I saw DWS on MSNBC prior to fully knowing what this data breach was all about, and she seemed almost giddy.
Watching this Sanders lawyer right now, this is going to lead to all out civil war in the party if they aren’t allowed to have access to the data.
Although it looks like the DNC is so incompetent that even denied access to the data, there probably is a way to get it.
Baud
I thought this would be all over my RSS feeds, but not yet.
DWS always seems giddy.
Villago Delenda Est
If I understand this correctly, the Bernie people found the problem, pointed it out, and now the DNC is banning Bernie, essentially, for pointing this out.
Uh huh. Hillary needs to personally get involved, stat, and tell the DNC to back the fuck off.
And the Dems need to show some fucking intelligence and find someone other than DWS to head up the party apparatus.
Major Major Major Major
The DNC takes VAN breaches very seriously.
They sent truck-based industrial shredders around every week just to ‘collect’ our canvassing sheets in 2008. We had to throw them off the balcony in boxes so they were touched by as few people as possible.
Agreed about the Hillary thing, but social media is blowing this way out of proportion.
Cacti
NBC now reporting that 4 different Sanders campaign staffers spent 40 minutes conducting searches of Clinton’s proprietary data.
That’s felony computer fraud, Cole (18 U.S.C. 1030).
But sure, be angry at Clinton and DWS because of reasons.
Bobby Thomson
@Villago Delenda Est: DWS needs to go, but Uretsky created his own problem.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, Sanders fired his top data guy over this, so I don’t think he regards this as a “whistleblower” situation.
Agree about restoring acess ASAP.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Who else would want it? It’s like current speaker of the house, nobody wants to be DNC chair. Someone might fall on their sword (or be pushed onto it) but who you gonna get? This is assuming of course that it has to be a current dem politician.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I agree. Be magnanimous to the campaign that is not now and never was going to win, stop looking paranoid and pull the cross away from those all-too-ready to climb up on it to screech about Bernie! (and of course, their precious selves) being victimized by the Evil One.
Big Ol Hound
Hillary should tell Debbie to go after Donald not Bernie. Never air the infighting or the GOP will have something true to talk about.
John Cole
@Cacti: File charges then.
Regardless, the solution to this is not to effectively neuter a campaign.
Cacti
@Villago Delenda Est:
You don’t understand this correctly. Audit documents from NGP VAN found that 4 different Sanders staffers performed searches of Clinton’s proprietary data.
So far, names known include Sanders’ recently fired national data director, Josh Uretsky, and deputy national data director Russell Drapkin, who still has a job.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti: Well, it seems Bernie is on the ball about this…understands the implications, did the honorable thing.
I still think Hillary should personally get involved and point out, politely, that Sanders took IMMEDIATE action with his data guys who did something unethical. Bernie seems to get this, the DNC is showing a terrible pro-Hillary stance that is unbecoming.
Emma
So, if I understand it correctly, four of Sanders’ staffers went trawling through Hillary’s proprietary data but Hillary is responsible for making sure Sanders doesn’t suffer in any way?
How magnanimous of all of you. Forgive me if I have doubts that you would feel the same if it was the other way around.
Linnaeus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I wouldn’t hold my breath for that. If the Clinton campaign sees this as an opportunity to handicap Sanders’s campaign for good, they’re not going to intervene on his behalf.
Ruckus
May be misunderstanding here but if the data is supposed to not be shared, why is the data even on the same servers so that there is even some remote possibility that access can be gained, even through no fault of any of the users?
And yes I understand that a firewall was down, but how often does that happen? Seems to me that either someone at the vendor shut it down, accidentally or not, or it is a pretty crappy firewall, or someone was hacking. As this had been reported to have happened before and nothing seemingly was done to correct the situation, maybe the vendor has a serious problem.
In any event sure Sander’s guy has a level of incorrectness, but why does the blame seem to be pointed away from the vendor?
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti: Oh, NBC is reporting this? Well, might actually be true. Then again, the NYT got caught being totally bamboozled by someone with an axe to grind in both the Hillary email and San Bernardino social media revelations scandals.
Still, Hillary needs to tamp this down. It’s giving the unforgivable scum of the MSM a chance to flex their “both sides do it” meme, and divert attention from whatever dumbshittery the Klown Kar is up to today.
Bobby Thomson
DNC can’t drag feet but neither can Sanders. His lawyer’s reference to data being stolen from Sanders is transparent blAme shifting.
gwangung
@Villago Delenda Est:
Hm. As long as we’re sure that it’s just the (now) four, I’m fine with this.
Though it’d look bad if further news reveals that more Sanders folks did this….
Soonergrunt (mobile)
There’s no upside for Clinton to make a huge case out of this. Sanders isn’t likely to win the nomination, isn’t even a real threat at this point, and acting like he is only elevates him.
Clinton should simply say “we’re concerned about the breach and we’re looking into it, but we haven’t seen anything specific at this time and we’re moving forward with our campaign.”
Cacti
@John Cole:
Sanders surrogates, acting in their official capacities violated the law. That’s a big Biden deal, and one where Bernie bears some degree of liability as the principal of his campaign apparatus.
If high level officials of a political commit potentially felonious activity against a rival campaign, it warrants more than a good, stern talking-to.
If the shoe was on the other foot, would Sanders supporters be calling for any leniency toward the Clinton campaign?
Bobby Thomson
@John Cole: so just leave the henhouse open without assurances the fox is gone? That signals toughness and resolve.
John Cole
You all should listen to Uretsky on MSNBC explain what they did. It was not what Cacti is asserting.
John Cole
@Cacti: This is not what happened.
yegg
DWS has been an unbelievably awful DNC chair. I’ll be caucusing for Bernie but I’m not really anti-Clinton and I fully expect her to win, but is it really too much to ask for a party chair that at least pretends to be neutral and doesn’t govern by fiat?
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, I thoroughly trust the MSM to have all the true facts. Any of them.
Cacti
In the interest of avoiding any destructive infighting within the party, Bernie needs to fire anyone suspected of running searches of Clinton data. DWS needs to refer the matter to the DOJ, and Hillary needs to say Bernie did the right thing, and that there is no indication whatsoever of any personal involvement.
That’s this person’s opinion.
Emma
@John Cole: Do you have any proof other than Uretsky’s assertions? Because, hey, the guy who was fired says he’s innocent isn’t exactly proof.
Ruckus
@John Cole:
Is it ever?
Emma
@Cacti: Yep. I won’t get done, though. Too logical.
