Written by James and Jean Anton   

Debbie Wasserman Shultz’s monumental blunder may have cost Clinton the nomination.

On 18 December 2015 there was breach of political data; that is to say, the DNC’s database vendor ‘somehow’ lost the protective firewall meant to shield competitors’ data from each other. This had happened once before. It was Bernie Sanders who without any fuss reported it to Wasserman, who decided to do nothing about it.

When there was a second ‘breach’. Wasserman, the leader of the DNC, did not call judiciously Bernie to ask about it. Instead she immediately screamed “foul play.” She ‘leaked’ the story to the New York Times and the Washington Post and other major media friends who supported Hillary. They dutifully reported that Sanders, who is admired for his integrity, was involved in highly unethical political behavior. They never bothered to investigate.
Their collective intentions were clear: to take down Bernie Sanders.

The smear technique Wasserman employed (undoubtedly after consulting Hillary) was informed by none other than Karl Rove.
If you recall, Rove was “W’”s campaign manager. And he had a formidable task of handling ‘W’ who had ducked active duty in Vietnam by using his father’s influence to get into the Texas Air National Guard, then he quit flying, and ultimately deserted the Guard altogether. To make matters worse, everyone knew by that time that Bush was a liar–that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that the war itself was an unmitigated disaster.
Bush’s opponent was a highly decorated war hero, Senator John Kerry.

Sounds hopeless, doesn’t it? Not to Rove.
Rove’s website (Karl Rove’s Handbook, Daily Kos, 8 Oct 2012) gives 15 tactics that the Republican party routinely uses that have turned filthy politics into the norm. Tactic #2 advises Republicans to attack your opponent’s greatest strength. Tactic #5 advises Republicans to lie–the bigger the lie the better.
Kerry’s greatest political strength was his heroism under fire, so Rove assembled a motley crew of disgruntled Swift boat losers and sent them in to smear Kerry. They created stories that were later proved to be unfounded; nevertheless the mainstream media used them to smear Kerry.
It worked, “W” was “reelected.”

If the smear worked for Bush, why shouldn’t it have worked for Clinton? Well truth be told, it might have; however, smearing Bernie (who was gaining momentum) would not be enough for Wasserman, and she panicked.

Why?
She was aware that Bernie’s crowds were consistently much bigger than Hillary’s; Sanders also had just gotten some major endorsements, and was raising more money from supporters without the help of super PACS, and recent polls showed Sanders doing better than Hillary against Republicans.

Wasserman decided to use the breach-of-data smear to summarily end Sander’s political life. By appealing to moral values–Rove Tactic #6, she would say that Sander’s act was so egregious it disqualified him from running for President. And so as retribution, she deprived Bernie of the data that he owned, that had been collected by his own volunteers and workers. In other words, she was trying to win the nomination for Hillary by by blocking his ability to communicate with volunteers and staff.

One can only speculate that she hoped that Bernie would make the same mistake that Kerry made when he was smeared. (Kerry said that he wouldn’t “dignify” the Swift boaters patently false accusations (Rove Tactic #5 the Big Lie) with a reply, which turned out to be a huge political mistake).

Turns out she totally misjudged Sanders.
Instead of being cowed, Sanders immediately demanded a full, independent investigation, and sued the DNC.
Sanders never was a wuss.

When Sanders sued, Wasserman turned to her lawyers. They told her that she could in no way, shape or form defend her actions. Sanders had an open and shut case. She had no right at all to deprive Sanders of data that he owned. That she had better back down. Wasserman put her tail between her legs and backed down.
Wow!

Wasserman’s retreat from the attack meant that Democrats everywhere would be more aware than ever that she was working not for the Democratic Party, or even for Democratic Party ideals, but for Hillary Clinton. It showed that she would lie, smear, and recklessly attack opponents (even good Democratic opponents) to get Clinton the nomination.
The situation looked like what it was from the beginning, a setup. Obviously Wasserman was trying to fix the election. Equally obvious is that she was doing it with the blessing of Hillary.
She could no longer deny it.

Unfortunately Wasserman’s ploy has fractured the Democratic Party.
If Clinton gets the nomination (which is by no means as certain as her team wants everyone to believe), she will have a great deal of trouble getting elected without Progressive support.

Her only hope, if she gets the nomination, would be that the RNC, which is bought and paid for by the far radical right, nominates a candidate so extremely dangerous, crazy, and incompetent that voting for her becomes their only choice.

However, her nomination is no longer inevitability: “I don’t know how else to say it, except by saying it,” Hillary emailed a few days after the smear scandal, “We could lose the nomination.”

So there is hope.