"Right around the time of the convention, the leaked emails revealed Hillary’s campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races. A Politico story published on May 2, 2016, described the big fund-raising vehicle she had launched through the states the summer before, quoting a vow she had made to rebuild “the party from the ground up … when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.”
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, just as Gary had described to me when he and I talked in August. When the Politico story described this arrangement as “essentially … money laundering” for the Clinton campaign, Hillary’s people were outraged at being accused of doing something shady. Bernie’s people were angry for their own reasons, saying this was part of a calculated strategy to throw the nomination to Hillary." Brazile in Politico
————
I used to know Donna Brazile slightly from Green Room conversations and the like. My impression has always been that she is an honorable woman in spite of her peccadillo in revealing debate questions in advance to the Democrats.
For her to break with Bonnie and Clyde this dramatically is a major development. PT tells me that he will further develop this story later today. pl
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774?cid=apn
Brasile is currently on the road to sell her book. I am not convinced that she is telling “the whole truth” on the issue. But it is remarkable that she finally throws Clinton under the bus. How much did Putin pay her ;-)?
—
OT – I hope all you military folks have read about this farce playing out in Guantanamo
“Gitmo judge sends Marine general lawyer to 21 days confinement for disobeying orders”
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article182031196.html
The judge is, besides being an a**hole, legally wrong and now also a Colonel who will never make flag.
Donna Brasile used to take emails from anyone who wanted to email her. I remember being so outraged by her support of Obama in the 2007 primary and later in the election because he simply had NO real qualifications and no experience in office really. His Illinois legislature experience was a joke, as mostly people did everything for him to get the “Black” man into a position to run nationally. He did NOTHING during his first yeas as a Senator before running. He was the worst person in my lifetime to run for the office of POTUS. (That’s my opinion, of course.)
I hated it when people accused me of being racist for not supporting him. I hated it when I brought up actual information concerning his life–I was never a “birther,” but I just felt there wee many things I learned about his early life and his associates that made me sickened to think he would ever live in the WH.
If I tried to write my concerns to Donna Brasile, she had one response always: “Stop the Hate!” She never responded to my actual stated concerns.
That primary and that first run for President by BHO caused me to have a very, very sour opinion of Donna Brasile.
This late turn toward criticizing Hillary and Bill doesn’t change my opinion of her. She was simply a partisan hack who did not, until now, ever really base her opinion on anything but political expediency. I’m guessing this turn is based more on a CYA moment on her part.
This Brasile revelation exposes the bankruptcy inside the Dem part. When Howard Dean was chair of the DNC he instituted a 50 state policy; that is, Democrats would have a presence in all 50 states and the DNC would maintain full time workers in each. The point was to contest seats up and down the ballot from the county, to state legislature to house and senate races. This policy did not exclude the reddest of red states. When Obama won, he fired Dean and dismantled this policy. From then on the DNC was reorganized to serve only national level elections. Hillary simply extended Obama’s changes with the little twist, as Brasile reveals, that the DNC would back Hillary in the primaries.
This whole party is hopelessly corrupt. If anyone has noticed they are now in the process of sidelining and purging Sanders supporters from the DNC and the purge is being extended to the California Central Comm. The big money folks have taken over the whole organization — the fact that Hillary raised over a $ billion has whetted many apetites: who needs votes when there is that kind of money?
you say
“she is an honorable woman in spite of her peccadillo in revealing debate questions in advance to the Democrats.”
Let’s be clear, she gave the debate questions to Hillary
so that Hillary would have an advantage in debates against Sanders.
Quite contrary to rules of DNC.
I do not regard this as a “peccadillo”, rather it is proof of complete absence of any respect for any rules of legal or moral conduct.
Which is the basic reason I could not vote for team Hillary.
People on what the late Senator Paul Wellstone used to call “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” have hated and despised Donna Brasile for some years at least. She was considered a key Clintonite agent during the whole recent nomination campaign, for instance.
If she is breaking from the Clintonites now, perhaps it shows that she is scared of what might happen to them and what might happen to her if she remains too close to them. This could be a sign that the Good Ship Clinton is going down. Down to the bottom of the sea.
