Donna Brazile has her campaign post-mortem out, and it is brutal for Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Robby Mook and, ultimately, Hillary Clinton:
Right around the time of the convention the leaked emails revealed Hillary’s campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races. A Politico story published on May 2, 2016, described the big fund-raising vehicle she had launched through the states the summer before, quoting a vow she had made to rebuild “the party from the ground up … when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.”
Yet the states kept less than half of 1 percent of the $82 million they had amassed from the extravagant fund-raisers Hillary’s campaign was holding, just as Gary had described to me when he and I talked in August. When the Politico story described this arrangement as “essentially … money laundering” for the Clinton campaign, Hillary’s people were outraged at being accused of doing something shady. Bernie’s people were angry for their own reasons, saying this was part of a calculated strategy to throw the nomination to Hillary.
[…] When the party chooses the nominee, the custom is that the candidate’s team starts to exercise more control over the party. If the party has an incumbent candidate, as was the case with Clinton in 1996 or Obama in 2012, this kind of arrangement is seamless because the party already is under the control of the president. When you have an open contest without an incumbent and competitive primaries, the party comes under the candidate’s control only after the nominee is certain. When I was manager of Gore’s campaign in 2000, we started inserting our people into the DNC in June. This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary, but I could not find any in party affairs or among the staff. I had gone department by department, investigating individual conduct for evidence of skewed decisions, and I was happy to see that I had found none. Then I found this agreement.
The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.
[…] I told Bernie I had found Hillary’s Joint Fundraising Agreement. I explained that the cancer was that she had exerted this control of the party long before she became its nominee. Had I known this, I never would have accepted the interim chair position, but here we were with only weeks before the election.Bernie took this stoically. He did not yell or express outrage […]
This passage begins with Brasile discovering that the DNC was broke when she took over from DWS.
I’m sure Donna has her own agenda (mainly, deflecting blame and showing that she knew better in her secret heart), but the fact that the Clinton campaign essentially controlled DNC funds from 2015 forward, and put almost nothing into down-ballot races, is pretty damning.
JR
Wasn’t Brasile a Clinton affiliate going way back?
Cermet
Wonder if this occurs again (for someone else, say Bidden)? Bad mistake and a guarantee to lose down ballot races and control of state level operations that are critical for the long term health of the Democratic party.
Patricia Kayden
Off topic but there has been speculation that Trump may try to fire Mueller. If that happens, protesters need to hit the street to express that this fascism will not be tolerated by citizens. Rapid response rallies are already being planned should Trump act the fool. Here’s the link:, Republicans need to hear that everyone isn’t comfortable with letting this country slide into fascism.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I’m afraid thermonuclear protests won’t be effective, not anymore, Patricia.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
Aren’t down ballot races the purview of the DCCC and the DSCC etc. not the DNC ? But I’m sure the Berners are high fiving all over the place.
Corner Stone
If she was “investigating” why wouldn’t she start with the money first? She took the chair job without knowing who was in charge of the money? During a $B campaign effort? C’mon.
Nothing about this smells right.
Humboldtblue
They don’t give a shit and the worse it gets the more they’ll deflect. The only thing the GOP is concerned about is getting primaried from the right wing. Otherwise, they are fine with the chaos, it allows them to line their pockets while we watch them burn the place down.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
DWS didn’t know how to do smart political things, like throwing a Bernitov cocktail into the internet less than a week before a critical and tightening race in Virginia
msdc
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: Yes–and what a shocker that mistermix would be the one sharing “the primaries were RIGGED” stories.
Also too, remember that when Clinton puts out a book the year after the election it’s blame-shifting, but when Brazile releases her tell-all it’s bravely speaking truth to power.
msdc
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This, too.
Applejinx
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: Why? This is not new information and doesn’t change a thing.
The Democratic party has every opportunity to come out of this doing awesome and winning all manner of elections for ten, twenty years. They just need not to do THIS. That’s literally all that’s required. Everybody fucking knows this was the reality, and a majority voted for Hillary (including me, and I’d do it again) in SPITE of this.
Just run fucking candidates. The Republicans are death zombies in the pay of Russia, on a massive scale.
We already knew all this. It’s not shocking to anybody outside the bubble. This doesn’t hurt the Democrats, there kind of were no Democrats. Just DemSocs, and Hillsketeers.
And Brazile cheated for Clinton. She’s a weasel, she’s just an insider weasel. This doesn’t make her look good either. A lot of other people were prepared to cheat for Clinton WITHOUT backstabbing. Donna is up to something, most likely the book: I’m not going to buy it, nothing new here.
OzarkHillbilly
Meh. So much inside baseball talk.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Applejinx: Yes everything has always been and will forever be the Democrats evil doing.
TomatoQueen
It’s a bad idea, this erm mumble mumble. But it is not cancer in any sense of the word.
Applejinx
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: “At Least We’re Not Death Zombies In The Pay Of Russia!”
How about run candidates and be half as left as, say, Nixon or Eisenhower? Pff, get over yourself.
kindness
I’m glad Donna Brazille is trying to right the good ship DNC. Things need to be corrected. But this piece sounds more like a ‘let’s beat up on Hillary’ piece. Really? Isn’t that being handled plenty by a wide swath of the media?
Corner Stone
@OzarkHillbilly:
Speaking of baseball – HHHEEEYYYOOOO!!
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah. Fuck Brazile. Horrible timing. It’s not like the election date was a surprise.
Would it have killed this fucker to keep the book under wraps a few more weeks?
JMG
“if only they’d listened to me” is the theme of every book written by an insider about every losing presidential campaign in history. “We just came up short” doesn’t sell any books. Brazile’s chances of renovating the DNC are the same as mine — nil. She’s been a CNN talking head and no more for the last 20 years.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yes, but how about those ‘Stros??
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Republican operatives and Federalist types are all approvingly sharing and quoting this article on twitter. It’s nice to know they have the best interests of the Democratic party at heart
schrodingers_cat
Who or what is the cancer?
Chief Oshkosh
The fact that the cable gabfests have been booking her solidly for decades tells me she’s just another third-way bullshitter who is more-or-less a useful idiot to all the right-leaning shows out there.
Win an election, Donna, then I might, maybe, give a shit about what you have to say.
Peter
This sounds like more evidence that DWS was a horrible DNC chair. And she was. We’re all agreed on that.
That it’ll be treated by the Bernie twits as evidence that the primary was rigged, though, is incredibly annoying. They have yet to answer the basic question about their claim: if it was rigged how was it rigged? By what mechanism was it rigged?
Also Brazile’s tone is the most phony thing I’ve ever read. I don’t know what her angle is, but she’s certainly playing one.
Corner Stone
Don’t have time to read it all right now but I get the distinct impression we’re going to find out this is a whole mess of sweeping mischaracterizations that are easily twisted.
Jeffro
Let’s get some new blood in there, and quickly. We’ve got some elections to win!
Now then on to more important things, like Paul Manafort’s suits.(!) (Really, WaPo? You couldn’t think of anything else to sell papers/draw eyeballs today? Wait, though…I read it, I guess…dang it!)
If and when this article shows up in the dead-tree edition, be sure to save the pic of Manafort, Roger Stone, and Lee Atwater for your rec room dartboard. If only that photographer’d had a grenade instead of a Canon…
eric
This raises the important question: where did the Soros money really go? Steele dossier? Russia?
syphonblue
This report veers a bit heavily into “Clinton stole the primary” territory, but I think it would be a big mistake to just wave away the part about the DNC taking all the down-ballot money. Yeah the DCCC is also around for Congressional races, but come on…the DNC is where the big money is for the party and for them to take 99.9% of the money for the Presidential race is incredibly short-sighted and harmful for the party and the country. Yeah, you could’ve put Hillary in the Presidency, but then you’re still dealing with a Republican Congress. I’m not at all surprised that DWS has a horrible leader, because…duh, I’ve watched the DNC under her watch it was obvious to literally everybody that she had absolutely no business running that place.
MomSense
Oh FFS. The thing that was always/still is ridiculous about all of this is that the DNC’s big job was always just to host the convention and raise money -mostly to host the convention. They were really good at that. We had a kick ass 2016 convention. The down ballot races are done by the DCCC, DSCC, DGA, and state committees.
Both of Obama’s campaigns went outside the DNC, DCCC, DSCC, DGA, and state committees and all of those organizations were always pissed about it.
It’s like Howard Dean’s “50 state strategy” became some kind of magic incantation and now the DNC will never be what it once was. Nevermind that the DNC never was what it once was. The 50 state strategy meant running candidates who had a shot at winning. In 2004 and 2006 especially the DSCC and DCCC found a bunch of blue dogs to run in conservative districts and won. The same people who love the 50 state strategy hate the fucking blue dog results. The DNC had very little to do with those gains.
