{"id":43114,"date":"2025-08-07T12:36:37","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T19:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=43114"},"modified":"2025-08-07T12:36:38","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T19:36:38","slug":"those-constant-texts-asking-you-to-donate-to-democrats-are-scams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/08\/07\/those-constant-texts-asking-you-to-donate-to-democrats-are-scams\/","title":{"rendered":"Those Constant Texts Asking You to Donate to Democrats Are Scams"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A new analysis shows that if you give $100 to an appeal run by a leading Democratic Party vendor, only $1.60 will actually go to the campaign.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Nation Magazine<\/strong> (thenationmagazine@substack.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUG 6, 2025<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

by Chris Lehmann<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

These ubiquitous e-mail and text-message pleas for donations are known as \u201cchurn and burn\u201d come-ons.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The signs of the Democratic Party\u2019s receding viability are legion, from its dismal approval numbers<\/a> in opinion polls to its serial capitulations to the GOP<\/a> on Capitol Hill. Yet one arm of the Democrats\u2019 political operation is humming along: its nonstop fundraising appeals in e-mail inboxes and text-messaging accounts. These frenetic pitches are no doubt familiar to many Nation<\/em> readers: They invoke some pending MAGA outrage, suggest the imminent collapse of the republic is nigh, and hit you up for a small donation. Many of them are couched in the voice of a prominent Democratic leader or candidate, introducing themselves by their first names and addressing the recipient in the same fashion, as though from a neighboring barstool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nation<\/strong><\/em> is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These ubiquitous pleas\u2014known as \u201cchurn and burn\u201d come-ons\u2014are more than just a reflection of a panicking opposition party trying to stoke voter enthusiasm; they are, increasingly, the reigning business model of a Democratic establishment otherwise unable to effectively oppose the MAGA movement. And as a revealing investigation<\/a> by political-spending sleuth Adam Bonica shows, these appeals are scams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonica has combed through FEC filings to document the money flows generated by the Democrats\u2019 largest private vendor for churn-and-burn appeals, Mothership Strategies, and found that most of the small donations kicked up in this fashion stay firmly in the orbit of the Democrats\u2019 privately contracted fundraising complex. Of the $676 million that Mothership has raised since 2018, Bonica writes, $159 million went to Mothership\u2019s own coffers as consulting fees. Other money streams are likewise far afield from campaign work: $70 million for Mothership\u2019s payroll and $150 million for more consulting outlays. Most of these expanses, Bonica writes, \u201cappear to be administrative costs or media buys that feed back into the fundraising machine itself.\u201d Meanwhile, Mothership has its own hefty outlays for vendor support\u2014one firm specializing in these pseudo-personalized text come-ons, Message Digital LLC, pulled in $22.5 million over the same period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With all this dosh swirling around the Mothership\u2019s orbit, the percentage of cash going into actual campaigns and Democratic electioneering organizations is vanishingly small. \u201cMy analysis of the network\u2019s FEC disbursements reveals that, at most, $11 million of the $678 million raised from individuals has made its way to candidates, campaigns, or the national party committees,\u201d Bonica writes. \u201cThis represents a fundraising efficiency rate of just 1.6 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a stunning number\u2014but as Bonica also notes, it arises from a classic set of self-dealing Beltway arrangements. Mothership was founded in 2014 by two veterans of the digital arm of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Greg Berlin and Charles Starnes, who simply took the churn-and-burn strategies they\u2019d honed at the DCCC and converted them into proprietary assets as private contractors. And to keep the cash flowing in their direction, they also founded a host of plausibly goo-goo sounding satellite groups to authorize and circulate fresh torrents of fundraising asks. The partners thus \u201cbecame the operational heart of a sprawling nexus of interconnected political action committees, many of which they helped create and which now serve as their primary clients,\u201d Bonica notes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These are not a diverse collection of grassroots groups; they are a tightly integrated network that functions primarily to funnel funds to Mothership. . . . The relationship between the firm and this network is cemented by blatant self-dealing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A spokesperson for the firm disputes Bonica\u2019s analysis, saying \u201cThis Substack is completely inaccurate and contains numerous false and misleading claims about Mothership and our clients. The truth is that Mothership supports Democratic campaigns, PACs, issue advocacy organizations, and more in raising critical funds. We have directly raised over $400 million for dozens of campaigns and member-connected PAC clients. Further, a majority of the funds that are reported by the FEC as going to Mothership are pass through funds the company actually pays to our clients\u2019 other vendors, including advertising partners, to support their programmatic work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Share<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disputes over forensic accounting aside, this far-reaching grift is not something Democrats can afford, either financially or politically. The party\u2019s fundraising efforts are already lagging<\/a> behind the incumbent GOP heading into a midterm cycle. There\u2019s a grim perversity in setting up money fronts with names like Stop Republicans when their actual effect is to leach desperately needed cash out of Democratic campaign operations; the financial logic here serves to achieve the opposite of those worthy goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this is where the damage wrought by the Mothership empire goes beyond the financial hemorrhaging, as appalling as the scale of those losses are. To keep working, the churn-and-burn come-ons depend on Democrats\u2019 having some trust in the party\u2014and a fundraising complex that diverts donor cash away from the campaigns it professes to serve will only compound the party\u2019s credibility crisis. After running in the last election cycle on the true and urgent case that Trump and the MAGA movement represent an existential threat to American democracy\u2014and that Project 2025 aims to permanently enshrine the authoritarian agenda of the MAGA right in the most basic operations of government\u2014Democrats have largely failed to counter these threats as they\u2019ve come to gruesome life in Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s been a devastating blow to the party\u2019s image as it needs to persuade voters it can foreclose on another MAGA putsch next November. A new AP poll<\/a> found that a third of Democrats queried about the state of the party responded negatively: \u201cAbout 15 percent described it using words like \u2018weak,\u2019 or \u2018apathetic,\u2019\u201d the survey found, \u201cwhile an additional 10 percent believe it is broadly \u2018ineffective\u2019 or \u2018disorganized.\u2019\u201d Meanwhile, \u201cRepublicans were about twice as likely to describe their own party positively.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This enthusiasm gap broadly tracks the fundraising gap between the two parties\u2014and the cynical donor shakedowns perpetrated by Mothership and its satellite groups feed the perception that Democrats fundraise off crises rather than respond to them. As Bonica writes, the political impact of the Mothership grift is that \u201cfor every dollar a grandmother in Iowa donates believing she\u2019s saving democracy, 98 cents goes to consultants and operational costs.\u201d And the party\u2019s recent congressional record\u2014from Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer\u2019s disastrous capitulation to the GOP in last winter\u2019s budget showdown to the Democrats\u2019 dismal support for the brutal immigration crackdowns in the Laken Riley Act and the crypto-bribery provisions of the GENIUS Act\u2014reflects an approach to the party\u2019s base that\u2019s at least as cynical as a churn-and-burn fundraising pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the Democratic Party wants to be taken seriously as the answer to an unhinged and increasingly unpopular MAGA governing agenda, it needs to nuke the Mothership and start acting like an actual opposition party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new analysis shows that if you give $100 to an appeal run by a leading Democratic Party vendor, only $1.60 will actually go to the campaign. The Nation Magazine (thenationmagazine@substack.com) AUG 6, 2025 by Chris Lehmann These ubiquitous e-mail and text-message pleas for donations are known as \u201cchurn and… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43116,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43114\/revisions\/43116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}