Bernie had a joint fundraising agreement with the DNC too.

[boston bean]

Sanders campaign inks joint fundraising pact with DNC

Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign has signed a joint fundraising agreement with the Democratic National Committee, the DNC confirmed to POLITICO.

The move, which comes more than two months after Hillary Clinton's campaign signed such an agreement in August, will allow Sanders' team to raise up to $33,400 for the committee as well as $2,700 for the campaign from individual donors at events.

https://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/bernie-sanders-2016-fundraising-dnc-215559

This is not a rehash of the primary. But information provided to enhance information regarding the politico article posted here about Hillary having a similar agreement.

[ehrnst]

6. He chose not to use it. He did sign it. (nt)

[NCTraveler]

2. Sanders has been working with the party for decades.

Most of his work with the party has been about personal self-preservation, not coalition building. That is factual and not a slam. Clinton spent her career helping to build coalitions and a party. Actually being a significant player and working to accomplish goals.

A certain group is trying to act shocked like something unknown has come out. They are really just acting like fools. They will be taken in by the next person who goes around promoting a book as well, as long as it's about dividing Democrats.

Did Clinton or Sanders ever help the party by handing over their email lists?

Has Josh Uretsky's name come up in the Russia investigation?

[FSogol]

4. +1 n/t

[ehrnst]

7. +1000 (nt)

[Wwcd]

8. Its in Muellers hands so we wait.

Everyone with a political/financial connection to Manafort is under Mueller's microscope.

[NCTraveler]

9. A lot more than that.

"Everyone with a political/financial connection to Manafort is under Mueller's microscope. "

[Wwcd]

10. +..

Correct. Takes a uique skillset to bring down a global crime syndicate.

[lunamagica]

12. + a million!

[R B Garr]

13. ++++perfectly stated. Loyalty to his talking points is not a Democratic value.

Hillary worked and showed up and raised money -- over DECADES -- instead of using the DNC as a wedge.

[JCanete]

18. that isn't factual...that is a slant. Coalition building is powerful, but it can come with dilution

of message, and of policy. That dilution can itself be damaging to the brand, but not being crusaders against corporate greed offers an entirely more robust fundraising opportunity. It is a trade-off. To say that Sanders motives for working with dems was self preservational is to define his motives as selfish. You can believe that, but you can't claim that it is factual.

[NCTraveler]

19. It's actually factual and known.

Will Sanders be running in the Dem primary in Vermont again only to turn down the nomination? I found it to be funny that almost all of his supporters were unaware of his use of the party for personal gain. Career politicians with limited impact almost always use tools available to them in a selfish manner. It's about the next election.

[JCanete]

20. Its still slant, because you act like coalition bulidng for Clinton wasn't empowering her own place

in the party. That was for the good of all, not for the elevation of her status. Self-preservation as you style it, in order to continue to be a Senator and continue to promote causes you care about...that is selfish.

What exactly are you referring to as using it as "personal" gain?

[NCTraveler]

21. I never said such a thing.

"Its still slant, because you act like coalition bulidng for Clinton wasn't empowering her own place in the party." Easy to call it a slant if you simply make it up.

[JCanete]

22. you are defining one person as doing work towards goals, and the other as just saving his own skin.

Based not on fact, but on your own interpretation of actions. That is what I'm referring to.

[pandr32]

28. Yes x infinity

[wasupaloopa]

3. Don't be bullied into not having this discussion.

claiming you are refighting the primary is refighting the primary

[Me.]

5. Shhhhhhhh

Inconvenient truth

[R B Garr]

11. MSNBC just covered this. Bernie failed to perform.

Hillary was a prolific fund raiser and naturally exerted more influence in the party she was actually a member of -- FOR DECADES. It's not a rigged system or rocket science to observe that the DNC needs money to operate.

[phleshdef]

14. I think this is more about Brazille and Schultz than Clinton and Sanders, they can both go to hell.

Donna and Debbie I mean...

[uponit7771]

15. Hmmmm, thx for the context

[mcar]

16. Well, how about that?

I look forward to similar criticism.

[highplainsdem]

17. K&R

[ismnotwasm]

23. Im not getting why she worded things in that excerpt the way she did

It’s not new, or even very interesting, more it’s the nut and bolt mechanics of the party at a specific date in time. Moreover, Bernie did very, very well. He ran as a Democrat and was the beneficiary of democratic largesse—himself actually did raise quite a bit of money. Just not well enough to ever secure the nomination and he certainly wouldn’t have won the presidency. His chances are even less now if he chooses to run again.