If it were up to me the DNC would become a year round voting rights/voter protection organization that raised money for those efforts and for the convention and nothing else.
I can’t even with this bullshit anymore.
Hunter Gathers
@eric:
I received it. Used it to build my own casino. With blackjack. And hookers.
d58826
seems to me:
1. did it violate any by-laws/rules/past practices of the DNC at the time
2. fix the DNC so that this can’t happen again
3. was Bernie even in the race at the time
4. Bernie WAS NOT and STILL is not a D
5. and if Bernie was so darned concerned about the future of the party:
a. register as a D
b. turn over HIS mailing list
joel hanes
@Applejinx:
Brazile cheated for Clinton
keep fucking that chicken
Jim, Foolish Literalist
one of the many problems with waving that slogan like a bloody shirt. Also, it assumes that resources are limitless and good candidates are found down at the candidate store, in the good candidate aisle.
James E. Powell
@kindness:
Among the many things we have learned about the Clintons over the last 25 years is that beating up on Hillary Clinton, calling her corrupt, sells books, leads to spots on the cable & Sunday shows, gets clicks. Defending the Clintons gets you sent to the remainder bin. Brazile certainly knows the value of an “even the liberal . . . ” negative take on Hillary.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the DNC’s primary purpose was to put on a convention and elect a president.
d58826
@syphonblue:
I’m hardly big money but I never wrote a campaign contribution to the DNC. Hillary yes, some senate races yes, the DCCC and DSCC yes. But never the DNC.
While a post mortum to fix things going forward is useful this looks like part of the circular firing squad. But keep at it and the GOP will run the country forever
Sab
@kindness: We aren’t reading Donna Brazile book. We are reading Politico’s interpretation of her book- not the same thing at all.
Immanentize
This is such divisive and not very useful in a going-forward way that one wonders whether the Russians sponsored the book and the timing of it’s release.
mai naem mobile
Yes, let’s listen to Donna Brazille because she ran such a great campaign for Gore and she was such an awesome rep for Dems on teevee. I never liked DWS. They should have kept Dean o who didn’t have a regular elected job to worry about but the Obama people and the Clinton people didn’t think he kissed their asses enough. Jim Manley who is not a Clintonite thinks Obama ignored the DNC and let it wother in favor of OFA which was a mistake.
JMG
There are many people on this board who have donated to Democratic candidates and organizations. But I’ll bet none of us have ever donated to nor been solicited by the DNC. It’s a pretty vestigal organization and it lives off the high rollers Bernie was supposed to be against. I mean, I get a dozen highly irritating emails a day from the DCCC and have never gotten one from the DNC.
Amir Khalid
@Jeffro:
In her defence, Robin Givhan’s a style writer rather than a political journalist. Fashion and other similarly serious matters do make up her beat, and have for a long time. It was she, as I recall, who wrote a piece criticising VP Cheney for attending a wintertime state funeral abroad in casual outdoor gear instead of a formal overcoat. That said, I concur that Paul Manafort’s suits are a deeply uninteresting subject for an article, and that linking them to any political analysis is ridiculous.
MomSense
@Immanentize:
Nope. Just the publi$her.
Immanentize
@Sab: Very true. But it is setting the narrative for every one of her book tour appearances. It will be interesting to see what she says about it all.
And of course her giving Clinton the debate questions! Lock her up!!
Barbara
The idea that Brazile, the consummate, ultimate insider was “blindsided” by anything done at the DNC is all by itself highly suspect.
However, if there is a problem with the way the DNC divvies up money, maybe if Sanders and his supporters had actually been a part of the party instead of standing outside throwing darts, he might have been able to change whatever it was from the inside. And I do believe, to some extent, that Obama once elected made it part of his mission to be less involved in party politics and I think that was a mistake because it left a vacuum where there should have been clearer leadership. There may be such a thing as being too noble and too classy for entrenched political success. At any rate, I am not impressed and never will be with the ongoing efforts to blame Hillary for everything, especially by people that she supported and promoted for a long time, the same way I am not buying the ridiculous story told by certain Republicans that Trump is at fault for everything bad about the Republican party. If I had to guess, this is Brazile making an argument for her continued employment by some other Democratic organization or campaign.
ETA: And I totally agree that she is most likely playing up the “let’s blame Hillary” angle in order to get more opportunities to sell the book on cable news, which is really revolting, but especially coming from someone like Brazile, who knows how hard it is for strong women to gain respect.
Elizabelle
@Jeffro: That was the worst Robin Givhan article I have ever read. Bar none. It was 45 words worth of content spun into an article. Shame on the WaPo, and Givhan.
But the Manafort, Stone, Atwater photo was priceless.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JMG: I’ve donated to the DNC. At one point in the second Bush term I had a monthly donation set up. I don’t remember when I cancelled it, but I seem to recall I got lots of DNC emails, including from Perez earlier this year. But there’s such a fucking flood of them I can’t keep them straight. Now I give to individual candidates and my state party. Some guy named Farley running for mayor of I-forget-ville is particularly tenacious, and I have never sent a dime.
FlipYrWhig
Here’s how I can tell this is a sketchy story:
Bernie Sanders is the antithesis of stoic. He yells and expresses outrage when his shoe comes untied.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Shorter Brazille: Hillary blatantly kept most of the money she fundraised for her own campaign, and the DNC was poorly run. Both big shockers!!
I think the big C is a little over the top as a descriptor, mmix and CNN talking person, don’t you?
rikyrah
Donald Trump vs. the U.S. Justice System
by Nancy LeTourneau November 2, 2017
This is what President Donald Trump said yesterday in response to the terrorist attack that killed eight people in New York.
As Marshall notes, he just called our justice system a joke and a laughing stock. I’m not one to suggest that our system is perfect, but to let that kind of thing pass as simply another Trumpism is to normalize one of the most outrageous statements uttered by this man who now occupies the White House. The idea that he is a “law and order president” is beyond the pale.
I’ll also note that he called the alleged perpetrator of this crime an “animal.” His whole demeanor and language yesterday were in stark contrast to his response to the shooting in Las Vegas. During his remarks about that incident he called the actions of the shooter “pure evil.” But he never dehumanized that white man by calling him an animal.
FlipYrWhig
BTW Bernie Sanders had a joint fundraising agreement too. https://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/bernie-sanders-2016-fundraising-dnc-215559
rikyrah
Quick Takes: Trump and Friends Respond to Mueller Investigation
A roundup of news that caught my eye today.
by Nancy LeTourneau November 1, 2017
Gabriel Sherman has the scoop on how Trump and a couple of his close confidants are responding the the Mueller investigation. First of all, here’s Trump:
Here’s Bannon:
Jeffro
@Elizabelle:
It made me want to travel back in time just to roll that grenade. Think of the benefit to humanity!
rikyrah
A Fake Jihadist Has Landed a Top Job at Homeland Security
Frank Wuco, who has role-played as a terrorist, is in charge of implementing executive orders.
NOAH LANARD
NOV. 1, 2017 6:00 AM
………………………………………
But her emails!!!
A couple of comments
1. This is the 2nd week in a row where we’ve had old news covered as new. Last week: Hillary sold 20% of our uranium to the Russians (except not really). This week: Hillary laundered money and cost us local elections (except not really)
2. As others have noted, there is a huge conflation going on here. The money we’re talking about is specifically money raised for DNC/Local Parties. The bulk of actual fundraising is done directly by campaigns, which isn’t an issue here and primary support for local races is in the hands of other organizations, not the DNC.
3. The premise that Hillary actually had control of the Party is undercut by other quotes included above. The funding arrangement is described as a cancer, yet Brazile notes she was unable to find any symptoms of this cancer despite going department by department looking for evidence of skewed decisions.
4. One would think that after having covered something once, reporters/blog posters would be better covering it the 2nd time, but apparently any sort of learning curve is too much to be expected.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
good read… everyone…
To Virginia… and Beyond!
Thanks, Donna
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah: Remember Trump’s call to execute the Charlottesville guy who rammed his car into a crowd and killed Heather Heyer? Neither do I. Wonder why?
Edited for clarity.
jeffreyw
We were down to one pie, and then the murders began.
