It is a confusing time to be a Democrat. A new, multiethnic coalition has carried Donald Trump to a second term in the White House. Trump has wasted no time outfitting his Cabinet with both familiar neocon reactionaries (Secretary of State Marco Rubio) and darker, weirder menaces licking their chops at the damage they’ll soon be able to inflict (deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller). Liberals, meanwhile, have subsisted on a diet of anxious pundits and columnists to prepare for whatever is to come in January. It’s bleak out there.
But I think I speak for everyone when I say the one entity I don’t need to hear anything from is the Harris-Walz campaign—which, incredibly, keeps asking me to send them more money.
Look at this message, which hit my inbox yesterday:
I have received five emails like this in the days since Wisconsin flipped red, and they all tend to follow the exact same pattern. The Harris campaign—now inexplicably dubbed the Harris Fight Fund—allows that, perhaps, Harris’ voters are hurting from an existential political defeat, one that has reduced morale in the party to a low not seen in two decades. Then, in a genuinely gaslighting turn, it asks for $50. (Or $75, or $100, or $500, which is a swindle that frankly approaches Stop the Steal proportions.) Why does the campaign need this money? Well, according to the email, “there are U.S. Senate and House races that are either too close to call, or within the margin of recounts or certain legal challenges.” So, if you take the campaign at its word, this money will be used to plug leaky holes across the nation—fending off, I don’t know, Kari Lake’s one-woman Jan. 6 when Ruben Gallego is certified the winner of Arizona.
The problem with that premise is, of course, that the Harris-Walz campaign is reportedly in debt to the tune of $20 million, and it appears the operation is attempting to strip the wires from the walls in order to fend off its creditors. (It’s bad enough that the campaign is allegedly shopping around its email list, which is great news for our spam filters.) This sell-off comes after Harris managed to raise more than $1 billion for her four-month campaign.
Look, campaigns are expensive. Nobody can blame the Harris-Walz campaign for emptying the coffers and leaving everything out on the field. They were trying to win an election! But it’s pretty rich for them to be soliciting donations while some of the … more questionable decisions the organization made with all of that money come to light. You know the ads they projected onto the Las Vegas Sphere? That cost $450,000 per day. The Kamala banners flown over football games in swing states? That was in the six-figure ballpark. Even if some of the rumors of millions spent on celebrity appearances may be more complicated, it seems pretty clear not every dollar of this operation was carefully considered.
In some respects, what’s happening now is business as usual. Political operations are often overleveraged and fundraise around the clock to dig themselves out. (Mitt Romney’s campaign was massively in debt during its home stretch in 2012.) Still, at a moment where the entire Democratic establishment appears to be wildly out of touch with the concerns of the median voter—a defeat that hinged on the party’s inability to articulate a vision of a more affordable everyday life—why am I being asked to solve their problem? Read the room, Harris Fight Fund!
I hope this farce comes to an end soon, but I don’t have my hopes up. In the hour I spent writing this article, I received yet another email from the Harris campaign, pleading for 50 more dollars. “Our work is far from over,” read the header. Yeah, you can say that again.