[Jim Lane]

24. You call it "a similar agreement"? That's absolutely laughable.

I know the defenders like to pretend the agreement was about money only about money, while ignoring everything else.

Here's the key quotation from Brazile's revelations:

The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

Did Bernie have "a similar agreement" -- similar n that it gave him that kind of control over the party?

O ho ho, I think not.

And if the next line of defense is to ring in the startling news that Bernie wasn't a Democrat, then tell me whether Chafee and O'Malley and Webb were offered a similar level of control over Democratic Party strategy, DNC staff, etc.

[boston bean]

25. He never became the nominee, did he??

[Jim Lane]

26. In 2015 Clinton wasn't the nominee, either.

This is really ridiculous misdirection. With regard to the relationship between a campaign and the DNC, Brazile's comments expressly drew the distinction according to whether it was before or after the time when that campaign's candidate became the nominee.

Brazile was willing to draw the line when the candidate had enough delegates to win, even if some Democrats hadn't yet had the chance to vote. Whether one draws the line then or waits until after the last primary or waits until after the actual nomination at the convention is debatable. But there is no justification for the DNC to extend such special privileges to one of the candidates in a contested race when not one single primary or caucus has yet been held.

[boston bean]

27. Seems there were two agreements. Check yo facts.

[Jim Lane]

29. OK, I've checked the facts. I'm right. Here's a link.

According to Donna Brazile, as quoted in this book excerpt in Politico, the agreement I described in #24 was signed in 2015. Brazile wrote:

When you have an open contest without an incumbent and competitive primaries, the party comes under the candidate’s control only after the nominee is certain. When I was manager of Al Gore’s campaign in 2000, we started inserting our people into the DNC in June. This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination. [emphasis added]

[boston bean]

32. You need to broaden ur horizons.

[lapucelle]

44. A narrative is not a fact.

The party was not under HRC's control during the primaries and the general. The party was under President Obama's control.

Wikileaks stole and then released the joint fundraising agreement. It doesn't square with Donna's telling of the tale.

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/fileid/28674/7815

[Jim Lane]

46. What you link to doesn't undercut Brazile's revelations

You say that Wikileaks release "the" joint fundraising agreement. But what you link to is quite obviously not the final agreement; it's unsigned and has numerous blanks to be filled in. Assuming the accuracy of the Wikileaks disclosure -- an assumption that many people here were unwilling to make when what Wikileaks disclosed was not to their liking -- I conclude that this document was circulated at one point, but it's clearly not the final agreement. Therefore, there's no basis for saying that this leak "doesn't square with Donna's telling of the tale."

You write, "The party was not under HRC's control during the primaries and the general. The party was under President Obama's control." That's typical of the excessive defensiveness we've seen on so many of the posts on this subject. The main point is that the Democratic Party secretly entered into an unfair agreement that violated its own charter. I'm not inclined to blame Obama -- I very much doubt that he knew about it. Principal culpability would be with the DNC Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, although other DNC officers obviously knew of it as well.

Evaluating the Clinton campaign's action is murkier. On the one hand, the campaign obviously had no obligation of neutrality, as the DNC had. A campaign is free to, indeed is expected to, pursue the interests of its candidate. On the other hand, the campaign knew or should have known that the agreement was, at best, ethically dubious on the DNC's part, and that it would cause harm to the Democratic Party if it ever became public knowledge.

Anyway, the Clinton campaign is over. There's not much point in trying to decide how much criticism, if any, the campaign deserves. It's the conduct of the other party to the agreement, the DNC, that should be the focus now.

[lapucelle]

53. Facts are not "excessive defensiveness"

any more than self-serving narrative is "truth". What we do know is that one of the joint fundraising agreements seems to have been crafted with the long term fiscal health of the party in mind.

Although the Clinton campaign is over, and she has nothing personal to gain, she continues to raise funds for Democratic candidates and for her party. So if the question is "cui bono?", the answer is clearly not HRC. So who does benefit from Brazile's "explosive claims"?

Who indeed.

[Jim Lane]

55. The defensiveness is in taking everything to be about Clinton

The constant screeching that the Clinton campaign did nothing wrong, and in fact nobly came to the aid of the party, ignores the real issue: that the DNC did something wrong.

[lapucelle]

58. I wasn't aware of any "screeching".

It's the whining that's troubling.

