WASHINGTON — Democrats benefited from an unparalleled online fundraising surge during Donald Trump's tenure in the White House, delivering record sums of money to the party and overwhelming even the incumbent president's campaign in 2020.
But will the cash boom deflate when Trump leaves office?
At a time when Democrats are grappling with the implications of a post-Trump world — a political reset that could reshape everything from the party's policy platform to the type of voters it can win over — operatives say they might also have to reckon with a different role for online fundraising.
For four years, Democratic candidates up and down the ballot could count on an influx of fundraising fueled by small-dollar donors nationwide, often allowing them to easily outpace their Republican opponents. And digital fundraising pitches often centered on Trump personally, converting the visceral disgust many Democrats felt toward the president into hard campaign dollars.
Without Trump, however, the equation changes.
"The challenge for Democrats is to make the case to grassroots donors that Trump may be defeated, but Trumpism isn't," said Jesse Ferguson, a veteran Democratic strategist. "It's our job to show how his agenda has taken full control of the Republican Party, so if grassroots donors want to reverse damage he's done, they have to continue supporting these candidates in office."
Many Democratic digital fundraising experts say they are optimistic the party will avoid a major shortfall, pointing out that the money collected online has been rising steadily for two decades. They also argue that Republican congressional leaders like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will motivate Democrats grassroots donors to give, and that Joe Biden's presidency creates an opportunity to create an affirmative agenda that draws big interest.
"There's a misconception that Trump created this online fundraising boon," said Julia Ager, a Democratic digital strategist. "And the truth is isn't a steady growth that's been happening a long time."
The party gets an early test of their post-Trump fundraising next month with a pair of runoff Senate races in Georgia that will determine control of the upper chamber. Democrats say the fundraising for both Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock has been strong as they take on Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler ahead of the Jan. 5 election
Overall, Democratic fundraising totals from the last four years — and in particular the last two years of a presidential campaign cycle — have been unprecedented. All of it has been funneled through ActBlue, the ubiquitous digital fundraising platform used by Democratic candidates and liberal groups.
Through the third fundraising quarter of this year, ActBlue had processed more than $3.7 billion in contributions, according to data provided by the company.
That's more than five times what the group processed in the 2016 campaign, when it processed just $635 million in that presidential campaign.
That surge helped Biden significantly outraise and outspend Trump during the home stretch of the general election, a rarity for a presidential challenger.
But the most jaw-dropping fundraising hauls came in some individual congressional races. Two years after a so-called "green wave" helped Democrats win a House majority, Democratic Senate candidates like Cal Cunningham in North Carolina (whose third quarter fundraising total topped $25 million) and Jaime Harrison raised once-unthinkable sums of money.
Harrison's fundraising alone surpassed $100 million in total, the kind of money once associated only with national presidential campaigns.
The cash advantage ultimately didn't allow Harrison to defeat GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, and some Democrats have subsequently grumbled that the party wasted money on longshot races. But Democrats say that the cash still helped the party retain a small majority in the House, pick up at least one seat in the Senate and defeat Trump.
"Obviously, we had a big 2020," said Erin Hill, ActBlue's executive director.
Whether a focus on Trump was ever necessary, or even all that effective at persuading grassroots donors to contribute, is a matter of debate among some Democrats. Hill argues that small-dollar donors are more receptive to a pitch that emphasizes a positive policy agenda, something the party's candidates, led by Biden, can highlight in the coming years.
In her view, Hill thinks the surge of online contributions should continue even without Trump in office.
"A lot of what we're seeing is still the natural growth of what it means to have millions and millions participate in our democracy and have that kind of civic participation," Hill said. "The small-dollar movement was here before Donald Trump and will be here after Donald Trump."
Democrats caution that they expect online contributions will slow at the start of 2021, though they say it will be part of a natural downturn that follows presidential races. They say it's also unlikely that the next four years will exactly match the level of fundraising seen over the last four years, but that would primarily be because of an absence of a presidential primary that drew widespread interest from the party's grassroots.
"A challenge is going to be continuing to bring in new people and cultivate relationships with them and get them excited about the midterm election," Ager said. "But it's something we've learned a lot about over the past decade of online fundraising."
