I don’t mean to steal the fire of Mark’s excellent post on the Donna Brazile article. Brazile paints a dire picture of the mismanagement and neglect at the DNC, and the Clinton campaign’s bailout/takeover starting in 2015.
The most charitable possible reading of the Clinton campaign’s actions is that they bailed out the DNC, by whatever legal means necessary. Unfortunately this required funneling money through a method intended for state parties, that then left the state parties high and dry. And the previous management under Obama and Debbie Wasserman Schultz come in for a drubbing. Schultz presided over the losing of winnable elections, so I can’t say I’m surprised at Brazile’s general assessment.
I can’t claim to understand all of the legal/ethical issues, and certainly I can’t keep the entire history in the front of my mind all at once. So far I can’t quite make the leap to saying that the whole primary was “rigged”, as Elizabeth Warren went as far to say. I would need to see more evidence — or be reminded — of how Clinton’s influence over the DNC affected the primary versus Sanders: Was the Sanders campaign deprived of resources, support, infrastructure etc. that the DNC did offer Clinton? Did any of it have a material effect on the primary? Or does the conflict of interest make the primary inherently “rigged?” I don’t think this is merely a semantic discussion: “Rigged” is a strong word and we should be clear what we’re talking about — if only so that we can avoid it in the future.
Joy Reid has a useful thread casting skepticism on that:
A small note – that’s actually a big one – on the subject of “rigging…”
— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 3, 2017
I always think facts matter. We should be very clear what “rigged” means; and at the same time acknowledge an inherent conflict of interest when a campaign essentially buys out a political party’s operations. It’s just not acceptable. And it’s definitely not acceptable to bleed state parties and organizations dry, given that we’re only a few GOP state legislatures away from calling a constitutional convention. We’re eating our seed corn.
If there’s any hope to be had in this, it’s that we’re dealing with actual incompetence and bad strategy, as opposed to intractable structural problems with the party. Let’s replace people who aren’t up to the job with people who are. Massachusetts, e.g., is chockfull of effective political people, at every level: John Walsh for DNC chair? Kate Donaghue? We could do much better.
If we step back, and recognize that this is about faith in our Democratic/democratic institutions, then Warren is right:
“… When Tom … Perez was first elected chair of the DNC, the very first conversation I had with him was to say, You have got to put together a Democratic Party in which everybody can have confidence that the party is working for Democrats rather than Democrats working for the party. And he’s being tested now – this is a test for Tom Perez. And either he’s going to succeed by bringing Bernie Sanders and Bernie Sanders representatives into the process; and they’re gonna say it’s fair, it works, and we all believe it; or he’s gonna fail. And I very much hope he succeeds.
A housecleaning seems in order.
I agree with all of this, especially your search for precise definitions, but there are two problems.
For people hostile to the DNC or Dems in general, the notion of a biased referee is rigging enough. (Yes I know that’s not accurate — but it’s all they need.)
Elizabeth Warren changed the game entirely yesterday.
Yeah, that’s the question I posed – maybe the conflict of interest alone is enough to say “rigged”. If that’s the definition then we should say so.
And I agree re Warren.
I wished that Senator Warren had backed Sanders from the start, but I understand her actions. The Clinton machine was indeed powerful and played dirty, as we can now see clearly, she had to use caution. Perhaps Senator Warren decided to pick a fight when she felt the odds were more in her favor, and that seems to be now.
One set of money men attacking and wiping out another set of money men.
Somebody is trying to get the DNC away from the Clintons. Is it Bernie? Kind of doubt it.
Bernie and Trump/Bannon figured out that the party fundraising was pork for consultants. Who only knew how to win by frontal assault with massive waste of resources.
Hillary and Russian collusion story about to get thrown under… well you know.
I tend to agree up to erroneous and gratuitous trolling at the end.
I’m not sure there’s a plot to get the DNC away from the Clintons. It hasn’t belonged to them for a long time. Obama left a vacuum there.