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh
The Dialysis Machine
How Medicare steers low-income and minority kidney patients toward the hell of dialysis—and keeps two big companies rolling in profits.
by Anne Kim
n a sunny August day, an elderly, fragile-looking black man sits slumped in a wheelchair, eyes closed, outside the doors of a DaVita Dialysis center. The business takes up the corner of a run-down strip mall in Southeast D.C., in a heavily black neighborhood across the river from the Capitol. It’s next door to a liquor store and steps away from an ACE Cash Express check-cashing outlet, a barbershop, and a takeout place. A big sign on the glass warns visitors that firearms are not allowed inside. A handicapped-accessible public bus waits in the parking lot to take other patients home.
It’s midafternoon, but the shopping center is buzzing with knots of people hanging out by the takeout and the barbershop. Everybody seems to know someone on dialysis. One man in a barber’s smock out for a cigarette break says he had a friend who died at a dialysis center. He says ambulances are a constant presence at the DaVita clinic. It’s not unusual for people to die on dialysis: nationally, about one-fourth of patients die in the first year, and six in ten will be dead within five years.
As many as thirty million Americans have chronic kidney disease. If you’re one of them, and you’re white, well educated, and middle class or higher, odds are you’ll get the kind of medical care that will save your kidneys. You likely have private health insurance and get regular checkups. You probably caught your condition early and are taking medication to slow down the disease’s progression.
But if you are poor, less educated, and black, the odds are much greater that your disease will run unchecked and your kidneys will eventually fail. According to the National Institutes of Health, black people are nearly four times as likely to suffer kidney failure as whites. Then you will likely end up on dialysis, spending three days a week, four hours at a time, at a place like this one, as your blood is pumped out of your body, filtered, and pumped back in.
Scotian
Speaking as someone who watches your domestic State and Federal politics from the outside (because it always spills over hard into ours up here in Canukistan) I see the problem a little more simply. The GOP base stands by their side no matter what or who so long as it has an “R” and votes reliably, the Dems, their base, especially their far left base? They are like our NDP core base in my view, except far less useful and far more damaging. This loss was not Clinton’s fault, it wasn’t the fault of the DNC, DWS, it was the fault of the GOP being able to manipulate your political media into 600 days of EMAILZ after Benghazi hit dry holes on anything to do with it, and they did nothing but destroy, and the Berners, well they were more than happy to follow along with GOP based slanders and attacks on HRC thoughtfully provided by their good friends at RT. The problem and the reason why Dems lose and Rs win at heart is because one side cares about power first for their side at any and all costs, and the other is still more concerned with their precious fee fees and being appealed to in just their special way, else they cannot be bothered. Rs fall in line, Dems fall in love is a cliche for a reason.
Rs show up, Dems don’t, and I place responsibility there not on the leaders of a party, but on its supposed base and members and fellow travelers. Americans did this, they own this, and in particular Berners need to face up to the reality that THEY were the first major group to be exploited by Russian meddling in that so much of that excitement for him and dislike for her in the primaries was fed from, RUSSIA! OWN your part of the problem Berners and Mr. Sanders, but no, I see this sort of thing even a YEAR after this insanity came to be! He STILL thinks “Our Revolution” as solely domestic driven FCS!!!
No, Berners own this, Sanders owns this, if anyone on the left side of the voting spectrum does. This is not to give the DNC, DWS, and HRC a pass for their actual campaign mistakes, but the real gamechangers were Russian interference from the primary through to the end of the general, and James Comey in the last 11 days, especially when he hid what he knew about the Trump campaign and Russian connections while feeling it vital to inform about emails that were nothing and should not have been mentioned until they had at least been checked to see if they were not duplicates of what they had already seen, as it turned out. That is NOT on HRC in the slightest, yet to listen to some then and since it was always because HRC was such a bad candidate who could never win and even lost to something like a Trump, ignoring the fact that Trump once he became the GOP nominee had their entire machine working for him and of course protecting the Scalia seat on the USSC mattered too for driving voters to him, and she STILL won by 3 million more in the pop vote!. Well gee, look what it took to just barely stop her, more naked blatant outside interference than has EVER been seen in an American Presidential election, AND the first time an FBI Director has actively influenced the election ending by his actions.
This notion that somehow the Dems did all this to themselves, that they are simply so hapless, that this is so obvious only the Berners see it, it really grates on me to listen to fro the outside, so I can only imagine how much more so it does domestically.
While I agree the Dems need to find ways to win better, to not appreciate the realities of what they have been facing while castigating them for what is in the end the failure of VOTERS to act, well that way gets you nowhere in my books.
BTW, I still find it amazing that all the Berners ignore the LIAR that is Bernard Sanders, didn’t he swear/promise to be a Dem forever once he started running in the primary, that win or lose that “D” would stay by his name? Yet Sanders is somehow the real leader and voice of the Democratic Party despite going back to that “I” as soon as the election ended? Why is his LIES for political expediency fine, but anything a Clinton can say/do, welll…
Sorry about the length, but frankly this sort of thing really irks, especially this late into the matter where the manipulation has been shown. I could see in in real time, as could many others, but we could not source it beyond reasonable doubt. At this point, I think that has been well established.
The Thin Black Duke
As usual, white people are gonna twist themselves into pretzels to avoid the ugly reality that a lot of bigots wanted a bigot as President. White Supremacy, it’s what’s for dinner. But go ahead and blame Hillary again, why don’t you?
Amir Khalid
My take from the Politico story is that Debbie Wasserman-Schulz was a neglectful leader and a piss-poor fundraiser, which led to the DNC’s insolvency. The only group with the capacity to step in, Hillary’s campaign, did so. They did not try to rig the primary in Hillary’s favour, according to Brazile; but they were focused on Hillary’s campaign rather than those the DNC was meant to support. If there’s a prevention against future similar crises, it’s all about having more able and more focused DNC chairs.
FlipYrWhig
@Scotian: Magnifique. *kisses fingertips*
Just One More Canuck
@Jeffro: Christ, does Stone ever give off a Goebbels vibe in that 1980’s picture
Bobby Thomson
I haven’t seen such obvious lying in a political memoir since HR Haldemann.
Jeffro
@rikyrah:
Well gee, Don, why is that?
I mean, we know the guy is dumb beyond belief: did he really think that a special prosecutor would simply say, “Well, Mr. Trump assures me that he didn’t personally take orders from Vladimir Putin, so…case closed!” What a moron.
Bigger picture, though: why isn’t our national snooze media noting that exactly 0.0% of the things Trumpov has done, said, Tweeted, etc in regards to Russia are most definitely NOT the acts of an innocent man? Why isn’t there an eagerness to have Mueller & Co. thoroughly explore every avenue and vindicate the Mango Menace? Amirite?
“Take THAT Dems! Take THAT, Hillary! I’m so squeaky clean I can’t wait for Mueller to vindicate me and take away your last excuse for losing the election!”…nope, nothing like that at all. Ask why, media peeps!!
geg6
DWS was a terrible leader, no question. And I wish Hillary’s campaign had left more for the state parties. However, the parties signed off on this agreement, too. No one put a gun to their heads, so I’m not sure who has any right to bitch other than people like me who donate to and work with the state party. As for Bernie, fuck him. He wasn’t a Democrat, he’s never been a Democrat and he still is not a Democrat. None of it is any of his business. Fuck him, fuck him, fuck him. He had and has no right to anything from the Democratic Party.
Amaranthine RBG
I don’t know who this Donna Brazil is but to me she sounds like another one of the white women who voted for Trump.
Amaranthine RBG
@The Thin Black Duke: yeah, so this confirms my suspicions.
Spanky
@Amaranthine RBG: LOL!
@Amaranthine RBG: Double LOL!
tobie
@Peter:
Could be she’s auditioning to replace Nina Turner, who I gather has been a disaster at Our Revolution. This comes out just at the same time the wagons are circling around Tad Devine and the extraordinary Russian efforts to promote Bernie on Facebook and Instagram have been revealed. Sounds like deflection to me.
Chris
@rikyrah:
Not just that, he’s suggesting that having any justice system is a joke. Any system that takes any amount of time and where the possibility exists that the suspect will be found guilty is evil and bad, because he really wants to see the suspect hanged. He wants mob rule instead of a justice system, or, at best, Cardassian justice.
Major Major Major Major
This is… not a good piece. It’s so inflammatory and poorly-written that it absolutely turns me off to whether or not it contains parcels of truth. If her whole book is like this it must be almost unreadable unless you’re an aggrieved sore loser without the best interests of the party and country at heart. I’ll leave the campaign post-mortems to people who are not, to use the name of her upcoming book, such Hacks.
geg6
@Scotian:
I think I’m in love with you. Come over here and sit by me.
Kay
I feel like Bernie has to answer the basic question- why couldn’t he win Democratic primary voters?
