Rigged Primary

Donna Brazile writes that the Democratic National Committee was bailed out by the Clinton campaign financially and was essentially run by the campaign throughout the Democratic presidential primary.

Obama left the party $24 million in debt—$15 million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors after the 2012 campaign—and had been paying that off very slowly. Obama’s campaign was not scheduled to pay it off until 2016. Hillary for America (the campaign) and the Hillary Victory Fund (its joint fundraising vehicle with the DNC) had taken care of 80 percent of the remaining debt in 2016, about $10 million, and had placed the party on an allowance.

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When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.

The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

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This victory fund agreement ... had been signed in August 2015.

This is bad. Von Clownstick is a fucking mess, but he'll be gone soon. And then the Republicans will keep control of Congress and Pence will be re-elected because the Democrats have nobody.

Update (November 4):  Peter Rosenstein calls Brazile a sellout.

Conor Lynch argues that it's time for Democrats to embrace the progressive wing of the party.

The popular appeal of progressives like Sanders and Warren is that they actually stand for something and understand the concerns of working Americans. If the Democrats want to win in 2018 and 2020, they will have to convince Americans that they share this quality. The only way to do this is to embrace the progressive wing that they conspired against in 2016.

Andrew O'Hehir thinks the problem is deeper than ideological factions.

Sanders-style progressives long to purge the old guard and build anew, rebranding the entire party as a social-democratic enterprise dedicated to single-payer health care, a $15 minimum wage and higher taxes on the rich. Clintonite moderates, meanwhile, maintain that the [von Clownstick] presidency, Republican hegemony in Washington and widespread social discord are rogue events that perhaps didn’t really happen and in any case do not reflect on their strategy of policy-wonk triangulation or their record of repeated and humiliating defeat.

Both responses are essentially utopian: They rest on the premise that the Democratic Party is still a functioning political organization and that the United States is still a functioning democracy. We ought to know better by now. It does no good to pretend that the Democratic (and democratic) crisis — which is not just ideological and political but also moral, philosophical, financial, institutional and other adjectives besides — does not exist or isn’t important.

[E]xplanations of what happened last November ,,, completely ignore the near-total meltdown of the two-party system that got us there in the first place. Hillary Clinton’s bizarre defeat-in-victory was an event so unlikely it seems like a metaphor. So does the fact that the Democratic Party was so broke and so cynical it literally sold its soul for rent money. But those things happened. Until we face them honestly there will be no Resistance, no victory, no political renewal and no democracy.

Update (November 5):  Former Clinton campaign staff criticize Brazile.

The open letter, signed by more than 100 people, including campaign chairman John Podesta and vice chair Huma Abedin, said that staffers “do not recognize the campaign” that Brazile “portrays in the book.”

And Tom Perez promises reform in the nominating process.

Update (February 14, 2018):  It is notable that two additional potential Democratic presidential candidates have announced they will refuse corporate PAC money.