Housecleaning does not seem to be in the cards, however.
Unless you think that “incompetence” is limited solely to hiring Deborah Wasserman Schultz. I mean, if that’s your point of view, we took care of that, didn’t we? (By replacing her with Brazile, for starters.)
But I suggest it goes deeper than that–and I wonder if, when it goes that deep, if it isn’t in fact institutionalized. And also what the difference is between “mere” incompetence and corruption, at that point. They seem indistinguishable to me
As for Perez, hasn’t he made his choice? When he chucked the progressives out and replaced them with with lobbyists, I mean.
Hard to say. As someone here pointed out, he didn’t do it alone. If they chucked out Bernie people akin to Tad Devine, I might less concerned.
The DNC just fired a major fundraiser too. So stuff is certainly happening. It’s hard to know the players without a scorecard.
Asked if DNC system was rigged in Clinton’s favor, Warren says ‘yes’
Many of us had strong suspicions it was rigged. We were denigrated as “Bernie Bros” and insulted with suggestions of mental illness “Clinton Derangement Syndrome”
Now this.
Again, it’s time for the Clinton supporters, the neoliberals, the professional class of the party to step aside and get out of the way so that the party can return to its roots as the party of the working class.
I strongly suspect that Warren is going to have to walk back/modify the “rigged” comment. This is the kind of thing that would have been wise to slow-roll and delay comment, given how inflammatory the word is.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/donna-brazile-needs-to-back-up-her-self-serving-claims More from Josh Marshall:
Especially since Warren endorsed the incumbent in the mayor’s race. City workers, like DNC operatives, should be committed to ensuring a level playing field. But should anyone be shocked if they don’t? Was the Clinton nomination any more “rigged” than the mayor’s race will be next Tuesday?
@bob: Walsh has many advantages, some of them unfair, and no doubt dominates the city Democratic Committee.
But the role of the city committee in the city primary is in no way analogous to that played by the DNC in the presidential nominating process.
Warren’s endorsement is exactly that. I don’t think anyone believes that electeds have an obligation to stay neutral or not use their influence if they do so in aboveboard ways.
I’ll add as a side note that I believe Sanders lost the primary fair and square: he did not run that great a campaign and was less than strategic in his appeal to minority voters where he could have done well.
So not only did the Clinton folks taint their win, they did so needlessly.
It was just an analogy. I don’t claim that either election was /will be rigged. We both agree that the primaries weren’t rigged. Sen Warren, should explain why she thinks the primaries were rigged, and she should make the distinction between the two races.
Completely agree Trickle Up. I was a Sanders supporter who respected Clinton and expected her to win. This matters
I honestly think the bigger issue is that the DNC was so drained of money by the Obama campaign that it needed the Clinton campaign to bail it out. And the ethical issues around the quid pro quo of that bailout. And that there’s a loophole a mile wide that allows state parties to skirt federal contribution limits. All problematic stuff that we should be focusing on reforming.
Okay, so it was not as rigged as was thought and we can take comfort that the amount of rigging was minimal…..
Kind of like being just a little pregnant.
Not rigged at all, and Brazile herself is now clarifying that she did not see the primary as rigged.
Is that a Trump quote?
This is quickly becoming an exercise in let’s make sure our context is clear and facts are straight before we engage the circular firing squad we are so good at. It seems Brazile may have gotten her agreements confused and I’m also hearing the Sanders campaign was approached about a similar agreement and rejected or at least ignored it.
See JimC’s top post above, Christopher.
I’ll add that there might be a leg to stand on if the party establishment had not failed so completely and spectacularly.
But it did.
I saw his post, but do not concede his point.
Our Presidential candidate, with FOX, the FBI, Russia, Bernie and his bros, Stein, Twitter, Facebook, Daily Kos, and the alt-right working against her, still won millions of more votes than her opponent. Framing that as “failing spectacularly” is disingenuous.
