Bernie was right

Donna Brazile’s shocking exposé is the last thing the Democratic National Committee needed right now. Already reeling from a year of mismanagement under Chairman Tom Perez, the DNC was under Clinton control “nearly a year before she officially had the nomination,” according to Brazile’s new Politico story. This confirms the worst fears of Bernie Sanders and his legion of followers.

“When the party chooses the nominee, the custom is that the candidate’s team starts to exercise more control over the party. If the party has an incumbent candidate, as was the case with Clinton in 1996 or Obama in 2012, this kind of arrangement is seamless because the party already is under the control of the president. 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 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.”

The shocking details in Brazile’s piece reveal that the Clinton campaign controlled “the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised,” as well as critical DNC staffing decisions while the primary campaign was in full swing:

“The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings. I had been wondering why it was that I couldn’t write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer.”

In the end, Brazile describes an arrangement that was quintessentially Clinton. It was an “unethical” deal that “compromised the party’s integrity.”