To paraphrase an old adage about marriage: Anoint in haste, repent — and pay — at leisure.
And the marriage analogy is apt, considering how the Democrats decided to “defend democracy” in 2024. They cooked their primaries to cover up Joe Biden’s cognitive incapacity, and then short-circuited their national convention by anointing Kamala Harris without a single vote taking place. What happens when you arrange a shotgun marriage on a moment’s notice without even allowing another suitor to make a case?
Answer: You pay for the wedding. And you pay. And you pay:
The Democratic National Committee paid $1.6 million in September to cover debt from Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign — bringing the DNC’s total payout to the campaign to more than $20 million, and counting.
Why it matters: The DNC is trying to rebuild in the aftermath of 2024, and is being hampered by debts the party racked up last year.
And counting? How much more than $20 million will they have to pay to retire Harris’ debt? Axios doesn’t disclose the total amount that the DNC has to pay out, but it has already stretched out to nearly three times the number of days that Harris served as the Democrat nominee.
Why is this so important? Well, as I wrote earlier, the DNC is gasping for air as the RNC builds its 2026 war chest. However, Harris’ debt is hardly the only problem at the DNC in 2025. The RNC reported its cash-on-hand at $86 million, while the DNC only has $12 million in the bank. The $20 million (and counting!) that the DNC has had to put out this year to retire Harris’ campaign debt certainly put a hefty dent in that figure, but even without it, the DNC would have a $54 million gap in relation to GOP resources.
Why isn’t Harris out raising money to retire this debt, by the way? Oh, let’s not always see the same hands. The Wall Street Journal explained it well enough this morning, but let’s include it here as well:
At one point earlier this year, the DNC reached out to big donors to host a San Francisco-area fundraiser headlined by former Vice President Kamala Harris. Most of the donors rejected the request, according to several people familiar with the conversations. …
The DNC ultimately found a donor who hosted the event, but it raised less than organizers had hoped.
Harris underperformed? Quelle surprise.
If this sounds familiar, Axios lets readers in on the déjà vu. Barack Obama left the DNC $20 million in the hole after his 2012 re-election, and it took Democrats three years to pay it off despite Obama’s ability to raise prodigious amounts of funds. The drain on their resources played a role in their ability to compete in 2016, leading to Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton — or so Axios argues. The bigger drain on the DNC was Obama’s conversion of its infrastructure into his personal grassroots organizing corps, Obama For America, which heavily impacted the DNC’s GOTV capacity in that cycle.
Finally, let’s go back to the debacle that Democrats created when they corrupted their primaries to keep Joe Biden’s cognitive incapacity under wraps. They forced competitors out by changing the rules in state primaries (especially Florida), and disowned anyone who attempted to push Biden to compete, including Rep. Dean Phillips and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. When Biden imploded in the June debate against Trump, the cover-up came to an end, but the DNC was stuck. They had raised over a billion dollars with Biden’s campaign, and their attorneys believed that only Harris could access it — at least without a court fight — since she was on the ticket already.
The reason they anointed Harris was to keep from having to raise money from scratch. They thought they were saving money with this shotgun wedding. Instead, Harris blew through the cash in 107 days while gaining absolutely nothing with its use, and then some. Now the DNC is stuck with the bill from their own deceit and corruption, while Harris promotes her barely coherent memoir of the Lost Quarter.
And they say there’s no justice in the world …
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