Say, who does Ken Martin think he is – Barack Obama?
Wait ... scratch that. At least the DNC chair has pledged to pay his group's vendors at some point. Obama still has yet to even acknowledge they exist.
Of course, Obama doesn't have an election cycle to manage on behalf of his party, either. Martin does, however, and the prospects look exceedingly grim for the DNC. How grim? Martin wouldn't share the financial outlook with its own members without forcing them to sign non-disclosure agreements first. The bad news leaked anyway, thanks to public disclosures through the Federal Election Commission and leaks to media outlets.
Thanks to the latter method, we now know how Martin will attempt to get around the cash crisis at the DNC. Democrats will adopt the Wimpy Method, gladly paying vendors months from now for their hamburgers today. The New York Times exposes the scheme:
The Democratic Party is so short on cash that leaders at its headquarters have undertaken a new gambit to mask the severity of the problems: asking vendors not to send bills until after the midterm elections.
The bookkeeping maneuver, which was described by three people briefed on it, is the latest sign of financial duress for the Democratic National Committee and its embattled leader as money troubles threaten to undercut Democratic momentum with 100 days until the midterms.
So much is going politically right for Democrats these days. President Trump’s approval is down, gas prices are up and an unpopular war with Iran drags on. But dysfunction and debt inside one of the party’s key institutions — which is getting crushed in fund-raising by its Republican counterpart — are creating rising anxiety for top Democrats.
At the center is Ken Martin, the 53-year-old party chairman, who has found himself increasingly isolated, gripped by the fear that he will lose his job and relying on a vanishingly small circle of people he trusts, according to interviews with more than two dozen Democrats, including current and former D.N.C. officials and members. Most of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the party’s troubled state of affairs.
What does the DNC think it is – Social Security? Oh, wait ... wrong Ponzi scheme.
What makes this so remarkable, as the NYT points out, is that the DNC should be rolling in dough at the moment. Trump is not a popular incumbent, and in normal circumstances, Democrats should clean up in this cycle. Instead, the DNC has burned through its cash over the past two years, to some extent expending its income to retire debt from the last presidential campaign. It now has more debt than its cash-on-hand, and the burn rate may be getting worse rather than better.
This is nothing more than a desperation ploy, as even the normally sympathetic HuffPost points out. Not only does this show desperation, but it also cuts against every value that the DNC purports to champion. These vendors, like those who helped build Barack Obama's ugly monument in Chicago, employ people in working- and middle-class jobs. Many such vendors in the political sphere operate at thin margins and are small businesses without large capital reserves. If clients can't pay for their services within the normal 30-day billing cycle, they can't pay their own employees.
So much for affiliation with working-class Americans. And so much for "affordability" too, which requires people to have steady compensation for their labor.
Perhaps the bigger story is what the RNC and Donald Trump have managed to accomplish, even in a cycle where one would expect both to face significant headwinds:
Mr. Trump controls a $400 million super PAC, and the Republican National Committee is sitting on nearly $130 million. Mr. Martin’s D.N.C. is $2 million in debt.
We'll see how well the super-PAC money plays out in this cycle, and who it will benefit. Super-PAC performances are hard to predict, as their independent nature and Trump's mercurial approach can leave strategies unclear. The RNC's cash advantage, however, will have an enormous impact on the ability to run get-out-the-vote campaigns, especially in targeted races. The DNC may end up having to leave those functions to the campaigns themselves, which usually do not organize for that purpose, or the DSCC and DCCC, which also normally prioritize other functions. Martin wants to get those services gratis, but it's precisely this kind of organizing that has to employ people on the streets, literally as well as figuratively.
The problems go beyond cash management, the NYT adds. Martin faces some sort of HR investigation for assaulting an employee during an angry exchange. Martin has also grown "paranoid" about the potential for a "coup," although it would take a vote of the entire 450-member DNC to eject him from the chair position. Martin appears to be more concerned with fortifying his palace defenses than in, y'know, actually becoming competent at his job.
And now he wants workers to go unpaid while building those defenses. There's only one way to describe Martin and the DNC he leads: Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy. On the other hand, freeloading is far more on brand for Democrats than the NYT lets on.