And “disingenuous” is a polite way of saying “a damned LIE”.
I think “failed . . .completely and spectacularly” is a fair description when you consider just how weak a candidate Trump was. I agree with Tom’s list of bad things that were thrown at Clinton, but I don’t think 3 million votes is anything like her full potential winning margin. The DNC also managed to oversee a complete disaster in Senate races, and didn’t do much better in the House.
Supporters of the status quo, aka the Clinton cultist, will defend them regardless of the evidence. It’s not that strange when one considers the reality that 38% of Americans still support Trump. These Trump supporters don’t care about the Russian connection anymore than the Clinton cultists care about selling the Working Class to serve the commands of Wall Street.
In order for Trump to win, he needs to oppose a candidate with equally high negative ratings. He got close to that. He needed a candidate with a misogynistic past. He got the spouse of one. He needed a wealthy candidate complete with a lavish lifestyle and questionable financial dealing around the world. He got that as well. Finally, he needed a candidate who did not come across as having genuine concern for the working class, so little that they would not even campaign much in the rust belt. He got that.
And now we got Trump.
We GAINED two seats in the Senate and IIRC had higher aggregate vote totals for the House.
Gaining two seats was a terrible result when there were twice as many Republican seats up for re-election. It was a golden opportunity that was muffed.
Twitter, Facebook, and the Daily Kos are entities that campaigned against the queen. Good one, Did you miss everything Markos and his top posters said?
My list of things that failed in the 2016 campaign, sorted by importance, does not include “the party establishment”.
I’d say that the egregious and intentional slander of the Democratic nominee by Mr. Comey in the final stages of the campaign was far greater “failure” of what is supposed to be an impartial and non-partisan law enforcement agency.
I’d say that relentless spate of flagrantly partisan “Benghazi” hearings and investigations — entirely empty of substance — was a far greater failure of our political process. More than “failure”, it was an outright abuse of power.
I’d say that the virtual ownership of a major broadcaster by the GOP, and the relentless use of that broadcaster to spread lies, disinformation, and purely partisan propaganda is a far greater failure of our much-vaunted fourth estate.
Many things went terribly wrong in the 2016 campaign. It appears to me that the 2018 and 2020 campaigns will be even worse in no small part because of the steadfast refusal of ALL parties to admit, face, and change what actually went wrong in 2016.
Mr. Trump lost the popular vote and directly benefited from, among other things, draconian voter suppression laws in MI, WI and PA that prevented a great many urban blacks from voting.
America put Donald Trump in the Oval Office and handed him access to our nuclear triggers, when Hillary Clinton won the popular election.
My view is that future historians (if humanity survives Mr. Trump) will conclude that THAT choice — of Mr. Trump over Ms. Clinton — is THE failure of the 2016 election. It is arguably THE worst election outcome in America’s history.
I suggest that any failures of “the party establishment” will be a tiny footnote among those future tomes.
I actually don’t disagree with the majority of what you are saying, and Brazile has said some offbeat stuff about replacing Hillary with Biden (which the chair cannot do) that casts an incredulous shadow of on her more credible critiques. She exposes some deep dysfunctional organizational failures at the root of the party that ought to be leading the Resistance and forming an attractive alternative people want to vote for.
I don’t think this has a huge impact on why Hillary won the primary or lost the general (which if we lived in a democracy she actually won easily). The real impact is how Obama and DWS wrecked the DNC requiring a bailout in the first place, and why the law allowed that bailout and the ethos behind thinking it was a good idea.
The real impact is the data that Lee Drutham and Stanley Greenberg have compiled showing a huge majority favoring redistributionist economic policies that none of our candidates seem willing to run on. Clinton, Ossoff, Doug Jones and now Northam are running as anti-racist centrist consensus candidates and will all lose. They will lose since that center no longer exists in American politics and the new swing voter wants a radical improvement in the economic balance of power from the haves to the haves nots.
