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Brian Derek is a political strategist and the CEO and founder of oath a fundraising platform that uses data to
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rate and identify high stake elections um the aim is to direct donors to campaigns where their money will have
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the Maximum Impact Brian welcome thank you for having me on okay uh so let's talk about Oath talk about how it works
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in terms of taking donations and directing the money because as Scott just said a second ago before you came
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on money is where it's at and he calls himself a porpus he will explain it to you um of a donation but you said the
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problem oath is trying to solve is a tendency for donors to rage donate into the abyss there are a lot of villains in
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the political ecosystem that get people very angry and that generate this emotional response whether it's marger
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Taylor green or Lauren bobbert or somebody else and in the last eight years that has really turbocharged this
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Grassroots donor environment where people see something happen on the news or hear about it on a podcast on Twitter
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and then immediately run and donate to try and get that person out of office when really those funds could be much
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better used somewhere else maybe just to keep that person out of power um and so
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what we set up with oath is a free platform where people can go see what their donations are actually going to
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accomplish um we do objective analysis to say where are dollars needed the most to advance the thing that you care about
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right now whether that's Repro rights or protecting democracy and how can you direct it as Str ically as possible um
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without getting sort of the blowback of a thousand text messages and phone calls
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asking for more money all right Scott so before you came on I trifurcated donors
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into three buckets and my sense is the thing that gets him out probably the most quickly let's assume that he's
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totally defined and doesn't sees Nancy speaker Pelosi at his door and just says sorry Nancy I'm not interested in
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talking to anybody and says you know it's Obama on line one and he says I'm not interested he just goes totally
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defiant if the money tap gets shut off it gets very hard for him to stay in the race
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and Loosely speaking three buckets and by the way tell me if these are the wrong buckets big donors medium-sized
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small donor my sense of the big donors is they're just taking a wait and see attitude they're not going to throw
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millions of dollars into an abyss and not understand if and who it's going to my sense of the medium-sized B donors
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and this is anecdotal evidence and I'm one of them is that we are an open Revolt we are not only signing letters
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and have sto giving money to the Biden campaign but are starting to give money and are ready and prepping to give money
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to other candidates and then the small D Money donors are just getting inundated
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with desperate emails from the Biden campaign as they attempt to show some signs of Life tell me where I got that
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wrong and and what it means in terms of is the tap going to get has it been shut
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off I think that it has turned into a trickle for sure um a lot of donors are pulling back at least at the
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presidential level we've seen a increase in traffic to oath um tens of thousands
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of donors looking to give but they're not looking to give to the Biden campaign or or similar they're looking
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to give to down ballot races in these competitive states where maybe a progressive or um exciting younger
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candidate um could turn out people who might ultimately vote for the Democratic nominee for president regardless of who
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that is it's called reverse coattails strategy we're seeing a lot of enthusiasm there at the Grassroots level
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but I I think that you're right particularly in this mid-level tier um that people are looking for other
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options and they're looking to exert influence to to try to pressure Biden to exit the race and have a more viable
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candidate somebody with a A Wider path to Victory take his place there's also um a a partner that oath is working with
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called pass the torch which has set a fund where you can give to whoever the nominee might be so long as that person
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is a new candidate um it's literally just launching today actually but um I I I think that all of these are examples
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of how people are still looking to advance their values people are really concerned about the stakes of the
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election but they want to do it in the the Strategic way how how concerned are you will happen to down ballot
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candidates if he stays in the race um staying away from that how even if these you're directing him in the right places
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How concerned are you you know I I know reverse coattails but there is such a thing as coattail definitely very
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concerned oh yeah I want to be clear extremely concerned I had my staff which are mostly engineers and data analysts
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prepare a memo last week that said the worst case scenario and so if Biden loses in a landslide right we can
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imagine a debate performance similar to happened a few weeks ago another moment like that right before the election um
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if he loses in a landslide what does that do to the US Senate the US House State Legislative races State Supreme
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Courts and it's devastating to look at the stakes are incredibly high of course for the White House but they're
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incredibly high up and down ballot when you have election deniers and farri extremists running to take over very
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important parts of our government all across the country and so we can't afford to have a year like 20 10 when
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Democrats fell asleep at the wheel in the midterms with Obama in office um truly we we cannot uh sustain or or um
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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
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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
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for whatever reason we can save some of these Supreme Court seats we can save State Legislative seats and avert a
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worst case scenario one of the things that Biden admin Biden people are saying is they raised all that money after the
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debate the $28 million or whatever on on small donations but who matters more we've already seen some major donors
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including Barry Diller and Netflix uh Reed Hastings AR Emanuel publicly halting their support Rick Caruso until
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there's a new Democratic nominee other big donors are are going to support there was one particular one that's
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supporting one supporting him and some say they're shifting their funding to House and Senate races a lot of people
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are saying that to me um how uh how who's more important these big whales or porpuses like Scott or or what what
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matters with the money here you can't make it work entirely without both you you need both in order to put together
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the scale of campaign that is required to win in in 2024 but I will say at the presidential level where Biden in
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hardside dollars is expected to spend over a billion dollars a significant portion of that is coming in six figure
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checks um to the Biden Victory fund and so the Grassroots support is critical and also builds momentum and all of
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these um signifiers of party strength and unity very important but when it comes to how many offices you can open
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in the Battleground States how much time you can be up refuting attack ads and and those kinds of things a a big chunk
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of that money does come from this middle tier that Scott's referring to and and high dollar donors as well what do you
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think so what is the next if you will litmus test that publicly and privately sends a
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very strong signal uh around fundraising um is it do they get daily reports weekly reports what publicly
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says all right this is a this now has his donations have dried up when does when do we see that we will not see the