Dave
@Emma: That’s not quite how I see it, personally. Hillary isn’t *responsible* for anything at all. But the politically astute approach, I think (and some here seem to agree), might be to let it slide. She’s going to win anyway, right? No sense alienating Bernie supporters when she’ll need them in the general. If the shoe were on the other foot – if Hillary was stealing data from Bernie – the politically astute thing to do may be – may be – to go on the attack and try to knock Hillary’s numbers below that 50% mark.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti: Yet that is precisely the scenario that the rabid in both camps loathe.
Cacti
@John Cole:
Sure Cole. The story of the first guy to be sacked, and who will potentially be facing federal criminal charges, should obviously be taken as a source of objective, unvarnished truth.
Brandon
My view is this:
1. Sanders campaign disclosed this private to DNC.
2.
DNC under DWS has been and continues to be a disaster. She needs to go, stat.
Bobby Thomson
@John Cole: so he’s saying something other than what the paper trail shows? Sanders hired stupid people.
Betty Cracker
Yep, it would be the right and politically expedient thing to do for HRC to call on the DNC to restore data access to the Sanders campaign. Now would be good. If more Sanders staffers were involved than the dude who has already been fired, suspend their access, investigate it, and fire them if warranted.
Kay
@Emma:
The more time they spend talking about which candidate was wronged and the internal workings of campaigns, the worse it is. It has to be about voters, voters, voters.
I love how we’ve had complete and utter blanket coverage of the GOP candidates for months and the DNC finally appears, but only to punish a Democratic campaign.
John Cole
@Bobby Thomson: No- what he is saying jibes with the paper trail states and explains what they were doing, rather than ascribing ulterior motives like has been done here.
Not that any of this matters. I still think HRC is going to win the nomination and lose the general somehow.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m seeing a lot of this critique and don’t get it. Is the idea that this wouldn’t have been a story if the DNC hadn’t twirled its moustaches* and gone after Saint Bernard? Because every story even tangentially related to Hillary Clinton must have at its core some nefarious plot she and Bill concocted? (again, I’m a Clinton supporter because I think she’s the strongest general election candidate. I haven’t forgotten her Iraq vote or anything about the ’08 campaign, and I think Bubba is a jackass)
*ETA: and I think DWS is stupid, clumsy and incompetent and HRC should pick this moment to fling her under the bus, as the saying goes.
Kay
@Brandon:
Gross.
Maybe they were trying to distract from the fact that Democratic voters are wondering why the only thing they see or hear is GOP candidates, and that has been true for months.
How many people work there? What do they do, other than leak disputes and impose sanctions?
Roger Moore
@John Cole:
Yeah, because he’s totally going to admit it if he was doing something nefarious.
Chyron HR
@John Cole:
Thank god one side is mature enough to avoid ascribing ulterior motives and just stick to the facts about that scheming bitch Hillary setting up a honey trap for poor innocent ‘Bern’.
gwangung
@Betty Cracker: Right now, it’s up to four people. A little more than just Uretsky.
Think there should still be a deeper investigation, then restore access.
pamelabrown53
@John Cole:
Really. Everyone needs to calm down and wait as this fast moving story unfolds. Bloomberg is reporting that lists were saved as it pertains to the early voting states. Let’s see if we can uncover the facts before we vilify and/or make demands of anyone. Frankly, John, I think your post is jumping the shark.
Ridnik Chrome
@John Cole: Lose to who? You can’t beat somebody with nobody, and the Republican field is a big bunch of nobodies…
Major Major Major Major
Back in college, my dad used to joke that White Castle was the only burger you could eat on Friday.
This burger has even less in it. You might even call it a nothingburger.
SteveinSC
What the fuck would the Sanders campaign do with access to Hillary’s Wall Street Sugar Daddies? Send them an e-mail asking for a donation?
Bobby Thomson
@Betty Cracker: “is this what you would do with our national secrets, Hillary? Just let leakers off the hook?”
schrodinger's cat
Sounds like a storm in a teacup.
Emma
@Dave: Actually, I agree. It’s the Republicanish attitude of some so-called Democrats that’s starting to get to me. Hillary’s an evil witch but she’s responsible for cleaning up everyone’s messes! If she doesn’t she’s an evil witch!
Villago Delenda Est
This whole thing very stupidly plays to one of the MSM’s most favorite narratives, “Democrats in disarray”. In the mean time, Republicans are gleefully giving each other shivs in the back for Christmas, and the MSM is totally absorbed in this kerfuffle.
The dumbshits at the DNC went public with this. Because Bernie is such a existential threat to the DNC world order.
Fucking DNC idiots. Give the MSM what they want no matter how damaging it is to the brand. More idiotic short term thinking at the expense of long term benefit.
Cacti
@Roger Moore:
The fact that makes me think Uretsky is in some big trouble is that he was fired. Not allowed to resign, but unceremoniously booted out the door.
Major Major Major Major
@SteveinSC: Well.
There’s always the undecided voters on the canvassing lists. You do know how caucuses work right?
Davebo
@John Cole:
So what he’s saying (I didn’t see it) conflicts with the official Sanders campaign statement that they noticed the security flaw and immediately reported it to the DNC.
Is that about right?
Again, I didn’t see him on MSNBC but either he’s lying or they were lying before.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est: How exactly was this going to be kept secret? Sanders fired a guy over it.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You’re assuming the criticism is directed at Hillary Clinton. The criticism is directed at the DNC. DWS in Clinton’s corner doesn’t mean Clinton directs all of DWS actions.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodinger’s cat: me too, all the more reason for HRC to come out and say she has every confidence that her good friend Bernie will clean up his own house and she looks forward to a vigorous debate about the issues vital to the future of our great nation, with him and her good friend that other guy
Betty Cracker
@gwangung: I haven’t followed the story that closely since I first read about it this morning, but the vendor claims the firewall was down for half an hour. If that’s true, it shouldn’t require rocket surgery to figure out which Sanders staffers accessed it during that time period.
So they should figure that out — today — revoke any implicated credentials for the duration of the investigations and allow the rest of Sanders campaign to access the data. The last fucking thing we need is a huge intramural slap-fight.
RareSanity
@Cacti: This isn’t about “computer fraud”, this is about politics at the highest level.
Nobody is going to have charges filed against them, because there is nothing positive that can come from it, for ANYONE involved. The DNC, more specifically DWS, are handling this absolutely terribly. The minute this broke, she should have had a discussion with the Sanders campaign. Once she was informed that they knew who did it and fired him, she should have gone to the press and stated that the person responsible has been terminated, and they are now investigating what role the third party vendor played in allowing this breach to happen.
DWS has let the media define this as a Clinton/Sanders thing instead of getting out in front of it and making it a DNC/vendor thing. That’s supposed to be the purpose of the DNC…to look after the best interests of ALL Democrats. The best interest was for the DNC to take the heat off the candidates, so that they could focus on their campaigns.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Lordy, like that wouldn’t set his supporters off even more
Mmm Hmmm
So, I guess this is why the Obama folks always kept their data separate from the DNC while he was running his campaigns.
