Review: Donna Brazile's book is a must-read for political observers

Audio By Carbonatix

Donna Brazile has been on the political scene for decades. After working as a Democratic strategist, advisor and analyst for many years, she served as the campaign manager for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential campaign. Six years later, I had the opportunity to sit at her table at an event at Emerson College where she spoke out about rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. She was funny, personable and a straight shooter.

That latter quality shines through in her new book Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-Ins and Breakdowns that put Donald Trump in the White House.     

Although the headlines about the book have focused on key sections (her thoughts about replacing Clinton at the top of the 2016 presidential ticket, her assessment that the DNC had a deal with the Clinton campaign that, as she notes, “compromised the party’s integrity”), there’s much more to appreciate in this tell-all.

In the opening chapters, she paints the picture of a Democratic National Committee in crisis. After Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned as chair (following allegations that the party had favored Hillary Clinton in the primaries), Brazile takes the helm of the party only a few months before election day.

The party was in terrible shape, a realization she makes only after she becomes chairwoman. She writes, “As I saw it, we had three Democratic parties: the party of Barack Obama, the party of Hillary Clinton and this weak little vestige of a party led by Debbie that was doing a very poor job getting people who were not president elected.”

This was a party in chaos and Brazile openly acknowledges the organization’s mistakes. As vice chair of the DNC, she had been left out of the loop on key decisions by Wasserman Schultz. She writes that the party’s debt allowed it to be overtaken by the Clinton campaign. The party, she reveals, “had become dependent on [Clinton’s] campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operation.”

Her comments about the DNC paint a clear picture of the organization but Brazile’s book works most bracingly when it focuses on how Russian agents hacked their files (releasing many personal e-mails of employees, supporters etc.) and how those hacks affected the organization. She provides some context to the hacks noting that “The Chinese hacked the 2008 U.S. election, breaking into the Obama campaign to collect political information about the candidate and opposition research.”

But, she writes, the hacks into the DNC — which the organization was admittedly slow to react to — were different. Brazile eventually realized the scope of the online breach. She writes, “I needed to think of the hackers who had attacked the DNC as soldiers who wore crisply pressed military uniforms and clocked in to work precisely on time, dedicated to their mission to disrupt politics any place their government chose as a target.”

Much of the book is focused on that break-in and trying to rebuild trust at the DNC. Not only was the organization suffering from a trust deficit from some Bernie supporters. It was also suffering from a trust deficit from those — including donors and organization employees — who didn’t realize the extent of the damage from the hacks.

Brazile writes bracingly about these personal issues and reveals some of the pain and paranoia these hacks cost. It’s in these chapters that Brazile really succeeds in making the hacks personal and showing how they affected thousands of people.

One element of the book that doesn’t feel as clear though is the section focused on the infamous e-mail that Brazile was accused of sending the Clinton campaign during the Democratic primary. That e-mail contained a specific question about the death penalty that was later featured in debate.

After the scandal exploded (with presidential candidate Donald Trump even criticizing the e-mail), Brazile looked for the e-mail and couldn’t find it. She later calls the event “this thing I very well might not have done.” However, she admits that she and Roland Martin had been discussing questions like that (“That question was one that had made the cut,” she writes and she later apologized for sending the e-mail but it’s not clear if she believes she sent it or if she apologized to make the issue go away.

Despite that, the relevance of Hacks is not to be understated. She offers a personal story about the hacking of the DNC and really shows how detrimental such hacks are to our democracy.

“To this day,” she writes, “it is astonishing to me that we do not treat this as a national emergency.” Such sentiments — and her personal story of being a victim of the hacks — are ultimately why this book feels so urgent and necessary.

You can purchase a copy of the new book by clicking here.