Donna Brazile: How the Clinton campaign ran the DNC

[Shadows]

I wanted to center myself for what I knew would be an emotional phone call. I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process. Debbie was not a good manager. She hadn’t been very interested in controlling the party—she let Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired. By September 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart. Officials from Hillary’s campaign had taken a look at the DNC’s books. 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. 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. 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.

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 Al 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 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. Bernie took this stoically. He did not yell or express outrage. Instead he asked me what I thought Hillary’s chances were. I did not trust the polls, I said. I told him I had visited states around the country and I found a lack of enthusiasm for her everywhere.

I urged Bernie to work as hard as he could to bring his supporters into the fold with Hillary, and to campaign with all the heart and hope he could muster. He might find some of her positions too centrist, and her coziness with the financial elites distasteful, but he knew and I knew that the alternative was a person who would put the very future of the country in peril. I knew he agreed with me, but I never in my life had felt so tiny and powerless as I did making that call. When I hung up the call to Bernie, I started to cry, not out of guilt, but out of anger. We would go forward. We had to.


Wow Just Wow. Clinton bought the DNC for just 20M $? That is the price for a candidate to buy the DNC in a Presidential year. Not just Sanders in 2016, but Booker or Harris or any other candidate in 2020 will gladly take this deal.

And the people who are justifying this deserve to have President Trump. You can't support such corruption, subversion of democracy & shadiness & then oppose Trump.

[Shadows]

"Yes Hillary may have rigged the entire primary process in her favor, but let's not forget that Bernie also cheated by having his supporters show up and vote. Now let's move on."

Caucuses are low-turnout and only allow the most politically involved, activist voices, as most people don't have the time for hours caucusing and primaries are much easier. They are undemocratic and suppressed Clinton supporter turnout. Look at Washington-Sanders won the caucus but she won the non-binding primary which had many times the electorate of the caucus(over 800,000 to 26,000 in the caucus).

Again. FAKE NEWS. Caucuses don't give out vote numbers but delegates awarded from 1 particular slot. 26,000 is total fake news.

How is "Undemocratic" to ask people to engage & talk over an election? I do agree that caucuses do hinder participation which can be easily removed by absentee ballot which Nebraska & multiple other states did through Caucuses. To come with ridiculous examples like a non-binding primary which wasn't even a part of DNC delegate selection process is baffling. What next? Do a survey & see how many people voted on that & announce based on that.

[Shadows]

I wanted to center myself for what I knew would be an emotional phone call. I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process. Debbie was not a good manager. She hadn’t been very interested in controlling the party—she let Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired. By September 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart. Officials from Hillary’s campaign had taken a look at the DNC’s books. 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. 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. 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.

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 Al 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 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. Bernie took this stoically. He did not yell or express outrage. Instead he asked me what I thought Hillary’s chances were. I did not trust the polls, I said. I told him I had visited states around the country and I found a lack of enthusiasm for her everywhere.

I urged Bernie to work as hard as he could to bring his supporters into the fold with Hillary, and to campaign with all the heart and hope he could muster. He might find some of her positions too centrist, and her coziness with the financial elites distasteful, but he knew and I knew that the alternative was a person who would put the very future of the country in peril. I knew he agreed with me, but I never in my life had felt so tiny and powerless as I did making that call. When I hung up the call to Bernie, I started to cry, not out of guilt, but out of anger. We would go forward. We had to.


Wow Just Wow. Clinton bought the DNC for just 20M $? That is the price for a candidate to buy the DNC in a Presidential year. Not just Sanders in 2016, but Booker or Harris or any other candidate in 2020 will gladly take this deal.

And the people who are justifying this deserve to have President Trump. You can't support such corruption, subversion of democracy & shadiness & then oppose Trump.

All this from someone who had fed the Hillary campaign debate questions ahead of time, and said she wanted to cuss out the Bernie camp. When she's the voice of reason, wow, just wow.