Betty Cracker
@Bobby Thomson: “Do you launch a nuke to kill a mosquito, Mr. Trump?”
Ripley
*weeping* I just want my data back…
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: As RareSanity points out above, there are ways to handle this that don’t inadvertently damage the brand. Unfortunately, DWS is one of these idiotic short term “thinkers” who see an opportunity but don’t bother to think out the implications.
Cacti
@RareSanity:
Actually, it’s about both. And trying to sweep possible felonious activity under the rug is in no way beneficial to the DNC. It’s a political party, not the Genovese Family.
Bobby Thomson
BTW, when you’re fired your job is to fall on your sword or else keep your mouth shut until you have to speak or are asked unless you’re whistle blowing.
cmorenc
@Dave:
THIS exactly. Also, it’s in Clinton’s and Sanders’ best interests to extinguish media focus on this matter ASAP – and return the media spotlight to Republicans warring among themselves making outrageously extreme, racist/xenophobic statements that will undermine the viability in the general election of whomever successfully emerges from the GOP clown car as their nominee. When your opponent is busy shooting himself in the foot – stay out of the way.
For example, we don’t need CNN news stories like this: http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/18/politics/bernie-sanders-campaign-dnc-suspension/index.html …about the Sanders campaign threatening to sue the DNC over being denied access to the database. Let it go, DNC/Clinton – pick your battles wisely.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: I would nuke all the mosquitoes. Trump has never been stung by a mosquito, they wouldn’t dare (WHOOOOOO!). At Trump picnics, we don’t have mosquitoes, or ants, or roaches, they’re incredible picnics, like you’ve never seen, cause I’m rich and you’re not (YEEAAAAH! WHOOOO). Democrats are too politically correct to kill the mosquitoes, Hillary wants you to understand the mosquitos (BOOOOO!), I wanna get rid of them. You’ll wish you getting stung by roaches, when Trump is president, it will be like nothing you’ve ever seen, cause picnics will be great again.
Sherparick
@Emma: It is not about being “nice,” it is the practical politics that ultimately you want a united party by the time you get the nomination. Sanders fired the the guy responsible and apologize. Accept the apology and remind everyone of the the common enemy.
beltane
@cmorenc:
Yes, but we’re dealing with the Democratic party, an organization whose motto may as well be: When the opponent is busy shooting himself in the foot, grab his gun and attempt to commit suicide.
Major Major Major Major
This is why I’m a Hillbot. Apparatchiks and flacks stick around for decades for one of two reasons: they know how to get shit done, or they’re family. You say jump, they measure the height and report back to you.
And Bernie has neither.
You’re not just electing a president, you’re electing an infrastructure.
MathInPA
I am increasingly viewing Sanders the same way I did Obama in ’08: Unprepared, both for the fighting and for the discipline to get anything done. I’ll vote for him if he’s the candidate, but I hope he’s not. The releases from his campaign are about the same as with BLM and every other time he and his campaign goofs– petulant, whiny, and displacing the problems onto other people.
It’s increasingly clear to me that Sanders just doesn’t have what it takes to lead. I value his votes in the senate, but he sounds like someone whose first inclination is to bluster, then to vacillate, and then to do too little, too late. I think that’s why the “sure, she scores as one of the most liberal senators but she did some dumb things and therefore SHE IS A REPUBLICAN FOREVER!” crowd is drawn to him. He’s decided what’s right, and everyone can get on board or it’s their fault when things don’t work out.
I don’t find him inspiring. Even when he’s saying the right things and has the right passion, I’m reminded of a colleague of mine who had his method, dammit, and when it didn’t work, it was because someone before or after him had messed it up and it wasn’t his fault. He had a good foundation that worked for a lot of kids, but the grades and testing for him ebbed and flowed not with his skill or with the intelligence of the kids, but with how well their personalities meshed into his teaching style. I get the same feeling here– you adapt, or you get Berned, and fuck you if you dislike it.
There’s a difference between recognizing that the Republicans are committed to an apocalyptic, contrarian destruction of the US (one of the things that Obama missed and Sanders doesn’t), and deciding that you, yourself, are capable of bulling through with sheer willpower and righteousness (Sanders, increasingly, sounds like this).
Do I think he’d be better than a Republican candidate? Hell yes. Do I think he’d accomplish anything? No. I really don’t think he’d do much more than back a few agency shifts (which could be important) and then fold like a cheap suit in ’20, whether to an insurgent primary or to the Republicans.
goblue72
@Cacti: Clue. Find one. Seriously.
JMG
The two candidates will be in the same room tomorrow. They have the time and opportunity to make nice either before (preferable) or after the debate. It isn’t a good look for either one right now. Nobody likes whoever benefits from a rigged wheel, but neither does anyone like a candidate whining “Mom likes my opponent best.”
Emma
@Sherparick: Except that it’s now four people, not one. And I haven’t seen anybody ask Hillary for her opinion yet. AND I’m willing to bet a 4 star dinner in Paris that if it had been Hillary’s people who got caught none of the oh-so-committed-to-party-unity people would be pushing Bernie to forgive and forget.
Bobby Thomson
@Betty Cracker: this I agree with. But that investigation has to happen first.
Cacti
@goblue72:
Denial. It’s not just a river in Egypt.
MomSense
@Mmm Hmmm:
Yup.
DCF
Allow me to preface my perspective by stating that Bernie Sanders is – and has been – my mayor, House representative, and Senator since he was first elected in 1981. The Sanders campaign will ‘do the right thing(s) in response to this event.
This incident has exposed, in stark relief, the bias and incompetence of the DWS-led DNC – aided and abetted by the corporate media whose interests are not served by the goals of the Sanders campaign. I agree with Senator Sanders when he says that HRC is better than any of the Republican candidates on her worst day. However, we need to be candid here…HRC is a DLC/corporatist Democrat who is beholden to the monied interests (i.e., Wall Street) who do not wish the political system – as it now exists – to change in any significant fashion. DWS has acted as an overt HRC supporter from the get-go, and her failure to promote a 50-state strategy at the House and Senate levels of government has led in no small part to the Congressional/Executive debacle we have experienced throughout the President’s tenure.
We need new leadership at the DNC – and a candidate who will, in fact, further a true ‘political revolution’.
Senator Sanders is, as Alan Grayson put it, ‘…a national treasure’ – an individual who has held (and promoted) the same set of progressive positions over the course of his political career. HRC – as skilled and talented a candidate as she may be – is an individual who will adopt whatever position(s), within limits, can garner her sufficient support to be the eventual Democratic nominee.
