Just because you’re paranoid, the old saying goes, does not mean that people are not against you. That must be how Bernie Sanders feels today as Wikileaks provided validation of just how the Democratic National Committee was indeed colluding against his candidacy – something he had been saying right along. Okay, so party leaders have their favorites. That is the way of the world. And no Sandinistas are among the Democratic Party’s elite. Just ask Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Sanders supporter who did not last long as a Vice-Chair of the DNC. And, of course, Sanders himself is sort of an erstwhile Democrat, having not been baptized in the party’s waters, at least not in any river in Arkansas.
But holy smokes. This new revelation is not about being “careless” (as the FBI Director might have put it) or open to multiple interpretations (as defendants in the Inquisition might have thought it before they literally “felt the burn”). This stuff is blatant, arrogant, hateful (you know, whether Sanders is a Jew or an atheist, it’s going to hurt with my “peeps” in Kentucky and West Virginia. That alienated more groups – four — in one sentence than Trump has even managed to do yet), and stupid. Chairman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has agreed to step down after the convention but it looks like that is not satisfying the Sanders supporters.
Remember, the Sanders movement is much larger than the man. His endorsement of Clinton came in the form of being mainly against Donald Trump and there were never any assurances that many or most of his people would follow. The odds today are even worse for Clinton that she can assure them that she is worth supporting or that the Democratic Party is their home in November. She and her surrogates can make the case that Trump is too scary, but these folks and a whole lot of other people already know that. She has to answer that she is actually better. And yet she is still at best only running even with him. She has made the competence argument only to be undermined by FBI Director James Comey. Now she is going to have a few problems with the inclusive argument as well.
This DNC email issue is even worse than the first one. That one was all about process types of things, perhaps some plausible deniability for Clinton that she was only doing what other Secretaries of State had done, or that nothing she sent was classified at the time, or if it was that it did not jeopardize anyone – or whatever. But this new issue is real, tangible, and it smells. It shows her campaign to be mean-spirited, her party unfair, and her people petty and unprepared for the world stage. Why, Clinton wonders aloud every chance she gets, do people say such awful things about me? Why are they so mean to me? Note to Hillary: read the emails. We are.
And Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is not even gone yet. But even when she is, the other folks are still there. At least Ted Cruz imploded on the Thursday night of the GOP gathering. This one at the DNC is early and bad, and it threatens to derail her chance to unite a party of folks who can’t stand each other. It is going to take someone so slippery and amoral to find a way out of this for her.
Does she even know anyone like that?