Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House

by Donna Brazile

I want to talk about the arrogance and isolation of the Clinton campaign and the cult of Robby Mook, who felt fresh but turned up stale, in a campaign haunted by ghosts and lacking in enthusiasm, focus, and heart. More than that, Hillary’s campaign and the legacy project of the outgoing Obamas drained the party of its vitality and its cash, a huge contributing factor to our defeats in state and local races.

going to gavel in the convention. It was traditionally the role of the party chair to do so, but I didn’t want to do that to Debbie. It would seem as though I was gloating in my new role, and that was so far from the truth. No matter what she did or didn’t do as chair, Debbie deserved a respectful exit.

Almost as soon as I became interim chair I began to notice the ways that the Hillary campaign seemed not to respect the DNC and its staff. I had to beg the campaign to hire two buses to bring the staff up to Philadelphia to celebrate the nomination. Cheapskates. They were sitting on close to a half billion dollars in contributions and thought this small investment in morale was a waste of money. It would be a terrible slight if the staff was not allowed to share this moment. Finally I found the money to do it without approval from Hillary’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn.

Obama left the party $24 million in debt—$15 million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors after the 2012 campaign and had been paying that

off very slowly. Obama’s campaign was not scheduled to pay it off until 2016. Hillary for America and the Hillary Victory Fund had taken care of 80 percent of the remaining debt in 2016, about $10 million, and had placed the DNC on an allowance.

Gary was not familiar with the way

the DNC was governed, but he described the party as fully under the control of Hillary’s campaign, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp.

“Wait,” I said. “That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You’re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?”

The party chair usually shrinks the staff between presidential election campaigns, but Debbie had chosen not to do that. She had stuck lots of consultants on the DNC payroll, and Obama’s consultants were being financed by the DNC, too.

As I saw it, these three titanic egos—Barack, Hillary, and Debbie—had stripped the party to a shell for their own purposes.

Hillary bailed it out so that she could control it, and Debbie went along with all of this because she liked the power and perks of being a chair but not the responsibilities.