The Democrats closed down their convention on Thursday night only to be met by erupting problems within the party. Three top staffers announced they are leaving the Democratic National Committee (DNC). It is directly due to the leak of damaging emails about the primary battle between Hillary Clinton and her opponent Bernie Sanders.
What has become a familiar situation, the former secretary of state and the party’s presidential nominee is left unscathed, as she has so many times over the last 24-years in the public eye. The latest soldiers to take a bullet for Hillary are the CEO of the DNC, Amy Dacey, communications director Luis Miranda and chief financial officer Brad Marshall, the DNC announced in a short statement.
Donna Brazile, the mouthpiece for the Democrats in countless Sunday morning news programs and even a cameo on the CBS show “The Good Wife,” will take the DNC power seat after Debbie Wasserman Schultz took the fall and resigned as chairwoman.
Naturally, there was no mention of the email scandal in Brazile’s statement, spewing mostly niceties on the departing collaborators who sought to destroy Sanders’ campaign. “Thanks in part to the hard work of Amy, Luis, and Brad, the Democratic Party has adopted the most progressive platform in history, has put itself in a financial position to win in November, and has begun the important work of investing in state party partnerships,” Brazile said in her statement.
This exercise is commonly known as “changing the subject at hand.”
The question is, will Sanders’ faithful supporters buy it? It’s more than a bit obvious to learned Americans that the DNC is trying to turn heads away from the disastrous leak of nearly 20,000 stolen emails proving Sanders’ outcry that the committee was plotting against him.
Sanders can thank none other than WikiLeaks for publishing the emails just days before the Democratic convention, causing a political firestorm. In one email alone, Marshall “appeared” to write about a plan to use Sanders’ Jewish religion against him. The response from Dancey was a short “Amen.”
Nina Turner, a spokeswoman for the Sanders campaign said, “They need to clean house the DNC),” she told The Hill. She was right, shortly after that statement, Wasserman Schultz, who had organized a well-run convention was thrown under the bus only to be hired as a Hillary Clinton campaign “adviser.”
Now that all the bodies have been taken off their swords, the new field commander, prominent television commentator Brazile, will form a new battle plan to salvage Hillary’s “trustworthiness.” Her first directive was to name Tom McMahon to head a transition team to help prepare the party for November. Brandon Davis, who already serves as chief of staff, will continue in that capacity. Doug Thornell, a Democratic strategist who works at the consulting firm SKDKnickerbocker, would be joining the DNC on an interim basis as senior adviser.
Donald Trump was given a political gift with that scandal, but he once again derailed the opportunity with his own “foot-in-mouth” disease. He criticized the Gold-Star father of a fallen Muslim soldier which screamed, “Shut your mouth and be gracious.” Of course The Donald didn’t see things that way and stepped deeper into a bigger and bigger hole of his own making.
Trump later said that even socialist Bernie Sanders was moving against Hillary. “Clinton knew everything that was going on. She knew it was a rigged system, that Bernie Sanders never had a chance,” Trump said.
It was too little, too late. Trump squandered a golden opportunity to gain ground because of his inability to know when to keep his mouth shut.
