Dems Forced to Downsize Once Again as Convention Fundraising Falls Short

In January the DNC announcedit would be downsizing its national convention from four days to three.The first day, September 3rd, would instead be used to celebrate theregion with a big NASCAR-themed kickoff event at Charlotte MotorSpeedway. It makes perfect sense given what a huge NASCAR fan the President is.

Late Monday, the DNC announced another convention downsizing. The bigkickoff event would be moved from the Speedway to downtown Charlotte.According to spokeswoman Suzi Emmerlingthe move was prompted by concern over the logistics of shuttling people18 miles to and from the track. Logistically it just makes more senseto have the kickoff downtown with the rest of the events.

Of course the Charlotte Motor Speedway hasn’t moved since January, so why is this just becoming a problem now? Bloomberg News has the answer.from corporations, the host committee has raised less than $10million, well short of its $36.6 million goal…” Ouch! Less than tenmillion is bad. It’s also vague. How much less than ten million did theyraise?

With Democrats unable to raise even one-third of their fundraisinggoal, they were forced to cut a few more corners off their alreadystunted convention. They’ll need whatever money is left to outfit the 74,000 seat Carolina Panthers football stadium for Obama’s nomination acceptance speech. Hopefully Britney Spears’ set designer can come up with another colonnade of Doric columns on the cheap.

Usually any shortfalls in corporate campaign cash are quickly made up for by the Democrats’ union friends. In thiscase, that’s not happening because of more poor planning by Democrats.North Carolina is a right-to-work state, so unions “have been reluctantto contribute tothe convention because Charlotte lacks unionized hotels and isin a state where compulsory union membership or the payment ofdues is prohibited as an employment condition.”

But apart from the shortened convention, the last minute change ofvenue for the big kickoff event, the failure to raise even a third ofthe necessary funding, and irritating their best donors–other thanthat–this year’s DNC Convention is shaping up to be amazing.