President Donald Trump’s political weakness has led some political experts to discuss the possibility that Democrats could flip the House of Representatives, the Senate or both. But anti-Trump Republican strategist Steve Schmidt warned that Democrats could still be undermined by what he described as incompetence at the top of the party organization.

The criticism is aimed at the Democratic National Committee, the national party body responsible for fundraising, voter data, organizing support and other infrastructure that candidates depend on during competitive election cycles. In close House and Senate races, those functions can affect how quickly a party can register voters, respond to attacks and move resources into targeted states.

“The Democratic National Committee is failing every person reading these words,” Schmidt, who advised President George W. Bush, wrote Sunday on his Substack. “You should be very angry about it because that failure is neither providential nor pre-ordained. It’s a choice — like Trump — and it’s killing the United States of America.”

Schmidt pointed to the party’s financial difficulties, writing that “the MAGA Republicans have more than $128.5 million cash on hand compared to the Democratic National Committee, which is more than $2 million in debt. It’s also on track to spend exponentially more money on politics in Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Marianas, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa than across Mississippi and Louisiana, both of which have great US Senate candidates.”

He added, “It’s unacceptable. The DNC is terribly led by Chairman Ken Martin. A sign of the political ineptitude of both [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer and [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries is their inability to deal with what must be dealt with.”

Schmidt also cited a New York Times report that examined the party’s problems. According to the report, when it came to Democrats’ troubles, “at the center is Ken Martin, the 53-year-old party chairman, who has found himself increasingly isolated, gripped by the fear that he will lose his job and relying on a vanishingly small circle of people he trusts, according to interviews with more than two dozen Democrats, including current and former D.N.C. officials and members. Most of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the party’s troubled state of affairs.”

The Times further reported, “Mr. Martin’s fraying nerves are showing. In a pique of frustration in early July, he threw his phone at the desk of a junior aide while upbraiding the person. The phone-tossing incident resulted in a formal complaint to the D.N.C.’s human resources department.”

Schmidt criticized Martin’s reported conduct and the broader state of Democratic leadership, writing that “personally, I’m sick of the tolerance for losing and the Democratic Party mediocrities, careerists and hustlers who can’t, won’t, and will never stop losing because deep down they’re simply doing what they’re good at: losing.”

He continued, “The problem is that we’re losing the country because it isn’t being properly defended by the institution that’s built to stand up to MAGA and be for something better. It’s one of the foremost tragedies of this whole era. It’s deeply true and very real.”

AlterNet has previously reported on criticism of Martin’s performance. In June, anonymous high-ranking DNC sources told AlterNet that Martin had failed to prepare for Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting, mishandled the release of an autopsy of the party’s failed 2024 presidential campaign and refused to adequately address threats to voting security on electronic machines.

Those criticisms came even though the DNC acknowledged that “any assessment of the state of technology in the Democratic party would be incomplete without an acknowledgement that comprehensive data warehouses like Phoenix represent an irresistible target for hackers and other bad actors seeking to undermine the integrity of the modern political process.” The acknowledgment underscores why party infrastructure debates extend beyond messaging and leadership style: modern campaigns rely heavily on centralized voter files, analytics and digital systems that must be both effective for organizing and resilient against outside interference.