Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden criticized Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for calling herself a “moderate” Democrat when others are selling her as a “progressive.”
“Why did she call herself a moderate?” Tanden wrote to campaign chair John Podesta in September 2015 after Clinton told supporters at a campaign stop in Ohio she was “kind of moderate and center.”
“You know, I get accused of being kind of moderate and center,” Clinton said at the campaign stop. “I plead guilty.”
That didn’t sit well with Tanden, who wrote “it makes my life more difficult after telling every reporter I know she’s actually progressive but that is really the smallest of issues,” according to an email chain released by WikiLeaks from Podesta’s hacked Gmail account.
“It worries me more that she doesn’t seem to know what planet we are all living in at the moment,” Tanden said.
“I pushed her on this on Sunday night,” Podesta responded. “She claims she didn’t remember saying it. Not sure I believe her.”
“We were speculating, that it may be a Don Baer intervention,” Podesta added.
Baer is the CEO of consulting firm Burston-Marstellar and longtime Clinton ally. Baer served as a senior adviser to then-President Bill Clinton in the 1990s before going off into journalism and consulting.
WikiLeaks has released thousands of emails from Podesta’s Gmail account that give an inside look at how the Clinton campaign has been run. Some emails even included the transcripts of paid speeches Clinton gave to Wall Street bankers, the contents of which the campaign has refused to release.
The Clinton campaign has not confirmed the authenticity of all the emails, and instead has claimed to be victims of Russian hackers trying to swing the election in Trump’s favor.
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