Ed Morrissey:
John blogged about this last night, but it’s worth a deeper look — because this attack on Bernie Sanders’ religion goes higher than the first reports show. The Intercept’s Sam Biddle found this nugget in a trove of hacked DNC emails released yesterday by Wikileaks from Brad Marshall, the party’s chief financial officer, from early May. As primaries in Kentucky and West Virginia approached, Marshall proposed getting “someone” — presumably from the media — to press Bernie on just how Jewish he really is. But it’s the follow-up that should really raise eyebrows:
From:MARSHALL@dnc.org
To: MirandaL@dnc.org, PaustenbachM@dnc.org, DaceyA@dnc.org
Date: 2016-05-05 03:31
Subject: 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.In case readers can’t get exactly what Marshall was aiming to do to Sanders, he sent this follow-up two minutes later:
From:MARSHALL@dnc.org
To: MirandaL@dnc.org, PaustenbachM@dnc.org, DaceyA@dnc.org
Date: 2016-05-05 03:33
Subject: Re: No shitIt’s these [sic] Jesus thing.
Marshall seems to be aiming at more than just insinuating that Sanders is a Godless heathen to the voters in the Bible Belt. He wants to highlight Sanders’ Jewishness, apparently figuring that his “Southern Baptist peeps” will reject Sanders either way. Five days later, Sanders clobbered Hillary Clinton in West Virginia, and nearly won in Kentucky a week after that. It seems that Marshall didn’t know his “Southern Baptist peeps” as well as he thinks he does — and those Southern Baptist peeps might be wondering why Marshall and the DNC thinks so little of them, too.
So what was the official response to Marshall’s plan within the DNC? One of the addressees on Marshall’s proposal was his boss, DNC chief executive officer Amy Dacey. Did she rebuke Marshall, rejecting the use of religious belief to attack a candidate running in the primaries they ran as supposedly independent arbiters? Not at all:
From:DaceyA@dnc.org
To: MARSHALL@dnc.org, MirandaL@dnc.org, PaustenbachM@dnc.org
Date: 2016-05-05 12:23
Subject: Re: No shitAMEN
Amy K. Dacey | Chief Executive Officer
Democratic National CommitteeSanders complained a lot about the DNC rigging the primary system to make sure he had no chance of beating Hillary Clinton. This e-mail exchange certainly makes it clear that the DNC at its top echelon had conspired to kneecap his campaign. Even if the plan never came to fruition, the hostility toward Sanders and the intent to ensure his defeat is plain to see. And it seems few if any ethical lines were uncrossable in their pursuit of victory for Hillary in the primaries.
Donald Trump seized on the story this morning: