The release of leaked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails that appear to show DNC officials discussing how to work against Bernie Sanders has inflamed the progressive icon's followers, prompting cries of corruption and institutional unfairness. But is it really shocking if the DNC preferred Hillary Clinton as the party's candidate?
Nearly 20,000 internal DNC emails from January 2015 to May 25, 2016,?were released Friday by Wikileaks?showing messages sent and received from the accounts of Communications Director Luis Miranda; National Finance Director Jordon Kaplan; Finance Chief of Staff Scott Comer; Finance Director of Data & Strategic Initiatives Daniel Parrish; Finance Director Allen Zachary; Senior Advisor Andrew Wright; and northern California Finance Director Robert Stowe. One message appears to suggest that Sanders, who drew establishment scorn for staying in the race past the end of the primaries, be questioned about his religious faith in an apparent attempt to hurt his candidacy in several states.?
Related: #DNCLeaks: Sanders Calls for Wasserman Schultz to Resign
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A May 5, 2016, email from CFO Brad Marshall to Miranda and others, with the subject line "no shit,"?reads: "It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. 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 points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist." While Sanders isn't explicitly named in the message, it's clear they're referring to the New York City native who did speak of his Jewish faith during the primary season, despite Marshall's denial to The Intercept. It's unclear whether officials ever got "someone" to pose the question to Sanders.
Other emails reveal annoyance with the Sanders team and sensitivity toward the frequent charge that the DNC was biased toward Clinton, who introduced Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her running mate Saturday. One email received by Miranda pitches the narrative that "Bernie never had his act together, that his campaign was a mess. Specifically, DWS (DNC Chair?Debbie Wasserman Schultz) had to call Bernie directly in order to get the campaign to do things because they'd either ignored or forgotten to (do) something critical...It's not a DNC conspiracy, it's because they never had their act together."
Questioning a candidate's religious beliefs (or lack thereof)?in a craven attempt to pander to faith-based voters should be out of bounds, even in the bizarre political season we find ourselves in. It's gutter politics that deserves all of the condemnation it's receiving, and DNC officials must answer for it. But how does the apparent effort prove that the primary selection process was "rigged" against Sanders, as many are claiming? How does one logically proceed from offensive emails to systemic corruption that handed a candidate a win??Reading Twitter, one would think ballots were tampered with or votes thrown out, with no less than Donald Trump opining that the leak shows the system is "rigged."
DNC officials' personal feelings toward Sanders, or even attempts to influence coverage of his candidacy doesn't change the reality that Clinton won more states, votes and delegates than the insurgent Sanders. It didn't alter anyone's ability to vote for the candidate of their choice or influence the tabulation of state-by-state primary votes. It doesn't change the reality that a Northeastern self-described Democratic Socialist with a far-left platform was always going to be a tough sell to the electorate at large, even in this outsider campaign season. It shouldn't be shocking if top DNC officials thought a highly experienced former secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady would be a better bet in November over a candidate who would have been caricatured by Republicans?as a tax-loving liberal who wants to give everyone freebies.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, will likely face fresh calls to resign after the leak of internal committee emails. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Sanders' staffers are rightly condemning the information contained in the leak but otherwise encouraging the hyperbolic complaints of his followers.?"Everybody is disappointed that much of what we felt was happening at the DNC was in fact happening, that you had in this case a clear example of the DNC taking sides and looking to place negative information into the political process," Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told ABC. Sanders staffer Rania Batrice was even more explicit: "Everything our fans have been saying—and they were beaten down for and called conspiracy theorists—and now it's in black and white." But is it? The Sanders campaign and its followers had largely suggested that every Clinton primary win was illegitimate, with vague,cheap air jordans,http://www.nanicvlasy.sk/search/node/cheapjordanshoesfreeshipping.com/bolg, juvenile claims of her success attributed to the "corporate establishment."?
The DNC leak couldn't come at a worse time for the Democratic party. Clinton and the Dems are looking to counter the Republican National Convention and Trump's vision of America as a Mad Max-style hellscape with the selection of Virginia's Kaine and the Democratic National Convention, which starts Monday. The uneasy truce between Clinton and Sanders, brokered with a progressive party platform and an endorsement by the Vermont senator,cheap retro jordans, could reasonably be in jeopardy, and calls will continue for Schultz to be replaced as party chief. But the greatest danger is the leak feeds a narrative that doesn't have to actually be true for it to be damaging. If enough progressives feel Clinton and the DNC "stole" the nomination, does it matter if there really isn't tangible evidence of voter fraud? The narrative could be enough to send more progressives into the Jill Stein camp or lead them to stay home on election day, which could be fatal for Clinton's chances in a race that is closer than most anyone could have imagined.?
