Getty Images

So here we are. So much of the last 24 months has been about the Trump opposition rebuilding its energies, pacing its morale, marshaling its resources, building walls as firm against autocracy as possible with no power in Washington and preparing for the shot at reclaiming as much of that power as possible. In a week and a day we’ll get the first measure of the results. And we’ll get our first look at how the table is set for the next two years.

I wanted to return to the topic we discussed at the end of last week — the Democratic email and text fundraising colossus — but now from a different perspective. I wrote a response to Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach’s piece in The New Republic about all the problems with the system. While I don’t agree with every point, it’s a very valuable article and points toward at least two straightforward if challenging-to-implement reforms. But we also shouldn’t lose sight of what an amazing accomplishment and how incredibly needed Democratic small donor fundraising is. It is a genuinely mass-based, non-oligarch system of funding political campaigns at a time when the Supreme Court has given billionaire oligarchs free rein to buy campaigns and offices at scale.

Want to keep reading?

Join TPM to get full-access to our reporting, newsletters, and other member-only features.