April 8, 2020

TO: Interested Parties

FR: DNC Chair Tom Perez

RE: DNC general election programs to support Biden campaign and Democrats across the country

Since Donald Trump took office, the Democratic National Committee has been preparing to make him a one-term president. We’ve taken nothing for granted, and over the course of this campaign cycle we’ve made historic, early investments to lay the groundwork for our party to win in November. 

Former Vice President Joe Biden is now our presumptive nominee — he built a coalition that united Americans behind his candidacy and demonstrated the strength he will bring to the general election. 

In order to elect him and Democrats up and down the ballot in 2020, we are proud to have built  the most expansive campaign infrastructure the DNC has ever had for a non-incumbent presidential candidate in modern political history, including the following programs and resources: 

THE BATTLEGROUNDS PROGRAM

• As part of our Battleground Build-Up 2020 program, the DNC has made multi-million dollar investments across 12 battleground states — funding hundreds of field organizers, additional offices, and staff dedicated to data, operations and constituency outreach. The DNC is also funding communications staff in 6 battleground states who have been working to define and localize Trump’s record of broken promises for voters in key markets while building an in-state communications infrastructure for the general election.  

DATA, TECHNOLOGY, THE VOTER FILE AND COMBATING DISINFORMATION

• The DNC has completely overhauled the technology infrastructure of the Democratic Party, and it is unrecognizable from the 2016 cycle. The DNC now maintains a state-of-the art, cloud-based data warehouse and national voter file, which includes every registered voter in America. We have made massive investments to  improve the quality and quantity of data available on the file so that our view of every possible voter is accurate as possible — integrating key data sets, proprietary modeling, and augmenting the file in a variety of ways, like purchasing tens of millions of high quality cell phone numbers. 
• The DNC has also reached a historic agreement with state parties to participate in the new Democratic Data Exchange. This new data exchange allows candidates, state parties, the DNC and the progressive ecosystem to share data in real time and leverage all of the voter contact work of the entire Democratic community. 
• The DNC established a disinformation team to track active disinformation efforts affecting Democratic candidates, parties, and committees. We’ve built out tools to identify and combat disinformation and malicious activity and are working to analyze the massive streams of data being generated by several of the major platforms through an in-house tool built for social listening, which we’ve used to provoke hundreds of account takedowns on platforms controlled by all three major social media companies since the beginning of last year. 

THE DNC WAR ROOM 

• The DNC War Room is a rapid response operation with significant communications, research and digital components, staffed by dozens of operatives — many of whom are veterans of the 2016 campaign who have been tracking Trump for years — who work with hundreds of media outlets, surrogates, and online influencers to shape the narrative of the Trump presidency using reporter outreach, research, extremely localized content and disruptive online content, along with placing major stories about his record. 

TRUMP RESEARCH

• The DNC is home to the largest and most experienced research team in Democratic politics. They’ve built the world’s most comprehensive research file on Donald Trump – including “more than 7,000 lawsuits, volumes of Freedom of Information Act requests and thousands of hours of video footage.” This work began in 2015 and has continued without pause since the 2016 election.

MOBILIZATION

• The DNC has reserved $22 million in get-out-the-vote YouTube advertising across 14 battleground states. The ads will reach voters in targeted ZIP codes beginning in September and October and generate millions of impressions. Additionally, the DNC has doubled our SMS texting lists over the past year in key battleground states to recruit volunteers and mobilize voters. And we’ve trained over nearly 7,000 individuals on digital organizing in the past few weeks alone.  

VOTER PROTECTION

• The DNC is building a voter protection infrastructure to protect Americans’ right to participate in a fair election– including supporting on-the-ground voter protection positions in 17 battleground states, a national voter resource hub and hotline, as well as education, advocacy and organizing resources. We have brought numerous lawsuits to protect the vote in key states. 

ORGANIZING CORPS 2020 

• Organizing Corps 2020 is an unprecedented, multi-million dollar investment by the DNC and progressive partners that recruits, pays, and trains young people to work on the 2020 presidential cycle, with a special focus on communities of color. The program will ensure our nominee has the support of hundreds of homegrown field organizers ready to hit the ground in eight battleground states. 

These DNC initiatives will help the Biden campaign scale their infrastructure quickly and enter the general election in the strongest possible position. Trump’s record of broken promises and his agenda that’s hurt hard-working Americans have disqualified him from re-election — and these programs will help ensure Biden, along with Democrats running at every level of the ballot, secure victory in November.