This is nuts. Wikileaks has published a hack of 20,000 emails from Democratic National Committee staffers that show the party leadership worked against the anti-establishment candidate, Bernie Sanders, including the notion by a DNC executive to challenge Sanders’s religious belief on the grounds he’s an “atheist.”
Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage.
Just as bad, party chair says Debbie Wasserman Schultz says of Sanders’s effort to water down the party platform’s commitment to Israel to maybe include reference to the “occupation,” now in its 50th year:
“The Israel stuff is disturbing.”
While the party communications director observes that the Hillary Clinton campaign regards the Israel issue as an “ideal” one to “marginalize” Sanders.
Donald Trump has seized on the emails to try and recruit Sanders voters, calling the emails vicious evidence that the system is rigged, and noting the attack on Sanders’s faith.
Leaked e-mails of DNC show plans to destroy Bernie Sanders. Mock his heritage and much more. On-line from Wikileakes, really vicious. RIGGED
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2016
CNN reports that the emails, obtained from the accounts of seven Democratic National Committee staffers, threaten to upend the modus-vivendi between Clinton and Sanders forces ahead of the coming Democratic convention.
The revelation threatened to shatter the uneasy peace between the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders camps and supporters days before the Democratic convention kicks off next week.
Here’s the atheism email, on May 5, from “Marshall” at the DNC– identified as Brad Marshall, the chief financial officer of the organization, and titled, “No shit.”
It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think 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.
The Israel lobby stuff came up later in May in the context of a Washington Post story about the Sanders push to change the Democratic party platform. Wasserman Schultz commented to staff on the story: “The Israel stuff is disturbing.”
While communications director Luis Miranda told Wasserman Schultz that the Hillary Clinton campaign was pushing the Israel difference to the Washington Post reporter in order to marginalize Sanders:
“HFA [Hillary for America] specifically pushed that part of it…. The Israel plank, that they see it as an ideal issue to marginalize Bernie on.”
Here is the “Israel stuff” in that Post article that Wasserman Schultz found “disturbing.”
But the issue of U.S. policy toward Israel — which a Sanders adviser said “absolutely, legitimately will be a point of conversation” — has made some of Clinton’s backers nervous. Sanders is seeking a more “even-handed” U.S. approach to Israeli occupation of land Palestinians claim for a future state.
The current platform does not address the nearly five-decade occupation directly, but it endorses “a just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian accord, producing two states for two peoples.” Speaking last month during a contentious debate with Clinton, Sanders — who declared himself “100 percent pro-Israel” — said that Israel’s 2014 military assault on the Gaza Strip was “disproportionate” to the threat posed by Hamas rockets launched from the Palestinian territory into Israel.
Behind his words is a long debate among U.S. and international policymakers — one that divides the Democratic base and could pose a challenge for Clinton when she must bring her party together: how to weigh Palestinian interests when dealing with Israel, and whether resolute U.S. backing for Israel diminishes leverage to promote peace and fair treatment of Palestinians.
“On one hand there is not an enormous amount of difference between them. They are both pro-Israel, they are both pro-peace,” said one longtime Clinton supporter. “But in the context of the campaign terms like ‘even-handed’ can come to mean that the United States is signaling a shift” — and Clinton would oppose that.
Sanders has since folded on the Israel/Palestine issue in the platform, although the platform will come up for a vote on the convention floor this coming week; and then who knows what Sanders delegates will do…
Meantime, these emails are clear evidence of the role of the Israel lobby inside the Democratic Party. The base doesn’t love Israel; increasingly, poll numbers show that young Democrats, and women and Latinos and blacks, are turning against Israel. But the party relies on big pro-Israel money to a “shocking” “gigantic” degree and also relies on mainstream media that is dedicated to Israel. That’s why Clinton forces felt that they could “marginalize” Sanders by pushing this issue. And you wonder why Hillary Clinton pandered in her speech to the Israel lobby AIPAC, has promised megadonor Haim Saban that she will fight the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) along with Republicans, and has shown she will run to Trump’s right on this question (just as her husband ran to George H.W. Bush’s right in 1992 on settlements, and won). No, Bernie Sanders didn’t take her on on these issues, really. But his followers might.
“The Israel stuff is disturbing.”
The support of this stuff is even more disturbing.
As an American, I find it “disturbing” that U.S. policy on this matter is not “even-handed.” Indeed, after so many years of enabling the dispossession and oppression of Palestinians, I think even-handedness would imply an equal number of years of favoring the Palestinians: let us send aid to them, not to Israel. I find it disturbing that American foreign policy on this issue is immoral, unjust, and contrary to our national interest. I find it disturbing that our policy on this issue is dictated by a small group with a passionate attachment to a foreign country.
What the DNC has done is outrageous, and totally not democratic. It was very unfair of the DNC to treat Bernie Sanders this way, and that it had already decided who their nominee was going to be, by trying to sabotage the Sanders campaign. The idiotic Drumpf was right on this. This was rigged. It is hard to believe that the world’s greatest democracy has political parties that resort to such undemocratic tactics. Wasserman – Schultz should be kicked out asap, and treated like a criminal for what she has done. I doubt Clinton would however do the right thing and do so, as she needs wealthy Jews and AIPAC darlings like WS to help her win her next term. She even thanked her today, first thing, when she had her first appearance with Tim Kaine.
I feel bad for Bernie Sanders, because if he was not treated so badly by the establishment, he may have been the nominee, and the party would have a better chance of beating Drumpf.
People are terrified of Trump and the media is fanning the fear so that the lessor of two evils theory kicks in. But in total Hillary is far more dangerous than Trump and Pence is more dangerous than Hillary. Kane got the blessing In the Israeli press as a pro Israel centrist. One thing trump is right about the system is corrupt and rigged by dirty blood money.
Interesting that such a big deal is made of Sanders’ faith. Australian and British politicians who have any belief in God usually prefer a discreet silence about it, along with their share dealings and that business with the teenage girls and the whipped cream. (No, I haven’t got a copy of the video.) God talk makes the punters nervous.