Brazile's Allegations Show War Is Coming to Democratic Party

Donna Brazile, former head of the Democratic National Committee, made headlines Thursday when she accused the Clinton campaign and DNC of "unethical" behavior and "rigging" the primary in favor of Hillary Clinton. While not containing much new, provable information, Brazile's allegation is equivalent to "taking the smoldering embers of the 2016 primary and throwing some gasoline on them," Aaron Blake writes for the Washington Post. He says the allegations "could lead to some further soul-searching and even bloodletting in the Democratic Party" and could ruin the tenuous unity the Democrats built up in the face of the Trump presidency. Here's what else you need to know about Brazile's bombshell:

• New York disagrees, stating Brazile's account is "remarkable ... for the substance of its allegations and the melodramatic tenor of its prose." It argues one of the big takeaways is that Brazile believes the future of the Democratic Party is with Bernie Sanders and that she may be positioning herself for a role with the Sanders 2020 campaign.

• The Atlantic is more skeptical of Brazile but concurs that her going public is one more sign that Sanders is the unofficial leader of the Democratic Party despite signs from Clinton that she wants to stay involved in the political arena.
• Brazile's allegations show the Democrats need to have the same "war" they've been watching Republicans fight publicly since the arrival of Donald Trump, the National Review states, adding: "it cannot truly begin until they take off their rose-colored glasses and see clearly for the first time the candidate they presented to America."
• That war is surely coming, Susan Glasser wrote for the New Yorker a day before Brazile's allegations, but with Trump in office "it's no surprise that the brewing fight over the Democratic Party's future gets so little airtime." She says she hasn't "talked with a single Democrat or independent analyst who doesn’t think that the Party remains in serious danger of another electoral catastrophe."

• Meanwhile, Splinter states the only surprising thing about Brazile's allegations is that a longtime Democratic Party fixture is "finally selling off her worthless stock in Hillary Clinton once and for all." It's something that "would have been unthinkable just two years ago."
• And Red State is using the allegations to accuse the Clinton campaign of violating campaign finance laws and money laundering, "sort of like the way old-time Mafia guys would 'buy' a restaurant and milk it dry by skimming off cash."
• Finally, current DNC head Tom Perez says he's not discussing the allegations made by his predecessor. "We're moving forward," Real Clear Politics quotes Perez as saying. "One of my goals here as DNC chair is to make sure that the nomination process for 2020 is a process that is totally fair and transparent for everybody."

(More Donna Brazile stories.)