AxelFoley
@John Cole:
You think Bernie would do better against the clowns on the other side?
Either way, if the Dems somehow lose to the GOP this election, they deserver to lose.
Major Major Major Major
*checks GOS for grassroots spin*
*vomits*
hi!
Major Major Major Major
@DCF: I too recall President Grayson’s administration.
Peale
@Betty Cracker: Yeah. Again, I really, really don’t care about this issue. Data privacy and protection at the DNC and by the campaigns is like number 1,100 on the top list of issues I care about. It’s like asking me to care about whether or not a fair and open contact RFP was issued to find a printer for campaign Christmas Cards. Its too insider.
I guess I would have just penalized Bernie’s campaign with a ten day time out and moved on.
And really, I don’t want to know why the firewall was down and why if the firewall was down users weren’t cut off for the 1/2 hour it took to do whatever maintenance they were doing. I think I’m more pissed at the vendor who has made it that I have to care about something like this
? Martin
@Davebo: (Lifting my head from my database coding)
I’ve run across similar issues at work. My first course of action is when something seems amiss, to write/run some simple test cases that explore the bounds of what might be wrong. When I have a basic sense of what might be happening, I pick up the phone. Calling with a report of ‘something is broken’ isn’t useful. They need to know what is broken and to what extent and after years of doing this, you just automatically start finding that out.
The challenge looking on the admin side is that it’s impossible to tell the difference between ‘I looked at this’ and ‘I took this’. They are the same thing. The admin *should* be able to tell which records you touched, but the most trivial first test of a security problem is to see how much you can touch, and compare that to how much you know you’re supposed to be able to touch. E.g., I know I should be able to see about 10,000 records but suddenly I can see 100,000. That gives you a sense of scope and helps to narrow down the problem (what 90,000 records shouldn’t I be able to see).
In any kind of functional, professional relationship you should be able to go in and say ‘I ran the following queries’ (which the admin can see, btw) to determine the scope of the problem. I didn’t download anything locally, etc.
Not saying the Sanders staff didn’t exploit the situation. Not saying they didn’t do the right thing. I’m saying that telling the difference between exploiting the situation and doing the right thing can’t be determined by us in the bleachers. Even the admins may have trouble telling those apart. But a 40 minute delay between first spotting the problem and calling isn’t necessarily problematic to me. Depends a lot on the relationship between the parties.
Where I work, provided that my first check was to ensure that the security problem was limited to an identifiable number of people (that is, the databases weren’t suddenly chucked wide open to anyone, which is what it appears they first checked against) then they’d have no problem with me taking a few minutes to make sure there was a real problem here to report and that I could give them something useful to start from.
geg6
@Villago Delenda Est:
I first saw it from AP. So it’s not any particular media entity reporting the same thing. They have been told it was four different staffers and some of them saved the data. That is not in any ethical. At all.
? Martin
I should add – the reason most data folks advance and remain gainfully employed is that they don’t exploit these kinds of opportunities. Once you get that label attached to you, you’re never finding work again. Everyone is infinitely more paranoid about an insider letting data out than the potential opportunities to exploit someone else’s errors. Your data guys are more trusted than your lawyers. That said, if something like this happened and my staff exploited the situation, then yeah, I’d fully expect to be fired for that.
We’ll see how this plays out. I don’t expect this to turn into a civil war. Bernie will do right, Clinton will wave it off. These two know how to play the game.
Applejinx
@JMG: Interestingly, one of the things Bernie has always said (along with Elizabeth Warren and other progressives) is that the system is rigged. It’s a con, a cheat: you work, and the wealthy and powerful fuck you over no matter what you do.
I think it will work very badly for Hillary Clinton to be the beneficiary of an obvious rigging of the wheel and corruption of the system, and politically her best bet is to give Bernie’s data back and pull rank over the DNC.
The trouble there is, that makes her the dynastic kingmaker drowning in Wall Street money and only allowing Bernie’s campaign to still operate because the fix is in.
It might be better for Bernie if they don’t cooperate, because the narrative of ‘establishment politics appointing our new King’ is all too revealing and I know I personally was shocked to see this happening. It seems too brazen. It’s like they think we’re idiots.
chopper
@Baud:
DNC said they’d restore access once sanders’ campaign explained the situation and made assurances that any of clinton’s data was deleted. if sanders’ campaign has more than two brain cells to rub together they should have done that by now.
Cacti
@DCF:
Hey, that’s great.
The DNC bears some blame to the extent of hiring a patently incompetent vendor to host the data.
Now could you please explain how it is in any way Clinton’s fault that multiple Sanders campaign officials:
-Improperly and possibly illegally accessed proprietary data from the Clinton campaign
-Ran search queries of the improperly accessed proprietary data
-Exported and downloaded improperly accessed proprietary data
geg6
@SteveinSC:
This would be proprietary campaign information and it is more than just donor lists. They saved it to their personal files. That is not just a good faith mistake.
Keith G
Great, more chances not to talk about policy.
More chances not to talk about the things that will put food on people’s tables, or make sure they have a roof over their head for some secure amount of time at a price they’ll be able to afford, or take care of their kids, and/or buying their medicine. This is in entertainment this is not news. No wonder media are lapping this shit up.
My fucking god we are such a weak populace. No wonder we have shitty government run by and large by shitty people. We truly are getting the government we deserve.
@John Cole:
Not impossible, and just a smidgen more likely than many here would like to believe.
A certain percentage of Republican voting bloc will turn out no matter who their candidate is. The Democrats, while having a larger number of voters available to them, suffer from having fewer of them committed to turn out no matter what. The former Secretary of State is not going to energize potential voters with her winning personality. She needs to be focused on winning voters with policies that inspired them to join the fight. Episodes like this tend to diminish the chances of her being able to connect through policy and I am sure focusing on such soap operas serve the press just fine.
So yes, although right now it’s not the smart betting position, Hillary could lose the election.
Iowa Old Lady
@Major Major Major Major: Beyond undecided voters, the campaigns may have data on people they’ve contacted. They’ve phoned and knocked on my door multiple times asking how likely I am to caucus, who I plan to support, and how firm that support is. IOW, they may have data telling them who to try to persuade, who to call to be sure they have transportation, etc.
Villago Delenda Est
@geg6: I’m not saying that it is in any way ethical.
I’m just saying that the way this is being handled is not good for the party, at all. It plays right into the beloved “Democrats in disarray” meme of the MSM.
Major Major Major Major
@Iowa Old Lady: That data is mostly used to bother people until they caucus or rule out other voters, actually.
It’s why they’re bothering you.
