(Updates below)
Let's put this as simply as possible regarding Donna Brazile's "revelations" about the operation of the DNC:
We. Have. More. Important. Shit. To. Do. Than. Constantly. Fighting. About. The. 2016. Democratic. Nominating. Process.
I know some of you immediately wanna say, "I can be angry about more than one thing," as if you're somehow offering a compelling counterargument instead of sounding like a confused child. But you can't do something about everything because there are only so many fucking hours in a fucking day.
I know some of you immediately wanna say, "You don't get to decide what's important." To which I can only answer: Yes. Yes, I do.
I know some of you wanna say, "I guess you don't want to change the Democratic Party," usually followed by a blizzard of words like "rigged" and "fraud" and "stole" and "Grrrr-Hillary" and "Grrr-DWS" (not DSW, which is a discount shoe store), which is really part of a fantasy that Bernie Sanders would have won the election if the eeevil Democratic Party itself hadn't conspired against him. Never mind that Clinton had been working within the Democratic Party for almost her entire adult life (putting aside that youthful Goldwater fling).
I know some of you wanna say that if we don't fight about the future of the DNC now, we'll never win, we'll never get the disaffected Bernie-loving youth back, we'll never get progressive ideas in the platform, we'll never, we'll never, we'll never. And I'll just say, "Fine. Get into the game and change it. But how about waiting until after the fucking midterms, huh? How about getting involved in the local races to make sure the candidate you want wins? How about getting into it on a local level? How about not making everything about the presidency because, as the GOP learned with Trump and the DNC learned with Barack Obama, someone is always gonna come along and fuck your nice plan up?"
If you're already in the trenches, awesome. But the vast majority of people saying this shit aren't. I promise you they aren't.
I know you wanna say this shit because many of you have said this shit to me. And I get it. I totally fucking get it. But the fights that you want to have are the fights you have when you're not facing a fucking existential crisis.
I could toss in a metaphor or two to this argument. "The house is burning down and you want to talk about the color of the drapes" or some such bullshit. At one point, I really thought about doing a whole Game of Thrones thing, since that seems to form the cultural foundation for so many people (seriously, fuck anyone who says, "Bend the knee" and isn't being funny or is actually a character on Game of Thrones). I thought about comparing Trump to the Night King and people who would rather fight the old battles instead of the new ones to Cersei Lannister refusing to join Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen against the frozen zombies, but, then I thought I'd have people throwing all these geeky references at me and citing the books and whatever, and just imagining that gave me a headache.
It's not as fun out here in Left Blogsylvania as it was pre-Twitter. And it's absolutely a waste of fucking time to be arguing this shit when the barbarians aren't at the gate anymore. They are sacking the joint.
By making something out of this genuine nothing, you have given Donald Trump and the GOP and the right-wing media monster enough fuel to last for months. By jumping into the fray on this, by decrying Clinton and DNC, you have allowed the narrative on the corruption of the Trump administration to be watered down. You are giving anyone who was on the fence a reason to cling to Trump.
I have to add to this as I have to add to all things regarding 2016: I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary. I explained my reasons for doing that. And I had absolutely no trouble shifting to Hillary Clinton once the primaries are over. Because this shit isn't about me and my hurt feelings.
Hillary Clinton didn't rig anything. Even Donna Brazile said that today. She didn't hack the vote during the primaries. She didn't deliberately lose caucuses. What she did do was play politics, a filthy and dishonorable game. What she did do was expect the party that she had raised vast amounts of money for (for state and local races and party groups) to back her over the guy who all of a sudden decided he wanted to play and demanded that he be treated equal to the woman who spent her life working for the party.
You don't like the fuckin' rules? Then go to your local party headquarters. Volunteer. Answer phones. Work your way up the local hierarchy. Show you have more interest in the party than just every four years.
I learned this way back when I was in my early 30s and I decided I wanted to run for Congress against an incumbent Republican. The Democratic Party in my district hadn't put up a decent candidate in a couple of elections, and I thought, "Well, fuck it. I'll try" because I hated our asshole representative, a man by the name of Mike Pence. When I walked into the local Democratic HQ, the old white men there stared at me and asked what I had done as a Democrat. Had I worked on a campaign? Well, Bill Clinton. Had I run for anything? No. Essentially, they told me I hadn't earned their support and, sure, I could try on my own to get on the ballot, but they wouldn't help me. Come back when I had more under my belt.
And that's how you were denied a debate between the future Vice-President and the Rude Pundit. I realized that they were right. I didn't have a war chest or name recognition. They had their own agenda. I hadn't proven myself. (I'm not talking here about Bernie Sanders - I'm talking about those who want to change the DNC.)
Giving the right a way to help sow discord in the Democrats is like giving crack to a weasel. You thought it was bad before? You just wait.
As someone who has never attacked "Bernie Bros" or whatever, as someone who was intensely anti-Hillary in 2008, I say to Democrats, all Democrats, knock it the fuck off. Go back to your states and support your candidates. Get through 2018. Unite behind Democrats who are ready to fight Trump and the GOP.
Or the Night King will turn us all into the army of the dead.
Update 1: This Twitter thread does a great job of following the money to see what exactly Clinton's fundraising prowess did for the DNC.
Update 2: Yeah, the memo that Brazile was talking about contained several statements saying that it was meant only for the General Election, not the primaries. So this whole thing is even stupider and more useless and more of distraction than it was. But, hey, hope you guys enjoy the smell of Hannity's taint because he's gonna be slapping us with his balls more than usual over this bullshit. Great work everyone.
