Yes, the DNC wanted Hillary Clinton to win. Did that matter? Does that mean that the 2016 Democratic nomination contest was "rigged?"
That's a whole other can-o-worms. After all, the RNC certainly didn't want Donald Trump to win the Republican nomination! So, let's get into this. In social science, we base everything on the "counterfactual." What if the world had been otherwise? What if the DNC had not coordinated anything with Clinton? Would Sanders have won?
No. Just... no.
Sanders never had a snowball's chance in hell. Let's take a quick look at the American National Election Studies data from 2016. Among those respondents who voted in the Democratic primary, among white respondents, the vote was pretty even. Clinton won white voters 52.2% to 47.8%. That's close, and one can speculate about minor changes swinging things. So, maybe if x, y or z had happened, Sanders could have won the white Democratic vote. Maybe, maybe, maybe...
Among African-Americans? Kind of an important constituency within the Democratic Party... Clinton mopped the fucking floor with that little twerp. She beat him 80.2% to 19.8%. Latinos? 64% to 36%. Basically, it was close among white voters, and it was predictable all along that Sanders would only do well among white Democrats. The thing is... in order to get the Democratic nomination, you kind of need non-whites to support you. Sanders, for a variety of reasons, was never going to cut into Clinton's advantage among non-whites. Mostly, he's kind of Marxist. He sees race as "false consciousness," and a tool to divide the poor from each other so that they don't gang up on the rich, like they should. Sanders's response? Any time the topic of race comes up, he sticks his fingers in his ears, and yells, "LA-LA-LA-LA-LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" Not all socialists address race this way, and not all white socialists address race this way, but Sanders has a tendency to downplay race to an extent that alienates non-whites. In contrast, the Clintons have long had a strong relationship with the African-American and Latino communities. Sanders was never going to cut into that. He was almost perfectly suited to lose to Clinton among non-whites. Clinton had no shot against Obama among African-Americans, but Sanders? That dude was toast against Clinton among African-Americans. All of this washes about in a general election, but in a primary? This is where parties decide what they are about. Race and identity are central to the Democratic Party, and Bernie Sanders will never get that.
Add to that Clinton's built-in advantage among long-time party loyalists for, ya' know, actually being a Democrat, and Sanders was never going to get that nomination. The 2016 nomination was not going to Sanders. Period. Take away any coordination between Clinton's campaign and the DNC and Sanders still loses. Basic demographics within the Democratic Party, and basic partisan preferences for... a Democrat to win!
But wait, you say! Wasn't it close? Um, not nearly as close as you think. The press made it look a lot closer than it was, pretending that the race was a nail-biter to the end, long after Clinton had it locked up because she had already won too many contests for Sanders to catch up. During the 2016 campaign, I regularly referenced Monty Python's The Black Knight from The Holy Grail when discussing Bernie Sanders (see, for example, here). Clinton had beaten him. Clearly and indisputably. Sanders, though, kept insisting that he was still a viable candidate, and the fight was still going on, even after he had clearly, indisputably lost because he was clearly the inferior candidate.
And did you catch that line in my May, 2016 post? "What's he going to do to Hillary? Bleed cash [emphasis added] all over her?"
Think about that line. There is important substance relevant to Donna Brazile's accusation. Sanders raised and spent more money than Clinton! One of the central hypocrisies and stupidities of Bernie Sanders was as follows. He built his entire candidacy around the premise that money controls everything, so the first step in his bullshit "movement" was to pass a constitutional amendment allowing Congress to restrict campaign spending.
If campaign contributions and campaign spending did what Sanders always asserted, the little fucking twerp would have won! He raised and spent more money than Clinton, and still lost. Why? Short version: he is sort of an interloper in the Democratic Party, whereas Clinton had a long history within the party, and hence a base of support, combined with loyalty within the African-American and Latino communities, which Sanders would never be able to match because he refused to address issues of race. No financial advantage over Clinton (which he actually did have!) could overcome those disadvantages, so the little twerp lost.
Wait, money doesn't control everything?! That's right. It doesn't. Particularly not at the presidential level. In fact, at the nomination phase, money plays a weird role. Candidates need to raise enough money to be taken seriously by the press, but after that point, the money kind of doesn't matter. The press attention matters more. The phrase from economics is "diminishing marginal returns." Once you get enough money, the value of any additional spending just isn't very high. What matters is press attention, and as I commented back in May of 2016, Sanders was getting far more of that than he deserved given the state of his campaign. Fail to raise that much, and you're fucked, but Sanders not only raised enough, he raised more than Clinton! And the press gave him more attention than he deserved long after it was clear that he was nothing more than The Black Knight bleeding his useless cash all over the place.
So, take away the fundraising coordination between Clinton and the DNC, and what happens? The same damned thing. Clinton wins.
Clinton lost the nomination in 2008 to Barack Obama by getting careless and stupid during the campaign. There was a major policy opening because Clinton had voted to authorize the Iraq War, which was still a big deal in 2008. Obama, not having been in Congress at time, didn't have to take the hard vote, so he got to posture, and say how horrible and stupid it was. Clinton tried to get weaselly about it during the campaign because she's Hillary Clinton, and she's a fuckin' weasel, but Democrats were pissed about Iraq in 2008. She also didn't have get-out-the-vote operations in post-super-Tuesday states, where Obama mopped the floor with her in 2008. That gave him the 2008 nomination. Get-out-the-vote operations matter in primaries and caucuses!
Clinton didn't make those organizational mistakes in 2008, but remember that in 2008, the institutional figures in the Democratic Party supported Clinton initially then too. Obama was the upstart, and he won. Why? Because the DNC doesn't fucking matter in the Democratic nomination contest anymore than the RNC matters in the Republican's contest.
So, I just told you that none of this matters and that Sanders was toast anyway, but of course, I hate Bernie Sanders. Doesn't that mean I shouldn't be trusted? Won't I make excuses no matter what because I hate Sanders?
Um, no. If you follow the kinds of things I say, you'll notice that I am quite consistent in asserting that the Russian meddling, while it occurred, probably did not affect the outcome of the general election. I hate Trump even more than I hate Sanders. However, I have seen no evidence that the Russian meddling affected the outcome of the general election. I don't think it did. (Comey, yes, Putin, no). We need to be able to make these separations. Yes, the DNC coordinated with Hillary Clinton. Did that affect the outcome of the nomination contest? No. Sanders never had a chance.
Now, go away, Bernie. You, Ted Cruz, the lot of you. You're all the same. And pick up an economics textbook while you're at it. A real one. (Marx was an idiot).
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