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Divided We Stand

Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Donna Brazile and Paul Manafort, 1988

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the mechanics of the 2016 campaign and other problems that brought down the Democrats. 

I am currently writing a book about the 1988 campaign.

Donna Brazile has courted controversy with a new book about that campaign.  She was controversial in the 1988 campaign, too.

The Los Angeles Times, October 21, 1988:
A Democratic presidential campaign official resigned Thursday after the Dukakis campaign disavowed her comment that "George Bush owes it to the American people to fess up" about a rumor concerning an extramarital affair that rippled through Wall Street on Wednesday.
Dukakis personally apologized to Bush for the remarks, made by deputy field director Donna Brazile, when the two candidates met Thursday night in New York for the Catholic archdiocese's annual fund-raising dinner.

Brazile told reporters accompanying the Democratic candidate that "the American people have every right to know if Barbara Bush will share that bed with him in the White House."
Paul Manafort is in trouble over foreign lobbying.  On September 11, 1988, Robin Toner reported at The New York Times
Escalating his response to Bush campaign efforts to raise doubts about him, the Massachusetts Governor demanded at a news conference in Boston that Mr. Bush ''answer some questions that are being raised about the fact that several of his top campaign advisers had a contract with a foreign government, some of whose top officials were under investigation for drug profiteering.''
Mr. Dukakis read from a memorandum from Black, Manafort & Stone, a Republican consulting firm whose partners work as unpaid consultants to the Bush campaign. In the memo, he said, the firm ''brags about its ability to reach into high offices in this Administration as a result of what it calls back channel relationships.'' He added, ''I think the American people have a right to know that the back door of the White House will not be the front door for paid agents of foreign governments.''
''In a Dukakis White House,'' he continued, ''there will be no back door for foreign lobbyists. My staff will not have divided loyalties.''