Brazile is crappy. No 2 ways about it. But hypocrites blast a deranged Trump for unethical, undemocratic behaviour while supporting such corruption in the DNC. And these people shi* on Bernie for not doing enough. Bernie raised money for many Senate Candidates, campaigned for them & did more rallies for Clinton in the final week than probably she did for herself.

This man at 75, went coast to coast going over 2 dozen states or something that. All the while, it was told to him by Brazile that the DNC rigged it & through leaked emails that Hillary thought Bernie's people were basement dwellers & that she was for open borders & a fully open economy without any worker protections. Yet, this man said no disparaging comments to the media, kept his head down & did everything he could do to defeat Trump all while Hillary kept making stupid "Deplorable" comment before the GE (How idiotic can you be to make such comments in a GE campaign?)

And these idiots & Hillary Clinton still shi* on Bernie. They should be ashamed.

[Shadows]

How is "Undemocratic" to ask people to engage & talk over an election?

Hillary supporters have jobs. They didn't have 12 hours out of the day to sit around defending their vote and being shouted down by Bernie supporters.

Most of the Caucuses which had Video published including the one in Colorado & Washington have had a few good minutes of discussion without any shouting. In many cases, you had Clinton getting more votes than the initial tally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikn8WAMvl_k - Colorado.

I know it is easy to blast people for having minimum passion because 1 side had nothing. But anyways, Caucuses/Primaries is a meaningless discussion. They will probably have absentee ballots like they had in Nebraska.

[Shadows]

Democrats express outrage over allegations of early party control for Clinton in 2016

Ray Buckley, the chairman of New Hampshire’s Democratic Party, said that he first learned of the agreement while serving as DNC vice chair in 2016. “The day that Donna discovered this, she called me and I almost passed out,” Buckley said. “We were blatantly misled.” In response to the report Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a CNN interview that she believed the primary contest between Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders had been rigged. “This is a real problem,” she said. “We have to hold this party accountable.”  President Trump also jumped on the controversy with a tweet on Thursday night that suggested the Justice Department should investigate the “real collusion and dishonesty,” even though Brazile and the Sanders campaign have not alleged criminal activity.

Jeff Weaver, Sanders’s campaign manager, said in an interview that their campaign was led to believe it had the same joint fundraising agreement as Clinton. “We were not offered veto power on staff at the DNC, I can tell you that,” said Weaver. “This was a laundering operation. They’d go to fundraisers, they’d get a $350,000 check from donors which was supposed to be divvied up. Instead of disbursing that money, they’d turn around and run a small-dollar fundraising to generate small contributions that went to the Clinton campaign.” Buckley and other DNC members suggested that the party should also give DNC members access to its budget, which would have made it clear much earlier how the joint fundraising agreement was affecting the flow of money. “I will co-sponsor that amendment and vote for it,” Buckley said. “There’s so much reform that has to happen.”

Jane Kleeb, who took over Nebraska’s Democratic Party in late 2016, discovered that the party had accrued $35,000 in debt for the Clinton campaign. “Nebraska never even signed the JFA because we . . . didn’t want to be a funnel for, essentially, money-laundering,” Kleeb said. “And now we learn that a small group of establishment Democrats got to determine who our nominee was. That goes against everything that Democratic values are built on.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democrats-express-outrage-over-allegations-of-early-control-for-clinton-in-2016/2017/11/02/84e949da-c000-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html?utm_term=.7cb3ce59c15b

[Shadows]

"Yes Hillary may have rigged the entire primary process in her favor, but let's not forget that Bernie also cheated by having his supporters show up and vote. Now let's move on."

She pulled three and a half million votes out of a hat? Gosh, that's talent. Shame she's not president.

She didn't win 3M or 3.5M. That is FAKE NEWS like Trump provides. People have to stop such blatant falsehood.

[Shadows]

"Yes Hillary may have rigged the entire primary process in her favor, but let's not forget that Bernie also cheated by having his supporters show up and vote. Now let's move on."

