A former Democratic Party official advised the Clinton campaign several months before the Democratic National Convention on one simple, patronizing trick to fool Bernie supporters into throwing their support behind Clinton, according to a new set of emails released by WikiLeaks.
The emails are reportedly from the inbox of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chair.
In an email sent March 20, former Democratic Party official Mark Alan Siegel recommended in advance of the Democratic National Convention that if the number of super delegates in the future is reduced just to officials already elected in some capacity, “[Bernie’s] people will think they’ve won something from the Party Establishment…And it functionally doesn’t make any difference anyway.”
Siegel sent the email to Tamera Luzzatto, Clinton’s former chief of staff from 2001-2009. Luzzatto then forwarded the detailed advice to Podesta.
Siegel, who formerly served as executive director of the Democratic National Committee and most recently the vice chair of the Democratic Party of Florida from 2011 to 2012, said it’s important that the Clinton campaign find a way to make Sanders supporters feel like they’ve won something, so that they “go home happy and enthusiastic in working their assess off for Hillary.”
“I’ve lived through many national conventions and have found that it’s critical that all delegates, especially those representing losing candidates, emerge from the convention feeling that they have won something, achieved something tangible,” Siegel wrote. “I think this is terribly important especially with people like Bernie’s sometimes self-righteous ideologues. We want them to go home happy and enthusiastic in working their asses off for Hillary.”
But for Siegel, simply featuring more of Sanders’ ideas in the 2016 Platform wasn’t a good enough prize because Clinton at the time had already incorporated a good amount of his rhetoric into her campaign.
“Hillary has already smoothly pivoted to incorporate some important elements of Bernie’s ideas and rhetoric into her own message,” Siegel added. “Thus I don’t think the 2016 Platform is a sufficiently tangible prize for the Bernie wing of the convention. I think they have to be given something that they can claim as a singular success. I think I know something that would painlessly work.”
Siegel, who originally drafted the super delegate system following the 1972 Democratic National Convention, then proposed in the email that Democratic Party officials should be excluded from serving as super delegates, in order to throw a “bone” to Bernie ideologues.
“So here’s my idea,” Siegel wrote. “Bernie and his people have been bitching about super delegates and the huge percentage that have come out for Hillary. Since the original idea was to bring our elected officials to the convention ex-officio (because of the offices and the constituencies they represent), why not throw Bernie a bone and reduce the super delegates in the future to the original draft of members of the House and Senate, governors and big city mayors, eliminating the DNC members who are not State chairs or vice-Chairs. (Frankly, DNC members don’t really represent constituencies anyway. I should know. I served on the DNC first as Executive Director and then as an elected member for 10 years.)”
“So if we “give” Bernie this in the Convention’s rules committee, his people will think they’ve “won” something from the Party Establishment,” he added. “And it functionally doesn’t make any difference anyway. They win. We don’t lose. Everyone is happy. Anyway, I don’t know if Robbie is focusing on the convention at this point but the Bernie people have a lot of passion and we should try to keep them marginally on board. Just saying..”
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