Because this story is missing a piece. She implies that Clinton somehow “fixed” the nomination but how did she and/or the DNC do that? In some ways the story doesn’t even make sense- Clinton took over the DNC and ruined it and that somehow made it more powerful and it caused Bernie to lose?
Because he lost. So tell me how all these people conspired to cause that. It doesn’t matter if he “would have” won a general if he can’t get out of a primary. Southern Democrats weren’t voting for him. How did Clinton/DNC make that happen?
I’m not sure of cause and effect here. Clinton did X to make Bernie lose, or is it Clinton did X to make Clinton lose? I’ve read it several times and there’s some jump I’m missing there.
The effect of Clinton “taking over” the DNC on Bernie’s race was WHAT? Alternately, the effect of Clinton taking over the DNC was what? At the end of the day doesn’t it come down to that Bernie didn’t have enough primary voters in some states?
schrodingers_cat
@Chris: T is focused like a laser on attacking immigrants no matter what the issue but BJ has no time for those issues and will instead regurgitate the martyrdom of St Bernard the Pure of Vt for the nth time
Matt McIrvin
@JMG: I’ve donated to the DNC. I think it was back in 2004.
Marcopolo
Good morning folks. Let me start by complain about the title of this post. Cancer. Yeesh, I thought I was about to learn some front pager had been diagnosed. Glad that’s not the case.
As to the DNC, I’m in my fifties and the only person I can recall doing a really decent job running it in the last 30-40 years has been Dean. Hopefully Perez will do a decent job—guess we’ll see. But honestly, after Obama won the election in 2008, by January or February 2009 attention to running the national and state party apparati had already flagged dramatically (and I point this out as someone who worked 60 hour weeks from May-election day to get Obama elected). That was disappointing but we’d just won the election & held the House, Senate & Prez and all eyes and energy had moved onto governing. And in all reality, the day-to-day running of a political party is boring. At least it is for most people, me included, and I don’t think the incentives for doing a good job are there. I don’t know what the answer is for that.
All that being said, DWS was awful, and she was totally biased towards Clinton as was the vast majority of the party. But to all the Sanders folks complaining about that I’ll add you can’t expect to sweep in from outside the party, repeat outside the party, and expect to find a neutral playing field. I mean, really? For better or worse (worse it seems in hindsight), with Obama’s seeming disinterest in party affairs, the DNC and other Democratic Party structures have been the personal playground of the Clintons since the 90’s. That’s probably partially because Hillary was always planning to run for Prez and if there is one thing we know about her, she works harder and plans in more detail and ahead of time than just about anyone. So in a nutshell, I find it hard throw too much blame around.
As for Donna, she’s a little more independent of the Clinton orbit than DWS but not by too much. She’s obviously got her brand to protect and I guess now a book to sell, but I am finding it hard to believe she wouldn’t have already been aware of HRC’s financial arrangements with the DNC before she took the job.
This is long but let me finish by hoping, optimistically, that with the 800 lb gorilla of the Clinton’s moving off the field and into the sunset that perhaps the D’s will focus, bear down, and get on with the work of taking back seats. I’ll gladly do my bit supporting great candidates and volunteering on campaigns (though, god forbid, don’t ask me to actually serve in any capacity inside the party).
Betty Cracker
As someone said in the thread downstairs, this puts Tom Perez’s actions as DNC chair in a whole new light. I think @MomSense accurately describes the reality, but the “optics” matter too.
Maybe Perez will use this occasion to define the DNC’s role so everyone understands what it does. Because right now, almost no one knows, and I’ve seen firsthand how that knowledge gap affects local parties, and not in a positive way.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: He is another stooge of VP of Russia, after all he is an old timey comradesky.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Somehow it’s always that she had too much money and too many superdelegates and that sapped the will of regular people to fight the machine. Sigh.
eclare
@rikyrah: John Oliver had a really good segment on this.
SatanicPanic
This stuff is nerd shit. And Mistermix’s posts are edging towards automatic ignore.
RinaX
@Amaranthine RBG:
You might want to consult the Googles…
Major Major Major Major
@MomSense:
They also hated Howard Dean himself as establishment Clintonist neoliberal garbage, when he thought about running for DNC chair again.
@Kay:
By letting their votes count, of course. Remember?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
That opening paragraph– I lit candles and played gospel music to prepare for my appeal to the Small God, Bernie– put me in mind of Maureen Dowd trying to be funny.
Corner Stone
I thought this whole nut drop reminded me of something else mistermix once posted:
Go Zach!
Faithful readers will remember our hero, Zach, telling truth to the powerless. Who in this case was a Clintonista named Donna Brazile.
“Donna Brazile, the interim leader of the Democratic National Committee, was giving what one attendee described as “a rip-roaring speech” to about 150 employees, about the need to have hope for wins going forward, when a staffer identified only as Zach stood up with a question.
“Why should we trust you as chair to lead us through this?” he asked, according to two people in the room. “You backed a flawed candidate, and your friend [former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz] plotted through this to support your own gain and yourself.”
Some DNC staffers started to boo and some told him to sit down. Brazile began to answer, but Zach had more to say.
“You are part of the problem,” he continued, blaming Brazile for clearing the path for Trump’s victory by siding with Clinton early on. “You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy.”
Spanky
@Major Major Major Major:
So OK, that’s Bernie and his bros. Hardly enough buyers to get it to the FNYT Best Sellers list.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
My complaint with the DNC is not that someone “took over”. It’s that I have no idea what they do. I know what they DON’T do but I have no idea what value they provide, to anyone, really.
I would sort of welcome someone “taking over” and finding them an actual purpose. More and more it seems like sort of a slush fund to pay patronage hires. They have a giant building. I’ve been in it. Phones were ringing and things. I was thinking “I wonder what these people do all day” and I’ve been a locally active Democrat since my children got older- a long time.
Chyron HR
@Corner Stone:
“You let this happen,” complains man who did not vote against it happening.
schrodingers_cat
The T narrative against HRC totally mirrors the BS narrative and BS got there first. BS campaign provided an assist to the ascension of the current President. The same social media that helped T, helped BS. I am sure this is all a coincidence.
ETA: And now as the Mueller noose tightens and important state elections are at stake, BS supporters are replaying their old hits again, trying to give a bloody nose to the only force, the D party that can stop them.
ETA2: I have no idea what is Brazille thinking and why she/or her publishers put out this book just now.
Quinerly
@Sab:
Actually, the Politico piece is written by Brazille. Piss poor timing this week and next. I’m worried about the VA race.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: I posted about Trump’s stupid “extreme vetting program” just yesterday, but do carry on…
Chyron HR
Well, on the bright side, if the DNC throws Clinton under the bus then at least the people who lost the primary can move on and stop punishing America for it.
HA HA JUST KIDDING
Uncle Ebeneezer
@FlipYrWhig: Right!! I almost spit my coffee out when I read that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: during the race for chair Perez– and to be fair, Ellison and Beuttigig and all the others– talked about using the DNC to build up the party on the local and state level. The one concrete idea I remember was creating paid positions for young volunteers to train them and enable them to stay engaged. Again, Ellison and Beuttigig had similar proposal. I thought at the time I wanted Perez to get down to that and stop trying to be a party spokesman or talking head, cause he’s got a great record as an activist and executive, and he sucks on TV. But he seems to really want to be spokesman. In fairness, again, a lot of that had to do with that stupid unity tour, which I don’t blame him for. He was trying to deal with our crazy uncle.
Quinerly
@Scotian:
I may be in love with you. I usually don’t fall this fast.?
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
I mean at this point how would anyone know what the Democrats are doing when all we get is the morning tweet and the tail chasing of said tweet by the MSM?
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think they have to decide what they will do with the money before they raise the money. They owe that to their donors. This idea that they can just create a huge pot of money and then eventually settle on some way to spend it is just insane.
What ARE they? What is their JOB? I saw the Howard Dean plan in action. It was one visit by a paid organizer who lived 200 miles away. He dropped off a crazy-long list of stuff for us to do and I never saw him again. I met him again years later- he was working for a health care org.
This isn’t how one plans anything. You don’t say “I have this existing org that doesn’t do anything- what should it do?”
Butch
Good thing there are no elections in 2018, because that way we have time for more useless Democratic infighting.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Yes you did and thank you.
ETA:T’s USCIS is currently subverting legal immigration processes (from temporary visas to green cards to naturalization) through bureaucratic and other means. This is one area that they have been pretty effective on. I am speaking up and being annoying about this issue because many immigrants can’t speak up.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t know, Jim. How much does it cost to hire an organizer in each county in X states? That’s the budget. The budget isn’t “a big number, and then decide how to spend it” – they’re really surprised it’s a fucking mess? They don’t know why they exist.
