Democrats Text You for Cash. Most of It Never Buys Ads.
$65 of every $100 raised by text goes to asking for that cash in the first place. Meanwhile, the consultants get paid whether candidates win or lose.
If you’re a Democrat with an email address or a phone, you get these pleas: A candidate needs your dollars. Democracy needs your dollars. It doesn’t have to be much—but it can’t be nothing.
When you donate, you may feel pleased with yourself; when you don’t, it can be hard to ignore the creeping sense of guilt that you’re not doing your part. But what if neither the pride nor the guilt is really warranted? What if, as the scholars Jake Grumbach and Adam Bonica demonstrate in The New Republic’s revealing November cover story, most of the money raised goes toward raising money? What if the Democratic Party “is being devoured by an ecosystem of consultants” who get paid whether a candidate succeeds or fails, and who will go on raiding our wallets till hell freezes over?
The danger of untethered profit-seeking is a theme that runs throughout this issue. Michael Friedrich follows a group of tenants fighting a plan to let a private company demolish, rebuild, and manage a public housing complex in the highly desirable neighborhood of Chelsea in Manhattan—and collect a tidy sum renting market-rate apartments alongside the subsidized units. Lynn Stuart Parramore and Alissa Quart explore how Gen Z is contending with its looming obsolescence in an increasingly AI-dominated economy. And Adam Elder shows how the Trump administration’s fealty to fossil fuel companies is contributing to rather than stemming high energy prices.
It can be hard to remember amid the onslaught of his misdeeds, but Trump wasn’t always president. Photographer Peter Adams went into the Presidential Libraries and amassed a collection of images—from Ronald Reagan’s jelly-bean jar to LBJ’s remote control—that bring to life a time before. The backward glances here, however, are hardly sentimental. Osita Nwanevu takes issue with the idea that “the world is getting worse because people are reading fewer books.” Joanna Scutts considers the complex legacy of the socialist leader Eugene Debs.
No doubt Debs would agree that the fundraising emails are right on one count: Democracy does need us. Whether it needs the consultants is far less clear.
Democrats Text You for Cash. Most of It Never Buys Ads.
$65 of every $100 raised by text goes to asking for that cash in the first place. Meanwhile, the consultants get paid whether candidates win or lose.
If you’re a Democrat with an email address or a phone, you get these pleas: A candidate needs your dollars. Democracy needs your dollars. It doesn’t have to be much—but it can’t be nothing.
When you donate, you may feel pleased with yourself; when you don’t, it can be hard to ignore the creeping sense of guilt that you’re not doing your part. But what if neither the pride nor the guilt is really warranted? What if, as the scholars Jake Grumbach and Adam Bonica demonstrate in The New Republic’s revealing November cover story, most of the money raised goes toward raising money? What if the Democratic Party “is being devoured by an ecosystem of consultants” who get paid whether a candidate succeeds or fails, and who will go on raiding our wallets till hell freezes over?
The danger of untethered profit-seeking is a theme that runs throughout this issue. Michael Friedrich follows a group of tenants fighting a plan to let a private company demolish, rebuild, and manage a public housing complex in the highly desirable neighborhood of Chelsea in Manhattan—and collect a tidy sum renting market-rate apartments alongside the subsidized units. Lynn Stuart Parramore and Alissa Quart explore how Gen Z is contending with its looming obsolescence in an increasingly AI-dominated economy. And Adam Elder shows how the Trump administration’s fealty to fossil fuel companies is contributing to rather than stemming high energy prices.
It can be hard to remember amid the onslaught of his misdeeds, but Trump wasn’t always president. Photographer Peter Adams went into the Presidential Libraries and amassed a collection of images—from Ronald Reagan’s jelly-bean jar to LBJ’s remote control—that bring to life a time before. The backward glances here, however, are hardly sentimental. Osita Nwanevu takes issue with the idea that “the world is getting worse because people are reading fewer books.” Joanna Scutts considers the complex legacy of the socialist leader Eugene Debs.
No doubt Debs would agree that the fundraising emails are right on one count: Democracy does need us. Whether it needs the consultants is far less clear.
