DNC staffers waiting for Wikileaks to drop the other shoe

The resignation of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz came shortly after Wikileaks published hacked DNC emails which showed the organization gunning for Bernie Sanders. Today Politico reports staffers are expecting more to come with some senior people having already been asked to prepare resignation statements:

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Last week’s WikiLeaks dump, releasing thousands of emails showing DNC officials sparring with Bernie Sanders supporters and with one another, was what finally got Hillary Clinton’s top aides to force her out Sunday on the eve of the convention.

Now, all DNC senior staffers seem to believe they’re on the verge of being fired — and that’s before the next WikiLeaks release, which many fear is coming within days, and which DNC lawyers are bracing for. Several staff members have already been asked to prepare statements about their departures.

Staff members were briefed in a Tuesday afternoon meeting in Washington that their personal data was part of the hack, as were Social Security numbers and other information for donors, according to people who attended. Don’t search WikiLeaks, they were told — malware is embedded throughout the site, and they’re looking for more data.

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, has promised the group will release “a lot more material in the near future.”

The fate of DNC staffers is really just a sidebar in a story focused on the discontent with Wasserman-Schultz in the months before her resignation. As Politico describes it, everyone from the Clinton campaign to the White House to House Democrats were frustrated with her behavior but chose to look the other way until the Wikileaks story made that impossible.

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The story opens with an example in which Wasserman-Schultz was supposed to ask Vice President Biden for help with DNC fundraising. Instead she asked him to do a fundraiser for her reelection and also asked him to attend her daughter’s bat mitzvah in Florida. Here’s another example that frustrated Democrats:

Frustration within the DNC, the White House and the Clinton campaign was exacerbated by Wasserman Schultz’s efforts to raise her own profile by appearing more often on national television…

But Wasserman Schultz’s increased television activity increased her problems. After the raucous Nevada state convention in May, she went on the attack against Sanders and his supporters, and an enraged Sanders responded by calling for her resignation.

Just at the point when Democratic leaders were hoping to shift toward more party unity, she’d inflamed the situation and put herself in the middle of it.

There’s a certain irony at work here. Evidence suggests Russia was behind the hack of the DNC. Many Democrats, including those still at the DNC and people in the Clinton camp, have suggested it is part of an effort by Vladmir Putin to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election. But so far the biggest impact of the hack has been to dislodge the bumbling Wasserman-Schultz from her position at the DNC, paving the way for someone who will likely to do a much better job making the case for the Democratic party.

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David Strom 6:00 PM | March 26, 2024
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