Elizabelle
OT: NYTImes public editor (ie. ombudsman) Margaret Sullivan has her column up re the “jihadis messaged blatantly on social media! — oh wait” story.
Systemic Change Needed After Faulty Times Article (you can be excused for saying: which one?)
Burned by anonymous sources — again — but circling the wagons around reporters etc. (They remind us of Apuzzo’s Pulitzer.)
Editor Dean Baquet dismisses possibility source has an agenda outright. Says source actually did not understand the difference between publicly seen and private messages.
And the reporters did not ask to actually see Tashfeen Shooter Malik’s messages.
The circumstances being the rush to publish?
Also from Sullivan’s column:
I’m not sure anything that straightforward appears in the annotated story.
Iowa Old Lady
@Major Major Major Major: The Dems have actually stopped calling here. I guess I sounded pretty definite. The Republicans have not given up, despite my being a registered Democrat. I live in a neighborhood that’s pretty Republican. They may be relying on that.
geg6
@Villago Delenda Est:
Meh. Nobody but the crazy Teahadi-like Sanders supporters (and not all of them are that, but too many to make me comfortable with him are) will even remember this in a month, two at most.
cmorenc
@Emma:
SO FREAKING WHAT? Please explain what advantage there is for HRC in taking this attitude. The middle-school mean-girls approach would be to stay all bitchy with poutrage over this. The adult, tactically wise approach would be for Clinton to quickly and publicly cut Bernie some slack over this while requesting that the DNC restore his database access ASAP.
Applejinx
The Bernie lawyer is talking like he has documentation that ‘another campaign’ used this same mishandling of the computer system to help themselves to Bernie data, and nothing was done.
That would be consistent with Bernie’s established refusal to attack Hillary no matter what she does, and with the reality of the DNC and the database company being run by Clinton loyalists. It looks like there are records of this wall being down, and specifics on another campaign (O’Malley?? :D ) abusing that trust to take whatever they wanted from the Bernie side.
I haven’t worked with these systems other than in a data-entry capacity. Anyone got information on how this stuff is logged, and to what extent the Bernie campaign would be able to notice this happening, which apparently is old news? They saw somebody taking Bernie data, didn’t reciprocate, complained to the database company and got blown off. Now somebody’s reached into the honey trap looking for a way to better get their attention, tried to play whistleblower and got fired for it.
I want to hear more about this earlier incident where it was the Bernie campaign that got hacked, where they complained and nothing was done. Because keeping that on the down low and trying to go through channels is very much what the Bernie campaign would do in that situation.
geg6
@cmorenc:
I’m gonna guess that, since they are debating tomorrow night, this will be over by then or soon thereafter.
Myiq2xu
@John Cole: I still remember the pearl-clutching around here when one of Hillary’s supporters allegedly accessed Obama’s passport files.
DCF
@Cacti:
I do not blame HRC – directly – for whatever improprieties one (or more) Sanders staffers may have committed. Currently, there is some question as to whether the ‘…patently incompetent vendor…’ allowed Sanders campaign information to be available to the HRC campaign in October of this year.
The Democratic party has become a shadow of its historical (read: FDR) self since 1992. How else does one explain travesties like NAFTA and the 1996 Telecommunications Act? The American people do support a progressive agenda, and we need leadership – at all levels of government – that will sincerely and relentlessly pursue that path….
Major Major Major Major
@Applejinx: They log the pants off of the VAN. If somebody accessed it, they would know.
Baud
@DCF:
They should, but they haven’t. Maybe that will change one day. Maybe even soon.
Heliopause
Ah, the Democratic Party. In a week when the top political story was that the GOP is headed by a fascist clown and two far-right hispanics who are tearing each other to shreds over immigration, they decide to grab defeat from the jaws of victory. A minor internecine kerfuffle turned into a full-on Wolf Blitzer wankfest, timed perfectly to (perhaps) drag on over the Christmas holidays.
Don’t ever forget, Dems, you’re still one half of our late night comedy gold.
Linnaeus
@DCF:
There’s plenty to criticize the Democrats for, particularly on economic policy, but it goes too far to say that the Democratic Party is a shadow of itself. Remember that the party had an openly white supremacist wing into the 1970s, which it doesn’t have now. The rightmost Democrat is still to the left of the leftmost Republican, which is a relatively recent development. The party as a whole is probably more to the left than it was 40 years ago.
FlipYrWhig
@DCF:
Yeah, the Democrats sure blew it when they allowed the flaming racists to leave the party.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: Probably the whole thing just proves that Bernie’s people are even MORE virtuous than we suspected! Is it possible to be better than perfect?
Major Major Major Major
I am not a member of any organized political party; I am a Democrat.
Will Rogers
beltane
This is taking attention away from Donald Trump, the Internet expert.
Bobby Thomson
@chopper: this. A thousand times this. Instead they appear to be throwing a Hail Mary that Democrats will hold the Ssnders team’s fuckups against Clinton. #feelthewhine
Davebo
@? Martin:
I’ve been coding/administrating DB’s since 85 so I know a bit about it as well.
Let’s start with the fact that the Sanders’ crew weren’t administrators of the database, they were users. And it’s been widely reported that not only did they access records they saved data.
I have no idea what they mean when they say he “suppressed two folders of information” but if this reporting is accurate it’s obvious this wasn’t a situation where a security flaw was found and then immediately reported to the vendor.
Just One More Canuck
@Applejinx: Until the Bernie lawyer actually demonstrates in some credible way that he or she has “documentation that ‘another campaign’ used this same mishandling of the computer system to help themselves to Bernie data”, why shouldn’t I assume that he’s just blowing smoke
FlipYrWhig
@Bobby Thomson: “This news story about our campaign playing around with the Clinton campaign’s data is sure to make people flock to our banner! All they have to do is realize that it’s obviously a trap that Hillary and Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the database vendor cooked up together to deter our volunteers from inputting canvassing data! According to my Twitter feed, this argument is very persuasive!”
rikyrah
As New Hampshire polling goes, the new Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald survey
1. Donald Trump: 26% (down from 28% in October)
2. Ted Cruz: 12% (up from 5%)
2. Marco Rubio: 12% (up from 6%)
4. Chris Christie: 11% (up from 3%)
5. Jeb Bush: 10% (up from 9%)
6. John Kasich: 8% (up from 6%)
7. Carly Fiorina: 6% (down from 10%)
Bobby Thomson
@Villago Delenda Est: which campaign has been doing press conferences tgat pour gasoline on the fire?
Mike in NC
@beltane: On the subject of Trump, yesterday we had an interesting bus tour of the Nazi ruins of Nuremberg, where there is much local debate about spending millions of Euros to preserve some of those buildings as a warning to posterity, or simply raze them to put up condos and new office parks.
