You mean electing David Hogg as Vice Chair didn't instill a sense of renewed confidence in Democrat Party donors? Changing the election rules in the middle of the event because DNC members hadn't elected a "non-binary" board member didn't convince them of the party's seriousness? Go figure. 

Democrats are now in the midst of losing another election -- because their donors have begun voting with their feet. Just as Donald Trump and Elon Musk are cutting off the NGO archipelago to their political allies, big-ticket donors are closing their wallets:

Several Democrat donors said this week that they have paused their donations to the party because of how weak and ineffective it has become in the wake of President Donald Trump’s return to office.

“I’ll be blunt here: The Democratic Party is f***ing terrible. Plain and simple,” a major Democrat donor told The Hill. “In fact, it doesn’t get much worse.” ...

A second donor told the publication that they were equally as turned off about the party.

“They want us to spend money, and for what? For no message, no organization, no forward thinking,” the donor said. “The thing that’s clear to a lot of us is that the party never really learned its lesson in 2016. They worked off the same playbook and the same ineffective strategies and to what end?”

In fairness, they did win a couple of elections in between with the same tired playbook and ineffective strategies. Democrats won big in 2018 largely over the Russia-collusion hoax, and then won in 2020 in reaction to the pandemic chaos. But in neither case did they take any real lessons about the populist turn of the general electorate, nor have they since. 

Instead, in each cycle between 2018 and 2024, Democrats ran on the "TRUMP IS A NAZIFASCISTSTINKYBOTTOM" message, and nothing else. It's bad enough that Democrats didn't realize that the message had hit its expiration date before the 2024 cycle, despite evidence of Trump's rebounding political strength all around them. It's even worse that the party's reaction to the clear failure of that messaging is to double down on it now, along with robustly aligning with nearly every 20% position on all of the 80/20 issues in the American electorate. 

If donors were hoping to see any signs of introspection, that DNC meeting must have been a real eye-opener. Especially this part:

Jonathan Capehart asks for a show of hands: "How many of you believe that racism and misogyny played a role in VP Harris's defeat?"

Every hand goes up, and DNC members in crowd also raise their hands.

"You all passed," says Capehart.

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) January 31, 2025

Passed ... what, exactly? The entrance test to the Elitist Cocktail Hour?

Kamala Harris lost for the same reason Kamala Harris dropped out of the Democrat primary in 2019. The more she talks, the more her incompetence gets exposed. Or does Capehart think that Harris was forced to drop out in 2019 because Democrats are racists and misogynists?

In fact, it seems far more likely that donors are abandoning Democrats for precisely this kind of blame-shifting to cover up their own failures. Donors got talked into believing that Joe Biden was Sharp As A Tack® and The Best Version of Joe Biden EVAH for several months, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. Some who saw Biden up close and personal had already begun to realize that the party and the White House were lying, but went along because NAZIFASCISTSTINKYBOTTOM, yo. 

When that cover-up got exposed on national TV at the June 27 presidential debate, donors were then asked to suddenly embrace Harris as an anointed replacement and pretend that she was Joy McBrat. And they did, only to watch Harris try to run away from the media and spend their money by sticking it into the pockets of the production companies of A-listers like Oprah Winfrey, a billionaire mogul herself. 

After watching that happen while Democrats bypassed any democratic process to anoint a total incompetent to waste their money and time, why would these donors give the same people more money now?

Just in case anyone thinks this is a teaching moment for Democrats, read on to the end. Democrat strategist Jamaal Simmons expects the donors to return because, well ... NAZIFASCISTSTINKYBOTTOM, yo! "One way that will help them get over the heartbreak," Simmons says, "is how infuriating the new guy is."

The "new guy" is a known quantity entering his second term as President. Democrats have run the L'Homme Orange Mal playbook for almost a decade and it's not working, and neither is their progressive lurch over a longer period of time. If this is all Democrats have, the "new guy" is going to look better and better, especially in comparison to the clown show that Democrats staged last month at the DNC meeting. 

Also, the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today's show features:

•  Has any president since FDR had a more robust first month in office? 
• Andrew Malcolm note how popular Donald Trump has become and debate how much of that is his agenda and how much the sense of action contributes. 
• We also discuss the housecleaning at MSNBC, the popularity of Trump's agenda, and more!

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!