Chris
@Kay:
Saw a very left-wing friend from Europe after the election talk about how hopeful he was that Sanders had managed to run as “a real socialist!” in America, and that he probably would even have won if Hillary hadn’t cheated. I was like “oh, fuck. That really is what they’re all going to take away from this, isn’t it? And they’ll come away thinking that Sanders has far more appeal than he actually does, and that’s going to bite us in the ass if he tries to run again.”
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It was like during the recall in Wisconsin. No one could tell me what they wanted TO BUY with the national money.
There are 3 million voters, so half that, 1.5. They can’t just say “unlimited funding for whatever”- what? To buy what? Is this thing they imagine buying worth 200k? No one knows and no one cares. It should just be “a lot”.
Corner Stone
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: We already know what Democrats are doing. They are failing in disarray.
Scotian
@geg6:
Scootches over tentively
Be careful, my wife is on the other side of me…
LOL
Thanks.
@FlipYrWhig:
Thanks. One tries. If I must be a long winded blowhard, I try to at least be a well informed long winded blowhard…*chuckle*
Seriously, that this is STILL not understood, that the Sanders campaign was phase one of the Russian stop Hillary campaign, even after all that has been exposed by this point, well I find that really hard to stomach. I could tell the Sanders campaign was more vapourware than real when the voting numbers in the primaries came in, that a significant percentage of that online support was not showing up offline in terms of actual voting numbers. The signs were there from the outset, not least of one being why one heard old GOP slanders on HRC from the 90s suddenly coming out of the far left. That was a flare lit red tip off point for me that something was very wrong there.
Now, if I can manage that much up here, I have a hard time dealing with those that should have known better. I have watched the GOP and the hard right for over three decades now pollute, poison wells, and destroy political discourse, and for the most pat of the US media follows along and rationalizes everything into false equivalency. It wasn’t the left or Dems that destroyed comity, it was the GOP, and worse, it was BY DESIGN! The Contract On America was the true beginnings.
I may not have much better solutions than the rest of you, but I do know this much: Unless one can accurately and honestly see/describe the problem one has little to no chance of doing anything effective to counter/fix said problem. THAT is what makes this self deception about Sanders and Dems and Clinton so problematic in my eyes.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: no idea, but as I recall Perez’s proposed budget for that project was $6 million. How many organizers that employs, and for how long, I don’t know
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And we saw the same thinking at work in Bernie’s campaign. BACK TO BACK tv ads in Ohio. I didn’t encounter a single organizer and I live in poorwhitepeopleland- supposedly Bernie’s base. They focus entirely on raising money – where it comes from- the source must be pure – and then they just throw it anywhere.
schrodingers_cat
@Scotian:
I have been saying that since BS appeared as a serious primary challenger and was feted by many on the left. I don’t have the blinders of privilege that come with being born in the most powerful country on the earth. Its not just T voters that have them.
ETA: The blinders that I am talking about lead one to believe that the US dominance of the post WWII world is a natural phenomena and will continue no matter how they themselves act. Not everyone born here has these blinders ( President O didn’t) but many do.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
So say they’re all in lower income areas – where they should be- it’s about 40k per year per person including health insurance cost. They’re cheap. They could pay less than that but they shouldn’t because that supposedly goes against our values.
I’ll talk about this with Democrats but only if they tell me what they want to buy BEFORE they raise the money. this “state and local funding” unknown expenditure nonsense has to stop.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone:
Why, the New Yorker spent 500(+?) words saying that over and over just this morning!
Yarrow
@Marcopolo:
Agreed. It’s a terrible post title. Jarring to see. Wondering who’s been diagnosed. Just awful. PLEASE do not do this again in a post title. At least add context. Or just pick another title.
MomSense
@Scotian:
I think I love you. I’d offer to have you sit by me but you are in Canada so I would very much prefer to sit by you.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I would like them to pay young people. The amount of volunteer work they’re asking for is unreasonable especially because they’re paying the pros half a million a cycle. Young people got screwed. They’re in debt up to their eyeballs and we gave them a broken country. Pay them for their work.
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: I worked for the Obama/DNC field operation (they got muddied together) in 2008 and we had no clue how to spend all the money we had. Hiring more people wouldn’t have made sense unless it took the form of promoting volunteers, but we didn’t, nor did we have to. This was in Denver.
ETA we had already hired all the young volunteers, the remaining ones who gave huge numbers of hours were over-40 professionals and retirees.
O. Felix Culpa
@Kay: The DNC is irrelevant to anything but the presidential election, as far as I can tell. All the action takes place at the state and county levels. Our state party has hired young organizers for each quadrant of the state. We’re taking an “every county” organizing approach. That’s how it needs to be done. Locally, with local organizers, as someone wise on this blog once said.
ETA: This is why my political donations (such as they are) go to the local party and local candidates, where I know how the funds are used and where they have a chance to make a difference.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I really want to know what Brazile thought she was accomplishing with this, now.
“Donna Brazile” is trending worldwide on twitter. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it’s fairly rare for US political stories to beat out soccer news in that area.
O. Felix Culpa
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Huh. Can you say “Russian bots”?
Kay
@O. Felix Culpa:
Thanks. I agree, as you know.
I regret not backing Martin O’Malley. He’s looking better and better. Unfortunately he reminded me of the husband in a Lifetime made for tv movie, the one who is a killer and no one knows, although he’s obviously evil and secretive.
O’Malley 2020! Ugh.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@O. Felix Culpa: ah, see, I told you I wasn’t sure what that meant, but that makes a lot of sense. Russianbots, Politico types, and gleeful Republicans.
I’ve never been a Brazile-basher, I always thought Gore made his own mistakes and those were dwarfed by the forces arrayed against him (much as I feel about HRC), but this was just a bafflingly stupid thing to do.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bot factory at work?
Kay
@Major Major Major Major:
That’s funny because we had to raise 1000 dollars locally for a headquarters. We got nothing. They’re not bad at raising money- they’re bad at spending money! That’s an easy problem to fix, easier than the other way around. A lot of people know how to spend it better.
Doug R
Sandbagging f*ckery
Major Major Major Major
@Kay: I really really tried to want to back Martin, but he wasn’t making it easy.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
Well I hope Brazile is happy about polishing her bona fides or whatever this was. As for me, Draino seems appropriate.
Kathleen
@msdc: I think Hillary wrote in her book that she bailed DNC out. So I still don’t understand how Bernie was screwed over. It sounds as if DNC was a shambles.
rikyrah
@Scotian:
Appreciated all that you wrote.
You left out the not so small part of VOTER SUPPRESSION.
Yes, I will continue to beat this drum.
The amount of people in 2016, who LOST THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE BECAUSE OF VOTER SUPPRESSION…
Is 2-3 times the margin of ‘ victory’ for Dolt45.
We couldn’t said Fuck You to the Third Party folks…
IF OUR FOLKS HADN’T OF HAD THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE TAKEN AWAY FROM THEM.
Neldob
@Patricia Kayden: Yes indeedy. Many thanks.
Raoul
This all just reconfirms my decision to give directly to candidates. In the last cycle, besides doing a Balloon Juice thermometer give or two, I directly supported 22 candidates in several states.
I should maybe consider giving to my state party, but I’d want to be sure the money stayed in-state.
Oh, and I somehow got on the DCCC email list for awhile in 2016. My god. They were utterly awful. I’d say about 15% of them were just downright shaming. Most looked like they were designed by a 400 lb guy in a basement — in 1988. Shit graphics. Highlighting of !!11! urgent messages! All of it written for a maybe a 3rd grade reading level.
I had heard much about the vaunted VAN – Voter Activation Network, and about list segmentation and so on. Clearly the DCCC was writing these garbage begs and just hurling them to the ethers willy-nilly, with no effort to segment for people with actual reading comprehension or who don’t respond to “Don’t Blow It, Raoul. You’ll Hate Yourself Later” messages. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Likewise when I started to realize DWS was screwing the pooch, I started responding to DNC emails with my frustration. I eventually unsubed them, too, before she got the axe. The DNC/DCCC fundraising apparatus was all a shitshow.
Unfortunately, I don’t get great vibes from Perez. Bah! We have such huge opportunities!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: it got washed away be Bernie-mania and then the trump stomp, but MO’M’s faceplate was a huge surprise to me. I thought he was all but created in a lab by Kos and David Sirota, but he didn’t even seem to excite them.
