The thinking

Slow writing, for a slow kind of work.

Letter from the founder

Iowa, 2004.

The arithmetic of a race lost by six-tenths of a percent, and what it taught me about the discipline of political giving.

Essay

Portfolio theory, applied to the ballot.

Serious donors already think in portfolios everywhere except in politics. The same logic, applied to political capital, changes everything about how a cycle holds up.

Field notes

Four ways even serious donors waste capital.

The common failures of major political giving are not stupid mistakes. They are the predictable results of reasonable intuitions that do not scale.