Apples and oranges, Evil One. As a fellow Evil poster, I must point out to you that comparing Dean’s records to the Pubbies’ record is pointless. Dean is probably beating the stuffing out of the American Anarcho-Syndicalist Party’s fundraising efforts, and attracting many more new contributors than the Leftover Bull Moose Party, but that’s neither here nor there. Same with the Republican Party. The only sensible way to evaluate Dean’s success or lack thereof as a Democratic fund-raiser and party-builder is to check him against past Dem fund-raiser and party-builders, and the only evidence presented to date shows Dean has done better than his predecessors.
Evil, it’s a stretch to say that the Republicans having a four to one edge in cash and new contributors over the same period compared to Dean doesn’t matter.
Presumably, Dean was chosen because it was thought he could compete with the Republicans for dollars and message acceptance. So far, he can’t.
Republicans aren’t cringing inside every time Ken Melman approaches a microphone and the money is rolling in. If things don’t change, Dean is going to have a “change of heart” here soon.
Just sitting here wracking my brains, trying to come up with a plausible reason why the party that forthrightly defends the privileges of property and business should enjoy an advantage in money.
Nope. Can’t think of a thing.
Please present some sort of evidence, something that can be pointed to and evaluated, some fucking something other than your assurances that we will just rue the day that we ever heard of Howard Dean because every single elected official in all of America will be a Republican.
If you want to evaluate Dean by referring to contemporaneous Republican numbers, show me the numbers from past Republican/Democratic splits. If the Republicans have vastly increased their fund-raising, and the Democrats have increased their fund-raising at a markedly lower rate, does this mean that Howard Dean is at fault? If so, why? Who would have done better?
How do you integrate the success of the DSCC relative to the NRSC in your cogent analyses?
Respond with anything resembling any sort of data or something. But please, please, for the love of GD, please do not post another content-free post with nothing more than your hope about the future.
From Business Week: “According to the Federal Election Commission, the DNC raised $14.1 million in the first quarter of 2005, vs. the Republican National Committee’s $32.3 million. Dean drew about 20,000 new donors, while his rivals picked up 68,200. The bottom line: Republicans have $26.2 million in the bank vs. $7.2 million for the Dems.”
The problem is, there is too much yelling about “apples and oranges” rather than dealing with direct comparitory data.
How would that possibly be relevant in a discussion about the effectiveness of Dean? We would just find out how Ken Melman compared to Haley Barbour or any other combination of predecessors and successors. The advent of campaign finance reform also changes the picture.
Question 1: Not entirely. The Republican message may be resonating with more people. Remember, individual contributions are prized much more after the ban on hard money. That’s why the advantage that the Republicans have with new contributors is relevant.
Question 2: In the Business Week article, major democratic donors are holding their dollars for the moment to see if Dean flames out or not. His mercurial personality is working against him in this case.
Question 3: A democratic insider known to the big donors as someone who can be trusted to make good decisions and be smart with their money. Dean may yet be that man, but for now, they are holding onto their checkbooks.
At the risk of being accused of snark…this is apples and oranges. The money raised for the DSCC and NRSC is earmarked specifically for Senate races. The amount of money raised depends on who is running, whether their seat is viewed as vulnerable and who is in power at the time.
I don’t have a dog in this fight. Whether Dean is doing well or poorly makes no never mind to me. I’ve got nothing against Dean, though I wouldn’t vote for him…more because of my impression of him as a loose cannon than for political reasons. However, as has been pointed out, DNC chairman isn’t running for anything anyway, so its moot.
Looking at the BusinessWeek story “Howard Dean’s Raised Voice Isn’t Raising Cash” it seems pretty clear that the Republicans are way out ahead of the Democrats as far as fund raising goes (and I read an article on CNN the other day claiming that the Dems may have started off in the hole after the recent elections). The ‘debunking’ article cited by Hentor, “Debunking the Drudge-Novak Dissing of Dean”, makes a good case that Dean is actually ahead of past fundraising efforts by his predecessors, which is a fair point.
