NBC News: “Both the DNC show and its organizing program are attempts to connect with a fired-up and somewhat alienated grassroots base that has largely put its energy and money into other organizations. The DNC wants to bring into the fold ahead of the midterms and 2020 presidential race some elements of The Resistance that want nothing to do with the party organization, partly based on what is perceived as the DNC’s shabby, finger-on-the-scale treatment of Senator Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary against Hillary Clinton in 2016.”

“A sign of the problem: Last month, the DNC posted its worst April fundraising haul in eight years, even as other Democratic committees and left-leaning groups raked in cash at unprecedented rates.”

Los Angeles Times: “Democrats have no clearly defined leader or universally accepted direction aside from opposition to Trump.”

“Democrats essentially remain in the box where Hillary Clinton spent the general election: able to unify Trump opponents, but unable to craft a message for those not motivated by distaste for him.”

Said pollster Peter Hart: “The Democrats are closer to where the electorate is headed, but have shown a tin ear and an inability to understand the groups that formed the backbone of the Democratic Party for decades.”

Ben Smith: “Donald Trump has already changed the Democratic Party more than his own Republican Party. While the president has merely reduced his own party into a panicked mess, the Democrats’ trajectory seems to have moved subtly and decisively away from the center-left Clinton liberalism toward a politics whose planks make Barack Obama look like Al Gore.”

“I know, it’s been a distracting month. So you’re forgiven if you missed the big development on the Democratic Party policy front: the call for ‘a large-scale, permanent program of public employment and infrastructure investment.’ That plan, titled A Marshall Plan for America, came not from Bernie Sanders but from the Center for American Progress, the Clintonite Washington think tank John Podesta led. The proposal breaks in tone and substance with the Clinton–Obama focus on an economy led and dominated by the private sector.”

“The plan’s radicalism, CAP President Neera Tanden told me, is aimed at a jobs crisis that they’re talking about with an urgency that was absent from the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration.”

A spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee told Greg Sargent they are “on track to announce sometime this month that it raised $20 million online this year — which would already outpace the entire online haul of the last off-year of 2015.”

Politico: “The DNC headquarters remains mostly empty, devoid of almost any senior staff. It has a new chairman, Tom Perez, but there’s still no executive director. There’s a completely new organizational chart, but the gutted political, finance, and tech offices remain in search of new leaders. In other words, the DNC is showing signs of life after a long period of dormancy, but progress is slow. And it’s about to get more painful as Democrats prepare to embark on a delicate round of group therapy sessions — otherwise known as unity commission meetings — that could reopen intraparty wounds from the Bernie Sanders-Hillary Clinton presidential primary fight.”

“In private conversations with fellow Democrats, new Chairman Tom Perez describes the precarious situation as trying to repair a plane that’s already in the air. The committee had been largely neglected by party leadership in the final years of Barack Obama’s presidency.”

“House Democrats are going to extreme lengths to conceal a report on the party’s problems,” Politico reports.

“After nearly five months, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) will present his investigative report to lawmakers during a members-only gathering at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee headquarters Thursday night. But members are not allowed to have copies of the report and may view it only under the watchful eyes of DCCC staff.”

Politico: “The first three months of the Trump administration have demonstrated that the energy and anger of the electorate has shifted unmistakably to the left as Democrats assume the role of opposition party after eight years of controlling the White House.”

“But the movement is decentralized and diffuse, lacking a singular leader and splintering into multiple fronts. Ask more than a dozen progressive activists to define the goals of the Trump resistance… and receive almost as many different answers.”

Ron Brownstein: Can Democrats reconcile two very different economic visions?

Politico: “Trump’s first 100 days in office appear to have resuscitated the party, if for no reason other than the rank-and-file loathe him so deeply and furiously. Grassroots activism and organizing is surging. Irate Democrats are flooding GOP town halls even in conservative states like Idaho and South Carolina. Small-dollar fundraising is also on fire — six of the 10 Senate Democrats up for re-election in states Trump won collected over $2 million in the first three months of the year. For some of them, that represented more than had ever been raised in their state this early in the election cycle. But while the president has generated a vibrant culture of resistance on the left, it’s obscuring the depth of the hole that the Democratic Party still finds itself in.”

“Democrats are on a torrid fundraising pace in the first months of the Donald Trump era, powered by enraged small donors who are plowing millions of dollars worth of online contributions into campaign and committee treasuries,” Politico reports.

“A Politico analysis of new federal disclosures suggests many Democratic Senate incumbents — particularly those who have been most outspoken in their resistance to Trump — are on a trajectory to raise more money online than ever before in a non-election year. That could help level the fundraising playing field at a time when Republicans are poised to reap the financial rewards of holding all the levers of power in Washington.”