Note to DNC: Stop Blaming Putin, YOU Wrote the Emails

For those who find themselves in opposition to Democrats, the last couple of days have been hysterical. Despite the dysfunction on display last week at the Republican National Convention, it’s clear that the GOP has nothing on the Democrats.

Democrats immediately went on the offensive, blaming Russians for the DNC email hack and claiming Putin’s government is trying to influence American politics. While that may or may not be true (hard information on who is at fault is still unavailable), none of that has anything to do with the fact that it was Democrats who wrote the damning emails.

As Scott Shackford notes:

Putin may or may not have played some role in the hacking of the DNC, and certainly it’s proper that the government investigate and track down who is responsible.

But neither Putin nor Russian hackers are responsible for the way the party treated Sanders and its supporters.

And this attempt to quickly deflect the subject matter over to Trump and Putin has the side effect (intentional or not) of again dismissively treating Sanders and his supporters’ concerns as largely irrelevant to the establishment.

Of course, Shackford is right. From a strategic sense, trying to deflect this and to equate Putin and Trump in voters’ minds is pretty smart. It’s a case of trying to make lemonade out of the lemons you’ve been handed. It sucks, so why not try to make the most of it? Who cares if it’s true or not? We know Democrats usually don’t.

However, it doesn’t change the fact that the emails are the result of a hack — not a fabrication. Democrats wrote every email being thrown back at them. There’s a reason Debbie Wasserman-Schultz resigned, after all. It wasn’t because someone made something up, it’s because those emails are real.

Republicans, Libertarians, and even Bernie Sanders supporters are having a field day with the WikiLeaks information. It turns out almost everything they accused Democratic Party elites of doing has been proven true. From anti-Semitism from a Democratic member of the House who should know better, to referring to Latino voters as “taco bowls outreach,” we see that the party of tolerance is far less tolerant than they appear.

None of this can be laid at the feet of Putin. While he may have been behind the hack, he wasn’t behind the real problem: the corrupt and prejudicial individuals who wrote them being so highly placed within the party.

No, Democrats, that’s all on you.