Spanky
@Kay: Cheer up, Kay! We Marylanders who’ve seen MartyO for years still get the same vibe. I don’t know how he can get past that.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I can’t stand DWS, because Bernie SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO RUN IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY PRIMARY IN THE FIRST PLACE.
she was being too cute by half, and we are STILL dealing with the repercussions.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’ve always liked Donna Brazile, mostly because she comes across as a real person and seems to have a sense of humor. But yeah, the timing of this is…not good. If Perez is smart (and I know he is, though the jury is out on “effective,” IMO), he’ll use the opportunity to define the DNC’s role and move forward.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Talk about an own goal.
FlyingToaster
@Kay: I have always assumed O’Malley was Tom Carcetti. Until he convinces me otherwise, I don’t see any way I can go for him.
Kay
The NYTimes is just a terrible newspaper. They are quite literally the megaphone for whatever Trump tells them. I mean, my God, no wonder they couldn’t verify the indictments. No one in “Trumpworld” was likely to tell them that.
Boy this “access” thing is working out great for their readers. They get a cleaned up version of whatever Trump wants Haberman to print this week. This is bad! It’s bad work. I mean, obviously Donald Trump is in the know on what Donald Trump says, but just repeating it as if they have unbiased other source is nonsense.
“Donald Trump says Donald Trump is not worried about probe” – that could be the headline.
Davebo
Memeorandum has the story. No surprise that RedState, The Daily Caller, bizpacreview.com, twitchy.com, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, The Week, Splinter, Mediaite, Instapundit and WhoWhatWhy are all commenting on it.
Not surprised to see Mistermix lumped in with that group either.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: MSNBC doing a piece on this now.
Kay
@FlyingToaster:
I laughed when I saw the photo. I would listen to him for 30 seconds and then think “no. I just cannnot”
It’ll be a lot of hard work but I may be able to get over my instinctive revulsion. MAY. :)
Yoda Dog
I nominate Scotian for FP duties.
He could replace the clown that called HRC a cancer. Fuck that noise.
Yoda oot.
schrodingers_cat
@Yoda Dog: Seconded.
Matt McIrvin
Does anyone here still think there’s hope? This shit is always going to happen. There’s a hack gap–when something’s not quite right, we eat our own, the other side doesn’t.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlyingToaster: Hasn’t David Simon always said this was the case? Just last week Simon tweeted something about being ready and willing to start up their feud again. I don’t know what O’M did to piss him off.
Kay
@FlyingToaster:
I initially backed Obama on a lark. He had no female white delegates in my CD so I figured with the Democrats rigid quota system I would win. It was really about me. Winning.
Easy too. I faxed in my commitment. No one was more surprised than me when he won.
Major Major Major Major
@Davebo: after I read the piece this morning I came here and i figured it would be FP’d here in three possible ways:
—angry righteous Cole rant about awful timing and STFU and you got everything you wanted you assholes
—AL mentioning it eye-rollingly
—mistermix agreeing and kicking off a rancorous and pointless comment thread.
@Yoda Dog: @schrodingers_cat: third. mm has been useless since the Zach thread.
Davebo
@Matt McIrvin:
Not really. At least if by “we” you mean Democrats. Sure it gets bad at times but generally if you limit the Democratic Primary to Democrat contenders things go fairly smoothly.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
You can ignore most of it. Our voters are “sporadic”. They’ll never hear about it. It’s a blessing and a curse.
msdc
@Corner Stone: Glad I’m not the only one who remembered this.
Even at one remove (Brazile), it’s always about appealing to the delicate feelings and drawing on the hard-won worldly wisdom of Young Zach.
Davebo
@Major Major Major Major:
I wouldn’t say it’s pointless. Quite the opposite actually.
Scotian
@rikyrah:
Only because I was running out of space and about to run up against the character limit, because you are exactly correct, that was also a core element of that defeat, and is a major part of why the Dems tend to be weaker at the polls. The voters most inclined to turn out for them are being blocked, and by deliberate conscious design. That too is indisputable from where I sit. So you keep on banging that drum as loud and often as you can, because it too cannot be said loudly or often enough.
I spend every election night as a vote scrutinizer/counter because I believe so strongly in civic participation/oversight and the importance of all being able to vote fairly and cleanly and have every vote treated equally in terms of validity of cast. It is again because of the way your politics spills back into ours that I pay as close attention, and I find the deliberate undermining and destruction of such concepts for political power by the GOP, while they claim to be the only true patriots, a truly repugnant reality (and yes that WAS deliberate understatement there),. I also see it as one of the greatest threats to my nation coming out of yours, right behind that scary overt religiousity in governing policy approaches that the GOP epitomizes.
Raoul
@schrodingers_cat:
Yes indeed. Trump, and more broadly the utter decay of the GOP in terms of both policy and analysis, are a claxon of warning that the era of US dominance has ended. And I do think it’s over, folks are just not quite awake to the level of our internal collapse. Though the world is noticing. Re-electing Dubya was a warning shot. Obama was like a remission in our national disease. Trump’s rise confirms the ills that GWB clearly signaled, though even he was just the mascot for an already decadent and corrupt leg of our political stool.
Davebo
And for anyone who has actually experienced Cancer first hand or with a loved one this is pretty fucking sick. If there’s a metaphorical cancer at BJ this is it.
Major Major Major Major
@Davebo: I haven’t gotten anything out of it except a reaffirmation that Kay should be posting on DNC issues instead of mistermix.
msdc
@Major Major Major Major: It’s not too late to hold out for the first two.
And actually, I’m incredibly gratified by how un-rancorous this thread has been so far. It’s like everybody other than a certain front-pager has gotten over this bullshit and has moved on to fighting Trump. Good.
Citizen Alan
Since her disastrous failure as Al Gore’s campaign manager, Donna Brazile’s primary objective has been the protection and advancement of Donna Brazile. Whatever effect her book has on Democratic politics, I’m sure it’ll go a long way towards that 3rd or 4th house she’s looking at.
Life in Queens
The “starvation diet” and the miserly sounding “keeping the DNC on life support” really give this away. Since when is funding the DNC the sole responsibility of one candidate in the field? The down-ballot candidates do have a legitimate complaint, but even there, when the contributors are giving to something called the “Hillary Victory Fund”… Brazille doesn’t even pretend to have found an instance of a DNC action that favored Clinton over Sanders.
Kathleen
@Scotian: @The Thin Black Duke: Thank you both. Well said.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@msdc: well, Jim Ignatowski’s un-funny cousin from Vermont did wander through the first few comments but he seems to have spotted a shiny Our Revolution sticker on a VW bug and run off after it
Davebo
@Major Major Major Major: I disagree, at least partially.
I’d love to see Kay as a front pager but I wouldn’t want to see Mistermix gone. He/She rarely posts anyway and it’s important to see what the other side is thinking.
Kay
@Life in Queens:
I agree. I never saw the actual charge in this indictment. I’m not reading it again, either. It’s a mess.
Major Major Major Major
@Davebo: maybe we should promote/invite somebody from “the other side” who doesn’t suck then.
ETA mm is needlessly inflammatory.
Thoroughly Pizzled
It’s a damn shame that we don’t have a Reince Priebus or Michael Steele of our own. They’d set everything right.
msdc
@Kay:
Given the high volume of unreportable small-dollar donations, the Sanders campaign’s documented problems with high-dollar contributions in excess of the legal limits, and their failure to file a final FEC report even after promising they would do so (and asking for an extension!), I’m not so sure the source is all that pure, either. They never cared where the money came from, just that it was spent against the neoliberal warmonger corporate whore.
Scotian’s comments about the Sanders campaign being the first leg of the Russian ratfucking are 100% on target. We’re learning more about their interference every day, and it won’t be limited to Trump or Facebook. This story isn’t over.
Kay
What is making me sad TODAY is not this- it’s the tax code rewrite. I just have this sinking feeling that in a decade we’ll look back and say “that’s when they set inequality in stone” – it feels catastrophic- like this was the end game of all this bullshit.
Starve the beast- by “beast” they mean “us”. Just a shoddy, falling-apart country full of privatized cheap crap and grifters and people living in their cars and working at Amazon warehouses while 10% buy stupid shit and watch Netflix.
So that’s the thing, not this. That’s what makes me want to expand my garden and check out and hide my savings under my mattress. Get a dog, even.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Scotian:
Holy shit. I love you, this post and want to have babies with it and you right now.
brendancalling
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: DWS is, and has always been, awful. I am old enough to remember her refusal to help Democratic candidates in Florida because she was friends with Ileana Ros-Lehtinen , the Republican.
She should have NEVER been in charge of the DNC. I wouldn’t trust DWS to run a fucking bake sale.
msdc
@Kathleen: Yes, I think everyone here would agree that the DNC was a shambles and DWS was a terrible chair. There’s nothing new in Brazile’s story and nothing that makes it the shocker mistermix wants it to be.
