I've somewhat wondered if this is an orchestrated conspiracy

No conspiracy. It's all very much out in the open.

I worked on a democratic Senate campaign last year for someone that I knew personally for over 20 years. Here's my takeaway: The party is like a factory. This factory looks for the best raw material (candidate) to work with. The Candidate can have some good qualifications and hopefully a compelling back story. But ultimately the campaign and party will determine what kind of narrative to create around the candidate. At the loading dock of the factory comes out a finished product that, in the case of the person whose campaign I worked for, does not even remotely resemble the actual person that started out on the assembly line.

The campaign/party is a machine. The machine has one purpose: get and keep political power. Tell any lie Craft whatever narrative is needed to make the candidate salable and more desirable than the opposing candidate. Hillary represents the epitome of this process. But... she is so phony, so fake, so scripted, so genuinely unlikable that the DNC, surrogates, operatives, etc will pull out all the stops (in Hillary's case they absolutely have to) in order to get her to the general. One of the little tricks the DNC pulled is limit the debates to 4 and hopefully with little hoopla and at time when not many people are likely to watch..

Go back and watch how Bubba tried to trash Obama in 2008 when it looked like the Hillbot was going to lose the nomination. Now, cube that, then cube it again and that's the volume of dirty tricks in store this time around.