John Kerry topped a list of ‘traitors’ who Hillary Clinton’s staff believed betrayed her during her bitter 2008 presidential primary battle with Barack Obama, a new book has revealed.
The detailed list, which also included Democratic Party heavyweight Edward Kennedy, who died in 2009, was kept by Clinton’s aides who ranked names on a seven-point scale, it is claimed.
Kerry, who was Senator for Massachusetts at the time and went on to replace Clinton as Secretary of State in the Obama administration, was among those receiving the worst possible score, according to the book.
HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton was written by political journalists Amie Parnes, from The Hill, and Jonathan Allen, from Politico.
They claimed that also on the political hit-list were Senators Jay Rockefeller, Bob Casey and Patrick Leahy as well as House of Representatives members Chris Van Hollen, Rob Andrews and Baron Hill.
Parnes and Allen write that year later Clinton aides ‘would joke about the fates of folks who they felt had betrayed them. “Bill Richardson: investigated; John Edwards: disgraced by scandal; Chris Dodd: stepped down,” one said to another. “Ted Kennedy,” the aide continued, lowering his voice to a whisper for the punch line, “dead”.’
Kerry was the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer in the 2004 presidential election and President Clinton had campaigned hard for him in the final stretch of that campaign, even though he was recovering from major heart surgery at the time.
In 2008, however, Kerry did not merely endorse Obama; he did so at a very vulnerable time for the then-senator from Illinois.
Having won the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, Obama then lost the New Hampshire primary to Clinton despite holding a large lead in almost all opinion polls, Daily Mail informs.