Dads! They're great—and when they send you an email or text, it's like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs. Everything is ostensibly in its right place, but something's a little off.
We polled 12 writers for their strangest and funniest tales of dads using digital communication (Facebook included). Happy Father's Day. Go text your dad some emojis.
ADAM ROTSTEIN, comedian and contributor to College Humor
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"My dad was born in Israel but has worked my whole life as an IT consultant at what I imagine is one of those awful corporate complexes in central New Jersey (I've never visited). He is a veteran of American office culture and probably uses the expression 'hump day' with his colleagues. It's all very professional. Sometimes we talk about intimate,cheap jordan see, familial matters via email and he still signs them 'Regards, Moshe' (and it's not his work email signature). It's ridiculously impersonal and probably reflexive in nature. His greetings are completely streamlined. I pay them no regard."
DEBBY HERBENICK, professor, sex advice columnist and author of?The Coregasm Workout
"My dad was an early adopter, and in college in the mid- to late 1990s, I was one of the few people who had a parent so active on email. His emails were frequent (several a day), long (several hundred words each), written in mostly all caps with occasional lowercase, and he told fantastic stories of his childhood, adolescence and peak moments of his life. He signed them with various self-given monikers, like TAO ('The Ancient One') and 'BLT' (an inside joke).
Also, before most news websites had anything very sophisticated online, and while home from college, I was embarrassed to learn my dad was a frequent faxer of the local news station, Channel 7 in Miami. The thing about faxes, as opposed to email, is that the original paper you faxed over is still in evidence and, unless you threw it away, available for everyone to see. His fax was in the room I stayed in when I came home, and I was mortified to see what a fax troll he was (though of course we didn't call it trolling back then). As far as I could tell, he faxed them pretty much daily ('Hey 7!') to correct their grammar or comment on their coverage of then-first lady Hillary Clinton, Janet Reno or others in power. Some of the Channel 7 staff seemed to egg him on, faxing him back with pointed but funny comments of their own; fortunately, nowhere did I see a cease and desist.
My dad passed away before the world of Facebook, Twitter and iPhones, and I can only imagine what these tools would have been like in his clever but trollish hands."
A function? Is dad taking mom to the club tonight? pic.twitter.com/53jFhURqJm
— Logan (@PlagueLovers) August 18, 2014
DOUG MAIN, reporter for Newsweek
"My dad is the Hemingway of emails. Not because he sounds like a famous novelist. But because the sentences are as terse and concise as possible. Like this. It's partially because he checks his email only once every couple of weeks. So I get replies from him weeks or even a month later. He's an old-school doctor who prefers face time to FaceTime. But mainly because he types with one finger, hunting and pecking. Also, commas rarely make an appearance. Whenever he writes more than a paragraph, I know it's very important, and I certainly appreciate the time it must have taken."
MARA WILSON,?writer,cheap jordan shoes, former child star, creator of the show?What Are You Afraid Of??and author of forthcoming book of personal essays
"My dad once texted me, 'Hi Marathon, did you get the package I sent you?' I wrote back, 'Sure did, thanks, Dadthon!'"
KATHERINE COHEN, Staff writer for Afropop
"I'm not totally sure why my dad decided to make a Facebook account, since he doesn't really like the Internet or most people. I only found out that he had one because Facebook kept suggesting that I friend this completely featureless David Cohen, who had no friends and no information on his profile. I mentioned it to my dad as a joke because I didn't really think it was him; he told me that it was, but I shouldn't friend him because 'nothing much goes on there.' Apparently, at some point, he created an account with no information other than his name, then immediately forgot his password and gave up. My mom sent him a friend request and she's still kind of mad he left her hanging. He periodically gets email notifications that someone he knows has friended him. It makes him anxious for a while, but he doesn't ever do anything about it.
You might also be interested in knowing that my dad once got an email saying he had won a million euros and actually called the phone number in the email 'just to check if it might be real.' He talked to some dude in Belgium who was mostly surprised that anyone had responded and made a sort of half-assed attempt to get my dad's credit card information, at which point my dad realized that he was not going to win any money and hung up."
