The 2004 election was the first cycle that I covered professionally. John Kerry was badly outspent by George W. Bush that year, and there was nothing remarkable about this.
Kerry was a Democrat and Bush was a Republican. Republicans were the party of business and of the rich, so of course they were better at raising campaign funds. An incumbent Democratic member of Congress would often be able to outraise a Republican opponent. But Dem challengers and Dems running in competitive open races typically faced major campaign-finance headwinds. That’s just how the world worked.
Then a whole bunch of things happened at once.
The 2006 and 2008 cycles were really bad for Republicans, which hurt their fundraising and put wind at the backs of Democrats. The party coalitions were also starting to shift, with Democrats attracting more and more college-educated professionals who weren’t necessarily “rich” but certainly capable of putting a few hundred bucks behind candidates they liked. And the relatively new ability to raise money online meant that it was suddenly feasible for a popular politician to raise significant amounts of money from those smaller donors.
This trend was reinforced by individual politicians. Barack Obama was well liked in Silicon Valley at a time when those companies were increasingly becoming the dominant force in the American economy. And then came Donald Trump, who in his first race in particular alienated a lot of traditional Republican Party donor types.
As a result of this kind of Long Realignment of campaign spending, we now have a large cohort — people a bit younger than me who weren’t engaged with the 2004 campaign — who don’t remember what it’s like for the center-left party to be at a financial disadvantage. In particular, a lot of progressives love to rant about billionaires and oligarchy and taking on the power of big money, but they usually do it in a way that treats Democratic Party donors as the enemy to overcome without much thought to the financial balance in the general election.
But I think it’s worth noting that things have changed, again.
Democrats’ current midterm polling feels almost too good to be true, and there’s a theory that summer polls are producing an illusory result. That may be the case.
But rather than posit polling error, I would like to raise the concern that, while James Talarico and Mary Peltola really would win if the election were held tomorrow, between Labor Day and Election Day every Dem running in a “reach” seat is gonna get hit with a barrage of ads aiming to amp up polarization and keep these seats red, all powered by a resurgence in Republican fundraising.
If your mentality is “well of course there’s always a lot of ads but who cares,” you may not be prepared for how much the financial balance of power has shifted.