Will Donors Stick with Joe Biden? | Pivot

1. 0:00 – 0:35

   Intro

   1. KSKara Swisher0:00

      Brian Derrick is a political strategist and the CEO and founder of Oath, a fundraising platform that uses data to rate and identify high-stake elections. Um, the aim is to direct donors to campaigns where their money will have the maximum impact. Brian, welcome.

   2. BDBrian Derrick0:14

      Thank you for having me on.

   3. KSKara Swisher0:15

      Okay. Uh, so let's talk about Oath. T- talk about how it works in terms of taking donations and directing the money, 'cause as Scott just said a second ago before you came on, money is where it's at. And he calls himself a porpoise, he will explain it to you, um, of a donation. But you said the problem Oath is trying to solve is a tendency for donors to rage donate into the abyss.

2. 0:35 – 1:37

   The Problem

   1. KSKara Swisher0:35

   2. BDBrian Derrick0:35

      There are a lot of villains in the political ecosystem that get people very angry and that generate this emotional response, whether it's Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert or somebody else. And in the last eight years, that has really turbocharged this grassroots donor environment where people see something happen on the news or hear about it on a podcast, on Twitter, and then immediately run and donate to try and get that person out of office, when really those funds could be much better used somewhere else, maybe just to keep that person out of power. Um, and so what we set up with Oath is a free platform where people can go see what their donations are actually going to accomplish.

   3. KSKara Swisher1:18

      Mm-hmm.

   4. BDBrian Derrick1:18

      Um, we, we do objective analysis to say where are dollars needed the most to advance the thing that you care about right now, whether that's repro rights or protecting democracy-

   5. KSKara Swisher1:27

      Mm-hmm.

   6. BDBrian Derrick1:27

      ... and how can you direct it as strategically as possible, um, without getting sort of the blowback of 1,000 text messages and phone calls asking for more money?

   7. KSKara Swisher1:36

      All right.

3. 1:37 – 2:53

   Three Buckets

   1. KSKara Swisher1:37

      Scott?

   2. SGScott Galloway1:37

      So before you came on, I trifurcated donors into three buckets, and my sense is the thing that gets him out probably the most quickly, let's assume that he's totally defiant and doesn't... sees Nancy, Speaker Pelosi at his door and just says, "Sorry, Nancy, I'm not interested in talking to anybody," and says, you know, it's Obama on line one and he says, "I'm not interested." He just goes totally defiant. If the money tap gets shut off, it gets very hard for him to stay in the race. And loosely speaking, three buckets. And by the way, tell me if these are the wrong buckets. Big donors, medium-sized, small donor. My sense are the big donors is they're just taking a wait-and-see attitude. They're not gonna throw millions of dollars into an abyss and not understand if and who it's going to. My sense are the medium-sized bo- donors, and this is anecdotal evidence and I'm one of them, is that we are in open revolt. We are not only signing letters and have stopped giving money to the Biden campaign, but are starting to give money and are ready and prepping to give money to other candidates. And then the small do- money donors are just getting inundated with desperate emails from the Biden campaign as they attempt to show some signs of life. Tell me w- where I got that wrong and, and what it means in terms of is the tap going to get... Has it been shut off?

4. 2:53 – 4:25

   Reverse Coattails

   1. SGScott Galloway2:53

   2. BDBrian Derrick2:53

      I think that it has turned into a trickle for sure. Um, a lot of donors are pulling back, at least at the presidential level. We've seen a increase in traffic to Oath, um, tens of thousands of donors looking to give, but they're not looking to give to the Biden campaign or, or similar. They're looking to give to down-ballot races in these competitive states where maybe a progressive or, um, exciting younger candidate, um, could turn out people who might ultimately vote for the Democratic nominee for president regardless of who that is. It's called a reverse coattails strategy. We're seeing a lot of enthusiasm there at the grassroots level. But I, I think that you're right, particularly in this mid-level tier, um, that people are looking for other options and they're looking to exert influence to, to try to pressure Biden to exit the race and have a more viable candidate, somebody with a, a wider path to victory take his place. There's also, um, a, a partner that Oath is working with called Pass the Torch, which has set up a fund where you can give to whoever the nominee might be so long as that person is a new candidate. Um, it's literally just launching today actually, but, um, I, I, I think that all of these are examples of how people are still looking to advance their values. People are really concerned about the stakes of the election-