Texted my dad "I'm excited about the future" and he responded "OK. Go to sleep"
— Ristolable (@Ristolable) June 11, 2015
ED ZITRON,?PR person,?Inc.?columnist and author of,jordan shoes?This Is How You Pitch
"My father is the most eloquent emailer of all time. He's a former management consultant and worked as a chairman in the NHS [National Health Service, in England]. I have worked with/spoken to Fortune 500 CEOs and venture capitalists that don't have the eloquence of email that he has had for his entire email life, from the very beginning back when he was sending emails through CompuServe and AOL. His grammar, wordplay and organization of text are practically flawless. This is funny, because of the way in which most people consider all adults past a certain level of 'Internet' or age to be unable to do email correctly. Every email he sends, from jokey 'Look at this funny news!' to talking about business matters, is perfectly typed. It's quite funny."
DAN ABROMOWITZ, contributor to ClickHole and The Onion
"Mine was an NPR household. Most rooms in my parents'’ house have a radio, and so you could locate who was where when by following the waft of Fresh Air. Our waking hours were accompanied by the constant white noise of measured, even-toned reporting.
Since I’ve moved out, my dad’s taken on two habits to increase this ubiquity of coverage: texting me whenever he’s listening to a story of any degree of interest to me and blasting NPR out of his pocketed iPhone’s speakers, like some kind of Public Radio Raheem, tucking himself in a tinny bubble of personal news. That kind of solipsism would do weird things to anyone. And so, home one weekend, I was helping my mom in the kitchen when, from somewhere in the house, he shot us both a cryptic text:?'tribute to ganfolgini.'
My dad’s a cogent texter,air jordan 11, but, as with his jokes,http://www.mixi.co.th/forum/newtopiccheapjordanshoesfreeshipping.com/bolg, he has a way of sometimes assuming a shared body of knowledge which in fact he’s in sole possession of. It’s fun, because then you get to do Dad Forensics! Here, I quickly put a few things together: 'ganfolgini' was probably James Gandolfini, who’d just died; a 'tribute' was probably on NPR, but since there was no NPR in earshot, my dad was probably in the basement (his ancestral homeland), inviting us down to listen. Of course, each of those pieces of pertinent information were either excluded or actively obfuscated, but who really cares? There’ll be plenty more NPR to fold us into down the line."
SARA MORRISON, senior writer, Boston.com
"I recently introduced my dad to the concept of emojis. He is a big fan, especially after he found out that there is an emoji of the flag of his homeland, Great Britain. When Scotland lost the vote for independence,http://www.mapsxm.com/search/node/cheapjordanshoesfreeshipping.com/bolg, he sent a British flag and that trumpet thing with the streamers. When he read a story about an English man who made a giant fart machine and pointed it at France, he sent a four-emoji combo of the?British flag, a peach that looks a lot like a butt, a gust of fart-like wind and the French flag. He used to sign all of his texts 'Dad' or even 'Luv, Dad,' but now it's only some of them.
Also: My dad doesn't use Facebook, but he does have a Twitter account. He has been blocked by @AlGore."
Dad just texted this to me from the other room pic.twitter.com/KUTz5Iv5I4
— Hot Dog Wiener (@googleymoogley) June 15, 2015
DYLAN VON WAGNER, singer/songwriter for the band Imaginary People
"I recall the first email ever presented by the Wagners. I call my dad and say:
?
LAUREN WALKER, reporter for Newsweek
"My dad's technological know-how can be summed up like this:?Whenever he forgets his Facebook password, he creates a new account. I'm friends with at least three of them. He also still uses AOL. And you know how AOL allows you to set up a maximum of five email addresses? He?decided to use all of them.
When I receive the rare email from my father, it will come from any one of these five addresses—each of which contains a literal or clever reference to his name.
The email itself is also distinctly him. When it appears in my inbox there is seldom a subject, meaning the contents are always a surprise. But when I open it, THE MESSAGE IS ALWAYS IN ALL CAPS. I don't know why. But as alarming as it is, I don't bring it up because it is one of life's funny constants."
My dad just emailed me this joke... pic.twitter.com/xmuaIc8epc
— Jeff Wysaski (@pleatedjeans) June 19,www.cheapjordansee.com, 2015
KEVIN NGUYEN,cheap jordans online,?editorial director at Oyster
"My father never emails me. He just forwards me stories from The?Wall Street Journal. When I worked at Amazon, he would send me any story he came across that mentioned Amazon, which was a lot of stories. About 10 months ago, I left to join a small startup. My dad still sends me articles about Amazon, which is, still, a lot of stories."
ELIJAH WOLFSON, senior editor at?Newsweek
"My dad
writes emails
like he is composing a poem
despite the fact that
the majority of the time
he’s just saying hi."
?