Why WikiLeaks was right: rigging the democratic way

In another statement, Brazile seemed to have undergone a remarkable transformation, suggesting that the author of Hacks had been abducted and substituted. The problem, as ever, was who was capitalising on her sudden insight. "Trump looks for a daily excuse to distract from his job. No, the primary system wasn't rigged! States control primary ballots."

Perhaps this is hardly surprising, when one considers the Russian mania that suffuses her Twitter postings, the usual bellyaching blame game that keeps company with Clinton. "Russia," she writes in a re-Tweet of a link from The Guardian, "funded Facebook and Twitter investments through Kushner associate." On November 4, she chirps in smug satisfaction how, "Report shows the complex way Russian hackers went after Hillary Clinton and the Democrats."

Another re-Tweet features a piece by Joy-Anne Reid in The Daily Beast as another attempt to throw critics off the scent, hoping that attention will not be paid to the atrocious conduct of the Clinton machine: "Donna Brazile's Bombshell Isn't that Hillary Clinton rigged the race, but that the Democratic Party Blew it."

All that is true, but the ugly, grizzled picture of Democratic decline and fabled suicide was epitomised by its poor choice of candidate, the party establishment's inadvertent admission that ossification had set in. The Warrens fell silent, and Sanders retreated, leaving his supporters to grieve and observe the unfolding calamity. Trump duly scooped up the remains. WikiLeaks was, after the dust had settled, discomfortingly right.