   3. KSKara Swisher4:23

      Right, but, but, but-

   4. BDBrian Derrick4:23

      ... but they wanna do it in a strategic way.

5. 4:25 – 5:59

   Down Ballot

   1. BDBrian Derrick4:25

   2. KSKara Swisher4:25

      How, how concerned are you what will happen to down-ballot candidates if he stays in the race? Um, staying away from that, how... E- even if these... you're directing him in the right places, how concerned are you? You know, I, I know reverse coattails, but there is such a thing as coattails.

   3. BDBrian Derrick4:41

      Definitely. Very concerned. Well, yeah, I want to be clear. Extremely concerned. I had my staff, which are mostly engineers and data analysts, prepare a memo-

   4. KSKara Swisher4:49

      Mm-hmm.

   5. BDBrian Derrick4:50

      ... last week that said the worst-case scenario. And so if Biden loses in a landslide, right, we can imagine a debate performance similar to what happened a few weeks ago, another moment like that right before the election. Um, if he loses in a landslide, what does that do to the US Senate, the US House, state legislative races, state supreme courts? And it's devastating to look at. The stakes are incredibly high, of course, for the White House, but they're incredibly high up and down-ballot when you have election deniers and far-right extremists running to take over very important parts of our government all across the country. And so we can't afford to have a year like 2010 when Democrats fell asleep at the wheel in the midterms with Obama in office. Um, truly, we, we cannot, uh, sustain or, or, um, our democracy may not be able to survive a result like that. And so that is why we're trying to focus people's attention on these races that it's true that there's a down-ballot effect, but even if we underperform at the top of the ticket for whatever reason, we can save some of these Supreme Court seats. We can save state legislative seats-

   6. KSKara Swisher5:57

      Mm-hmm.

   7. BDBrian Derrick5:57

      ... and aver- a worse-case scenario.

6. 5:59 – 9:10

   Who Matters

   1. KSKara Swisher5:59

      One of the things that Biden and his, Biden people are saying is they raised all that money after the debate, the $28 million or whatever on, on small donations. But who matters more? We've already seen some major donors, including Barry Diller and Netflix, uh, Reed Hastings, Ari Emanuel, publicly halting their support, uh, Rick Caruso, until there's a new Democratic nominee. Other big donors are, are going to support. There was one particular one that's supporting one, supporting him, and some say they're shifting their funding to House and Senate races. A lot of people are saying that to me. Um, how, uh, how... Who's more important, these big whales or porpoises like Scott, or, or what? What matters with the money here?

   2. BDBrian Derrick6:38

      You can't make it work entirely without both. You, you need both in order to put together the scale of campaign that is required to win in, in 2024. But I will say at the presidential level, where Biden in hard side dollars is expected to spend over a billion dollars, a significant portion of that is coming in six-figure checks, um, to the Biden Victory Fund. And so the grassroots support is critical and also builds momentum and all of these, um, signifiers of party strength and unity, very important. But when it comes to how many offices you can open in the battleground states, how much time you can be up refuting attack ads and, and those kinds of things, a, a big chunk of that money does come from this middle tier that Scott's referring to and, and high-dollar donors as well.

   3. SGScott Galloway7:31

      What do you think i- i- is... So, what is the next, if you will, litmus test that publicly and privately sends a very strong signal a- around fundraising? Um, is it... Do they get daily reports? Weekly reports? What publicly says, "All right, this has ab- This... Now his, his donations have dried up"? When does... When do we see that?

