The panel on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday slammed the Democratic Party and its lack of leadership in response to revelations that the Democratic National Committee conspired with Hilary Clinton's campaign during the 2016 primary by handing her team control of the national party and its finances.
Donna Brazile, former interim chairwoman of the DNC, will be releasing a new book next week that sheds light on the missteps of the Clinton campaign and Obama administration that helped enable Donald Trump to be elected president. Politico Magazine published an excerpt from the book on Thursday that revealed the DNC was having severe financial troubles when she took over after the Democratic National Convention last year and that she discovered her predecessor, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.), struck a deal with the Clinton campaign to oversee DNC spending.
"You have Hillary Clinton, a very ineffective presidential candidate, whose team strangled the DNC and didn't let them do their job," co-host Joe Scarborough said. "They had control over everything the DNC was doing before she was even a candidate and then you have the chairwoman of the DNC actively rigging the process."
Guest Donny Deutsch, an outspoken Trump critic, said the revelations bolster the narrative that Trump has set by calling Clinton "Crooked Hillary." He added that he finds it ironic that Brazile is the person making these claims since she was part of Clinton's "parade of nonsense," in which she leaked a debate question to Clinton's campaign before CNN's debate last March during the Democratic primary.
"It shows how as broken and fragmented as we talk about the Republican Party right now in search of itself and its pulling four different directions that the Democratic Party is even in worse shape," Deutsch said. "What does it stand for? Who are the leaders? The legacy of Hillary Clinton and the Clintons and Barack Obama."
"There are no new faces. There are no new voices," Deutsch continued. "There are new platforms and the Democratic Party needs to look hard in the mirror and say, 'Who is our future and how do we leave this behind?' Because, unfortunately, when you say the word 'Democratic Party,' Hillary Clinton still comes to the forefront and that's gotta go away."
Steve Rattner, a former Obama administration adviser and major Clinton supporter, downplayed Brazile's revelations and said that he understands why the Clinton campaign did what it did, saying that the quality of campaign officials is stronger than that of party committees. He went on to criticize Obama and current DNC chair Tom Perez.
"President Obama did the party no favors here. He did not really embrace the importance of building the party apparatus the way President Clinton had, and so as a result the party was left essentially broke and pretty dysfunctional," Rattner said
"As we sit here today, looking ahead, which is probably as important as looking back, we are essentially in the same place. The DNC is not very present in the lives of activist Democrats like myself. They are not raising money very successfully," Rattner said. "Tom Perez, who's running it, is a very nice and capable guy, but the RNC is way out-raising them. As you pointed out many times, we lost the 900 state legislature seats. We lost the governorships. We lost the Senate positions. Somebody's got to pull the DNC and the party apparatus together. Right now we don't have a leader as Donny said."