"He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist."
In
a recent e-mail sent to several Democratic party staff, a top
Democratic National Committee (DNC) official suggested that the party
should raise questions about Sanders’ “Jewish heritage” in key primary
states.
“It might ma[ke] no difference, but for [Kentucky] and [West
Virginia] can we get someone to ask his belief[?]” DNC chief financial
officer Brad Marshall wrote in an e-mail
to several other party officials on May 5, 2016. “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 [percentage] points difference,” Marshall
continued. “My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference
between a Jew and an atheist.”
The very next day, the Sanders publicly accused the DNC
of “trying to tip the party convention in Hillary Clinton’s favor.” In
December of 2015, the party cut off the Sanders campaign’s access to its own voter data.
Marshall’s e-mail was part of a large trove of DNC messages released by Wikileaks
on Friday. The revelation of his suggested attacks on Sanders’ only
poured fuel on the fire of accusations that the DNC was anything but
neutral during the party’s primary between Sanders, a sitting senator
from Vermont and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Marshall, however, was not the only senior DNC official eager to
knife Sanders. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz called Sanders’
campaign manager a “damn liar” in a May 17 e-mail.
In response to another e-mail, which contained a news article about
Sanders’ desire to appoint a new party chair if he won the nomination,
Wasserman Schultz wrote, “This is a silly story. He isn’t going to be president.”
