democratic campaign

The Washington Post is reporting that it is:

Democratic political committees have seen a decline in their fundraising fortunes this year, a result of complacency among their rank-and-file donors and a de facto boycott by many of their wealthiest givers, who have been put off by the party's harsh rhetoric about big business.

The trend is a marked reversal from recent history, in which Democrats have erased the GOP's long-standing fundraising advantage. In the first six months of 2009, Democratic campaign committees' receipts have dropped compared with the same period two years earlier.

There very well could be some frustration by Democratic donors that they feel “left out” in Washington. We worked to bring our party back to power, only to see them bow to the very people we worked to defeat.

Speaking for a personal point, I used to be one to donate. I haven’t done that in awhile, and have no plans to. I feel like the Democrats are snubbing their noses at their base for one, but another big reason is the economic down turn. I don’t have that additional $25 or $50 laying around to give. That alone could be another reason for the downturn.

Overall I highly doubt that fundraising will be what it was a couple of years ago, but I also believe that the Democrats will have to work a lot harder to sell themselves to their donors and attempt to regain some trust that has been lost lately.

One factor that helped push Democrats over the top last week was the campaign ads. The Republicans took to their typical negative campaign ads, as well as new stunts such as the automated robo-calls. This pissed off a lot of voters and they showed their dissatisfaction with these tactics at the polls.

Now we have a Democratic Congress and they are planning on putting their new found majority to work to help rid our democracy of these vile problems:

With their new power, Democratic leaders want to craft a constitutional way to stop voters from being flooded with robo-calls peddling deceptive information. They are floating the notion that authorizing calls with fraudulent content should be a crime. "These robo-calls, somehow, constitutionally, we are going to have to find some way to stop this," Reid said.

Schumer said he and Rep. Rahm Emanuel -- the boss of the House Democratic campaign committee, who is expected to be elected to a leadership spot today -- made a list of what they consider abusive campaign practices. In some cases, the volume of calls that went out to targeted likely Democratic voters was so heavy as to constitute harassment.

In other examples, the calls peddled disinformation -- whether about a candidate or the location of a polling place. Criticizing the robo-call dirty tricks, Schumer was blunt. "It's despicable" and the perps "should go to jail for 10 years."

Schumer said he and Emanuel are looking at legislation applying criminal penalties to certain kinds of campaigning and creation of a separate unit at the Justice Department to prosecute.

This is very good news for America as a whole. If a candidate can only run on smears, then they have nothing to offer. If they can only win by tricking voters or suppressing them, then they have already lost the battle.