Building a Narrative Against Sanders
“Wondering if there’s a good Bernie narrative for a story which is that Bernie never ever had his act together, that his campaign was a mess,” DNC National Secretary Mark Paustenbach wrote in an email to National Communications Director Luis Miranda on May 21. After detailing ways in which the Sanders camp was disorganized, Paustenbach concludes, “It’s not a DNC conspiracy it’s because they never had their act together.”
The idea was nixed, though. “True,” Miranda acknowledged in his response. “But the chair has been advised not to engage. So we’ll have to leave it alone.”
Lamentations That Sanders Is Not a Democrat
As the primary season wore on, Wasserman Schultz appeared to grow exasperated with Sanders’ desire to stay in the race when the delegate math was against him — in one email lamenting the fact that he is an independent in the Senate but was running as a Democrat in the primaries. In an April 24 email she received with an article describing the ways Sanders felt the DNC was undermining his campaign, she wrote back, “Spoken like someone who has never been a member of the Democratic Party and has no understanding of what we do.”
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