No Republican would have tolerated Jeb Bush taking over the RNC. Why did Democrats tolerate it from Hillary Clinton?

Nobody will mistake me for a Bernie Sanders supporter, but if I were, I’d be “bernin’ mad” over the recent claim by Donna Brazile, the former interim chairman of the Democratic National Committee, that Hillary Clinton’s “campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearinghouse.”

This isn’t coming from Fox News or Breitbart. It’s from POLITICO, which is largely staffed by former Washington Post reporters and is definitely part of the mainstream media establishment. Brazile, for her part, actually lost her job as a CNN contributor when she was accused of leaking questions in advance to Clinton. She’s not anti-Democrat in any way, she actively sought to help Hillary, and that’s what makes her claims of DNC bias toward Clinton so damaging.

The details are in Politico at THIS LINK. I understand the fundraising problem — both parties are faced with unrealistic and outdated campaign finance limits which have the effect of starving the two national political party structures of the cash they need to operate, while allowing candidates, PACs, and state and local parties to raise much larger amounts of money.

The short version is that Clinton supporters could only write checks for $2,700 to Clinton’s campaign, but could donate up to $10,000 to state Democratic parties. In 32 states, the state parties had an arrangement by which those donations would be forwarded to the Democratic National Committee, so a wealthy Clinton supporter could donate $320,000 to the DNC to support Clinton in what Politico called “essentially … money laundering” for the Clinton campaign.

I understand that Clinton has a long history as a successful fundraiser.

But can any of us imagine what would have happened if Jeb Bush, the “establishment” candidate who early on was expected to use his massive campaign warchest to steamroll his way through to the Republican nomination, had worked out an arrangement in August 2015 — ALMOST HALF A YEAR BEFORE THE FIRST CAUCUS AND PRIMARY VOTES WERE CAST — comparable to Clinton’s arrangement?

Here’s the arrangement, in the words of the INTERIM DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRWOMAN: “in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.”

If Jeb Bush had tried something like that, not only Donald J. Trump and Ted Cruz but virtually every other Republican candidate would have exploded in furious anger.

They would have been right to do so.

You just can’t have one candidate for a contested race using his or her money-raising skills to control the political party BEFORE GETTING THE NOMINATION!

I’m no fan of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. I’ve followed his career for decades and believe he’s sincere, but also sincerely wrong, and his policies would do untold damage to America if they were ever implemented.

But fair is fair, and what Hillary Clinton did doesn’t even come close to being fair.

I’m well aware of the smoke-filled-room tactics of old-school politics in both parties. I’m not going to pretend to be shocked. I know political history, and I’m well aware that a few generations ago, a candidate like Clinton wouldn’t have had to use this money-laundering scheme to take control of the party’s nomination process. She was backed by the Democratic Party’s establishment, and backed overwhelmingly, and in an earlier era would have used other methods that were dirtier, blunter, and less transparent.

What makes this bad is not that it happened, but that it was done underhandedly.

Clinton is well-known as an excellent fundraiser, She could have openly declared that because the Democratic Party was millions of dollars in debt due to management decisions over which she had no control, she was going to step in as the “white knight” to raise tens of millions of dollars for her party.

She might well have convinced lots of Democrats that her successful money raising methods were a good reason to vote for her instead of for Sanders and his socialism.

Yes, if Clinton had been open in what she was doing, she would have aired the dirty laundry that DNC Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz had been doing a poor job of fundraising. She might even have had to point out that President Barack Obama, despite running the White House, hadn’t done a very good job of helping Democratic Party finances, and had actually put the Democrats millions of dollars into deficit spending following the 2012 campaign.

But as is often the case, the coverup is the real problem, not the initial actions.

Bernie supporters have every right to be furious. Democrat voters should have known this long before the 2016 campaign began, and definitely before Clinton sewed up the nomination.