This story has been brewing for a few weeks. The NYT reported today:
CNN has severed ties with the Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, after hacked emails from WikiLeaks showed that she shared questions for CNN-sponsored candidate events in advance with friends on Hillary Clinton’s campaign
Let’s not mince words, what Brazile did here directly undermined the public trust. These debates started out with an explicit or implicit statement to the effect that no candidate had received the questions in advance. Brazile watched those debates, knowing this wasn’t true, knowing she’d played a hand in pulling the wool over our eyes as viewers.
Can anyone, with a straight face, blame voters for thinking the Democratic primary was “rigged”?
First, DWS was ousted over e-mails that showed the DNC under her leadership demonstrated bias towards Clinton. Now it turns out she was replaced by someone who had actively violated the public’s trust to give the Clinton camp an assist in the primaries.
Even if you believe the leaked questions had no impact on the race at all, this is a problem, because it further undermines trust that the primary process was fair. Secondly, why would Brazile think the most qualified and best prepared candidate needed an assist for a debate at all?
And this was not just Brazile. People who knew Brazile had put her finger on the scale during the primary kept mum and let it happen. This includes Clinton’s communications director Jennifer Palmieri who received the e-mails and was promised more questions. Count Brazile herself amongst them. After her appointment back in July, she issued this statement:
“On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic party for the inexcusable remarks made over email. These comments do not reflect the values of the DNC or our steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nominating process. The DNC does not – and will not – tolerate disrespectful language exhibited toward our candidates. Individual staffers have also rightfully apologized for their comments, and the DNC is taking appropriate action to ensure it never happens again.”
With hindsight, this sure does sound like a big hunk of medium-rare sanctimony with a generous helping of hot steaming hypocrisy. Seriously, just how many own goals have various Democrats scored this cycle?
There have been claims that the WIkileaks e-mails could have been tampered with. No sender or recipient has, as yet, pointed to a specific e-mail and denied its accuracy. Tellingly, in this instance, Brazile has not come out and denied sending the leaked e-mails in question. If they were tampered with, it should be a simple matter for Brazile to say: “These are fabricated”. She made an oblique statement about “verifying the authenticity” of the emails back on October 11. But there’s nothing further on that three week old innuendo. Most reporters now believe Brazile’s Oct 11 statement that she didn’t share questions with the Clinton campaign was a lie. Instead, most recently she has said:
In an interview on Monday, Ms. Brazile said she offered her resignation to CNN when emails surfaced earlier in October that showed her telling Ms. Palmieri: “From time to time I get the questions in advance.”
“I didn’t want CNN to get involved in this WikiLeaks controversy,” Ms. Brazile said by telephone. “I didn’t want to put CNN in the middle of what has been a real invasive cyberintrusion.”
Yes, let’s all shed copious tears for Brazile as the victim of “cyberintrusion”. That should make it much easier to forget about the millions of ordinary voters who were watching the debates and believed it was a level playing field. It’s pretty clear Brazile thinks CNN is the one she should be apologizing to. The implication is that Democratic primary voters are absolute chumps if they expect the vice-chair of the DNC to remain neutral.