One has to ask though…if the Dems are up on their fundraising, how are the Pubs doing. Are they down from previous years or are they ALSO breaking records raising funds for the cause? I’d say, based on the Businessweek article and a few other things I’ve read that the answer is a tentative ‘yes’ (sorry, no cite…the information is there on the same site that wyethwire, author of the ‘Debunking the Drudge-Novak Dissing of Dean’ used as a cite, but digging through the Federal Election Commission reports, all in PDF format, and presenting them here, is above and beyond what I’m willing to do…and there are no other non-‘right wing’ cites I can find with a quick google search. If anyone else wants to tackle it I’d say knock yourself out).
And does it really matter? Well, it matters for the OP…it certainly shows whether Dean is doing a good job at fundraising (though if his competion on the RNC side is also doing better than previous years, then it still calls into question how good Dean is doing comparatively speaking), and that reflects on whether he’s doing a good job over all. But…does it matter for the Democrats as a whole if they can’t keep up with the Republicans in the raising of funds? Sure, its great to have the moral high ground (or to think you do anyway), no dirty hands, etc…but I’m unsure how great that is if you don’t manage to win elections. Especially if one of the major factors for losing (if indeed it IS a major factor…I’m unsure) is that your opponents had more money than you did.
Not going to go into my own ‘what I think the Dems need to do to win’ spiel…its been rejected in the past and I have no doubts it will be again. What I will ask though is, isn’t it important, vital even, for the Dems to not only keep pace with the Republicans as far as fundraising goes, but to gain some ground? $14 million vs $32 million, Pubs with $26.2 million in the bank vs. $7.2 million for the Dems…seems like a pretty wide gap to me and one that the Dems should be doing everything they can to close.
-XT
I stated above that the Republican fundraising efforts had set a record for single quarter fundraising in a non-presidential election year, for any political party.
No, considering the Pubs raised 12% more than the Dems in the last election, but could only muster a 3% margin in the election. The Dems clearly get more bang for their buck in elections. Besides, the Pubs always do better early in the cycle, while the Dems close the gap closer to the election, when funds are needed most.
I ain’t skeered.
Translation: We spend a lot less, and lose only by a little. 
Look, if you want to debate a different question, that’s fine. Remember the title of this thread. I’m going to assume that that question has easily been put to bed, and the question you really are trying to debate now is whether Republicans or Democrats raise more funds.
Now, [url=http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/ptytots.asp?cycle=2002] here is a graph showing fund-raising by election cycles from 1987 through 2002. I would never contend, and I don’t think I ever have, that Democrats raise more money than Republicans. I really don’t think there is any debate there, so repeatedly saying that the RNC has raised more money than the DNC is pointless. (I would note however, that despite the consistently lower amount of fundraising, the Democrats won half of the presidential elections during the time period illustrated in the graph.)
What is the question you are trying to prove? That Howard Dean is screwing up? Look at the graph and then tell me how you are going to answer that question by a contemporaneous comparison between Republicans and Democrats.
I predict that you will come back with a reply that “Well, he should be getting more!” You may feel this way, likely because in your heart you really want to find something that is going wrong for the Democrats right now, and your publican talking points tell you that Dean fits the bill, but you will need to show why he should be getting more money than he is, not just because you say so.
If I wanted a simple answer, I’d have posted a GQ. What I wanted was a discussion, which I did in fact get. Thanks very much for it.
I liked very much reading your points, Hentor, and the ones provided by others in this thread.
But please don’t treat it as an answered question, because I stated earlier that the metrics on this aren’t simple ones, and probably won’t be clear until late 2006.
From my POV, Dean is a disaster, and if a Republican equivalent to him were in charge of our store, I wouldn’t be at all happy about it. Lots of you are, though, which tells me as much about you as it does about Dean.
Once again, I wouldn’t expect you to be happy about a Republican equivalent to Dean running your party, as that would make him a Democrat in every way except on paper. My point is that we don’t want someone running our party who is a Republican in every way except on paper.