I may yet get to tap LeaNder awake so I can gloat about the End of the Clintons.
b
It is normally impossible to confine a commissioned officer pending administration of justice. The officer can be placed in “arrest” and ordered to confine himself at home or some other pace. The proceeding in question is not a court-martial. It is a military commission which is something not seen before 9/11 for many years. Perhaps it has different rules. The lawyers will tell us. Military judges are not promoted to general. pl
@Pat – Here is a detailed legal analysis of the court proceedings that put the General under arrest. The judge is wrong.
https://twitter.com/kalhan/status/925768647938838529
https://twitter.com/kalhan/status/926125134196494337
“Military judges are not promoted to general. ”
The lead defender who was put under arrest is presumably on the same career ladder but was made general when he took up that job.
When one reads the McClatchy/MiamiHerald reports one finds that the whole case stinks. The civil death penalty defenders rejected court orders to appear because of some secret ethic issues. One of those is allegedly that their talks with their client were (again) listened to by the prosecution. The lead defender, the General, accepted their position. The judge did not (without having authority on this).
The whole Guantanamo thing is a huge blamage for the military justice system. Some 600 verdicts in terrorist cases have been issued in civil courts while Guantanamo made a total of 5 – all of which were plea deals.
Gen. Mike Kelly, when he was commander at Gitmo, did all he could to prevent Obama from shutting the place down.
b
As I thought this is a military commission and not a court-martial. Military Commissions run by different rules designed to kangaroo defendants especially civilian defendants that the system wants to deny Article 3 federal courts trials to.. That is why they occasionally do bizarre things. The Lincoln conspirators were tried by a military commission. The USMC BG is not a military judge. We have a few general officer JAGs in each service but they are not in the same career track as a military judge. pl
Sorry, but I have to mention that I used the spelling in the post. I was sure the name should be spelled “Brazile.” So, I checked, and I believe I was right to double check.
DianaLC
Ah, you poor thing. I led you astray on the spelling. pl
Col.,
I’m shocked to find there is no coverage of this story in the NY Times.
Don’t know about Democratic Party financing, but in Hawaii and I assume other states, there is in essence separate accounting for federal funds subject to FEC and state funds subject here to CSC (Campaign Spending Commission). They each have their own rules. Donations that come in are earmarked by donor or organization arranging donation to either federal, state, or both in some proportion. Aside from the state parties themselves, there are associated
organizations (affiliates) primarily for fund raising and these funnel donations into the state party (in return they typically get seats on the State Committee and maybe standing committees — rules, platform, and credentials). Some of this also extends down to the County level. As far as national, mainly what we get is access and support for voter databases. The State Chair, National Committeeman, and National Committeewoman have seats on the National Party Committee.
My understanding is that Obama’s campaign set up OFA as an entirely separate fund raising activity that was not responsive to the State Committees and DNC and the State Committees had to do something to develop their own donation streams. Don’t know how HRC’s campaign fit into this.
Our party here in Hawaii is too poor to afford any paid staff. We used to have a part time Executive Director for the State Chairman, but had to let him go.
Note that typically within the State Committee there is an Executive Committee
which is the main decision-making body. In theory decisions taken by the State and National Committees are ratified at the state and national conventions, but in modern practice these are kind of unwieldy (especially the national conventions).
As an aside, I believe the DNC has 57 “state”-level committees with permanent representation on the DNC. These are the actual states and additionally DC, the territories, and something called “Democrats Abroad”. I think this is what Obama was referring to when he was criticized for his statement about “states” he had visited.
I am just a “precinct president”, the lowest possible position in the organization.
I have no expertise in the machinations of our two major political parties. A question to those who do.
I understand that the GOP & the Democrats are private organizations and can have whatever rules and bylaws that govern them. In this context the arrangement between the Clinton campaign and the DNC is not illegal. My question is why Donna Brazile who I believe is an Obama and Clinton acolyte, is spilling the beans now? Why didn’t she say something when this arrangement became obvious to her?
References to Obama here are unclear about exactly what he did. It was always my understanding that he considered the DNC a Clinton organization so steered money away from it and was in no hurry to repay what he got from it.
