Beware This Year’s Biggest Democratic Distraction
Beware This Year’s Biggest Democratic Distraction
The political marketplace is chock full of inefficiencies, but Marcus Flowers’ glitzy-yet-unwinnable crusade against Marjorie Taylor Greene is in a league of its own.
The Democratic marketplace is wildly inefficient. Challengers running in some of the most winnable Republican-held districts in the country lack even basic funding, while candidates taking on MAGA torchbearers like Marjorie Taylor Greene are flush with millions upon millions in races they are guaranteed to lose.
Despite this reality, there are no apparent mechanisms for correcting the market. Who wants to call out someone who is ostensibly doing a good thing like running against Marjorie Taylor Greene, donating to that candidate, or connecting donors to candidates?
After the 2020 election, critics of Democratic “rage donating” — the habit of donors to support candidates out of negative feelings towards their GOP opponents — zeroed in on examples like Jaime Harrison’s $130 million campaign against Lindsey Graham. In addition to well-documented instances of digital rage donating, there are a number of distinct types of inefficiencies plaguing Democrats and the political industry overall.
Consider just a few:
Donors giving too late: in some races, large and small-dollar donors alike rush cash to candidates running in important races, resulting in situations where those candidates literally cannot spend it fast enough. Individual donors might feel savvy or gratified waiting until the end of the game to make a contribution, but these last-minute cash infusions become incredibly inefficient in the aggregate — and sometimes even wasteful. For example, Maine Senate candidate Sara Gideon finished her 2020 race against Susan Collins with $10 million in last-minute contributions leftover, unspent while Democrats up and down the ballot lost close races around the country.
Insufficient year-round investment, especially in red/rural states: It takes a ton of time and energy to build the localized power required to win swing districts — especially in red and rural geographies. Without consistent, year-round investment in building on-the-ground organizing infrastructure, candidates effectively enter each successive cycle starting on their own, back at square one. Entrepreneurial far-left groups like Justice Democrats and Our Revolution had outsized impact in deep-blue urban centers in 2018 and 2020 largely by investing diligently to build organizing capacity on a timetable that doesn’t stop in November. (Those trying to win the middle must take a few pages out of their playbook.)
Online money laundering: In order to make it onto the debate stage in the 2020 presidential primaries, Democratic candidates had two options: they either had to break 1% in at least three polls from DNC-approved pollsters or they had to exceed 65,000 unique campaign donors, with at least 200 donors in 20 different states. The latter might seem like a laudable goal in theory (it’s good to have more donors from more places!), but in practice the effect was candidates taking $5,000 max-checks from wealthy donors, giving it to Mark Zuckerberg’s magical advertising machine, and then getting $4,000 back from 2,000 different donors who answered their (money losing!) plea to “chip in $2”.
Democratic Donors Have a Marcus Flowers Problem
Highly questionable political projects are a dime a dozen nowadays. From the “No Excuses PAC” that made national news and raised $180,000 for its nonexistent efforts to primary Joe Manchin to Andrew Yang’s quixotic and substance-free initiatives, there are a plethora of opportunities for donors to blow their money on hype-heavy-but-unserious causes.
But the single biggest Democratic spoiler of 2022 is Marcus Flowers’ glitzy campaign against Marjorie Taylor Greene. As WelcomePAC co-founder Lauren Harper wrote in The Bulwark, Flowers is all but mathematically guaranteed to lose:
“Every Democrat fantasizes about seeing Marjorie Taylor Greene go down in flames. But the reality is that she won her district by a landslide in 2020 and is on track to do the same in 2022. Trump won in her newly-drawn district with 68.1 percent of the vote in 2020—a bigger vote share than he got in the very red states such as Idaho (63.9 percent), Mississippi (57.6 percent), or Nebraska (58.5 percent).”
