@hightor,
hightor wrote:
So "the DNC was basically an arm of the Clinton campaign." Is that all there is to it? I don't understand why this is so shocking — she'd been doing the groundwork for the past eight years! Why would anyone expect the central committees of political parties to operate above board, in plain sight? When did they ever work that way?
Most people don't appreciate the significant changes that have occurred in the nominating process for presidential candidate over the last three decades. Before 1980 the process chiefly involved State and National conventions within the local and national party organizations, and the focus was clearly on the strategies for the respective Parties for winning the election. The transition to statewide Primary elections, weakened the party organizations and added enormously to the cost of campaigns ( and the corruption that usually attends it).
That said the Party National Committees remain focused on the political establishments of the parties and their respective strategies. As we saw in 2016, there were serious gaps between the focus of both national party organizations and their traditional electorates. As a result outsiders played stronger than expected roles in both. Trump exposed the half-hearted contradictions of the Republican establishment and took the Primaries by storm in a highly populist (and democratic) proves. Eight years of Obama - with the Clintons waiting in the wings - had bred a high degree of complacency among Democrats and they had to look to an outsider, the self-proclaimed Socialist Bernie Sanders, for what they hoped would be a quiet non threatening pro forma opposition in the Primaries. The result was almost as surprising to them as was that of Trump to the Republicans.
There was turbulence and surprise in both primary contest. However I believe there was far more duplicity and corruption in the Democrat contest, and that appears to be the issue now.
Democrats appear to be leaderless, clinging officially to leaders of the Past (Pelosi & Schumer), while the DNC itself is in the hands of the far left radicals. I suspect Donna Brazile's rather late "revelations" in her book were an effort to disengage herself from the past and perhaps align herself with what she may see as newer forces in the party.