Fr33d0m
I take Bernie’s campaign at its word when the campaign manager says staffers had “irresponsibly accessed” data from another campaign, that one staffer was fired and others might be disciplined.
That says to me that they had indeed done something wrong, at least as far as the campaign is concerned. It appears the campaign self-reported the issue and dealt with it up front.
So that makes DWS’ actions suspect, but I will wait to hear more before I start casting the kinds of words some of you have. I agree that Hillary should step-up and request the access be returned, especially if the Bernie campaign self-reported and took action without being asked to. I also agree that DWS needs to act in a fashion that looks like she’s not picking sides–and that is how this is being received on the other end.
We should also be talking about how risks inherent in the architecture of this system are mitigated and who should have been providing management oversight as the system was being worked on. Somebody should have been in position to assure the integrity of the system while it was being worked on and their job should be in question as well.
So yes, more investigation into how the problem occurred and what steps are being taken to either further segregate the information or keep it safe during such operations, and into what exactly was accessed and how–and by whom. As well as the actions of both campaigns and the DNC
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig: if that weren’t almost a literal transcript, it would be hilarious.
rikyrah
DJ Sylvester
@DJ_Sylvester
Something stinks. #DNC & @DWStweets were told of firewall issues 2mos ago but did nothing until Sanders gained pledge of 700K union members.
Bobby Thomson
@Davebo: use is presumed from access when you’re talking about information. If they really wanted to probe the effects if the lapsed firewall they would/should have gotten a third party because it’s understood you can’t just forget confidential information and there’s a real risk they would be barred from the campaign. That tells me they are lying or idiots or both.
kindness
I’ll support either Bernie or Hillary in the General Election. But we need to find a way to dump DW Schultz right now.
FlipYrWhig
@Bobby Thomson: I should have included that the scheme was clearly put into effect “…because they’re so afraid of our mighty strength.”
Bobby Thomson
@rikyrah: they were told the fire wall was down two months ago. Not at all the same thing. #feelthewhine
DCF
@Linnaeus:
The Democratic Leadership Conference (DLC) – spearheaded by Bill Clinton – pointed the Democratic party toward a ‘Third Way’ (read: Republican-lite). The result was competing parties that were less and less distinguishable from one another – and disaffected progressive voters whose party moved farther and farther to the right.
I agree with you that the ‘…party [base] as a whole…’ has recently moved farther to the left over the past decade. However, the party ‘elite’ is still largely populated by DLC-oriented individuals who fear – for a variety of reasons – to stand firm for progressive (as opposed to regressive) values.
It would be wise for the DNC/HRC apparatus not to alienate the Sanders/Warren wing of the American political spectrum. If Sanders supporters – particularly the youth cohort – become disenchanted with the electoral process, and HRC becomes the nominee, she could conceivably lose the 2016 election via a lack of participation (and voting).
Bobby Thomson
@kindness: but how?
gwangung
That’s something everyone can agree on.
KCIvey
@Emma:
Sure, but I’m willing to bet the same dinner that DWS would not have cut off the Clinton campaign’s access.
joel hanes
@Mike in NC:
> Nuremberg
Will you be in Nurnberg long ?
Fascinating place. Falling snow over the Christkindlmarkt in front of the Frauenkirchen on a December 1973 evening was one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve ever had.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christkindlesmarkt,_Nuremberg#/media/File:Christkindlesmarkt_nuernberg.jpg
And you should definitely buy a pair of echte Nurnberger bratwurstchen on a brotchen from a street vendor. Mit senf.
I could spend a whole weekend just in the museums.
On the other hand, I can take or leave the traditional Christmas Lebkuchen — tradition is all very well, but it’s just not that delcious a cookie. Nor does marzipan delight me, no matter how it’s shaped.
Chyron HR
@DCF:
Hey, just elect Trump and he’ll bring back the glory days of FDR (read: rounding up undesirable minorities and putting them in prison camps) in no time!
Bobby Thomson
@KCIvey: true, but her hackishness isn’t an excuse for their failure to destroy the data they took and provide assurances.
This is why she needs to go. In addition to being terrible at every aspect of DNC chair, she lacks legitimacy, and it allows bad actors and potentially bad actors to avoid responsibility.
Kay
In the first public sighting of the DNC in months, they decide to launch a high-profile battle with a Democratic campaign:
Check and mate, DWS. You sure showed those losers.
John Cole
The only possible upside of HRC losing the general election would be watching Cacti weep salty fucking tears for the rest of her/his existence.
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major:
Yup. It times out pretty quickly, too which can be a pain if you are on a lengthy persuasion call or step away to help someone else.
FlipYrWhig
@DCF: The problem with your little fable is that there never was a time that the Democratic Party stood for progressive this or that. It was an alliance between progressives, labor, and hardcore racists, and then when Republicans wooed away the racists, it became an alliance between progressives, people of color, and socially tolerant middle-class suburbanites.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Christ, did she actually say that? :::head-desk:::
KCIvey
@Bobby Thomson: There’s no indication they took any data. They saved it to lists in the system and did not export it, at least as far as I’ve seen reported. NGP VAN has cut off their access to those lists and presumably could delete them (if they didn’t want to save them for investigation). Why doesn’t the DNC just tell NGP VAN to restore access, and let this damaging fight die down? It’s certainly not helping any Democratic candidate win the general election.
beltane
@Kay: DWS is quite tough and nasty on Democrats while being notoriously accommodating towards Florida Republicans. She is a far better asset to the GOP than Reince Priebus is.
Maybe Martin O’Malley can be the next DNC chair.
FlipYrWhig
@beltane: That’s a pretty good idea for O’Malley’s future, actually… although I wouldn’t mind seeing a person of color heading the DNC soon.
Davebo
@Kay:
You’ve got to admit Bernie’s campaign has been blustering pretty loudly.
They should be given back access to the data to be sure but Bernie’s staff isn’t serving him well in all this and I’m not talking about the 4 guys who combed the data. (I’m looking at you Jeff Weaver…)
Bobby Thomson
@KCIvey: saved but didn’t take? Rather than fight semantics, the point is that the DNC demands for restoring access are actually very reasonable and the Sanders campaign has made a very stupid decision to fight them. #feelthewhine
Emma
@John Cole: No, John. The upside would be more women dying from illegal abortions, more trillions of dollars spent on stupid wars we can’t win, more millions of sick people cramming into overstressed emergency rooms.
Oh. You mean that’s not an upside?
Emma
@KCIvey: Sure. Next time your credit card number is stolen feel free to tell the store not to worry about security.