   4. BDBrian Derrick7:58

      We will not see those figures until early August-

   5. SGScott Galloway8:01

      Hm.

   6. BDBrian Derrick8:01

      ... unless they choose to release some data beforehand. Um, there's a quarterly report that we'll get on July 16th, but it'll mostly have the same information that we just got, um, from the, uh, monthly report that we get about the national committees. It will be... I will say, as someone who's worked in campaign finance for most of my career, you can weave a lot of different narratives out of, uh, finance data about the strength of your campaign or how much you're, uh, you have versus your opponent. Um, Biden has raised so much money to date, a, a, a historic amount of funds, that he's not going to be, um, like shutting down campaign offices or laying people off. That, that is not sort of in the realm of possibility in the next six weeks. Um, so he, he will not face a cash, cash crunch before the convention. And if he leaves the convention as the nominee, the money taps, many of, many of which I think they're making the calculation will turn on again, because people will have nowhere else to go.

7. 9:10 – 10:52

   What are you hearing

   1. BDBrian Derrick9:10

   2. SGScott Galloway9:10

      But what are you s- uh, I'm just... What, what are you seeing? You're, you're in this community, right? Wh- across from your buddies that you talk to or meet with over a beer, I don't know where you live, or coffee, or, or... I'm worried that it a- saying someone drinks beer is somehow a hate crime now. But anyways, what are you hearing? What are you hearing in terms of e- is it off 90%? Is it off 10%? Is it... Am I being an alarmist? I would imagine it's literally just stopped. What are you hearing in terms of donations to Biden and to Democrats in general? W- what's going on out there?

   3. BDBrian Derrick9:50

      I'm hearing... I'm part of multiple, um, different donor collectives or donor groups, um, that I either advise or am a member of that are having parallel conversations around, how can we make a change here to match the crisis of the moment that we're in? And so either people are making the choice to, um, withhold money entirely, uh, which would allude to the sort of change that you're referring to. But I think that it's more common that they're changing the targeting, um, that, a- as you, uh, mentioned, Kara, that they're looking at Senate races and House races, that they're setting up new Super PACs to support alternate candidates. Um, and so there's still a lot of money moving. There's no real way for us to assess the damage being done directly to Biden's accounts and how, how much that has slowed. I, I can't estimate that.

   4. KSKara Swisher10:51

      So, so, so in that vein,

8. 10:52 – 12:16

   Most important races

   1. KSKara Swisher10:53

      aside from what's going on at the top of the ticket, what's the most important race no one's talking about? Where have you been pushing? Give us two examples or one example.

   2. BDBrian Derrick11:01

      There's many. I would say state supreme court races in Michigan and North Carolina, incredibly important this cycle. Um, people often overlook state supreme courts, but they influence how maps are drawn, what voting rights we have, reproductive rights, gun legislation, all kinds of things are decided at that level. Um, so I think that both of those will be really critical. And then I would also point to the state leg races happening in Arizona. Um, both chambers are currently controlled by Republicans, but could flip to Democrats with a strong, uh, robust turnout campaign in Arizona. Even if we lose at the presidential level, the way that the districts are drawn, it's still possible that we could flip those chambers and reverse Arizona's, uh, abortion ban, um, which would be vitally important to, of course, millions of people living there. And then the last one I'll sneak in are the ballot measures. Big year for ballot measures.

   3. KSKara Swisher12:03

      Right, abortions.

   4. BDBrian Derrick12:03

      A dozen states putting reproductive rights on, on the ballot.

   5. KSKara Swisher12:06

      Yeah.

   6. BDBrian Derrick12:06

      Also, anti-gerrymandering ballot measure in Ohio.Um, in Missouri, there's one for a living wage. Lots of really great opportunities for direct, direct

9. 12:16 – 14:09

   Risk taking

   1. BDBrian Derrick12:16

      democracy.