That hasn’t stopped donors from showering him with cash. According to the latest available FEC filings, Flowers has raised nearly $11 million to-date. This is no lucky accident: Flowers’ vast haul is the result of a well-oiled fundraising machine that savvily combines the mechanics of rage donating with online money laundering to siphon off a never-ending stream of contributions.
The whole thing is especially a shame because Marcus Flowers is running a highly compelling and patriotic campaign to beat one of the most overtly malevolent figures in American politics. He and his team certainly deserve props for making a go of it. But with so much on the line this November — and so many Democratic challengers going dramatically underfunded in potentially winnable Republican-held districts across the country — it’s important to note that his operation ultimately boils down to little more than a dangerous drain on critical resources.
It’s Not 2020 All Over Again
For a sense of just how problematic Marcus Flowers has become this cycle, it’s helpful to contrast him with Jaime Harrison. As noted briefly above, Harrison’s doomed 2020 campaign to unseat Lindsey Graham in South Carolina became memorialized as the poster child for wildly inefficient rage donating by Democrats.
But was that really the case? Credible polls showed Harrison neck and neck with Lindsey Graham. Just a month before the general election, the high-profile Morning Consult poll even found Harrison with a two-point advantage over his Republican opponent. Harrison, his team, the DSCC, and everyone else in Democratic Campaign World were working with the best information they had access to in order to unseat a detested opponent who they had genuine reason to believe was beatable.
It turned out that the polls weren’t simply wrong directionally. Poll after poll not only found a close race, but a significant bloc of split-ticket voters who planned to vote Republican for president — but not for US Senate. This bloc evaporated by the time Election Day came around, with Harrison finishing less than 1% ahead of Biden. There was nothing malicious in Harrison and Democrats around the country investing in this race — data at the time showed a genuine path to victory. If anything, the fault lies in the larger Democratic marketplace post-election, which has not invested heavily enough in winning over more split-ticket voters of the kind who powered Joe Manchin, Jared Golden, and others to victory.
Returning to Marcus Flowers, there isn’t a single poll showing him coming within a mile of MTG. In fact, there are no public polls of the race at all. That’s very likely because the Flowers campaign (which has more than enough money to pay for a survey) doesn’t want to confirm what everyone in Campaign World already knows: that he doesn’t have a smidgeon of a shot at winning.
In the notable absence of any public polling, what are the experts saying about Flowers’ race? Over at FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver puts Flowers at a <1% chance of victory.
As much as Democrats might wish otherwise, there’s no way Flowers defeats MTG this November.
Everything Lost, Nothing Gained (From Flowers)
At first glance, there appears to be some cognitive dissonance between two of our theses here: that Democrats need to compete more on GOP-held turf — and simultaneously that Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Democratic opponent is effectively running a scam PAC.
It’s important to acknowledge that there are potential positive externalities to investing in unwinnable races:
Up-ballot draft: Compelling down-ballot candidates have the ability to energize voters in a way that benefits candidates further up the ballot (e.g. presidential candidates) and enables them to do better.
Building capacity on the ground: Investments in candidates running in difficult areas can make sense when viewed through a strategic, long-term lens. By making contacts, identifying and engaging key voters for GOTV and persuasion, and building organizing capacity in hard-to-win areas, campaigns that are predestined to lose in a given cycle can lay the groundwork for future victories — especially in hard-to-win areas.
If Flowers was spending significantly on field staff engaging swing voters, that would be one thing. But according to his latest FEC filings, just 2.7% of his campaign’s total spending has gone to staff/field (and this even includes payroll processing fees). By contrast, 39% of their expenditures have gone toward fundraising (hence the incessant and annoying “Can you rush $5?” texts).
The Time for Distractions is Over
With just six weeks to go until Election Day, there are still plenty of Democrats who need serious financial support to flip Republican-held seats. Marcus Flowers is not one of them.
Looking for a high-impact campaign to contribute to at the eleventh hour? Send your money to candidates who can win instead (such as one of our favorites, Will Rollins).