Organizers of Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate in Goffstown, N.H., left hand warmers at every work station in the media filing center. They did so, presumably, because the press file and adjacent spin room were perched atop the ice in Sullivan Arena, where the Saint Anselm College Hawks boast a winning record in the New England Hockey Conference.
But the chill wasn’t just emanating from below the floorboards. It was in the air around Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) top aides and surrogates, still frosted over the Democratic National Committee’s decision to suspend access to its voter files late last week. The sanction came after the DNC caught several Sanders staffers taking advantage of a temporary software glitch to snoop around rival Hillary Clinton’s voter data. (The Sanders campaign fired one of the perpetrators Thursday and suspended two others Saturday.)
Speaking to reporters in the arena before the debate, campaign manager Jeff Weaver referred to the suspension, which was lifted late Friday, as a “death sentence” and a “very heavy-handed, unfair overreaction by the chairwoman.” He was referring to DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
“I think what it demonstrates is there are establishment forces out there that are very, very concerned about the success of this campaign,” Weaver said.
(Read Seven Days‘ coverage of Saturday’s debate here.)
Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator who endorsed Sanders last month and who has been campaigning on his behalf ever since, called the DNC’s decision to “bring down a hatchet” on the Vermonter’s campaign “stunningly wrong.”
“I’m embarrassed right now as a Democrat that the DNC would do something like that — attack one of your presidential candidates in that way,” she said.
At least in their public comments, top Sanders supporters directed much of their ire at the DNC, not the Clinton campaign. But they repeatedly suggested that the former was in the tank for the latter.
“I would say that, for a while now, we have believed that some of the decisions made by the party were made to benefit Secretary Clinton and her campaign,” senior Sanders adviser Tad Devine told reporters before the debate. “For example, the fact that we’re having a debate on the Saturday night before Christmas — that our last debate in Iowa was on a Saturday night.”
Asked about the Clinton campaign’s use of the words “stole” and “theft” to describe the data breach, Devine said, “That was an utter and complete mischaracterization about what happened.” Soon thereafter, Devine went nuclear on Twitter:
Asked Saturday afternoon whether Wasserman Schultz should resign from her role atop the DNC, Weaver paused and considered the question.
“I’m not going to go that far,” he said after some reflection. “That’s for the DNC officers and others to decide.”
Why not, given all his tough talk?
“Let me just say this: When Sen. Sanders secures the nomination, I think there’ll be some leadership changes at the DNC,” Weaver responded.
Oh, snap!
“I’m not really worried about it,” Wasserman Schultz said later Saturday upon learning of Weaver’s words. “I serve at the pleasure of the president of the United States — and I expect to continue though my entire tenure.”
The DNC chair wasn’t above flinging the zingers herself. Asked if she had “overreacted” to the data breach, Wasserman Schultz took the opportunity to characterize the Sanders campaign as dysfunctional.
“I called Sen. Sanders and I’m the one that informed Sen. Sanders of his own campaign’s breach,” she said. “And he was very troubled by that.”
Soon after the candidates took the debate stage that night, Sanders apologized for the actions of his staff. Though he sounded, at first, like he wasn’t all that sorry, he quickly delivered a full-throated apology — to Clinton and to his supporters.
“This is not the type of campaign that we run,” he said.
After the debate, Devine told reporters in Sullivan Arena that his boss handled the exchange “brilliantly.”
“I think he made an important point that, listen, the American people don’t want a bunch of political squabbles between candidates and parties,” said the guy who’d just been squabbling with a candidate and a party. “What they want are candidates who will deal with the real issues that confront their life.”
Weaver, too, said he’d been impressed by what a “big person” Sanders had been during the debate.
“I think we saw it in the first debate when he talked about ‘those damn emails,’ and you saw it again here tonight,” the campaign manager said. “That’s just the kind of person he is.”
So was Weaver, like his boss, ready to apologize to the Clinton campaign — even though he refused to do so hours earlier in an interview with Politico?
“I think the candidate speaks for the campaign, and I thought he was the biggest person on the stage,” he said. “And, as always, we are very, very proud of Bernie.”
“That wasn’t my question,” Seven Days pointed out. “My question was: Are you sorry now?”
“I’m sorry it happened,” Weaver said.
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I believe that the DNC set a trap for the Sanders campaign by dangling that information in front of them and then declaring outrage that they would actually look at it. How are we to know if the Clinton campaign was able to view proprietary lists of Sanders donors at the same time? This was no accident, but another strategy to take down this campaign at the height of its success, because Hillary has already be anointed as the DNC’s chosen candidate.
At the time, we’re meant to trust the DNC’s word that the Clinton campaign did not do the same. However, Bernie’s campaign cited two prior security breaches that they reported to the DNC–and apparently the DNC did nothing to fix this security breach issue. The second that Bernie’s staffers stepped out of line, the DNC immediately revoked their access to their own data and Clinton pounced on it as a target. The head of the DNC strongly supports Clinton, too.
It’d be shocking if this was all mere coincidence.
The guy who’s spent the vast majority of his political career openly bashing and hating on Democrats and the Democratic Party . . . a) is now trying to use the hated Democratic Party to get elected; b) gets caught breaking the Party’s rules; and c) whines that the Party is not being nice to him about his breaking of the rules?
You’re kidding, right?
This is why Bernie’s just plain wrong in saying he’d not run as an independent, because he doesn’t want to be a “spoiler”. How could the election be more spoiled, for honest-to-goodness progressives if Clinton gets the nomination? They’re working to spoil his campaign — and the mass media isn’t even mentioning the restriction from the DNC database for his own campaign’s data — so why shouldn’t he spoil their party? Heck, I’d actually vote for him if he didn’t have a “D” next to h is name.
Bottom line, Bernie’s staff got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. More corrupt political hijinks.
Sgt. Wasserman-Schultz was a major player in Hillary’s 2008 campaign. Now she’s heading the party. If you don’t believe the power of the Clinton machine, here it is in living color. How could a stooge be running the DNC in any other scenario?!
Coincidence, I don’t think so. Bernie was doomed from the start against the ‘machine’.