I had assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that former interim DNC chair Donna Brazile no longer had a career in American politics. How could she? After the revelations which came out of the leak of John Podesta’s emails one might easily presume that she would be so radioactive nobody would come within a country mile of her. This was clearly an errant conclusion since the party kept her on straight through the election of her successor last month and she is still making the rounds on the interview circuit to this day. This past week she published an editorial in Time Magazine which finally seemed to amount to a confession of what she did to rig the Democratic primaries against Bernie Sanders. (Emphasis added)
In October, a subsequent release of emails revealed that among the many things I did in my role as a Democratic operative and DNC Vice Chair before assuming the interim DNC Chair position was to share potential town hall topics with the Clinton campaign. I had been working behind the scenes to add more town hall events and debates to the primary calendar, and I helped ensure those events included diverse moderators and addressed topics vital to minority communities. My job was to make all our Democratic candidates look good, and I worked closely with both campaigns to make that happen. But sending those emails was a mistake I will forever regret.
Saying that you “forever regret” something isn’t quite the same as an apology, but at least it’s a start. So now we can all let the healing begin and simply move on, right? Not so fast. In a follow-up interview, Brazile reversed course and yet again flatly denied any wrongdoing. (NOLA)
If you think that the last line is an admission guilt and an expression of remorse … well, not so much.
In an email exchange Saturday with the website Journal-isms, Brazile strongly denied that she had shared any debate questions with Clinton’s campaign.
“At no time did I receive or participate in the drafting or dissemination of questions provided by CNN,” Brazile told Journal-isms. In a follow-up telephone conversation, Brazile said, “I’m not going to allow the lies to stand.”
The first thing to note is the now familiar pattern of how carefully Brazile couches her words. Notice how she specifically points to the “questions provided by CNN.” That’s yet another case of being too clever by half because in the primary incident she provided the Clinton campaign with a question which came from TV One anchor Roland Martin, not CNN’s Jake Tapper. By doing this, she can still cling to the claim that she’s technically telling the truth.
Putting all of this together, her curious statement in the editorial column begins to make more sense. She never said she regretted providing the question to the Clinton campaign. What she actually regretted was “sending those emails.” This is sadly all too common in American politics and what she’s really saying here is, I’m not sorry I did it. I’m sorry I got caught.
Given all that we now know, I’m still left with the one question I’ve had ever since the scandal came to light. How does this woman still have a job anywhere in the American political game? Do the Democrats honestly have no shame?
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