But again, I am really gratified by how nobody else here seems to be falling for it. We need to push back vigorously against this kind of bullshit whenever and wherever it pops up, especially with elections right around the corner.
J R in WV
@Amaranthine RBG:
Well, that just shows your lack of knowledge of anything you comment about here. She’s a black woman with a pretty solid history which is why she was asked to take on the DNC. No reason for you to know that, as you are proudly ignorant of political science in general and American political history in particular. As chair of the DNC we can be pretty sure she didn’t vote for Trump, the suggestion that she may have is idiotic.
FlyingToaster
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Simon said that Carcetti was a composite character, and that O’Malley was one of the politicians who was included.
When asked, O’Malley claimed he was the antidote to “The Wire”.
Simon was not, um, amused. Since he’d been covering Bal’mer City Hall at the time, and the parallels between Carcetti and O’Malley’s political rise were uncannily exact, he took offense.
Other aspects of Carcetti seem to map to other Baltimore politicians, but the councilman->mayor->governor track — and tactics used — was O’Malley.
Mnemosyne
@msdc:
It helps that the obvious trolls are obvious, and no longer worth arguing with.
msdc
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: O’Malley was my governor and was a pretty good one. I think he ran into a couple of problems:
1. Sanders, unconstrained by any sense of responsibility to the party, the eventual nominee, or basic math, became the anti-Hillary candidate; and
2. The Freddie Gray killing and the Baltimore riots shone a light on the least savory parts of his record as mayor.
The first meant there was no room for him in the primary, and the second meant the one constituency that was least fond of Sanders was also not going to be fond of him. It’s a shame because, like I said, he was a pretty good governor and I think he would have been a decent candidate – and if he’d been the main opposition choice I don’t think the Russian trolls would have found much purchase there.
@FlyingToaster: And there’s that. Contrary to popular perception, he’s not Carcetti (in season four Carcetti literally does the exact opposite of what O’Malley did in taking a state bailout of the schools), but good luck convincing anybody who’s seen the show.
Yarrow
@Davebo:
Kay is a front pager. She just doesn’t post on the front page anymore.
Corner Stone
@Citizen Alan:
It’s hard to see how this angle will lead to her ever being employed as a D strategist or campaign operator. She may sell some books and get a bunch of bookings so the media can breathlessly slag HRC for a month or two longer. But then what? Who would hire her after this?
Elie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Disagree completely. If they are sustained in response to such an eventuality they would and would stimulate other action
Kathleen
@MomSense: Baud may be getting some competition for out affections.
Yarrow
@Matt McIrvin:
Hope is overrated. Action gets things done. I’m going to call my reps today and tell them the tax plan is terrible. They need to hear from us. A lot.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good one, thanks for the laugh.
Matt McIrvin
@J R in WV: I thought ARBG was being sarcastic and implicitly calling the rest of us hacks.
Ptocopius
It was also pretty well known to anybody who was paying attention in 2016. I saw several (many?) stories about it explaining in detail how it worked. It’s hard for me to believe Brazile didn’t know about it from the get-go, but it’s water under the bridge now. Brazile should be “a former official of the DNC” by now, too.
Corner Stone
What we should also find not-humorous is that all of the NeverTrump “allies” of ours are all gloating about how crooked Hillary is and how both Obama and HRC destroyed their own party.
Corner Stone
@Matt McIrvin: In any event it was too obvious a comment to bother responding to.
Kathleen
@Major Major Major Major: @msdc: I totally agree.
Mnemosyne
Also, I have to admit that I have a little bit of sympathy for Brazile, even if her timing is potentially disastrous. She was brought in at the last minute to replace DWS and had to hold things together while getting blamed for everything by the Zachs of the world, only to get replaced by Tom Perez. No wonder she decided to drop a match in the gasoline and walk away.
Juice Box
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: His mom called him. It’s dinnertime in Macedonia.
p.a.
Well. Let’s see some on-the-record quotes from state party sources, especially those that went from lean Dem and tossup to Hair Furor. Until then, it’s just self serving rumor and innuendo.
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
No, ARBG thinks that white supremacy doesn’t exist or, if it does, it wasn’t a deciding factor in the 2016 election, so he loves to point out the half-dozen or so Black women who are prominently for St. Sanders.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne:
Plenty of people at the DNC were cleaning up the mess and didn’t do this. She doesn’t get a pass from me.
Matt McIrvin
At any rate, I have no idea how the Democrats get the Bernie faction on board for future elections. It’s necessary, because there’s no majority without them, especially in the purple areas where Trump won. But at this point they’re allergic to doing anything with the party and will take any imperfection or impropriety as the sign that the system is rigged against them. I guarantee they’ll crap on any 2020 Democratic nominee unless it’s Bernie.
NR
I’ll just point out that Sanders knew about this two months before the election, but kept it quiet for the good of the Democratic party and the Clinton campaign. Kinda kicks a hole in the whole “Bernie Sanders is eeeeeevil” narrative that’s so popular around here.
Anyway, it’s been obvious that reform is needed at the DNC for quite a while now. The biggest problem isn’t stuff like this, it’s the fact that the consultants tied to the party get rich regardless of whether the party wins or loses. You would think after the past 8 years that there would be a serious re-examination of the way that the Democratic Party operates. The problem is, the people who get rich off the scheme wield too much power in the party and have no interest in that happening.
If the DNC were to ever transition to a more transparent and accountable, small donor model, it could revolutionize politics in this country. That isn’t going to happen if we continue to plug our ears and pretend everything is fine. Doing that only helps one group of people–the consultant class who doesn’t want an end to their gravy train.
Scotian
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
*BLUSH*
mere mortal
Read this to yourself, slowly. Read it again, four more times.
This acknowledgement annihilates the entire story. Unless “Hillary’s campaign kept nearly all the money from the fundraisers Hillary’s campaign was holding” is a scandal. Which, umm…
FlipYrWhig
@NR:
I’m with you! JUST IMAGINE if candidates and consultants had slurped up money from gullible small-dollar donors, avoided disclosing it, and/or bought additional houses from the haul! Good thing the gravy train stops comfortably short of Lake Champlain.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: why, just the other day I saw Tad Devine roaming the banks of the Ohio river, shoeless and bearing his lantern aloft, as flocks of UAW workers and retired machinists tossed their guns and Blue Lives Matter bumperstickers aside, filled his beggar’s bowl with $17 contributions and keened, “You were the one we sought! Where were you, Last Honest Campaign Consultant?”
barb 2
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
indeed.
I do not trust Donna Brazille. She is best buddies with Turd Blossom aka Karl Rove. She is a sleaze bucket.
Scotian
@FlipYrWhig:
I know, right? Thankfully these things only happened in the evil HRC campaign and not in that campaign of goodness, sweetness, morality, and light, run by and for Birdie, I mean Bernie Sanders.
/S (for those that needed it)
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Scotian: *clinks glasses*
Cheryl from Maryland
@rikyrah: Thanks for the link to this article. I think of your sister and hope she is doing well. The article strengthens my resolve that my husband needs a new kidney before he’s on dialysis (he’s approved for a transplant, and I’ve completed the work to be a living donor). Unlike the doctors cited in this article, his nephrologist is committed to keeping him off dialysis until his transplant. The other thing which isn’t clear to people and not cited in the article: that one can be a living donor without being a match. In fact, even if one has the same blood type, there are other issues (such as antibodies) which are considered in order to get the best match. There have been donation chains with as many as 60 people.
NR
@FlipYrWhig: Woah, sick burn bro! You really got me there!
That burn was so sick, in fact, that it completely negates the last 8 years of devastating nationwide losses by the Democratic party! I’m with you guys now! Gooooo Democratic establishment! You guys are doing a great job, don’t change anything! Am I doing it right? Don’t leave me hanging, I want to be like you guys!
FlipYrWhig
@NR: WE NEED FEWER RICH CONSULTANTS AND ALSO MORE DISCLOSURE AND MORE BERNIE SANDERS EVEN THOUGH HE DID NEITHER AND DID I SAY ESTABLISHMENT YET ESTABLISHMENT ESTABLISHMENT 8 YEARS ESTABLISHMENT 8
Jim, Foolish Literalist
We need to get past “identity politics” so that regular Americans like N R’s string of step-dads and “uncles” who day drink down at the Dew Drop Inn will be willing to pay higher taxes, once Bernie shouts at them that it’s for their own, and the greater, good.
Duh.
NR
Only you guys would use a revelation like this as another opportunity to bash Bernie Sanders. Well, you’re nothing if not predictable I suppose.