Fr33d0m
@Emma:
Personally I doubt we have to “push” either of them, but the relevant example of being magnanimous is still Bernie’s response to the Clinton email questions during a debate (or at least I think it was a debate).
goblue72
@Fr33d0m: Pretty much. He had an opening a mile wide to go after her on the email thing. Instead, he magnanimously shut it down. So yeah, when the tables were turned, he did the right thing.
So all of these speculative “if the shoe was on the other foot” counter-arguments are wholly unpersuasive given that we do indeed have a real life example and know exactly what happened. We don’t need to speculate.
DCF
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s history, not mythology…LBJ drove the racists out of the Democratic party with his advocacy for policies such as civil/voting rights. Those folks then moved to the Republican party via Nixon’s southern strategy. Call me radical, but programs like Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security and the like are what IMO are ‘progressive’…in a similar fashion, FDR proposed (and implemented) programs such as the TVA and the CCC…the ‘labor’ title covers a rather large cohort, given the economic conditions of the 1930s….
Davebo
@John Cole:
Pretty harsh, especially from you of all people.
Grow up John.
KCIvey
@Emma: If they’re still worried about the security of their system, then they should shut down access for all campaigns until they can get it fixed.
@Bobby Thomson: Apparently exports of data are logged, and there’s been no report of an export. If they haven’t exported any data, what are they supposed to delete?
We had a special election for the DC Council a couple of years ago. One of the candidates happened to be the chair of the “state” Democratic committee. And wouldn’t you know it, somehow other Democratic candidates weren’t allowed access to the NGP VAN voter file controlled by the DNC.
Kay
@Davebo:
Her job is to promote the Democratic Party, not to “win” a battle with a Democratic campaign. While we’re talking about organizational competency, isn’t she the manager of the organization that apparently leaked this and then clumsily announced a draconian punishment before she had any facts?
I hope she stands firm against the Bernie Sanders campaign, I really do. Emerges triumphant.
John Cole
@Emma: What part of “only” is eluding you, for goodness sake?
max
If the patch (according to the DNC!) allowed ALL users from ALL campaigns to access the data, and Bernie’s staffers reported the problem to the DNC and the DWS went out and took Sanders to task for it, then clearly she was in the wrong, since ALL campaigns could see all data. (And this has apparently occurred before.)
No side is claiming a felonious access to the database, since the Sanders (and the Clinton and O’Malley) campaigns could see everyone else’s data. That’s not even a prima facie ‘unauthorized’ access breach under federal law (look it the fuck up), never mind that the law in question is written terribly badly and has been misused in the past.
There you go.
max
[‘Not about the Clinton campaign, but very definitely about problems between DWS and the Sanders campaign.’]
Marc
@Emma: We see a lot of complaints here about how Sanders partisans are antagonizing people sympathetic to him. I’m leaning Sanders (but support either in the general, of course), and the attitudes of Clinton supporters on boards like this are definitely rubbing me the wrong way. That’s the point that John is making.
You’re winning, for heavens sake, and more to the point the two campaigns have been pretty damn clean in how they treat each other. Be gracious.
goblue72
@Kay: And there, in a nutshell, is the problem with the Clintonistas. Major 4 Times upthread noted that he/she supports Hillary because of who she’s affiliated with / advised by people who know what they are doing. You know, people like Mark Penn. Or Rahm Emmanuel. Or Sidney Blumenthal. Or Bob Rubin. Or Erskine Bowles. Or DWS.
Bobby Thomson
@Marc: they are acting as though the res don’t apply to them. Hard to be gracious about that.
@KCIvey: if they saved it, they have it. Or, if “save” is being used in a weird way for this software, and they don’t actually have possession, custody, or control of what they saved, they can certify that. (But Uretsky sure made it sound like they have it and allegedly were going to put it in a report to the vendor and/or the DNC.). Not at all an unreasonable request.
Cacti
@John Cole:
Never outgrew your giant, right wing hateboner for all things Clinton, did you Cole?
AxelFoley
@MathInPA:
Shows you didn’t know what the fuck you were talking about in ’08 then.
John Cole
@Cacti: You’re really oblivious about how you come across (and not just to me), aren’t you?
Bobby Thomson
@max: try again. One side admittedly ran searches and saved data. All people are saying is, “make sure they don’t have continuing access to what they saved””. So just fucking do it and get off the fucking cross.
Applejinx
@John Cole: I think they’re just fighting way harder and more effectively than silly posters like old RTR.
By the way sorry about the flurry of similar posts just now: I can’t work out what got me in moderation. I don’t think it can be my verbosity: that’s not a banning offense, and I’ve not been too incendiary.
Davebo
@Kay:
There was no “leak”. A leak implies an insider “speaking on the condition of anonymity” and that hasn’t happened.
Look, Bernie’s campaign got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. The DNC began an investigation which, IMO was warranted. Pending that investigation they decided to block the campaigns access and as more facts have come out, facts that I’m pretty sure the DNC knew before the press did, that looks like a reasonable move.
And let’s be clear, I’d like to see the Sanders campaign regain access by COB today.
But let’s be clear here. The Sanders campaign is now on their 3rd version of their story about what happened. Perhaps they should just have just opted out of the system and built their own.
Even Uretsky doesn’t claim they didn’t capture data. He just claims they didn’t capture data they knew they shouldn’t have had access to that would help the Sanders campaign. Even then he prefaces it with the tried and true “To the best of my knowledge” tool.
“To the best of my knowledge, nobody took anything that would have given the (Sanders) campaign any benefit.”
None of this is Bernie’s fault. He is, in my opinion, an honorable man but his campaign has made a muck of this since it began.
You can delegate authority, but not responsibility. At least until you’re actually elected president.
I’m a Sanders supporter even though I know he has no chance to win the primary. Hillary is a political pro and Bernie, or more specifically, his staff, is looking like a group running for a Vermont House seat right now. Well funded, but horribly mismanaged.
Politics is often about damage control. Don’t throw more kerosene on the fire.
Cacti
@John Cole:
You’re cute when you’re angry, big fella.
;-)
Applejinx
@Marc: I think they’re in some way justified because they are NOT winning: not as much as it’d appear, only in certain carefully picked polls and in the spin.
Bernie recently passed a number (that might be moderation bait?) that has seven figures, twice as many small donor contributions as Obama had back in the day. Bernie’s done twice what Obama was managing at that time in his campaign, and Obama still won against the same ‘inevitability’ doctrine. In that light, it’s not surprising the Clinton people are fighting real savagely. Have some respect, they are fighting for their political lives for a second time and watching it all happen again, I’m not surprised it’s getting testy in here.
If you don’t like how the Clinton people are acting, go out and volunteer and hit the bricks for Bernie, nicely. We can still do that even if the DNC never gives the data back, and we totally will.
