Spoiler Alert:  Chances are your $3 contribution rushed to Nancy Pelosi won’t save democracy.  Not even if your donation is matched 10X and arrives by midnight as requested.

These days –about every 11 minutes –my email inbox dings with news that another message from a Democratic candidate,  the party itself, or some strange sounding political committee has arrived.  The frequency has given fresh meaning to Grandma Craver’s reminder that “Enough is enough.  Too much will make a dog sick.”

To be clear, I’m all for the Democrats winning.  And I sure want to do my part.  But so many of these appeals are devoid of how my $ will make a difference (meeting an FEC filing deadline by midnight ain’t a reason) that I find myself totally turned off and turned away.

Instead, I’ve simply turned my giving to those organizations that tell me what they’re doing on the ground (voter registration, grassroots organizing, town meetings) and how my contribution will be put to work.

Apparently, I’m not alone.

In a New York Times piece by Prof. Lara Putnam and writer Micah Sifry titled Fed Up with Democratic Emails?  You’re Not the Only One the authors note that “on the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue, the number of donors more than quadrupled in roughly four years, reaching 15 million during the 2020 election cycle.  But less than two years later, Democrats and national progressive organizations seem to have done very little to translate that energy into a lasting movement. What happened?”

What happened, according to their study “National Democratic and progressive groups together burned through the surge of liberal organizing under Mr. Trump, treating impassioned newcomers like cash cows, gig workers and stamp machines to be exploited, not a grass-roots base to be tended. Worse, research by academics and political professionals alike suggests many of the tactics they pushed to engage voters proved ineffective.”

The authors offer this example that perfectly reflects the deluge flooding my inbox from Nancy Pelosi on April 28: “I asked — several times. Barack Obama told you the stakes. Joe Biden made an urgent plea,” she said. “I don’t know how else to say this, so I’ll be blunt: All these top Democrats would not be sounding the alarm if our democracy wasn’t in immediate danger of falling to Republicans in this election. I need 8,371 patriots to step up before time runs out, rush $15, and help me close the fund-raising gap before the End of Month Deadline in 48 hours.”

Over the years Agitator  has focused on various components of the email appeal process —here, (deceptive practices) here, (volume and retention) here, (urgent subject lines)  here (negative messaging, here, (frequency and cadence).

Sadly, many of our warnings seem to have come home to roost with the Democrats as summarized in the NYT piece:

“Inside Democratic fund-raising circles, this tactic is known as “churn and burn”: a way of squeezing money out of individual donors that reliably produces brief spikes in donations but over the course of an election cycle overwhelms their willingness to keep giving. “

Count me among the overwhelmed.

Roger

P.S.  Of course the Republicans aren’t without sin.  In fact theirs may be worse.  Not only do they flood the ether with emails, The Washington Post today reports that as the GOP’s fundraising returns drop the party is blaming it on Google’s spam filters and wants any types of controls/spam filters removed for political email.  Clean lists…ethically sourced lists..opt-in/opt-out rules be damned.  Details of GOP complaints and demands are set out in the Post article.