November 5, 2017
On Thursday of this week, Donna Brazile detonated a bomb inside of the Democratic Party in an article in Politico, which contained explosive charges suggesting that the Joint Fundraising Agreement between the DNC and the Clinton campaign rigged the primaries in Clinton’s favor. Brazile’s evidence for her claim that the Joint Fundraising Agreement was a “cancer” was the fact that it gave Clinton’s campaign control over how money was spent prior to the nomination being secured and the fact that it gave Clinton’s campaign control over key DNC staff hires, such as Communications Director (Source: “Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC,” by Donna Brazile, Politico, 11/2/17). Closer examination reveals that the arrangement, while unusual, was not unprecedented (Source: “No, the DNC didn’t ‘rig’ the Democratic primary for Hillary Clinton, by Boris Heersink, The Washington Post, 11/4/17). While it is certainly true that those agreements are evidence of the DNC’s preference for Hillary Clinton, they do not offer any evidence that the DNC was responsible for Clinton receiving 3.7 million more votes than Bernie Sanders in the primary (Source: Heersink, The Washington Post, 11/4/17).
Given that fact, we have to ask why Brazile made these claims now, on the eve of Election Day, when Democrats are trying to maintain control of the Governor’s mansion in Virginia and wrest control from the disastrous Chris Christie in New Jersey. In both states, the Republican candidates are waging ugly, racist campaigns, taking a page out of the Trump playbook. Democratic losses on Tuesday will have grave implications for the health of our democracy. The occupant of the Governor’s mansion will impact women’s reproductive rights, redistricting and felon disenfranchisement. Brazile is an experienced political player with literally decades of experience as an operative at the highest levels of the Democratic Party. She had to know that these disclosures would re-open old wounds from the 2016 Democratic primary, feed the media narrative of a Democratic party that was both inept and corrupt, and most consequentially, engender a “pox on both their houses” cynicism that depresses voter turnout and increases apathy. The question we have to ask is why? What positive goal could Brazile achieve through these disclosures?
We can see what’s in it for Brazile – plenty of media attention and increased book sales. But what is in it for the constituencies that the Democratic Party is supposed to serve – people of color, LGBTQ people, working people and women? How does the knowledge that a major political party, impoverished by its own lack of dynamism in the wake of Barack Obama’s 2008 victory, struck a deal with the 2016 leading presidential candidate with a track record for raising money, help us right now? Presumably Brazile has noticed that we are facing an unprecedented challenge to the continued existence of democracy with the presidency of Donald Trump. Trump makes no secret of his eagerness to shred the Constitutional protections enshrined in our Bill of Rights. His administration is scapegoating and preying upon Latino immigrants with a viciousness not seen since the Japanese internment camps of World War II. Trump’s Justice Department is ratcheting up the failed War on Drugs and withdrawing from consent decrees designed to curb rampant police brutality against Black people. In the face of all of this, Brazile has chosen, not to offer her experience to progressive women of color running for office, but instead to dive into the arcana of the mismanagement of the Democratic Party?
With all due respect to Ms. Brazile, we don’t need her book to know that the Democratic Party apparatus is broken. We need merely to survey the string of electoral defeats for proof. Black women certainly don’t need to read of her pique that the Party was treating her like “Patsey the slave” to know that the Democratic Party has a history of taking its most loyal and reliable constituency for granted (Source: “Donna Brazile: I considered replacing Clinton with Biden as 2016 Democratic nominee,” by Phillip Rucker, The Washington Post, 11/4/17).
What we need right now is to unite to defeat the most consequential threat to democracy and equality that we have faced since the Civil War. We need leaders and foot soldiers that are clear about the serious challenge we face and uninterested in resolving petty grievances. A book that rehashes the Bernie vs. Hillary debate is fiddling while Rome burns. I, for one, am ready to turn the page.