The Washington Post, among others, is reporting that donations to the Democrats are way, way down this year.
The Post ascribes this to the Democrats taking hard-line, anti-business positions (for which I've seen little or any evidence, particularly if you're talking about actual legislation). And so we have a mass media run by large corporations telling us that a politician's problems are all derived from being too hard large corporations.
Hardly a surprising revelation, although I think we're all supposed to pretend that it is.
But the truth is that Democrats have seen a historic and meteoric rise in their fund-raising capability over the past several years because new technologies have allowed grassroots fund-raising at unprecedented levels. This has been demonstrated time and time again right here on DailyKos.
Now the money is drying up.
And it's because the Democrats aren't delivering what they promised.
I remember back in 1993 and 1994, the congressional Democrats shot themselves (and the entire party) in the foot by failing to pass President Clinton's initiatives. The very same initiatives that had ushered Clinton into the White House.
I never thought that we would see the Democratic Party repeat those mistakes in my lifetime. I certainly didn't suspect that they would repeat in the face of Obama's unprecedented victory last year.
But here we are. Repeating history. Obama promised CHANGE, and the Democrats (including Obama) are failing to deliver it. Like Clinton before them, this failure will trigger an inevitable (and utterly predictable) backlash. The vanishing act of Democratic fund-raising is just the tip of an iceberg which will reach deep into the 2010 elections.
This same Washington Post article quotes Vice President Biden saying, "If they take them back, this is the end of the road for what Barack and I are trying to do." But let's be honest here: Obama and the other leaders of the Democratic Party have already taken a wrong turn and are putting pedal to the metal in their race towards the Dead End Finish Line of their weak-kneed failures.
Biden, and other Democrats like him, apparently expect people to give them money for nothing. Maybe mouthing empty promises and cashing the donation checks was something they could get away with when the party had no meaningful political power. But now that the party wields enormous political power, that's just not going to cut it.
So, in short, there's a pretty simple principle at work here: We gave you money to do a job. You aren't doing it. Start getting the job done and the money will start flowing again.
It's that simple.