Donna Brazile

In advance Tuesday night's debate, the New York Times featured a “guest essay” by Donna Brazile in support of Kamala Harris. Brazile has the same Teflon coating that protected Judge Judy (AIDS patients “should just die”) and Doris Kearns Goodwin (serial plagiarist) when their transgressions were exposed.

It was in advance of a debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in March, 2016, that Brazile tipped off Clinton about questions that would be posed. Her perfidy was exposed by WikiLeaks – but not until October. In the meantime, the supposedly unbiased Brazile had replaced Debby Wasserman Schultz as head of the Democratic National Committee. (Wasserman Schultz resigned in late July after her pro-Clinton bias became too blatant for the millions of Democrats who favored Bernie.)

Soon after Donald Trump became President in 2017, Donna Brazile wrote a pseudo-apologetic essay in Time that described her secret tip-offs to Hillary as “a mistake I will forever regret” – but not because she'd been deceitful and derelict in her duty to the Democrats' rank-and-file.

“By stealing all the DNC’s emails and then selectively releasing those few,” she wrote, “the Russians made it look like I was in the tank for Secretary Clinton. Despite the strong, public support I received from top Sanders campaign aides in the wake of those leaks, the media narrative played out just as the Russians had hoped, leaving Sanders supporters understandably angry and sowing division in our ranks.”

As if (1) Sanders supporters wouldn't have been angered by Brazile's duplicity unless manipulated by those devilish Russkies! And (2) As if Sanders supporters are supposed to heed “top campaign aides.” And (3) as if the “media narrative” had been inaccurate. And (4) as if the split in the party wasn't deep-rooted.

That's a lot of trickery to pack into one sentence.

It's not the crime

And it's not the thought,

It's not the deed

It's if you get caught

– Tower of Power

Which “top Sanders campaign aides” expressed strong support for Donna Brazile after she was caught tipping the scales for Hillary Clinton? Only one, press secretary Symone Sanders-Townsend, who told Politico, “Donna regularly reached out for messaging guidance from us and was very helpful. She was even-handed and we all had a great working relationship with her…Donna Brazile is one of the reasons the Democratic National Committee was able to move forward following the convention and she is the reason many people like myself have a seat at the table today.”

Symone Sanders-Townsend has moved forward to a seat at the table on MSNBC, where she hosts a show called “The Weekend.” According to Wikipedia, “she left the Sanders campaign abruptly in late June 2016, saying ‘she was not let go and that leaving the campaign was her decision.’ In October 2016 she was hired by as a DNC strategist. In 2021 Vice President Harris made Sanders-Townsend her chief spokesperson, but that gig lasted less than a year. I’m guessing it was Kamala’s decision.

The same Democratic Party strategists who wouldn't let us have Bernie in 2016 (when the polls showed Hillary neck-and-neck with Trump, while Bernie was beating him by 15%) tipped the election to George W. Bush in 2000 for the same reason: their instincts are undemocratic. If they had let Ralph Nader take part in the debate, he would have been the intellectual on the left, Bush the ignoramus on the right, and Gore the solid everyman in the center — a winning position. With Nader excluded, Gore was the smartass sighing contemptuously at Bush, an ordinary guy who evoked sympathy for not knowing much about history.

Who was campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000? Donna Brazile.