   2. KSKara Swisher12:17

      When you think about what's happening now, I realize it's unprecedented, but everyone's like, "You can't go into chaos. We have to stick with Joe." Uh, Ezra Klein made a very good argument why chaos is okay, it's o- risk-taking is okay. Do you think it's a good time to take a risk? And I assume the money will flow to whoever they decide... if they take a risk and do it in a non-chaotic way, not r- ridiculously chaotic is what I'm talking about. Um, but, uh, is that... is, is that the worst thing, to create chaos for the Democratic Party? Can you answer those critics that say that, that you can't do it now, it's too late?

   3. BDBrian Derrick12:56

      I think that the, the damage has been done in terms of chaos, and unfortunately, while I support him and, and have spent a lot of time talking about his successes, it was done by President Biden. He entered this chaos into the conversation with his debate performance, and so now all we can do is respond to it. I said right after the debate, it's gonna be a very uncomfortable six weeks until the convention, and then after that, it will be settled, one way or the other, whether it goes the way I hope it does or not, we only have a few weeks left of this, of this potential chaos. But Joe Biden coming out every single day and saying he's staying in the race is not going to quiet it either. So, I think that you can take the, um, desire for a, a neutral piece out of the equation and just decide what you want to come out of the chaos. Do you want a new candidate to come out on the other side, and the energy and sort of the historic nature that might come with that? Or do we wanna stick to Biden and cross our fingers that we make it across the finish line in November? But either way, now through the convention is going to be a rocky couple of weeks, um, with a lot of uncertainty and unanswered

10. 14:09 – 15:24

    Trump fundraising

    1. BDBrian Derrick14:09

       questions.

    2. KSKara Swisher14:10

       Scott, last question.

    3. SGScott Galloway14:11

       So, we've been talking a lot about Biden. Do you have a sense for where Trump's fundraising is in contrast or compared to July of 2020?

    4. BDBrian Derrick14:21

       In a much stronger position, um, than 2020. (sighs) I'd have to pull the exact numbers, but he has spent the last three months in back rooms with billionaires, and they have really stepped up. We saw, uh, Tim Mellon, who also is supporting RFK Jr., one of his largest donors, just write a $50 million check to a Trump Super PAC. Absolutely huge, uh, amounts of money. He also met, as I'm, I'm sure you're... you've talked about, uh, with oil execs and asked them to raise him a billion dollars, um, and said that he would make some policy changes to his platform in, in exchange. And so, he really has leaned in to the billionaire club, um, is amending his platform actively, g- things like flip-flopping on TikTok, in order to appease them, and it is paying dividends. And we're seeing that in his dramatically accelerated, uh, fundraising post-conviction.

11. 15:24 – 16:47

    RFK Jr fundraising

    1. SGScott Galloway15:24

       But you brought up something, y- you mentioned RFK Jr. Just quickly, we'd be remiss not to ask, fundraising for RFK Jr. and what that says about the race.

    2. BDBrian Derrick15:34

       I think the RFK Jr.'s campaign, um, has always been propped up by just a handful of people who have other interests in his candidacy continuing, whether that's his running mate, um, who's written millions, at this point, maybe over 10 million in checks, um, to, to his campaign, or whether it's, uh, billionaires who have their own interests in who they think he will take votes away from. But there are certainly no grassroots energy or grassroots donation, um, campaign in order to fund and scale an RFK Jr. ticket. He would not h- even have the funds to make it on the ballot in many states, uh, without these million-plus dollar checks that people have been writing to help him.

    3. KSKara Swisher16:19

       Interesting. All right, Bryan, this is really helpful. I, I think people should just calm the fuck down. That's our feeling. Just, like, just think, think logically about where the money should go, including these down-ballot races you mentioned. But people can go to oath.vote to learn more and figure out what you are interested in voting for, and that you can put money to use in ways that are probably more helpful going forward. Thank you so much.

    4. BDBrian Derrick16:41

       Thanks for having me on.

Episode duration: 16:47