Failing
to learn from the humiliating losses of the last election,
establishment Democrats continue to cater to their oligarchical
donors while rejecting the party’s progressive base and its future.
By
Whitney Webb
Part
2 - A Washington insider disguised as a ‘progressive’
Despite presenting himself as a champion of
“progressive” ideals, Perez is as establishment as they come. A
controversial member of the Obama administration, Perez has been
flagged for a number of top positions by Democrats in recent years.
When Eric Holder resigned from his position as attorney general,
Perez was named as a possible replacement. Following the death of
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Perez was rumored to be a
choice to fill the vacant seat on the court. He was even ranked as
the 3rd most likely candidate for Clinton’s running mate in the
2016 election.
Though Perez was edged out as Clinton’s vice
presidential pick by Tim Kaine, he made his commitment to Clinton no
secret during the election. It should come as little surprise, then,
that Perez’s personal email address appears in a number of the
now-infamous Podesta Emails, 20,000 pages of emails published by
WikiLeaks in October and November from the personal Gmail account of
Clinton campaign chair and D.C. insider John Podesta.
Perez’s email correspondence with Podesta clearly
shows that Perez was intimately involved with Democratic Party
establishment figures in actively working to thwart Sanders’
primary campaign, particularly in Nevada. In a lengthy email sent to
Podesta and Maya Harris, a senior advisor to Clinton, Perez lays out
strategies to help Clinton secure a win at the state’s caucus. In
the email, dated Feb. 2, 2016, he asserts that if Clinton could do
well in the Nevada caucus, “then the narrative changes from
Bernie kicks ass among young voters to Bernie does well only among
young white liberals.” This narrative of Sanders supporters
being predominantly white was widely recognized as a smear tactic on
the part of Clinton supporters, one which Salon described as “a
dirty, dangerous game.”
Other emails show Perez working to discredit Sanders by
other means. In an email to Podesta dated March 2, 2016, Perez
expressed his excitement at his upcoming appearance on the Telemundo
network, where he hoped to “trumpet [Clinton’s] strong support
among Latinos and put a fork once and for all in the false narrative
about Bernie and Latinos.” Yet, Latino support for Sanders was
anything but a false narrative, particularly at the time Perez made
this claim.
Perez also openly admitted earlier this month that the
primary had been “rigged” against Sanders. However, before the
end of the day, he had retracted the comment, tweeting: “I have
been asked by friends about a quote and want to be clear about what I
said and that I misspoke.” He also made sure to add that
Clinton had won the primary “fair and square.”
It is worth noting that Perez, in his correspondence
with Podesta, used a personal email account. Perez, like Clinton, has
come under fire in the past for allegedly using his personal email
account in order to avoid being accountable to Freedom of Information
Act requests.
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