After Wikileaks dropped a bombshell by releasing almost 20,000 hacked DNC emails, the Bernie Sanders campaign is not happy. Many of these emails proved that there was a concerted effort to stop Sanders from winning the nomination, including a possible effort to question his faith.
“Someone does have to be held accountable,” said campaign manager Jeff Weaver to ABC News, adding:
“We spent 48 hours of public attention worrying about who in the [Donald] Trump campaign was going to be held responsible for the fact that some lines of Mrs. Obama’s speech were taken by Mrs. Trump. Someone in the DNC needs to be held at least as accountable as the Trump campaign.”
Weaver went on, saying:
“Everybody is disappointed that much of what we felt was happening at the DNC was in fact happening, that you had in this case a clear example of the DNC taking sides and looking to place negative information into the political process.”
“We have an electoral process. The DNC, by its charter, is required to be neutral among the candidates. Clearly it was not. We had obviously pointed that out in a number of instances prior to this, and these emails just bear that out.”
What these emails show is a clear attempt to squash the candidacy of Sanders in order to help the “establishment” favorite, Hillary Clinton. “Everything our fans have been saying — and they were beaten down for and called conspiracy theorists — and now it’s in black and white.” said another member of Sanders’ campaign, Rania Batrice.
Attention is now being focused on DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who Sanders had previously called on to resign. Just days before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, the chairwoman is seen more as a figure of disunity than unity and she will no longer be speaking at the convention.
The leaked emails also showed an attempt to target Sanders on his religion, a topic politicians always avoid attacking each other on. CFO of the DNC Brad Marshal wrote in an email in May:
“It might may [sic] no difference, but for KY and WA can we get someone to ask his belief? Does he believe in God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My southern baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”
All in all, this shows just how slimy the DNC has been. While the Republican Party has struggled with disunity, the Democrats appear to be competing to see who can fall apart the fastest. It will be interesting to see how this carries over into Philadelphia. Will Sanders delegates revolt? Will Sanders give a speech to the Democrats much like the one Ted Cruz gave to Republicans? What looked to be an easy week for Democrats just got exponentially more difficult.
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