Anyway, this story is getting play in other places and hopefully will lead to some housecleaning and positive change at the DNC. You guys can keep ignoring the hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into a handful of consulting firms that lead the Democratic party to loss after loss if you want to, and keep blaming the party’s problems on anybody to the left of Barack Obama. The rest of the world will pass you by. Peace.
Chief Oshkosh
@Citizen Alan:
I’m keen to know what Jim and Kay see in her, now or ever. To me she’s always been the exemplar of all that is wrong with the Democratic Party. Not the sole or best exemplar, but solid podium finish.
Brazile is a loser. She’s kept around for exactly that reason.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: Anyone who hires a rich loser retread like Tad Devine totally deserves to lose! People who do things like that should stop lecturing everyone else about which tactics work! DOWN WITH SYSTEM THAT SAYING WIN MORE VOTES AND BE DEMOCRAT! WE MUST WORKING TO HAVE GLORIOUS OF FUTURE!
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
Didn’t Devine and Brazile work together on the Gore campaign? ?
Buskertype
Why are Clinton supporters are so much more pissed off about the primary when their candidate won?
PJ
@mere mortal: I recall numerous posts here crowing that Hillary was raising all this money for downticket races while Bernie was doing nothing for other Democratic candidates. In fact, she was funneling most of it back to her own candidacy. This was reported on last August: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/08/democrats-are-exploiting-a-campaign-finance-loophole.html. This was not illegal, and may have been beneficial to Hillary, but it certainly wasn’t beneficial for downticket Democrats. Even if Hillary had won, she’d still be facing a Republican Congress, which would mean her legislative agenda would be going nowhere, and she’d be the subject of a gazillion investigations led by Jason Chaffetz, which is just one reason why the Democratic Party has to get it together on state races, part of which includes adequately funding them.
TEL
You know, Mistermix, after reading your post, I did what you should have done, and actually looked things up:
1. Clinton and Sanders signed the exact same agreement with the DNC.
2. Clinton, unlike Sanders, actually donated some of her fundraising to the DNC. Sanders kept all of his fundraising.
3. Brazile was on the board of directors at the DNC during this process. If she found wrongdoing, she could (and should) have spoken out. Her own writing suggests she didn’t find any.
4. Referring to this as a “cancer”, when so many of us have lost loved ones to actual cancer, is disgusting.
If you have a problem with this, it’s with the DNC, not with Clinton. A post on how to make the DNC operate better would have been a more appropriate topic. You’ve written a number of other posts that I feel are not up to Balloon Juice standards. This one is so bad, that I’m not wasting my time on any future posts from you.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@TEL:
Thanks for this. All correct. Bernie didn’t deliver on his agreement, so like usual, took advantage of other’s work.
mistermix was a Berniebro.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It means the Russian bots are still at work.
Mnemosyne
@Buskertype:
Because dead-ender Sander supporters keep whining that he only lost because he was somehow cheated in a nebulous way that they can never explain but magically shifts every time yet another of their conspiracy theories falls apart.
It’s tedious, frankly.
NR
@TEL:
LOL, no:
Bernie Sanders didn’t have an agreement like that with the DNC.
Keith G
It’ll be nice when all the hands on deck of the current and recent Democratic party hierarchy are either in total retirement or at least hosting some low rating show on MSNBC.
Recently, Democrats seem less inclined to rally around policies than to rally around personalities.
I have hated Donna Brazile since her outstanding work for the wonderfully run Al Gore campaign. I never understood why she kept circulating back into positions of importance in the party hierarchy. DWS has always struck me as a weasel. Fuck both of them and fuck party leaders with important names who’ve let these people screw up the hierarchy of the party.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@mistermix up top:
Here’s the real story.
TEL
@NR: Excuse me if I don’t take your say-so about this any more seriously than Mistermix’s. I remember your many posts throughout the election far too well for that. It may be more accurate to say that they both signed similar agreements (although Bernie’s was for far less money). Unlike Bernie, Hillary didn’t renege on her agreement (in the end the amount Bernie raised was $0).
https://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/bernie-sanders-2016-fundraising-dnc-215559
Mnemosyne
@TEL:
I still haven’t managed to get a single dead-ender to explain to me why Sanders should have been handed the nomination despite getting 3 million fewer votes. There’s a lot of dark muttering about corruption and cheating, but they can never point to any actual thing that happened during the primary election that was done by Clinton or her campaign. The best they’ve come up with is claiming that the hard-right Republican who runs elections in Arizona secretly fixed those in Hillary’s favor because shut up, that’s why.
Groucho48
I seem to to recall Clinton spent years attending numerous fundraisers for down ballot races before her Presidential runs. Yes, I’m sure that was partly in order to have folks owe her, but, I’m sure that fundraising helped elect more than a few Dems.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Now remember as a fellow HRC supporter, we’re supposed to forget about the 2016 primary and not bring it up. If folk that supported the Sage from Burlington bring it up, we’re supposed to say: “She was the worst candidate ever and he would have won in a landslide”; and never speak of this again(until they bring it up again).
NR
@TEL: It’s not my say-so, that quote is directly from Donna Brazille in the linked article. The agreement the Clinton campaign had with the DNC went far beyond fundraising and gave them full control over DNC staffing and communications. Sanders didn’t have an agreement like that.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
Move the goalposts, rah rah rah !
LanceThruster
@Mnemosyne:
Because Sanders would have won and it would be in keeping with the rules of gow superdelegates could vote. Clinton’s strategy of trying to ‘run out the clock’ may have played will in the rarified air of the primaries, but pretty much useless in the general. Bernie’s support was growing as hers was declining. She had all the advantages from the start, yet this individually financed dark horse was showing very emphatically just how vulnerable her campaign was.
I’ll join with anyone here to fight voter suppression and end gerrymandering moving forward, but reject those wanting to circle their wagons around a failed candidacy by arguing for more of the same.
Betty Cracker
I kinda hope Sanders runs again in 2020. Pretty sure Gillibrand, Harris or whoever will beat the old fart like a circus monkey in the primary, and then maybe we can finally move the fuck on. Otherwise, this shit will never end.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Betty Cracker: He can’t live forever.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
When You’ve Lost Donna Brazile…
Good to see most of the Clintonite Neoliberals are still hard at work burying their heads in the sand!
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
?Only the good die young?
Buskertype
@Mnemosyne: I seriously never hear this, other than when I hear Clinton supporters talking about it
Wil
I read the Politico article.
I still didn’t see any material way in which the situation resulted in ‘rigging’ or ‘cheating’ for Hillary.
Anybody?
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
mistermix,
How much money did the self proclaimed leader of the People’s Revolution put into down ballot races?
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Just Some Fuckhead: How do you know he’s not part of the undead?
Maybe that why he won’t release his taxes. The undead can’t claim a personal exemption on their 1040.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
mistermix,
seriously – echoing Brazile’s moronic use of “cancer”
Show us on the doll where Hillary touched you.
It has to be. There’s no other way to explain such a self destructive form of clinton derangement syndrome.
Sad!
Ruckus
@JMG:
I get fund raising emails from the DNC all the time. And from the DSCC and the DCCC and about 10 other organizations/politicians. Every day.
AxelFoley
@Scotian:
Well said. Well said indeed.
planetjanet
@FlipYrWhig: That is so perfectly awesome. Well done. Thanks.
mere mortal
@PJ: Yeah, reading through this stuff again reminded me of the stories of state candidates describing money coming in then going right back out. What surprised and depressed me was the horrible state of the DNC, both in terms of leadership and financing. I miss Howard Dean.
And yeah, she would have faced a horrifying situation in Congress, and we might have seen an 8 member Supreme Court for as long as the remaining 8 stayed on, then 7… And impeachment and all the rest. Maybe the Committee for the Best Available Timeline got it as right as they could manage here.
Mayur
@NR: That statement is misleading and based on the wrong documents.
https://twitter.com/WalktheTalkBern/status/926195470824640512/photo/1
https://twitter.com/fawfulfan/status/926401375621275648
https://twitter.com/ahumorlessfem/status/926249997376638976
This really, really sucks. The fact that this lie has run around the world a dozen times and the truth is metaphorically tying on its shoes in deep twitter feeds is a huge problem. I’m positive that none of the actual mass media outlets will pick up on these actual facts but will instead continue to spew Brazile’s glurge. Fuck her.
Mutaman
@Mayur: Sounds like all HRC “scandals” doesn’t it? When the history of Donna Brazille is written she will be remembered for doing something really stupid (giving up the debate questions that nobody asked for) and then lying about it.