Steve
It is true that the two parties are private organizations that are guided by their own by-laws. What Hillary did, according to Brasile, broke no local or federal laws. But she did violate the Dem party by-laws. If someone had the resources they could sue the party under those grounds — it is not a criminal case but a violation of contract.
There are state level election commissions that regulate how donated funds are spent and violations result in fines not criminal penalties. Nothing Hillary did violated those regulations at least in California.
blue peacock,
Yes, they are private organizations. The deliberate throwing of the primary election to Clinton over Sanders was in no way illegal. It was, however, an enormously stupid and self-defeating move. I think it started right after the Chicago Convention in 1968. The DNC saw the chaos of that primary/convention as the reason they lost the election. They longed for the discipline displayed by the RNC. They developed the super delegate system to ensure a disciplined, top-down primary in the future. Add to this flawed system, a tragically flawed Clinton who truly believed we all owed her the Presidency, and we ended up with the DNC fiasco of 2016. I’m surprised she did as well as she did.
It’s unfortunate for the DNC that the Clinton wing wasn’t destroyed by the election. They obviously haven’t learned squat and are maintaining a death grip on the DNC apparatus. The Sanders-Gabbard progressives should stop wasting their time fighting over the rotting corpse of the DNC and learn the new ways of AI-assisted, micro-targeting electioneering. It’s a lot cheaper than the industrial age machine politics and should be natural for a grass roots Progressive movement like “Our Revolution.”
OT – the latest of the Guantanamo farce:
Judge orders U.S.S. Cole case to continue despite defense attorneys quitting case
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article182285026.html
This statement by a Justice Department lawyer in that piece is quite remarkable:
/quote/
“While the government has an interest in ensuring that the proceedings at Guantanamo are fair, that interest is not compelling enough” to stop the proceedings, …
/endquote/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-02/shocking-truth-donna-brazille-accuses-clinton-campaign-rigging-primary
Marc Elias, the person who contracted Fusion GPS who created the Steele dossier and whose law firm hired Crowdstrike to investigate the alleged hack of the DNC email server.
There’s clearly more than meets the eye here. Why didn’t Bernie fight this control of the DNC by the Clinton campaign in a more open and vigorous manner? It seems that he acquiesced to the rigging of the primary.
TTG, I believe you are on to something. The only problem with current AI is that the system needs to be trained with historical data. That means it is not helpful in “new” situations where there are no data sets for pattern recognition. I agree with you however that when many Americans get beyond the “voting for the lesser evil” and start voting for “Our Revolution” or “LibertyOrBust” or even the “Pirates” then we’ll have some change in our politics. Otherwise all we’ll get is “change you can believe in” as the status quo rules.
Scott,
“My understanding is that Obama’s campaign set up OFA as an entirely separate fund raising activity …”
Obama for America was the campaign organization (OFA). The new OFA, Oranizing for Action, wasn’t set up until 2013.
TTG,
“… learn the new ways of AI-assisted, micro-targeting electioneering. It’s a lot cheaper than the industrial age machine politics and should be natural for a grass roots Progressive movement like “Our Revolution.””
I think we are going to see a few more corporate versions of this electioneering in upcoming election cycles.
The Donna Brazile revelations about the subornation of the DNC by Hilary & Co. are making headlines across the country!!!
Well, maybe not so much. I just checked the websites of my two local dead tree dailies, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press, as well as
PravdaThe New York Times, andIzvestiaThe Washington Post. The only one that had a story about the affair was the WaPo, but the link was near the bottom of the home page under the Politics heading. Then I checked two local non-print news sites: MinnPost and Minnesota Public Radio News. Nada in both cases. Reassuring to see most of them marching in formation. Somebody should get the word to WaPo, however. Bezos must be slipping.Crowdstrike was hired through the law firm so whatever they found would be privileged work product. They had no idea what they’d find, and weren’t after the truth.
Bernie was spostted driving around a $110K Audi R8 shortly after being beaten. Odd.
To clean the Calif DNC, two things is needed one to take out the Move on org. (Which is really a Clintonite DLC org.) two to leave Behind the Hollywood money likes of Harvey’ you know what demand comes with that money. If that could and would to happen then there will be a democratic machine that is hard to stop.Both are the long shout.