Democratic Contributors Brace for the New World They Now Face

Money down a rat hole is the general feeling of big Democratic donors to Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign. The frustration will soon be felt in the coffers of the Clinton Foundation, most assuredly.

The Democratic National Committee is feeling the cold shoulder more than anyone else. It is already trying desperately to sow a new image of togetherness rather than individual groups as its failed campaign suggested. If the DNC learned anything about the bitter loss, it is the word deplorable has no place in future party strategy.

To make matters worse, the legacy of Barack Obama is in serious jeopardy from his landmark legislation, Obamacare, to the foreign policy of a weakened, more humble America. There is little time to reset the image of the Democratic Party before midterm elections in 2018.

It’s no secret to liberal Democrats that a GOP Congress is hell-bent on rolling back President Obama’s accomplishments. Is that what the American people were saying with the November election? Have the voters of this country begun a rejection of the liberal slant the nation has been gravitating towards?

Many Democratic donors still feel burned by the party’s 2016 election losses and what they see as dysfunction in the DNC, which will elect a new leader in February. Their last two choices, an embittered and openly Hillary Clinton supporter, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the interim DNC chairwoman, Donna Brazille, who was caught handing debate questions to Clinton during the debates.

If this is not disastrous enough for the big-spending contributors, many of their names were released in the WikiLeaks hack of Democratic National Committee emails, believed to have come at the hands of Russian intelligence. Many anonymous contributors now feel they have a target on their back with the upcoming Trump administration.

Democratic investors supported Hillary Clinton with a record $550 million. They were led to believe Clinton would rout the bombastic Trump and deliver Democrats the Senate and help the party make inroads into the GOP’s House majority. That couldn’t have been a bigger miscalculation in the most stunning presidential election in decades.

Now Democrats find themselves in the unenviable role of a full-scale and expensive rebuilding project. Their leadership is without a leader that won’t be elected until more than a month after Trump is sworn into office.

Many reluctant and shell-shocked donors wonder if Trump is the second coming of Ronald Reagan and that their party is in for a long nuclear winter of partisan bickering and scrambled alliances. Democrats face a daunting map in 2018, when they’ll be defending 25 of the 46 seats they currently hold in the Senate. A filibuster-proof majority is within reach for Republicans.

Naturally, those responsible for collecting political contributions paint a rosier picture than reality dictates. Top liberal fundraisers are ignoring November’s stunning results. Can the party survive with their biggest contributor, billionaire George Soros, despised in conservative circles? The new political order in Washington that sees Republican majorities in both Houses and a president-elect who despises both the media and lobbyists in general all dedicated to stamping out the liberalism of the Obama presidency?

Those fears were echoed by David Brock, the liberal political operative whose umbrella of groups include the opposition research firm American Bridge and the watchdog group Media Matters for America. He invited 225 current donors and 175 prospective donors to a meeting in Palm Beach, Fla., over Trump’s inaugural weekend, as he seeks to fund a web of liberal groups he hopes will rival the Koch brothers’ network of influence on the right.

Can he succeed with a rudderless Democratic Party that re-elects the aging Nancy Pelosi as their House Minority Leader mainly because she is the queen of fundraising? What good did that do in the last election, or for that matter, the three before that?

Brock says “they” will continue to fight. He professes “they” are in a rebuilding format. He feels it is “encouraging” so many donors were in shock with the election results. In the real world of today, Brock should be afraid of the new political ideology in Washington that makes it chic to go conservative and love America. Who knows, maybe there will be a flow of conservative Hollywood celebrities in Canadian exile that return to a new La La land.

No word yet on the so-called celebrities that promised they would leave America if Trump won.

Dwight L. Schwab Jr. is a moderate conservative who looks at all sides of a story, then speaks his mind. He has written more than 3500 national political and foreign affairs columns. His BS in journalism from the University of Oregon, with minors in political science and American history stands him in good stead for his writing.

Publishing

Dwight has 30-years in the publishing industry, including ABC/Cap Cities and International Thomson. His first book, “Redistribution of Common Sense – Selective Commentaries on the Obama Administration 2009-2014,” was published in July, 2014. “The Game Changer – America’s Most Stunning Presidential Election in History,” was published in April 2017.

Location

Dwight is a native of Portland, Oregon, and now a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area.





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