Since you wouldn’t like it, why is it so difficult to understand that we wouldn’t either? Yet you continue to tell us repeatedly that if we were only more like the Republicans we’d win.
We’ll continue to keep a hotline open to your party for advice, just in case we decide that we want to attack some country, keep the gays down, spend money we don’t have, etc., but in the meantime, let’s keep that phone from ringing.
Fine. As long as you are clear that, rather than using any definable or quantifiable standard for evaluating him, you are relying on your political bias, that’s fine. Just don’t try to fancy up your predisposed ill-regard for Howard Dean in the garb of an actual debate about his job performance.
Exactly. And in the light of Bush’s plummeting approval ratings, and the public’s dissatisfaction with the Republican Congress, a narrow victory last year is likely to turn to dust in your mouth in 2006. So long as you guys keep kicking your own ass with things like Terry Schiavo, Social Security and ballooning deficits, we don’t even need to try harder.
Yeah, except for that phenom of the last few election cycles in which Dems win the election but Republicans are the ones who take office.
Similar analysis was used prior to the 2004 election to suggest that the Democrats would win that.
In fact, on this very board, a prominent voice for the left said something like, “It’s only now becoming clear that the Democrats will gain seats in the 2002 elections,” several months before the 2002 elections. (They did not).
But you’re convinced that THIS time, the Democrats will gain seats. How? Karl Rove is still out there, indefatigable. A constant refrain from last election cycle is that people are not swayed by mere facts like Social Security and deficits. Why do expect that they will gain importance this time?
In short – I’m asking what’s DIFFERENT this time around? We’ve had a couple cycles of predictions of wins, followed by losses, followed by explanations for those losses. What essential element of the strategy will change this time to change the result?
[QUOTE=DMC]
Once again, I wouldn’t expect you to be happy about a Republican equivalent to Dean running your party, as that would make him a Democrat in every way except on paper. My point is that we don’t want someone running our party who is a Republican in every way except on paper.
[QUOTE]
I wasn’t talking about policy or political philosophy. I was talking about temperament and job performance.
In my opinion, the Democrats would be better served by a liberal Ken Mehlman, who quietly raises money and builds the party.
No. Actually, the “analyses” that I recall took note of the fact that Bush was only up by about 3% in polls heading in to the election and that historical evidence said that undecideds broke for the challenger. This did not happen, these predictions turned out to be wrong, and my belief that Kerry would win was wrong. However, I see nothing of the sort here. Bush and the Republicans are not up in polling numbers at this time, so there could be no similar analysis.
Well, Bricker, Howard Dean seems to think the answer is to make ridiculous partisian statements. If he just repeats them enough, people will turn away from the dark side and approach the light.
What I’ve been wondering is which is going to get Dean canned first…his mouth or his lack of fundraising?
Regarding your other question, and at the risk of offending Hentor, nothing is different. If the number of Republicans drops in either the House or the Senate, the Democrats will cling to that as a beacon of hope for the next two years. But that hasn’t happened in the last two election cycles as I recall.
When the 2006 election is over, the Republicans will still be in charge of both houses of congress and the republic will continue to lurch toward a police state where evil lurks around every corner.
What you seem to be saying is that “we can do anything we want, the voters don’t really care”. This kind of hubris may have served you in the past, but it only encourages more egregious behavior that eventually will tip the scales. Plus, we are already seeing the cracks in the monolithic right-wing, as Republican moderates flex their muscles, with the failure of Frist to pull the trigger on the “Constitutional Option”.
Contrary to your opinion, the voters do have a breaking point. That the Pubs have successfully skirted that boundary in the past is no guarantee that you can continue to abuse the American public with impunity. Another year and a half of Iraq, Tom Delay, deficits, high gas prices and the housing bubble, and I think the worm will turn.
I love it when Republicans think that they have discovered the secret to breaking the historic political cycle from left to right and back again, as if there will be a 1000 year unbroken reign of right-think. In short, time, and the inevitiable voter fatigue when the party in power fails to deliver on their promises will be your downfall.
I have already put my money where my mouth is; care to raise the stakes?