I get that we're all really upset over the DNC and the Clinton campaign joining forces before the primary. Some of us are also upset that people are upset.
All of this seems to be some serious revisionist history. This deal is form August, 2015. Which means it would have been worked on in July right? The same July when Hillary Clinton had a 50 point lead.
Polling chart.
It is well established that incumbents join with the DNC to form a united front toward the election. This even happened in 2000 when Gore was not technically the Presidential incumbent.
Who knows what would have happened if Biden had announced?
Regardless, when this agreement was entered into, it appeared to many that Hillary Clinton would coast with a comfortable lead toward the general election. In that context it makes a lot of sense for the DNC and her campaign to get on the same page and work to the ultimate goal of winning in 2016.
What does this mean?
First, it certainly means that this agreement does not need to be as nefarious as people are making it out to be. In retrospect it feels like an underhanded agreement that might have helped her get an edge against a genuine primary opponent. In reality it was presumptuous at worst. The parties to this agreement probably figured this would be a relatively uncontroversial primary with one candidate in the 60-70 range and another in the 20 range.
Remember, we’re talking a 50 point lead!
Second, we can’t pretend that it didn’t have an impact. The DNC was aligned with the Clinton campaign with an eye to the general election with her as the candidate. This was by design, not by coup. But it’s the height of denial to pretend that staff doesn’t matter in influencing the margins of political events.
Third, this can’t be about Hillary and Bernie and needs to be an examination of party practices going forward. Unfortunately, these are big personalities to set aside. If there was a single big failure on the part of the D party in 2018, it was a failure to recognize what was happening in the attitudes of the voters right in front of it. We were unresponsive to what was happening in certain parts of the country (and if you get defensive at this, we ALL have to at a minimum acknowledge that resources should have been distributed differently in the general). If some of that unresponsiveness is due to a party that set its course a year early, that should be examined.