buncha morans.

  24. 24.

    Shana

    I know I’m way late to this thread but let me say, again, that the best thing Dean did when he was DNC Chairman was the 50 State Strategy. Here in VA where we were teetering on the brink of being a swing state that money and dedicated staffing made a huge difference in our abilities. I’m convinced it sped up our conversion by about 3-5 years.

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