If the past few weeks are any indication, Democrats have earned a right to be excited. On the tail of unexpected election victories in Alabama and Virginia, this week saw Democrats score wins in Wisconsin—specifically, in districts that Donald Trump won handily in 2016. “There were a large number of people motivated to go vote because of what they heard from the White House and what they saw in Congress,” Lee Carter, a progressive who won a staunch Republican House of Delegates race in Virginia, told my colleague Peter Hamby recently, while Wisconsin operative Trygve Olson noted enthusiastically on Twitter, “If the G.O.P. is losing WI-10 lookout!”

On the precipice of a blue midterm wave, Democrats are even toying with the idea of re-taking the House of Representatives. But a dire report suggests that Dems could still find a way to bungle their advantage. An organization already riven with distrust after the intra-party wars of 2016 and 2017, in July the Democratic National Committee pledged $10 million toward rebuilding their state party infrastructures across America. More than a year later, according to Vice News, only one state has received any of the promised funding. While the D.N.C. told Vice that they had made significant, multi-million-dollar investments in recent special elections, and planned to review submissions to the State Party Innovation Fund, several state chairs told the outlet that they are still anxiously awaiting the cash influx spurred by widespread anti-Trump sentiment.

“[Our fear] is that no matter how high this wave is in 2018 . . . we won’t have the ability to take advantage of that and win . . . races that would normally be out of reach but could be competitive,” Ray Buckley, who chairs the New Hampshire Democratic Party, told Vice. Other state leaders described feeling “micromanaged” by national party officials. “I think people want to move faster and want to have more input and I don’t think either of those things are outrageous,” said Christine Quinn, vice chair of the New York Democratic Party and former speaker of the New York City Council. “People have been really clear about that with the party.”

One has to feel a measure of sympathy for Tom Perez, the current D.N.C. chairman tasked with rebuilding a party suffering from years of neglect. Over the years, a lack of attention from Barack Obama and his political allies, combined with the general ineptitude of former chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, led to a decline in the strength of state-level parties, and a subsequent red stranglehold on state legislatures and governors’ mansions. (By 2016, Republicans completely controlled a whopping 26 states.) That negligence also resulted in traditionally blue states, such as Michigan and Wisconsin, flipping for Trump in the presidential election. “Clearly Tom inherited a shithole, not just in fund-raising but in terms of morale as well,” said Ken Martin, the head of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

If the structural problems are bad, the internal political climate may be worse. Perez is largely seen as a continuation of Clintonian politics, a charge lobbied against him when he campaigned for the chairmanship against the Bernie Sanders-aligned Keith Ellison. That ideological split has yet to heal, and a recent “purge” of party officials viewed as Ellison-Sanders loyalists only exacerbated the rift. “Tom is just really miserable in the job, which is part of why it’s not going well,” said one Democratic official who has worked with Perez, observing that Perez would often turn down fund-raising opportunities “even though they are obviously not in good shape financially.”

The numbers betray his reluctance: according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Democratic National Committee had just $6.4 million in cash on hand. The Republican National Committee, on the other hand, had almost $40 million. And as they play fund-raising catchup, Democrats are likewise attempting to coalesce around a concrete strategy that will translate to a maximum number of electoral wins. “The question for Democrats is not ‘are we going to pick up seats,’” Guy Cecil, the chief strategist for Priorities USA, told Hamby. “We are going to pick up seats in the House, we are going to pick up governor’s races and state legislatures. The question for Dems is ‘are we going to maximize everywhere possible?’” If they don’t, it’s a safe bet that Democrats’ bungling party apparatus will be stuck with the blame.