Hillary Clinton
Days after the explosive revelations by former DNC interim Chair, Donna Brazile, regarding financial corruption in the DNC, the media and pundit spin has already begun to dull the significance of these events to our eroding democracy. The rare opportunity for accountability and DNC organizational reform seems to be slipping through our fingers.
The truth is the rigging of the 2016 DNC presidential primary began long before the contract was signed between the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Victory Fund in August 2015, as implied by Donna Brazile. It actually began as early as the start of 2014.
In February 2014, Former President Clinton and Hillary Clinton announced their commitment to support the “Voter Expansion Project", the new DNC initiative announced in the winter of 2013. Beyond a short blurb in NPR, this project and its relevance to the ever-unfolding events of Hillary Clinton’s failed second run for president remains largely unexamined.
The Clintons were central to the Voter Expansion Project, which the DNC officials believed would appeal to their donor base; and that, in turn, “would help the Clintons raise money to help extinguish the DNC’s nearly $16 million in debt left from its 2012 effort to re-elect President Obama”. The Clintons pledged to help retire that debt, but as it turns out, they did not. Instead, according to Donna Brazile’s book excerpt published by Politico, they used this debt as an opportunity to exploit campaign financing laws and contractually take over the operations of the DNC in August 2015, a year prior to Hillary becoming the official DNC nominee for President. When Brazile audited the DNC books, she discovered former chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a staunch Clinton loyalist, continued to pay high retainer fees to consultants and firms syphoning money to people and organizations that displayed fealty to the Clintons or their neoliberal ideals.
What is important to note is the Clintons had their hands on the DNC voter data and likely began to plot Hillary’s state-by-state campaign strategy when they took over the Voter Expansion Project in February 2014. This directly contradicts her version of events that when she inherited the DNC as the nominee in late July 2016, “it was bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong.” And there wouldn’t have been anyone more knowledgeable about DNC data than the Voter Expansion Project’s Data Director, Seth Rich, but he was murdered on July 10, 2016, just two weeks before the DNC convention in Philly. The case still remains unsolved. Although Hillary Clinton continues to blame the condition of the DNC, in part, for her loss, none of this would prevent her from campaigning for Wasserman Schultz’s 2016 reelection bid, even after her forced resignation from the DNC, giving the appearance of “all’s good”; crooked cronyism.
While many progressives feel vindicated by the public admissions of Donna Brazile, sorting out this complicated machine of deeply imbedded corruption, entitlement, big money, and power brokering behind the scenes of the DNC could take the best investigative journalists years. The quick tempo of everyday news cycles and the constant “shock and awe” of corporate media propaganda doesn’t lend itself to unraveling the finer details of election finance law, voter roll purging, vote flipping, voter suppression, misinformation campaigns, data analysis and exit-polling information, which would all show the big picture of the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign. Yet, even a cursory exploration of the matter demonstrates a widespread manipulation of voters and a complete disregard for democratic processes.
Despite two years of strategizing, hundreds of millions of dollars spent, the overwhelming support of liberal corporate media, and the manipulation of superdelegates, Hillary Clinton still lost to the worst candidate in U.S. history, Donald J. Trump.
When Donna Brazile’s explosive claims came out, Hillary Clinton had been enjoying her time “stumping”, as it were, to reinforce her false narrative of campaign events; all blame pointing outward - to Russia, Bernie, Seth’s data, to the DNC, to misogyny. Truth be told, Hillary Clinton is not a victim as she hopes we’ll believe, but a very wealthy, powerful, privileged woman who went to great lengths to rig the primary against Senator Bernie Sanders and to win the presidency at all costs, even at risk of a Trump presidency.
When the finer points of the DNC corruption and culture of dirty politics are revealed, the 2016 presidential race will likely go down in history as a saga of entitlement and privilege versus bravado and vulgarity. It’s an ugly, embarrassing snapshot of our country; the question remains, will anything change?
The ever-increasing wealth inequality in our country is staggering, and the gulf between the elite and the average American is even greater. The average American is fair, honest, and ethical; our relationships, jobs, social support and standing all rely upon this fact. We have very little to gain with skirting laws and rules. Many of us live paycheck to paycheck, and still we remain diligent in our job responsibilities and faithful in our duty to family and community obligations. However, it appears the elite have everything to gain from unethical behavior and persistent cover-ups. Time and time again, we’ve seen Hillary and Bill Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and the leadership of the DNC repeat bald-faced lies to the American people, with very little worry for serious consequence. The mainstream media tends to obscure and quickly forget such deceptive behavior and let’s be honest, the American people have come to expect little to no accountability in Washington D.C.
For those who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primary, they saw it was rigged firsthand; they embarked on tedious citizen investigations, support of litigations, and protests. Perhaps the most shocking part of Donna Brazile’s revelations to Bernie’s volunteers and supporters wasn’t in their content, but in the fact a DNC “insider” actually told any measure of such an explosive truth.
But when looking at the rigging of the DNC 2016 presidential primary, we must go back and look at the Clinton’s involvement in the DNC’s Voter Expansion Project and their failed pledge to retire Obama’s re-election debt. Partial truths are not enough to regain the public’s trust. Maybe it’s about time, our representatives in D.C. and both political parties begin to emulate the better people of this nation; the average American. If the DNC doesn’t reform around basic principles of ethical behavior with a commitment toward authentic, verifiable democratic processes, it will continue to fail. The growing third party movement will overtake them because when you don’t honor the voices and votes of your members, then you truly don’t deserve them.