The HVF-DNC joint fundraising agreement was the instrument through which $22,000,000 of a $24,000,000 debt was paid off in less then a year.

Remember all the whining and screeching about the continual fundraising? Now we know why it was necessary.

[sheshe2]

33. Why would?

Here's the key quotation from Brazile's revelations:

The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

Did Bernie have "a similar agreement" -- similar n that it gave him that kind of control over the party?

Why would an outsider that As an Independent joined to run in the Democratic party that he said...

Bernie Sanders says he ran as Democrat for the media attention

Bernie Sanders on Monday night said he decided to run for president as a Democrat because of the media attention he would receive.
"Do you run as an independent? Do you run within the Democratic party? We concluded-- and I think it was absolutely the right decision, that, A) in terms of media coverage -- you have to run within the Democratic Party," the Vermont independent said at MSNBC's Democratic town hall in Columbus, Ohio.

The senator also said that the only way he could have launched a third-party bid was if he were a billionaire.
"If you're a billionaire, you can do that. I'm not a billionaire. So the structure of American politics today is such that I thought the right ethic was to run within the Democratic party," he said.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-sanders-says-he-ran-as-democrat-for-the-media-attention/

Why on earth would you expect him to get "a similar agreement" when he only just joined our party for the media coverage? I repeat, only just joined and you expect him the same agreements as a life long Democrat? Seriously?

Did Bernie have "a similar agreement" -- similar n that it gave him that kind of control over the party?

[Jim Lane]

34. O'Malley (unlike Hillary Clinton) was a lifelong Democrat. Was he offered a similar agreement?

Or was this extraordinary favoritism extended only to one candidate?

I think we know the answer to that question.

[melman]

36. Pow

[sheshe2]

37. I see you didn't answer my question.

You just switched topics. Stay focused.

[melman]

38. lol

[sheshe2]

39. Profound statement.

I see you gave it a lot of thought, melman.

[melman]

40. What more needs to be said?

You claimed there was no answer when the reality was there was an answer you couldn't deal with.

[sheshe2]

41. Neither you or Jim responded to what I wrote...

Just Lol!

[Jim Lane]

42. If not getting questions answered were a crime...

A fair number of people on this board would be in prison on a "three strikes" sentence.

But, snark aside, I shall answer your question.

First, no, Sanders could not reasonably have expected such an agreement. Nor could O'Malley (who I know was a lifelong Democrat) or Webb (who I think was a lifelong Democrat, though he served in the Reagan administration). Nor could Chafee, who had become a Democrat a few years earlier.

Nor could the former Goldwater Girl have reasonably expected such an agreement.

You see, the DNC Charter requires the DNC to be neutral among the contenders for the nomination. That's why none of the contenders, regardless of party history or affiliation, could have reasonably expected such an agreement. It was a gross violation of the DNC's own rules. Formal rules aside, it was also a gross violation of every standard of fairness.

Second, the reason I mentioned Sanders is that, among the dust thrown up by the Distraction Faction to try to maintain the fiction that there's nothing to see here, one item that keeps getting mentioned is that Sanders also had a fundraising agreement. The distraction here is that it's disingenuous in the extreme to compare the two agreements. Only one of them gave the favored campaign such complete control over the supposedly neutral party machinery.

Third, if this agreement was amply justifiable on the basis that, of the four candidates being screwed over, one of them wasn't a Democrat, then why was this noble and righteous arrangement kept secret? The obvious answer is that, although BERNIE ISN'T A DEMOCRAT is considered to be a really really important point in some quarters, the DNC knew that this obsession over formal party identification wasn't universal. In the Democratic primaries, some 13 million people voted for Bernie. That number exceeds Obama's popular-vote margin in each of his two victories. At the time of the secret agreement, the DNC didn't know how many people would vote for each of Clinton's opponents (I personally thought O'Malley would do much better than Bernie, shows what I know), but they could reasonably foresee that there would be a lot of voters who would prefer a different nominee. The DNC officials wanted Clinton to be nominated but they also wanted all those other candidates' supporters to vote for her in November. That's why they kept the deal secret -- because they knew how unfair it was and that many people would react negatively.

For my part, if I had known about it in November, I still would have voted for Clinton -- but I would have been even less enthusiastic about my decision than I actually was.

[sheshe2]

43. Great start and a really cool dig at a DEMOCRAT!

Nor could the former Goldwater Girl have reasonably expected such an agreement.

