Donna Brazile - Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-Ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House

W hen the name HILLARY CLINTON popped up on my phone in February 2017, I realized hers was a call Id stopped waiting to receive. On Election Day, the tradition in politics is that candidates personally thank the people who helped most in the campaign. Win or lose, in the days that follow, the candidate extends that circle of gratitude to members of the party and the donors. Bernie Sanders called me on November 9, 2016, and Joe Biden, too. The vice president even came to our staff holiday party. But I never heard from Hillary.

I figured she might be hurting too bad to make that call. I had a tender spot for Hillary. I sympathized with everything she had gone through in the wretched election of 2016. I had been through plenty of rough campaigns in my forty years in politics, but I had never seen anything like the viciousness and turmoil of that horrible season as I fought alongside her. The only thing that was keeping me going as we faced the blazing fury of Donald Trump, when I was getting hit every day and thinking I just wanted to stop, was knowing my friend Hillary was getting the shit kicked out of her, too. Look at what they are doing to her, how they are destroying her, Id think. I felt a duty to Hillary that went far beyond just being the chair of the Democratic Party.

We had met when I was still in my twenties. I was working as a consultant at the Childrens Defense Fund in the 1980s, which was where I met Hillary. I was a high-minded, strong-willed young woman who, through my aptitude for politics, crawled out of poverty in Louisiana to a career in Washington, DC. Hillary was one of my idols. While I was rough and bossy, Hillary was cool and smooth, polished by the Ivy League, and comfortable in the halls of power. Also, she was fearless fighting for childrens rights, and I saw in her many qualities I wanted to make stronger in myself.

I never forgot that it was Hillary in 2003 who told some of the party leaders to pay attention to a talented young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama. Without that assist from Hillary, Obama would not have been offered the keynote at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and almost certainly would not have gone on to become the first black president. Hillarys gesture back then always stayed with me. So when several decades later, I suddenly was asked to serve again as interim party chair on the eve of the Democratic Convention in July 2016, just until she won in November, I couldnt say no.

But I wanted to. I had promised myself, after I managed Al Gores campaign in 2000, that I never would let politics break my heart again. Acting as a media surrogate and staunch supporter of the team that got the first black president elected more than healed that wound. Getting Obama reelected was joy. So when I was asked to serve as interim chairfor what would be my second stint in this thankless jobI decided I had one more fight left in me, and a noble one at that. I could help get the first woman president elected. After she won, Hillarys staff would assume control of the party. I could dance out the door to the sweet music of victory and go back to my perfect life. I never could have guessed how the months that followed would alter my lifeand my countryforever.

Instead of being able to dance out the door in November, I had to stay through the end of February to perform the somber duties of the defeated: the painstaking work of filing all the financial reports with the Federal Election Commission, filing similar reports in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, shutting down offices, laying off thousands of people.

After that disastrous Election Day I didnt want to think about politics or talk about it, and I was guessing Hillary felt that way and worse: that she had blown this chance and had let her sisters down. My heart went out to her. No matter how strong our differences were in the campaign, I know she is a good woman. I heard from time to time that she was asking about me, but I never took it seriously. She had all my numbers. I knew what I wanted to say to her and it was: I have nothing but respect for you for being so brave and classy considering everything that went on. But in the weeks after the loss, every time I checked my phone thinking I might have missed her call, it wasnt her.

A fter the loss, the Democrats went into hiding, or started picking through the carnage, while the country was hungry for answers from a party that honestly didnt know what to say. We had lost to Donald Trump! How was that possible? And what did we have to do to make sure that didnt happen the next time?

It took me until the end of the year, after a holiday in Hawaii, to start getting my mojo back. We needed to remember that Hillary had won the popular vote. We did not have to hang our heads in shame. No, we had to find a way to stand this party back up if we were ever to have a chance to win again.

What inspired me was my kids, all 150 of them. Ive never given birth to a child, but politics is a family affair. In a campaign, you see what the others are made of, you see people under pressure, and you see their limits tested in triumph and defeat. You get to know one another, in ways better than you do members of your real family. When I spotted young people with a real spark, that true combination of idealism and cunning essential to surviving in politics, I found work for them. Those were my kids, ages twenty-two to forty-five, scattered all around the country. I wanted to rebuild the party to give them a chance to lead.

Back in December when I thought about what the party could do, what I could do, I remembered how Terry McAuliffe took over as Democratic National Committee chair after our loss in 2000 and how Howard Dean stepped up after the defeat of then U.S. senator John Kerry in 2004. They reached out to the voters to understand what the party had gotten wrong about the mood of the country. They wanted to let the grassroots decide the future direction of the party. I would do the same. First we needed to get this loss out of our system.