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those figures until early August unless they choose to release some data beforehand um there's a quarterly report
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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
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that we get about the national committees it will be I will say as someone who's worked in campaign Finance
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for most of my career you can weave a lot of different narratives out of uh Finance data about the strength of your
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campaign or how much your uh you have versus your opponent um Biden has raised so much money to
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date a historic amount of funds that he's not going to be um like shutting down campaign offices or laying people
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off 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
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before the convention and if he leaves the Convention as the nominee the money Taps many of many of which I think
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they're making the calculation will turn on again because people will have nowhere else to go but what are you I'm
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just what what are you seeing you're in this community right across your buddies
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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 saying
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someone drinks beer is somehow a hate crime now but anyways what are you hearing
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what are you hearing in terms of is it off 90% is it off 10% is it am I being alarmist I would imagine it's literally
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just stopped what are you hearing in terms of donations to Biden and to Democrats in general what's going on out
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there I'm hearing I'm part of multiple um different donor collectives or donor groups um that I either advise or am a
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member of that are having parallel conversations around how can we make a change here to
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match the crisis of the moment that we're in and so either people are making the choice to um withhold money
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entirely uh which would allude to the sort of change that you're referring to but I think that it's more common that
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they're changing the targeting um that as you uh mentioned Cara that they're looking at Senate races and house races
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that they're setting up new super packs to support alternate candidates um and so there's still a lot of money moving
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there's no real way for us to assess the damage being done directly to Biden's accounts and how how much that has
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slowed I I can't estimate so in that vein aside from what's going on at the top that what's the most important race
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no one's talking about where have you been pushing give us a two examples or one example there's many I would say
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state supreme court races in Michigan and North Carolina incredibly important this cycle um people often Overlook
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State Supreme Courts but they influence how maps are drawn what voting rights we
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have Reproductive Rights gun legislation all kinds of things are decided at that
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level um so I think that both of those will be really critical and then I would also point to
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the state ledge races happening in Arizona um both Chambers are currently controlled by Republicans but could flip
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to Democrats with a strong uh robust turnout campaign in Arizona even if we lose at the presidential level the way
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that the districts are drawn it's still possible that we could flip those chambers and reverse Arizona's uh
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abortion ban um which would be vitally important to of course millions of people living there and then the the
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last one I'll sneak in are the ballot measures big year for ballot measures dozen states putting Reproductive Rights
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on on the ballot also anti-gerrymandering ballot measure in Ohio um in Missouri there's one for a
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living wage lots of really great opportunities for direct direct democracy when you think about what's
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happening now I realize it's unprecedented but everyone's like you can't go into chaos we have to stick
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with Joe Ezra Klein made a very good argument why Kos is okay is okay risk-taking is okay do you think it's a
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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
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a non-chaotic way not ridiculously chaotic is what I'm talking about um but is that is is that the worst thing to
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create chaos for the Democratic party can you answer those critics that say that that you can't do it now it's too
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late I think that the the damage has been done in terms of chaos and unfortunately while I support him and
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and have spent a lot of time talking about his successes it was done by President Biden he entered this chaos
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into the conversation with his debate performance and so now all we can do is respond to it I said right after the
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debate it's going to be a very uncomfortable six weeks until the convention and then after that it will
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be settled one way or the other whether it goes the way I hope it does or not we
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only have a few weeks left of this of this potential chaos but Joe Biden coming out every single day and saying
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he's staying in the race is not going to quiet it either so I think that you can
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take the um desire for a a neutral piece out of the equation and just decide what
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you want to come out of the chaos do you want a new candidate to come out on the
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other side and the energy and sort of the historic nature that might come with that or do we want to stick to Biden and
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cross our fingers that we make it across the Finish Line in November but either way now through the convention is going
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to be a rocky couple of weeks um with a lot of uncertainty and unanswered questions Scott last question so we've
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been talking a lot about Biden do you have a sense for where Trump's fundraising
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is in contrast or compared to July of 2020 in a much stronger position um than 2020 I'd have to pull the exact numbers
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but he has spent the last three months in back rooms with billionaires and they have really stepped up we saw uh Tim
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melon who also is supporting RFK Jr one of his largest owners just write a $50 million check to a trump super pack
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absolutely huge amounts of money he also met as I'm I'm sure you're you've talked
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about uh with oil exec and asked them to raise him a billion dollars um and said
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that he would make some policy changes to his platform in in exchange and so he really has leaned in to the
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billionaire club um is amending his platform actively things like flip-flopping on Tik Tok in order to
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appease them and it is paying dividends and we're seeing that in his dramatically accelerated uh fundraising
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post conviction but you brought up something you mentioned RFK Jr just quickly we'd be not to ask fundraising
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for RFK Jr and what that says about the race I think the RFK Junior's campaign um has always been propped up by just a
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handful of people who have other interests in his candidacy continuing whether that's his running mate um who's
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written Millions at this point maybe over 10 million in checks um to to his campaign or whether it's uh billionaires
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who have their own interests in who they think he will take votes away from but there are certainly no Grassroots energy
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or Grassroots donation um campaign in order to fund and scale an RFK Jr ticket he would not even have the funds to make
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it on the ballot in many states uh without these million plus dollar checks that people have been writing to help
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him interesting all right Brian this is really helpful I think people should just calm the [ __ ] down that's our
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feeling just like think think logically about where the money should go including these down pallot races you
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mentioned but people can go to oath. vote to learn more and figure out what you were interested in voting for and
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that you can put money to use in ways that are probably more helpful going forward thank you so much thanks for
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having me on