Jonathan Allen, author of multiple books on Hillary Clinton, told C-SPAN former President Bill Clinton is pressuring Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez to keep the Bernie Sanders wing of the party in check.


Allen and co-author of “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign,” Amie Parnes, told C-SPAN’s Pedro Echevarria they uncovered new material about Hillary Clinton’s campaign they’ve included in an updated version of the book.

The added tidbits reveal several Democratic operatives complained ahead of Clinton’s embarrassing 2016 loss that the campaign had become complacent and did not have a coherent message about economics, and some questioned “how they would help people raise themselves up.”

“It starts there, but we actually run well past the election, and some of the new material about the fight for the Democratic party between the Sanders factions and the Clinton factions, and there’s a really sort of intense scene in there with Bill Clinton talking to Tom Perez, giving him instructions about what he wants him to do with the DNC,” Allen said. “Which hasn’t entirely worked out.”

Parnes explained that despite the concerns from folks on the ground, most on Clinton’s campaign were certain she’d become the 45th President of the United States.

“I think Amy and I, after having talked to dozens and dozens of people who worked on the Clinton campaign, came to the conclusion that what they were telling us was that Hillary Clinton didn’t really have a message for the American public that was about what she was going to do for them, rather than the campaign,” Allen said. “And that’s not to say she did not have plans for what she was going to do for them, she just wasn’t able to articulate them in a way that sounded like it was more about them than about her.”

Allen came back to Bill Clinton and Perez later in the discussion when he described how the Democratic Party continues to struggle with its identity and leadership.

“The DNC is unpopular with its own base. Half of the Democratic Party, or roughly half of the Democratic Party, felt like the DNC was unfairly tipping the scales in the last presidential election, trying to get Hillary Clinton nominated, trying to hurt Bernie Sanders,” he said.

“You start with that bad blood, and really there’s just been a clash between these two sides that has resumed. The hostilities that had been put aside during the Democratic convention in 2016, resumed the minute that Donald Trump was elected – this huge battle for the soul of the Democratic Party between the Clinton-type folks and the Sanders folks, and Tom Perez is in the middle of that and he’s gotten very explicit instructions from President Clinton, as we write in the paperback extension of the regular book.

“He’s gotten instructions from Bill Clinton not to let the party go to the Bernie Sanders folks. I think people who are reading this, people who are interested in how the Democratic Party works – how it shattered apart and how it’s trying to put itself back together – will find those passages in here pretty interesting,” Allen continued.

“I also think certainly Republicans will find those interesting, as well.”