Three More Ousted Following Wikleaks Email Release Showed DNC Favored Clinton & Displayed Religious Intolerance

Leaked emails

More heads are rolling at the DNC following the release of hacked email by WikiLeaks, which previously led to the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz (and her subsequently being hired by the Clinton campaign). Politico reports:

With just three months until Election Day and the Democrats’ official party apparatus struggling to right itself from months of dysfunction and the scandal caused by the WikiLeaks email hack, interim Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile cleaned house Tuesday with the ouster of three top officials.

CEO Amy Dacey, communications director Luis Miranda and chief financial officer Brad Marshall are all leaving the organization, the DNC announced Tuesday afternoon, shortly after staffers were informed of the changes in a meeting. The announcement praised all three outgoing officials, but people familiar say the departures were heavily encouraged.

Brad Marshall was the one who sent the email suggesting using Sanders’ religion against him. In addition to being offensive to Jews, this has led some Humanists and atheists to leave the Democratic Party. Luis Granados, director of Humanist Press, wrote:

The Democratic National Committee’s Insult to Atheists

Goodbye, Democratic Party. Unless there is a major, credible act of contrition, right now, I’m outta here—for good.

On Friday, a batch of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) included a little missive from a Brad Marshall. Marshall is not some clueless underling—he is the chief financial officer of the party and has been for six years now. The gist of the message is to recommend that some unnamed individual, probably Bernie Sanders, be publicly reviled for being an atheist.

Marshall’s first response when this came to light was that the email, which does not mention Sanders by name, was not about him at all, but about a surrogate. “I do not recall this. I can say it would not have been Sanders. It would probably be about a surrogate.”

So in DNC-land, smearing a big shot like Bernie Sanders as an atheist is a no-no, but smearing a mere “surrogate” as an atheist is a cool thing to do.

It didn’t stop there. Marshall’s boss, Amy Dacey, is the chief executive officer of the entire DNC operation. She gave a one-word response: “AMEN.”

As the chattering class erupted over all this, Marshall finally issued a backhanded apology: “I deeply regret that my insensitive, emotional emails would cause embarrassment to the DNC, the Chairwoman, and all of the staffers who worked hard to make the primary a fair and open process. The comments expressed do not reflect my beliefs nor do they reflect the beliefs of the DNC and its employees. I apologize to those I offended.”

In other words, he’s sorry he got caught, even though he didn’t do anything wrong because it was the devil who moved his fingers on the keyboard, not his true self. In fact, the only thing even the devil may have done wrong was to make the primary less of a “fair and open process.” Condemning those who hold certain religious beliefs? Stepping on the neck of the already most disdained group in America? It doesn’t even dawn on Marshall that there’s anything wrong with that…

The Mussolini-wannabe the Republicans just nominated is loathed by most humanists. But there are other options. If you’re a fiscal conservative, Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party may be appealing. If you’re a fiscal liberal, Jill Stein and the Green Party may be appealing. As far as I know, neither of these parties tries to win friends and influence people by snidely insinuating that so-and-so is a filthy little atheist. Like the Democrats do, with impunity. Until now.

Amanda Scott wrote a similar article entitled Democrats Should Know that Religion Is Not a Litmus Test for Public Office. The Humanist.com also noted that even Ted Cruz has recently expressed support for religious freedom for atheists, although he has not always expressed such tolerance. I’d also add that for politicians on the religious right, religious freedom often means the right of the Christian majority to impose their religious views on others.

The removal of Brad Marshall was a step in the right direction, but this does nothing to remedy the real problem–the undermining of Bernie Sanders campaign and the nomination of a candidate as unfit for public office as Hillary Clinton. Clinton actually has found a way to benefit from this in raising anti-Russian hysteria and connecting it to Donald Trump. While Russia may or may not have been involved in hacking the email, at this point nothing has been proven and this is reminiscent of the run-up to the Iraq war based upon false claims.