DEAR SUZANNE

We Have Questions.

Suzanne,

Yesterday, you made a video on Instagram about Alani Bankhead.

You told your 334,000 Instagram followers that you were not attacking her. You were simply examining what you called “objective information.” You said your “feet are planted squarely in reality.” You said there is “no way” Alani can win Montana’s Senate race. “There is no path to victory.” You called her campaign finances “abysmally low.” You said Seth Bodnar “could actually win.” And you suggested that Alani’s decision to remain in the race she won might be an “ego response.”

While you were explaining “reality” to the Democratic nominee for United States Senate, were you also aware that there was an organized campaign underway with a rather spectacularly unsubtle name?

“Project Montana Senate Dem Dropout.”

We have seen the materials.

They don’t say, “Let’s debate whether Bankhead should remain in the race.” They don’t say, “Let’s publish an op-ed.” They contain instructions.

One of the listed “TOP PRIORITIES” tells participants to examine a “Bankhead contacts spreadsheet of people close to Alani Bankhead.”

Then comes the instruction:

“If you have connections to anyone here,” contact one of the organizers.

Another instruction tells participants to contact people they know in Montana and ask whether they’re willing to “help get Bankhead to drop out.”

There’s a shareable action document. There are designated contacts. There are instructions for volunteers with less than ten minutes to spare and different instructions for volunteers with more time.

This wasn’t three Democrats arguing over beers about electoral math.

Somebody built infrastructure.

And last night, Alani Bankhead said something considerably more serious.

She said her daughter, a minor, had been included on what she described as a “target list for harassment.” She said her family was taking additional security precautions because of escalating harassment and death threats. She said she had deactivated her personal Facebook account to make it harder to target innocent friends and family.

So, naturally, we have some questions for you.

Suzanne, did you know about Project Montana Senate Dem Dropout when you made your video?

Did you know there was a spreadsheet containing people close to Alani?

Did you see that spreadsheet?

Did you know Alani says her minor daughter was included?

Did anybody associated with Project Montana Senate Dem Dropout contact you?

Did anyone associated with Seth Bodnar, his campaign, organizations supporting him, political consultants, activists, donors, PACs, or anyone advocating for Alani’s withdrawal provide you with any information about this race?

Did anyone provide talking points?

Did anyone ask you to make a video?

Did anyone ask you to amplify the argument that Alani should withdraw before Monday’s deadline?

Because suddenly your description of yourself as merely “a regular person with access to irrefutable data and information” is the most interesting sentence in your entire video.

Access from whom?

Maybe the answer is nobody.

Maybe you researched every number yourself, independently reached every conclusion, decided independently that this particular Senate race hundreds of miles from Washington deserved an emergency video to your enormous audience, and independently happened to amplify the precise objective being pursued by an organized campaign trying to force Bankhead from the ballot.

If that’s what happened, tell us.

We will print it.

But you made yourself part of this story when you used your platform to pressure a candidate to withdraw. Asking where your information came from isn’t an attack. It’s journalism.

You seemed quite fond of objective information yesterday.

So are we.

There’s another piece of this that has been bothering me.

Alani Bankhead won the Democratic primary.

Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. Not according to some motivational poster hanging inside campaign headquarters.

There was an election.

People voted.

She won.

And yet somewhere between that election and Monday’s deadline, an astonishing number of people apparently decided democracy needed a customer-service department where inconvenient results could be returned without a receipt.

Your argument is that circumstances changed. Bodnar has money. Some voters who won’t support a Democrat might support an independent. Alani doesn’t have enough cash. Therefore, she should make the “brave” decision and remove herself.

That’s an argument you’re entitled to make.

What you are not entitled to do is transform that argument into objective fact by repeatedly calling it one.

“There is no path to victory” is not a fact.

It is a prediction.

“She is destined to lose” is not data.

It is your conclusion from data.

The election hasn’t happened yet. Humanity has developed many impressive technologies, Suzanne, but we have not yet developed an FEC-compliant crystal ball.

You said in your video that your feet are “planted squarely in reality.”

Now we’ve learned that reality now contains a spreadsheet.

Reality contains an organized campaign explicitly dedicated to making the Democratic nominee drop out of the Montana Senate race.

Reality contains instructions to work through people close to that nominee.

Reality contains a candidate saying her minor daughter ended up on the list and that her family is taking security precautions.

And reality contains a prominent influencer telling hundreds of thousands of people that the nominee’s refusal to surrender might be an “ego response.”

Then came my favorite part.

After telling Alani that her campaign was hopeless, that she was destined to lose, that remaining in the race could help elect a Republican, and that withdrawing would be “something really brave,” you offered her something.

Your podcast.

If she drops out, you told her, she can come on your podcast and “spill everything.”

Suzanne.

Jesus Christ.

That’s not a consolation prize.

You don’t get to publicly help push a woman toward the emergency exit and then stand outside holding a microphone asking whether she’d like to discuss what the evacuation felt like.

Especially now.

Not until some questions are answered.

Who created Project Montana Senate Dem Dropout?

Who created the Bankhead contacts spreadsheet?

Who decided people in Alani’s personal life belonged on it?

Who distributed it?

Who recruited volunteers?

Who contacted influencers?

Who supplied the “irrefutable data and information” you’ve referenced?

And what, if anything, did you know about any of this before you pressed Record?

Those aren’t “indignant ego battles.”

Those are questions.

You told us yesterday that your feet were planted squarely in reality.

Good.

Keep them there.

Because reality just got considerably more interesting.

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Suzanne is welcome to come on our podcast and answer any of these questions. We also want to be clear about something: this is not a personal attack on Suzanne Lambert. We share her stated goal of defeating Republicans in November.

What we dispute is the extraordinary conclusion that the way to accomplish that is by pressuring Montana’s duly nominated Democratic candidate to surrender the nomination she won.

Suzanne is also far from the only influencer suddenly making this argument, which raises larger and more important questions: Who is pushing this campaign, who is contacting these influencers, and what exactly are they being told?

Those are questions worth answering, particularly now that the pressure campaign has reportedly extended beyond Alani herself and into her family.