She pulled three and a half million votes out of a hat? Gosh, that's talent. Shame she's not president.

She didn't win 3M or 3.5M. That is FAKE NEWS like Trump provides. People have to stop such blatant falsehood.

17 mIllion to 13 million. That wasn't super delegates or DC,  that was what the the voters chose. Why don't you focus on winning in 2020 rather than complaining your loss in 2016 was unfair?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_2016

Again that is Fake news. Deliberate Falsehoods being propagated with a freaking Wikipedia link? So called liberals/progressives have to be more intelligent than to propagate deliberate lies when the DNC doesn't record Popular Votes & doesn't have vote numbers for multiple states. The actual number is likely much lesser than 3 or 4 million.

People will focus on 2020 after Bernie announces his candidacy. But one can't have a future without learning from the past.

"Yes Hillary may have rigged the entire primary process in her favor, but let's not forget that Bernie also cheated by having his supporters show up and vote. Now let's move on."

She pulled three and a half million votes out of a hat? Gosh, that's talent. Shame she's not president.

She didn't win 3M or 3.5M. That is FAKE NEWS like Trump provides. People have to stop such blatant falsehood.

Odd how tenuous your English is, isn't it?

I missed a by* - She didn't win by*.

It happens when I am replying to dumb low IQ people. I try to type fast & save my time while replying to hacks & dense folks. Stupid people do need to be called out for what they are though.

[Shadows]

@realDonaldTrump
Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn't looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems..

@realDonaldTrump
 ...New Donna B book says she paid for and stole the Dem Primary. What about the deleted E-mails, Uranium, Podesta, the Server, plus, plus...

@realDonaldTrump
 ....People are angry.  At some point the Justice Department, and the FBI, must do what is right and proper. The American public deserves it!

@realDonaldTrump
The real story on Collusion is in Donna B's new book. Crooked Hillary bought the DNC & then stole the Democratic Primary from Crazy Bernie!

@realDonaldTrump
Pocahontas just stated that the Democrats, lead by the legendary Crooked Hillary Clinton, rigged the Primaries! Lets go FBI & Justice Dept.

Trump has nothing to do but take shots at "Crooked Hillary" -  Crazy twitter President !

[Shadows]

A joint fundraising agreement between the Bernie Sanders campaign and the Democratic National Committee -- obtained Friday by ABC News and signed at the start of the primary campaign for the 2016 presidential election -- does not include any language about coordinating on strategic decisions over hiring or budget, unlike a fundraising memo between the Hillary Clinton team and the DNC. In light of the revelation by Brazile, multiple sources have confirmed to ABC News that DNC chair Tom Perez wrote a note to the members of the party Friday, in which he defended the conduct of previous party leadership and stood by the party’s impartiality. "Our understanding was that the DNC offered all of the presidential campaigns the opportunity to set up a [joint-funding agreement] and work with the DNC to coordinate on how those funds were used to best prepare for the general election. Since then, both of those joint fundraising committees have been shut down," he wrote.

The Clinton campaign Friday afternoon confirmed the existence of a memo between the DNC and their campaign, which specifically outlines an expanded scope and interpretation of their funding agreement. In that memo, Hillary for America (HFA) reportedly agreed to help the DNC raise money and clear its debts, and in exchange, the party consented “HFA personnel will be consulted and have joint authority over strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and general election related communications, data, technology, analytics, and research.”

Weaver, who currently sits on a new unity commission charged with suggesting reforms for the party, said he was surprised that the newly-elected leadership at the party was not taking a more proactive stance to dealing with the old wounds. “A real executive would say, 'This was a terrible thing that went on, we are cleaning it up,'" Weaver said. “[Tom] Perez isn’t tied to this why is he defending this? It's ridiculous.”

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sanders-campaign-document-reveals-fundraising-relationship-dnc/story?id=50926505

Ohh Tom Perez - Already caught lying. Guess he is determined to be DWS II.