Is The DCCC A Racket? You Bet Your Sweet Ass It Is!

Gone-- but the stench was left behind

Last week Roll Call reported that the DCCC hit a record-breaking fundraising number-- over $9.3 million in May… and that most of it came from grassroots contributions. A DCCC robot read a prepared statement: “The huge enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans has shown up in special elections, primaries, and with record-breaking small-dollar fundraising. Democrats are unified heading into the 2018 midterms, and we will continue to channel grassroots energy towards flipping seats on the largest House battleground we’ve seen in a decade.”

According to the fundraising figures, the DCCC raised $6.55 million through its grassroots programs, with $4.5 million coming from online donations, with an average donation of $19.

…The committee also reported that over the first five months of the year it has received online donations from 167,000 first-time donors, and added 2.4 million people to its email list.

Also over the last five months, the committee has raised nearly $22.3 million in online donations, surpassing its total online donations for the entire year in 2015.

What a shame so many sincere grassroots Democrats fall prey, not just to endemic DCCC incompetence, but to the overwhelming corruption that drives the organization and determines every decision. That link goes to an exposé from 2010 that delineates DCCC corruption and how it works… and DCCC corruption has, if anything, gotten much worse in the interim. Thursday night we looked at a real-time sale of a nomination in a very winnable Orange County seat that the DCCC is willing to write off in exchange for some fat checks from an ambitious lottery winner. But that isn’t even the kind of corruption I mean. Gaius hit on it earlier on the same day here, the systemic kind of corruption which should send small dollar contributors fleeing.

Let’s take the Ossoff race for example. One of the consulting firms the DCCC saddled him with-- the kind of thing corruption organizations like them and EMILY’s List do with all their candidates-- is owned by former (and future?) DCCC staffers, Greg Berlin, Jake Lipsett, and Charles Starnes, who pocketed-- as in personally pocketed-- $3.9 million. Some of that was money I contributed! You too? Nd that was just one of the many DCCC-connected consulting firms on the Ossoff gravy train. You know all those dull and ineffective TV ads? The DCCC encourages that kind of garbage, not because they win elections-- they don’t-- but because they are commissionable and the ex/future staffers make millions off them (personally make millions, becoming very wealthy-- regardless of whether a candidate wins or loses… and most-- the vast majority-- lose).

Solution? Never, never, never, never contribute to shady organizations like the DCCC or EMILY’s List. Always and exclusively make your contributions directly to candidates who stand for the issues you want. Chances are if the DCCC solicits money by touting popular progressive agenda items-- like single payer health care, for example-- whatever money doesn’t get pocketed by avaricious staffers, goes to prop up conservatives who vehemently oppose the very policies they hoodwink donors into thinking they’re advancing. When an organization with a massive overhead like the DCCC, End Citizens United or EMILY’s List encourages you to give your money to them, rather than the candidate, that money is more likely to go towards defeating what you want than to advancing what you want. Trustworthy operations like Blue America, DFA, the PCCC, Daily Kos, etc encourage you to contribute directly to candidates for whom they make substantive cases. That’s where you should be contributing, not through rackets like the DCCC.