Donna Brazile<\/a>, the outgoing interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, kicked off a series of “future forums,” which will select her replacement, by apologizing for the party’s 2016 defeats.<\/p>\n“I’m not going to sugarcoat it: We failed,” Brazile said. “We made some serious mistakes and some strategic errors. We got cocky about our invincible blue wall, and then we saw it crumble because of just a few thousand votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.”<\/p>\n
Brazile was elevated to interim chair after the release of emails stolen from the DNC effectively forced Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., from the role. Wasserman Schultz, who was then facing a stiff primary challenge for her South Florida congressional seat, became a villain for supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who blamed her for a late-skewing and limited schedule of primary debates.<\/p>\n
But the well-liked Brazile came under fire from another set of stolen emails, including two she’d sent to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, informing him that CNN – where she was a political analyst – had shared possible primary debate and forum questions with her. That ended her time at CNN.<\/p>\n
In her Phoenix remarks, Brazile defended the DNC employees who had spent the second half of 2016 being exposed by hacks.<\/p>\n
“Let me just say how proud I am of the DNC and all the staffers who lived through that,” Brazile said. “They were attacked and harassed every day – often attacked by the people who should know better.”<\/p>\n
Brazile also condemned the online conspiracy theory that Seth Rich, a young DNC staffer who was fatally shot last July in Northwest Washington, had been killed in a DNC coverup.<\/p>\n
Russian hackers, she said, had ended up enlisting the media in a campaign of sabotage.<\/p>\n
“We failed under extraordinary circumstances,” she said. “If you are an American, you are a victim of a hostile attack, a murderous dictator who wanted to affect the election. They hired an army of trolls to spread lies and distract from the real issues.”<\/p>\n
After Brazile left the stage, Gov. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., gave a pep talk for western Democrats, whose gains in 2016 had stood apart from a Republican tide.<\/p>\n
“We are frustrated that Siberia’s favorite candidate is going to the White House,” said Inslee, in a reference to the alleged attempts by Russia to influence the election.<\/p>\n
(c) 2017, The Washington Post \u00b7 David Weigel<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX – Donna Brazile, the outgoing interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, kicked off a series of “future forums,” which will select her replacement, by apologizing for the party’s 2016 defeats. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it: We failed,” Brazile said. “We made some serious mistakes and some strategic errors. We got cocky about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5409,"featured_media":90324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[1,33],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Brazile to Democrats: 'We failed you' - 'We got cocky about our invincible blue wall' - Breaking911<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n