Join the Club \u2013 The Democratic National Committee and Bernie Sanders<\/p>\n
In a world where it feels like every news item NOT related to Trump and Russia is a distraction, former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile did us no favors this week. Her new book, \u201cHacks,\u201d goes after the Hillary Clinton campaign for making an \u201cunethical\u201d deal with the Democratic National Committee prior to the 2016 Democratic Convention.<\/p>\n
Brazile, the Gore Campaign manager from 2000, was brought in as interim Chairman just prior to the Democratic Convention in 2016. This was after the Russian hack through Wikileaks revealed that former Chairman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was demonstrably in the Hillary Clinton camp during the primary campaign against Bernie Sanders. Brazile was the Vice Chairman of the DNC prior to her elevation.<\/p>\n
She made it clear that there was nothing \u201cillegal\u201d about the deal between the Clinton campaign and the DNC, and that in fact, the Sanders campaign had a similar deal. What Brazile felt was \u201cunethical\u201d was that the DNC, at one point almost broke, ceded a great deal of financial control to the Clinton campaign in return for Hillary fundraising for them. Brazile felt this \u201cweighted\u201d the DNC to Clinton over Sanders, who raised much less money for the Committee.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s right. The DNC was weighted for Clinton. And while Bernie\u2019s supporters probably won\u2019t like hearing it, they should have been.<\/p>\n
Senator Sanders to this day is NOT a member of the Democratic Party. He wears his \u201cIndependent\u201d label as a badge of honor, claiming loyalty to his ideals and his supporters, not to a political structure. He entered the Democratic primaries as an insurgent, running against the system. \u00a0Why is anybody surprised or angered that the \u201csystem\u201d he was running against, the party he still refuses to join, was slanted against him?<\/p>\n
And yet the party went through the motions of treating him as an equal, signing the same agreement with him as with Clinton. And while Clinton DID receive a lot more for her agreement, Clinton DID raise an enormous amount of money for the DNC, keeping them from being irrelevant.<\/p>\n
Many of today\u2019s \u201cresistors\u201d believe that the Republican party should have rejected Trump as being unfit for office. They blame Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Reince Preibus and the other leaders for allowing the party to fall into Trump\u2019s trap. The DNC also made some judgments about the candidates, and while Sanders showed well in the primaries, he was (and is) clearly unelectable in a general Presidential election. No one, including Clinton, went after Sanders in a major negative way; no one attacked the man who claims to be a Socialist.<\/p>\n
Clinton didn\u2019t because she knew that the Sanders supporters would eventually have to come to her aid in the general election. And while many did, others, angered by the perceived unfairness of the DNC, or by the constant irritation of social media trolling (some Russian) stayed home. Hard to say what effect that had on the final outcome.<\/p>\n
Senator Elizabeth Warren stated the primaries were \u201crigged\u201d against Sanders in an interview this week. While the vote totals clearly were not, to say that the Democratic Party was unbiased in the election simply wouldn\u2019t be true. The word \u201crigged\u201d implies that the outcome was fixed, which is also not true. And while we need to look and see if the voting in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania were in fact \u201crigged\u201d in the general election, Warren is looking to her own future with the \u201cBernie\u201d supporters by her comments.<\/p>\n
If Sanders expects fairness from the structure he\u2019s campaigning against, then he is truly na\u00efve. If he wants to be a Democrat \u2013 then join the club.<\/p>\n
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