Wikileaks: Clinton Surrogates Wanted to Fool “Bitching” Bernie Voters into Supporting Hillary

A newly released Wikileaks email from the Podesta hack reveals a plan by Clinton surrogates to fool “bitching” Bernie Sanders voters into supporting Hillary by offering them a largely meaningless change in rules that apply to superdelegates.

The email was sent by Hillary’s former chief on staff Tamera Luzzatto on March 20 of this year. The recipients included Podesta, the chairman of Clinton’s campaign, and Robby Mook, her campaign manager.

Luzzatto forwards “Sanders-related advice from Mark Siegel,” the former Palm Beach County Democratic Party Chairman.

In the email, Siegel explains how Bernie’s “sometimes self-righteous ideologues” could be fooled “to go home happy and enthusiastic in working their asses off for Hillary.”

“So here’s my idea. Bernie and his people have been bitching about super delegates and the huge percentage that have come out for Hillary,” wrote Siegel. “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. And it functionally doesn’t make any difference anyway. They win. We don’t lose. Everyone is happy.”

In other words, Bernie supporters could be offered some symbolic ‘victory’ that actually means nothing at all in order to trick them into becoming Hillary supporters.

Luzzatto shared the email with Mook and Podesta “as a favor and cause of his role in the Dems’ delegate system.”

The email will further enrage Bernie Sanders supporters, whom Hillary Clinton referred to as “basement dwellers” that had bought into a “false promise” in an audio recording that emerged earlier this month.