Mr. Sanders started to disappear as a serious political threat
for Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton weeks and even months ago,
when it became obvious that Mrs. Clinton would garner enough delegates to
assure her nomination. Long before Mrs. Clinton had thrown off her annoying Primary
incubus, her agents were doing their best to destroy the Sanders campaign, as
recent emails hacked by Russian operatives and released by Wikileaks make
clear.
Governor Dannel Malloy, head of the national Democratic
Governors Association and the Savonarola of the progressive movement in the
northeast, an email bonfire snapping and crackling all around him, addressed
the Democratic Nominating Convention on opening day even as Socialist
Bernie Sanders was fading into the wallpaper.
Mr. Sanders months earlier had airily dismissed prospective Democratic
Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s compromising emails as unworthy of
attention. “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damned
emails,” Sanders told Mrs. Clinton during a Primary debate. He received a warm and appreciative smile from Mrs.
Clinton while operatives on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were busily tarnishing his reputation. One
thinks of Paris, sighting Achilles hauling the body of Hector around the walls
of Troy in his chariot, timidly replacing the arrow back in his quiver and murmuring to
one of his comrades, “All this talk about Achilles’ damned heel just makes me
sick.”
Of course, Mrs. Clinton’s email scandal did not disappear
after Mr. Sanders’ benediction; nor will it disappear now that FBI Director
James Comey has declined to open a criminal prosecution against the Democratic
Party nominee for President. Mrs. Clinton’s Achilles’ heel – one of several –
continues to be her slew of compromising emails.
And now a similar plague of compromising emails threatens
the Democratic Party itself.
In one of 20,000 emails released by Wikileaks, “Trump isn’t
trying to bring people together,” Rebecca Christopher, a DNC foot soldier,
advises “Video vetting,” a Democratic Party propaganda vendor, “Attached is a
script for a new video we’d like to use to mop up some more taco bowl
engagement, and demonstrate the (sic)
Trump actually isn’t trying.”
“Taco bowl engagement?” Hispanic-American voters, heavily
courted by the Clinton machine, will wince at the racist slur – and then vote
for Mrs. Clinton anyway; such are the expectations of Mrs. Clinton’s formidable , money-sodden and far flung campaign organization.
In another email,
Mark Paustenbach, National Press Secretary & Deputy Communications Director
of the Democratic National Committee, identifies Greg Sargent of the Washington
Post as a suitable mouthpiece for the Democratic Party Ministry of Propaganda and
advises a fellow DNC operative that “the specific reporter is not as important as
getting it to an outlet before the news breaks so we can help control the
narrative on the front end. Otherwise this may likely get spun in a
not-so-helpful way.” Other samplings of the massive Wikileak cache of purloined
DNC emails may be found here.
Even among partisan lackeys in the news
business, resentment coils at some point like a serpent in the soul. Really and truly,
the average ethically unchallenged reporter does not like to be fretted and played upon by their political
overlords.
Hamlet to Guildenstern: “Why, look you now, how
unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me. You would seem to know
my stops. You would pluck out the heart of my mystery. You would sound me from
my lowest note to the top of my compass. And there is much music, excellent
voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak? 'Sblood, do you
think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you
will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me.”
Following the resignation of Democratic National Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, mostly as a sop to Mr. Sanders who had earlier called upon
her to resign, Mr. Malloy was asked by MSNBC's Chris Hayes to weigh in on the wrecking ball emails. Mr. Malloy answered, “It’s pretty
clear that you were getting private thoughts that never should have been put in
writing. Anyone has a right to have an idea, and most of them shouldn’t be
shared. It was an absolute mistake, and they shouldn’t have done that, and it
was wrong, and I think she’s [Ms. Schultz] decided that she needs to step down.”
Ms. Schultz had stepped down into yet another job fluffing
pillows for Mrs. Clinton, and Mr. Malloy will return home to a brewing controversy
of his own, a criminal grand jury investigation of dirtball campaign financing practices
involving lawbreaking and possible compromising emails that perhaps never should have been put into writing.
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