The Atlantic

What Donna Brazile's New Book Really Reveals

The former DNC chair’s sometimes-confused book illuminates the fundamental difference in approach between the Clinton and Sanders campaigns.
Source: Jim Young / Reuters

Donna Brazile seems confused.

In her new book Hacks, released this Tuesday, and in an excerpt in Politico Magazine published last week, the former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee wrote that she searched for proof that the 2016 Democratic presidential primary was “rigged” for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, and said, “By September 7... I had found my proof and it broke my heart.” Yet on Tuesday, Brazile appeared on CBS News, where she said the contest was fair. “I found no instances that the party rigged the process, and I wanted to make sure Bernie and his supporters understood that,” she said. The contradiction is so clear that even Chris Cillizza was able to spot it.

The claim of rigging, made and withdrawn, is the buzziest of several stories to come from the book, . One, , was the idea that Brazile plotted to remove Clinton from the Democratic ticket after her September 11, 2016, fainting spell, perhaps replacing her with Joe Biden and Cory Booker. The wrote that Brazile had “seriously contemplated setting in motion a process to replace” Clinton, but it’s difficult to tell from the book just how serious she was. Brazile wrote that she had occasionally threatened the Clinton campaign with removal when she felt disrespected,

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic8 min readAmerican Government
The Return of the John Birch Society
Michael Smart chuckled as he thought back to their banishment. Truthfully he couldn’t say for sure what the problem had been, why it was that in 2012, the John Birch Society—the far-right organization historically steeped in conspiracism and oppositi
The Atlantic4 min read
Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-war Fantasia
Once, in a windowless conference room, I got into an argument with a minor Japanese-government official about Hayao Miyazaki. This was in 2017, three years after the director had announced his latest retirement from filmmaking. His final project was
The Atlantic4 min readAmerican Government
How Democrats Could Disqualify Trump If the Supreme Court Doesn’t
Near the end of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments about whether Colorado could exclude former President Donald Trump from its ballot as an insurrectionist, the attorney representing voters from the state offered a warning to the justices—one evoking

Related Books & Audiobooks