In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), said she believes that the Democratic Party did rig the 2016 presidential election against Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Raw Story reports.
The Democratic Party Railroaded Bernie Sanders
The interview follows revelations made Thursday by Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, former chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), according to Politico. Excerpts from her latest book revealed that she had proof that the Clinton campaign gained control of the party with an “unethical fundraising agreement” that culminated in Clinton’s clinching the 2016 primary.
Hacks: The Inside Story of The Break-Ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in The White House, Brazile’s book, is truly a bombshell of epic proportions.
Here’s an excerpt:
“I told Bernie I had found Hillary’s joint-fundraising agreement. I explained that the cancer was that she had exerted in the control of the party long before she became its nominee. Had I known this, I never would have accepted the interim chair position, but here we were with only weeks before the election.”
“Bernie took this stoically. He did not yell, or express outrage. Instead, he asked me what I thought Hillary’s chances were. The polls were unanimous in her winning, but what, he wanted to know, was my own assessment?”
She told him she had misgivings about the polls:
“I had to be frank with him. I told him I did not trust the polls, I said. I told him I had visited states around the country and I found a lack of enthusiasm everywhere. I was concerned about the Obama coalition and about millennials.”
Brazile said she and Sanders knew the outcome might endanger the country. And not because of Hillary.
“I urged Bernie to work as hard as he could to bring his supporters into the fold with Hillary, and to campaign with all the hope he could muster. He might find some of her positions too centrist, and her coziness with the financial elites distasteful, but he knew, and I knew that the alternative was a person who would put the very future of the country in peril. I knew he heard me. I knew he agreed with me, but I never in my life had felt so tiny and powerless as I did in making that call.”
And then rage set in:
“When I hung up the call to Bernie, I started to cry, not out of guilt, but out of anger.”
Raw Story noted that Brazile said that the competition between Clinton and Sanders wasn’t a “fair fight.”
“If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.”
And in her interview with Tapper, Warren agreed.
“This is a real problem,” she said. “But what we’ve got to do as Democrats now, we’ve got to hold this party accountable.”
When the DNC elected Tom Perez as chairman, Warren said she spoke with him in the hopes that he would find ways to heal the rifts within the Democratic Party. She said she wants to reunite the party to help Democrats “rather than Democrats working for the party.”
“This is a test for Tom Perez,” she said. “And either he’s going to succeed by bringing Bernie Sanders and Bernie Sanders’ representatives into this process and they’re going to say ‘it’s fair, it works, we all believe it,’ or he’s going to fail. And I very much hope he succeeds. I hope for Democrats everywhere, I hope for Bernie and all of Bernie supporters he’s going to succeed.”
And Perez is succeeding. By firing Sanders supporters and supporters of Keith Ellison (who was backed by Sanders) from their positions at the DNC. What a guy. He voted for the status quo. As long as Democrats keep doing this, nothing will ever change. Also, the blame isn’t all on Perez. Warren, after all, despite being Sanders ally, finally endorsed Clinton.
The Democratic Party Is Its Own Undoing
This is why people who are truly progressive need to look beyond Hillary Clinton, who is a neoliberal in wolves’ clothing. And neoliberalism, with its embrace of free-market capitalism, is the root of all too many nightmares today. It’s an ideology that brings out the very worst in people.
Writing on neoliberalism for The Guardian, George Monbiot notes:
“We internalize and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages — such as education, inheritance and class — that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.”
If the Democratic Party is to succeed, it’s going to have to become something other than the Democratic Party.
Donna Brazile has now issued a wakeup call to Democrats. Will they listen?
You can watch Tapper and Warren discuss this in the video below.
Featured image by Lily Holt via YouTube video
