Following up on my morning post about the Democratic political contribution infrastructure, I had a number of TPM Readers write in saying, in so many words, No! You’re wrong. People are totally burnt out about the annoying emails. I want to point out that I said the same thing, how abusive and stupid and annoying the avalanche of emails are. What I noted is a sort of admission against interest, which is that the haul from online small donor giving keeps rising. So at least at the aggregate level, effective burnout, actually seeing contributions decline, is not something we’re seeing. It may be around the corner. And we can and should do better. But on this acid test the money keeps rolling in. And that’s clearly a big reason why it continues.
In any case, the reflexive and sometimes vituperative responses make the larger point: people hate these emails! We all know this and experience it. It’s almost a core experience of being a Democrat in early 21st century. In a way it’s build into the architecture of the internet itself. Even though sending emails and texts costs money. The effective costs per blast is still extraordinarily low. In a way it’s an analog to the low barriers to entry in digital publishing.
My personal experience of this is kind of unique. I constantly have to unsubscribe to things because people share my emails a lot. But I also make no political contributions. (I’ve made two contributions in the last 25 years – one about to the DNC about 20 years ago and a second in 2025 to a candidate for a county council. I made an exception because it seemed so distant from the broader political conversation.) So I’m sort of a bystander to the process rather than a participant. But I’m probably inundated by the emails as much as anyone because of the mailing lists I end up on. I get it. It’s not only annoying. It reaches a kind of predatory self-parody.
