The hollow soul of the Freedom-Hater party

Kimberley Strassel at the WSJ on the latest hacked Democrat emails and the cronyism and rank cynicism they make plain:

The latest hack of the DNC—courtesy of WikiLeaks via Guccifer 2.0—shows that Mrs. Clinton wasn’t alone in steering favors to big donors. Among the documents leaked is one that lists the party’s largest fundraisers/donors as of 2008. Of the top 57 cash cows 18 ended up with ambassadorships. The largest fundraiser listed, Matthew Barzun, who drummed up $3.5 million for Mr. Obama’s first campaign, was named ambassador to Sweden and then ambassador to the United Kingdom. The second-largest, Julius Genachowski, was named the head of the Federal Communications Commission. The third largest, Frank Sanchez, was named undersecretary of commerce. 

Keep in mind what an earlier leak revealed: a May 18, 2016, email from an outside lawyer to DNC staffers in which the attorney suggests a call to “go over our process for handling donations from donors who have given us pay to play letters.” Add this to what the Clinton and Abedin emails have shown to be a massive pay-to-play operation at the Clinton Foundation, in which megadonors like the crown prince of Bahrain got special access to the secretary of state. 

And there are also all those Clinton speeches, for which they were paid millions. News comes this week that despite the Clintons’ promises to distance themselves from their foundation, they will first be holding what sounds like one last fire sale on future presidential access: a belated birthday bash for Bill Clinton, with a glitzy party at the Rainbow Room in Manhattan. A donation of $250,000 gets you listed as “chair” of the party, while “co-chair” costs $100,000. Foundation officials are refusing to say who has donated, or how much.

So which political party is all about money, influence and special access? The Republican Party held a true, democratic primary. Seventeen candidates battled it out, and the voters choose a nominee that much of the party establishment disliked. 

Leaked emails show that the Democratic Party hierarchy retreated to a backroom to anoint Hillary Clinton and then exercised its considerable power to subvert the primary process and kill off the Bernie Sanders campaign. In one email, Chief Financial Officer Brad Marshall suggested sliming Mr. Sanders on religion: “Can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.” How’s that for deplorable?

Perhaps most revealing are Mr. Powell’s emails, which show, undisguised, how Clinton supporters think. Specifically, the emails demonstrate that this crowd recognizes the Clintons as a menace—and yet they are willing to excuse away anything. “I would rather not have to vote for her,” Mr. Powell wrote to a friend. “A 70-year person with a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still [sleeping with] bimbos at home.” 

Unpack that. Mr. Powell is saying that Hillary is old; that she is a scandal factory; that she will cut any corner to win and do anything for a buck; that she won’t help the country; and that her husband remains a liability. And yet other emails suggest Mr. Powell nonetheless was (is?) debating giving her a boost with a well-timed endorsement in the fall. 

This is the modern Democratic Party. The more it has struggled to sell its ideas to the public, the more it has turned to rigging the system to its political benefit. Don’t take Republicans’ word for it. Just read the emails.

Post-America, take a long, unflinching look at what this is.