This is a RW talking point and a very poor way to start your argument. Actually after that I will respond no further. Goldwater Girl. That is beneath contempt from a Democrat, no matter whom you supported that should not come out of a Democrats mouth. Never on a Democratic board . It is better suited to other sites.

[Jim Lane]

45. It was a DEMOCRAT who popularized the phrase "an inconvenient truth".

And, yes, I know it was in a different context. I saw the film.

I took the lesson of that DEMOCRAT's chosen title to be: Facts are facts, even if they sometimes make some people uncomfortable.

Do bear in mind that I said that even the lifelong Democrats in the field also could not reasonably have expected the kind of deal that the DNC entered into with one campaign.

[Demsrule86]

49. And look what happened to him...lost the election.

[Jim Lane]

56. Oh, right, I forgot. Therefore we should ignore everything he says. Good point. (n/t)

[Demsrule86]

61. No, but I wouldn't bet he can guide us to a win...I blame Nader mostly for his loss...but

backing away from Bill Clinton was a mistake.

[Jim Lane]

62. Bear in mind the context. I wasn't quoting Gore on electoral strategy.

I quoted him for this interpretation of his title: "Facts are facts, even if they sometimes make some people uncomfortable."

If that's what Gore meant, I think he was right. That doesn't depend on Nader or the campaign's treatment of Clinton or any of the other issues about the 2000 election.

[Demsrule86]

63. What facts? From what I can tell... the 'facst' were either out and out lied about or

Donna Braziille confused two agreements.

[Demsrule86]

50. Oh and the article was bullshit...votes determine who wins any primary ...not the DNC first of all.

You believe it because you want to...and it is such a waste of time and energy...let 16 go.

[delisen]

57. Why was DNC virtually bankrupt and how did

they try to raise money to stay in business?

[KitSileya]

54. She is a former Goldwater girl...

the way he was dead-beat dad. In other words, both are really demeaning ways of referring to people who have done a lot else with their lives, and hardly did either thing I just accused them of. By the time Hillary could vote, she was a Democrat, and should be given that respect, just as Bernie should be given respect for living according to his own principles rather than following society's conventions.

And if you call Hillary a former Goldwater Girl, you can never call Warren anything but a former Republican.

[Jim Lane]

59. Here's the context: I support the Democratic Party's rule of neutrality.

The rule doesn't say that the party shall be neutral among all the contenders who are lifelong Democrats, or among all who have been Democrats for at least four years, or even among all who are Democrats. It commands neutrality, without exception.

That means that O'Malley (lifelong Democrat) and Clinton (Democrat since her teens) and Chafee (Democrat since about 2013 IIRC) and Sanders (caucuses with the Democrats but not formally affiliated) and Webb (whatever his status was) were all entitled to be treated fairly. And, yes, if Elizabeth Warren ever seeks the nomination, she'll also be entitled to be treated fairly. The issue of party affiliation, past or present, is up to the voters to decide, not the DNC.

It's obvious that quite a few people on DU disagree with this rule and would like to see it changed for the 2020 cycle. They certainly have the right to advocate for that. I personally support the current Democratic Party rule.

[Spiranthes]

30. Great post!

Thanks!

[David__77]

31. Good, yes, get all the information out.

That’s for the best.

[KitSileya]

47. And he fucked over all the state parties because he refused to concede

As long as he refused to concede, the money that Hillary raised through *her* JFA couldn't be released to the state parties to be used for local races. Only the nominee could release these funds. So the state parties had to play catch-up because they didn't get the damn money that only she raised - BS raised outside his own JFA because he didn't want to give money to unpure candidates.

Just another way BS screwed over the Democratic party.

[Demsrule86]

51. There is that...and we have the Congress from hell now.

[uponit7771]

52. +1

[NurseJackie]

60. Unforgivable.

(Thanks for posting this.)

[ehrnst]

64. Yep - that's what Brazile probably didn't intend to reinforce.

But yes, that's what's being made clear with the "excerpt."

I'm betting her publisher is sweating right now.

[Gothmog]

65. Agreed

[Demsrule86]

48. That article was total bullshit.

Donna Brazille better hope the righties love her because she burned her bridges or maybe she is hoping for a stint at our revolution...very disappointed in her. My son sent me an email ...this article and I replied...votes determine who the Democratic candidate is...and not the DNC. There is a serious effort from the left, right and probably Russians to divide us so we cannot stop Trump and/ or to promote the 'revolution'-of course they don't care about the people hurt...resist.