Fundraising

For more half a decade, the massive nonprofit now officially blessed by Bidenworld to be its main backup on the outside has been soliciting donations via ActBlue, the Democrats’ top online fundraising tool. It turns out that this is almost certainly illegal. According to website archives, the Future Forward USA Action (FFUSA) has had a “donate” button on its homepage that links to an ActBlue site since at least 2018. Groups like FFUSA are usually given about two years to get their paperwork in order, but for a group this big to be this far behind in getting its act together is raising eyebrows in the campaign finance world.

Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to formally quit the Democratic Party could have serious consequences for America’s most famous socialist. While Democrats in Arizona and across the country figure out how to handle the Senate’s newest independent, the cogs in the Democratic Party’s machine are already kicking her to the curb. Their actions could have major ramifications for some of her Senate colleagues. Moments after Sinema declared her independence, her longtime progressive firm, Authentic, dropped her because its employees felt that working with her was tantamount to “devil’s work.” Now, NGP VAN, the Democratic Party’s top data firm, is cutting ties with her because she left the party. Here’s where it gets complicated for the Democratic Party.

While we all ponder the mysteries of the Notre-Dame fire, let me say a word or two about a golden nugget of domestic news. Donald Trump, in the first quarter of 2019, raised over $30 million for his re-election campaign, more than the top two Democratic candidates combined. According to the AP news story, the overwhelming majority of donations were $200 or less, with an average donation of $34.26. You can look that up under ‘Populism, 21st-century American.’ All told, the Trump campaign has almost $41 million on hand (in addition to the $45 million brought in by the Republican National Committee). As a point of comparison, the Obama campaign at this point in the 2012 election cycle had about $2 million stashed away.