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

by Donna Brazile

Win or lose, in the days that follow, the candidate extends that circle of gratitude to members of the party and the donors. Bernie Sanders called me on November 9, 2016, and Joe Biden, too. The vice president even came to our staff holiday party. But I never heard from Hillary.

was Hillary in 2003 who told some of the party leaders to pay attention to a talented young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama. Without that assist from Hillary, Obama would not have been offered the keynote at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and almost certainly would not have gone on to become the first black president.

had promised myself, after I managed Al Gore’s campaign in 2000, that I never would let politics break my heart again.

No matter how strong our differences were in the campaign, I know she is a good woman.

knew what I wanted to say to her and it was: I have nothing but respect for you for being so brave and classy considering everything that went on.

After the loss, the Democrats went into hiding, or started picking through the carnage, while the country was hungry for answers from a party that honestly didn’t know what to say.

What inspired me was my kids, all 150 of them. I’ve never given birth to a child, but politics is a family affair.

Those were my kids, ages twenty-two to forty-five, scattered all around the country. I wanted to rebuild the party to give them a chance to lead.

remembered how Terry McAuliffe took over as Democratic National Committee chair after our loss in 2000 and how Howard Dean stepped up after the defeat of then U.S. senator John Kerry in 2004.

They reached out to the voters to understand what the party had gotten wrong about the mood of the country. They wanted to let the grassroots decide the future direction of the party.

I arranged for an inspirational speaker to open the general meeting, hoping that an uplifting message would help us expel the ghosts of 2016.

People were bitter, and all of them wanted to blame the DNC.

No matter how many times during these forums that I was goaded to do so, I never threw the Clinton campaign under the bus. I knew my job was to stand there and take the body blows, acknowledge it, absorb it, so that all of us could let it go.

The 2016 campaign, convention, and election had shattered long-standing relationships, leaving old friends wary of one another. This was more than the burnout and dejection that follows a crushing loss.

We were all unable to reach out to the people we normally counted on.

was not okay. I had nothing left to return to. This campaign had tarnished my reputation, forced me to step down from CNN, and strained my relationships with colleagues and friends.

The hacking of the DNC by the Russians shook my world, depleted my energy, creating in me a fear so deep that now I had surveillance cameras on every door and window at my house.

accepted after we said our good-byes that I might never hear from her again.

I thought about the notion that the Democratic Party is a family.

The other thing families are good at is keeping secrets. This Democratic family needed to stop doing that. So many things happened during this campaign that we were not supposed to talk about, and those secrets became part of our bigger problem and part of our defeat.

In the midst of the reality show that became the campaign, no one was focused on what was happening to the democracy, and the distractions have only continued with Trump in the White House.

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.

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.

I became so frustrated that in the days following Hillary’s shocking collapse at the 9/11 memorial ceremony I nearly replaced her as the party’s candidate for president. I want to explore the reasons why I decided not to do that and ...

The purpose of this exhumation is to once and for all get everything out in the open.

Obama swept into office in 2008 with a majority in both houses of Congress, but in the last eight years we’d lost all of the ground we gained. We lost control of the House in 2010 and, since Debbie took office in 2011, we’d also lost the Senate and more statehouses and governorships.

After it was clear in June that Bernie Sanders had lost the nomination, he announced he would support Hillary, but he spent the six weeks leading up to the convention complaining to anyone who would listen about Debbie and the DNC. He claimed that she put the fix in for Hillary from the start. He attacked the rules that allowed party leaders chosen as superdelegates to declare their support for a candidate independent of the results of the state primaries and caucuses.

The Bernie folks and some other unsettled state delegations from the West were not persuaded that was the full story.

In 2008 it was a time for change, but in 2016 it was a popular revolt.

As the bruising primary campaign played out, some of their supporters came to believe that the process was rigged.

Fortunately, at around 9 p.m. I had realized what I needed, and what these people needed, was a drink.

I went next door to a store and bought $400 worth of liquor. I set up an impromptu bar and started mixing drinks and ordered food to be delivered.

After a few drinks and some dinner, people were in a mood to compromise.

This was the only convention I’ve ever been to that literally made me sick. It wasn’t just the speeches. Between the air outside, which was poisoned by the tear gas police had sprayed on the protestors, and my moldy, dusty hotel room, I ended up at the Cleveland Clinic to figure out why I was having such a hard time breathing.

when I started in politics at the age of nine, working to elect a Kenner, Louisiana, city council candidate who promised to build a playground in my neighborhood. The councilman won, the playground was installed, and I was on my way.

Although I am through and through a Democrat, my decades of experience had helped me master the skill of being able to say nice things about everybody when I was on television.

could say good things about Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb, Joe Biden, Lincoln Chafee, or Bernie or Hillary. Hell, a few times I even found a way to say something good about Donald Trump.

In some ways I thought of myself as an actress, playing the part that the prod...

In the morning when I was getting ready to go to the studio I’d know if I was going to play the part of the bitch who stands up to the GOP talking points. Or they might ask me to be the cool, calm Donna, the voice of re...

When I looked into the TV cameras, I envisioned that I was speaking to someone older, whiter, and living in middle America who was staring at me and trying to open t...

Voting Rights Institute

I told CNN and ABC that I needed to go on maternity leave because I did not want to be separated from Kai.

Debbie’s tone was so casual that I had not absorbed the details, nor even thought that it was much for us to be concerned about.

It also released a few embarrassing emails from Donald Trump’s campaign and Sarah Palin.

They questioned his faith and conjectured about ways to smear him for being an atheist in strongly religious states like Kentucky and West Virginia.

They mocked him for being an outsider, the very thing that had energized his supporters, who were sick of establishment corruption.

The emails showed the DNC staffers developing a stor...

press about how his campa...

In the days before the convention opens, groups and state caucuses hold meetings and receptions, and the Democratic Party hosts meetings of the party rules, platform, and credentials committees, which are required by convention rules.

The release of the emails also had exposed the personal information of our staff people and many donors, some of whom Debbie’s top staff had ridiculed in their messages.