> high-ranking DNC officials discussed the possibility of making Sanders' religion a campaign issue in southern states
Did they do so? If so, thats clear meddling. If not, its shows intent of meddling.
> Paustenbach suggested that a past incident could be used to promote a "narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never had his act together, that his campaign was a mess."
Again, suggestion to do acts of meddling but not clear if they went through with it.
> Wasserman Schultz resigned as DNC chair after the leak, and was replaced by Donna Brazile and the Democratic National Committee issued an apology to Sanders.[52] Speaking on CNN, Sanders responded to the email leak: "...it is an outrage and sad that you would have people in important positions in the DNC trying to undermine my campaign.
Regardless if the intended meddling happed or not, it is clear that even the party itself know that they were in the wrong.
They did not bring up Sanders's religion, so there was no meddling there.
> Paustenbach suggested that a past incident could be used to promote a "narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never had his act together, that his campaign was a mess."
This is out of context. Sanders was attacking the DNC in the media for following pre-agreed-upon rules in Nevada. They were discussing how to respond to those frankly ridiculous attacks. http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff...
> Regardless if the intended meddling happed or not, it is clear that even the party itself know that they were in the wrong.
To recap, we have their full email history here, yet we still can't find a single instance of them acting to rig the primaries against Sanders. Wasserman-Schultz resigned to get out of the spotlight, which she believed would put more attention on Clinton for the general election.
That led to a lot of acquaintances of mine that supported Sanders to continue bashing Clinton after the primaries were already over, when it would have been really helpful for the Democratic party to have been unified throughout all of that.
Again, I refer to them as delusional because the '16 primary fight was about 1/3 as dirty as the '08 primaries, and somehow Sanders supporters feel being treated gently isn't good enough, what they expected was a clear majority of democratic voters to simply hand over the reins of the Democratic Party. They truly expected politics to revolutionize itself because of Sanders presidential run, and somehow tricks would not be a part of politics instantly and forevermore.
I think my big takeaway regarding the primaries is that most 'progressive' Sanders voters simply wanted to hurt the American establishment, and if they couldn't do it with Bernie they wanted to cry, pick up their ball, and go home.