The rhetoric of a war for Americas soul is exactly what we need to be running on. That’s exactly the language Bernie, Warren and Brown are comfortable with. It’s exactly the language folks like Northam and even our own local candidates for Governor are terrified to touch. Populism wins elections, whether it be right or left wing. Our goal as liberals should be to embrace the populist moment and push the leftist alternative to the far right. This mealy mouthed suburban focused coffee party liberalism ain’t gonna cut it anymore.
Tweet from Donna Brazile:
That’s quite the hashtag!
The DNC doesn’t run the primaries. So even if it had a favorite, that’s no different than a PAC having a favorite.
Talk about moving the goal posts, now it’s ok for the DNC to have favorites? It may not b required to be neutral-but it has an ethical responsibility to be neutral. This scandal is less about the candidates and all about a flawed loophole that damages the party’s effectiveness on the ground and siphoned its resources to a media heavy strategy that failed to move voters downballot.
Add this to the “Super Delegates” and wonder why ordinary working class voters feel that they don’t matter at all to the party. This creates a vacuum, one that a tyrant can fill, as we are witnessing every day, sadly.
There has yet to be evidence that the national party did not act in a neutral manner.
There is no evidence that Clinton supporters will ever accept. We know that. Bill Clinton is not a misogynist despite all the evidence we have. Bill Clinton did not attack working class Americans despite all the evidence we have. Hillary Clinton did not act as a cancer in the party despite all the evidence we have.
Got it.
Clinton supporters are no different from Trump supporters that remain today despite all the evidence before them. Different sides of the same coin.
It’s hard to accept evidence if it’s not shown in the first place!
@ It’s hard to accept evidence:
There is no evidence. It is pointless to attempt to discuss any of this with those who equate Hillary Clinton with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton supporters with Donald Trump supporters. That’s just an irrational claim, and it is pointless to respond to irrational claims.
As to the earlier comment about DNC favoritism, I’m not sure that the 2016 DNC was any more biased than any prior DNC has been. That’s not to defend it, it’s to instead say that I think the angst is primarily about losing the election.
I’m all in favor of making changes at the DNC and all the other party organizations, nationally and locally. At the end of those changes, I predict some things will still be true:
1. Real men and women are imperfect.
2. Real imperfect men and women are going to like some other men and women more than others.
3. Real imperfect men and women — especially those who are active in politics — respond to real people far more than organizations. Things like loyalty, affection, respect, and trust happen between PEOPLE.
4. Real contributors are going to give different amounts of money. Any contributor who finds a way to legally make tens of thousands of dollars (or more) appear in campaign coffers is going to get more attention than any contributor who gives $100.
5. One contributor who legally directs $10,000 into the campaign is going to have more influence than 100 contributors of $100 each unless those 100 contributors find a way to be represented by one person. See (3) above.
I’m not happy about the 2016 DNC. I haven’t given to the DNC in more than a decade because it’s been so troubled for so long. Troubled organizations do disturbing things. That’s why I avoid them.
Yes, I want us to fix the DNC. I think that there are several steps towards doing that:
1. Be clear about values and priorities
2. Insist that our organizations reflect those values and priorities.
Jesus did not say “The last shall be in the middle and the first shall be unharmed”.
One of the things Elizabeth Warren got right when I met her a few weeks ago is her observation that the Democratic Party has always fought for the weakest, the poorest, the least powerful.
As we fight the war that must be fought against wealth concentration and income concentration, we must remember that working class white men are very much in the middle of the line that Jesus was talking about.
I suggest that participants in any populist movement need to be willing to let those who have been last step to the front of the line.
I see precious little evidence of that willingness in ANY contemporary populist movement. That’s NOT what the Tea Party was about, it’s not what Donald Trump supporters were about, it’s not what the more vocal Bernie Sanders supporters were about, it’s not what the AfD is about in Germany, It’s not what the “Freedom Party” in Austria is about. It’s not what Brexit was about in the UK.
We must remain faithful to our values and priorities.