Davebo
@John Cole:
Informed? Was that the word you were looking for?
Put Alain on it right away dude! Unless you feel your recent interest in databases qualifies you to do it yourself.
Bobby Thomson
@Davebo: agree with all of this. If Sanders weren’t focused on debate prep I find it hard he would have let things get so out of hand. He definitely had no idea what Uretsky was doing because it’s so damn stupid.
Cacti
Clinton campaign makes first public statement about data breach:
Doesn’t sound too overheated.
goblue72
@Davebo: Opt out?
The system in question is NGP-VAN’s voter database software, the result of a 2010 merger between two companies. NGP, founded by Nathaniel Perlman, the CTO for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign, provided the voter database / political fundraising software to most federal Democrats and most of the Democratic campaigns for President from the late 1990s. VAN, founded in early 2000s, provided the voter database software for Obama and a large number of the major labor unions. Following the merger, NGP-VAN is pretty much the de facto voter database software for the entire Democratic party. One of things the Democratic Party did was move away from having several competing voter database software platforms, with various voter information being separated and moved to a single system to comprehensively track voter information from campaign to campaign.
You don’t just “go out and build your own”.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Yup. Bernie Sanders is a smarter version of Dennis Kucinich transplanted to Vermont.
Emma
@Marc: First and foremost, I am not a Clinton supporter. I am a Democratic supporter. As I’ve said before, I will crawl over broken glass to vote for whoever wins the primary. I don’t give a damn who it is. There’s more at stake than who wins the primary.
However, the remarkable ability of Bernie supporters to throw shit at Hillary Clinton while at the same time demanding that Clinton supporters behave like Boy Scouts irritates me to the soul. Their whinging about this is obnoxious. The same people who happily call Clinton a corporate whore (and that’s their mildest insult) bitch and moan when somebody has any disagreement with their hero, even in the mildest parliamentary language. Either everyone refrains or everybody throws mud. The only thing turning the other cheek does in politics is to leave you with finger marks on both cheeks.
DCF
@Applejinx:
In 2007, HRC was leading BHO by twenty (20) points at this juncture of the 2008 presidential campaign. I imagine the HRC campaign is experiencing flashbacks and responding (in this time frame) in a vigorous and aggressive fashion.
To be clear…I will vote for HRC, should she be the Democratic nominee…the Supreme Court is only one of the reasons why I would do so…however, I will do so without the excitement and enthusiasm that a more progressive candidate would elicit from me….
Lastly…never underestimate Bernie Sanders….
FlipYrWhig
@DCF:
As many people have said, the Dixiecrat ethos was “socialism for white people.” When you long for the FDR and LBJ days, that’s part of what you’re longing for. The reason why the DLC/Third Way gambit worked was that when the racists swung Republican the Democrats set out to win over the affluent suburbanites who were the backbone of Eisenhower Republicanism. The DLC didn’t set out to stab progressivism in the back for shits and giggles; they tried to sell efficiency, technology, and technocracy to the people who had been voting Republican for years, and to a large degree it worked. If nothing else it bought time for people of color to become a larger presence in America and push Democratic politics in a more socially liberal direction.
Davebo
The National Data Director for a presidential campaign is probably one of the top 4 positions in any campaign these days. Just ask President Mitt Romney.
Three days ago I’d have said I’m woefully under qualified for such a position but today… Bernie, I’m here if you need me!
Heliopause
@John Cole:
One of the more distasteful things to come our of this election season is the strong authoritarian streak found in some Clinton supporters. We got an inkling of it eight years ago and it’s back in full flower this year.
FlipYrWhig
@Emma: Bernie’s online partisans do him no favors.
Davebo
@goblue72:
Obviously I was being facetious there.
Betty Cracker
Well, the race to see who would most quickly make political / donation hay out of this incident has been decided, at least in my inbox. Team Bernie sent me an invitation to sign a petition calling on the DNC to restore data access and an account of the events that omits the possibly shady accessing of Clinton’s data and the firing of the campaign’s national data dude. It does rightly point out that DWS has had her finger on the scale all along…
ETA: I’m on both HRC’s and Bernie’s mailing list. So far, not a peep from the HRC campaign.
goblue72
@Davebo: Apologies. Thread has gotten so long I’m just skimming. My bad.
geg6
@John Cole:
Says the middle-aged white guy who won’t really lose anything with that result.
Marc
@FlipYrWhig: I’m seeing a lot less destructive behavior on either side than I saw in 2008. I like it that people are passionate about candidates that they support. It’s incredibly refreshing for someone like me to have a candidate like Sanders who really resonates with things that I believe in. At the same time, Clinton is clearly listening; I’ve been reading what she’s supporting and I think that she has learned a lot over the last eight years. My primary reservations about her is her relative hawkishness on foreign policy – I have a sinking feeling that she’s going to prove how tough she is by launching wars. My primary worry about Sanders is whether people are really ready to elect a socialist to the presidency.
geg6
@Marc:
What if we don’t know who we’re supporting but the Sanders supporters are so obnoxious every single day that it keeps pushing me out of his column? Neither Hillary or Bernie are my idea of the ideal candidate. I truly am not committed either way. But for months now, the Sandersnistas have been only second in obnoxiousness to Trump’s. They remind me of every Ron Paulite I’ve ever come across. It’s really offputting and, if you ask me, Bernie should cut most of them loose.
Frankensteinbeck
@Marc:
I hear this a lot. Why do you think she’s hawkish? She voted for Iraq, but she’s certainly part of a large crowd there. More recently, she’s proudly bragged about being part of peaceful resolutions of the Iranian nuclear issue.
Bobby Thomson
@Heliopause: yeah, the nerve of them expecting the Sanders campaign to follow the rules. Rules are only for Hillary.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: O’Malley should have taken the opportunity to remind folks that no one cares about his data.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Marc: I see shades of 1984 with Bernie as the nominee.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: This election seems so unprecedented, its really hard to predict what will happen.
Davebo
@goblue72:
No apology required.
This should have all been trivial but again, poor campaign management IMO.
@Marc:
He was never going to get that far. I love Bernie, but he’s no Barack. Hopefully he can tamp this down and go back to pushing Hillary to the left.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: How about your datum?
geg6
@Applejinx:
This comment is a perfect illustration of what I’m saying. You sound like the Republicans in 2012. Exactly.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: He reminds me of what Fritz Mondale was saying then, just a bit louder. It didn’t sell then.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: My data is protected by encryption based on the Navajo codetalkers. Unhackable and impenetrable.
Marc
@Frankensteinbeck: She is on the right side on Iran. She was a strong advocate for military action in Libya and Syria within the Obama administration. She didn’t take her fights to the public, which I appreciate, but combined with her Iraq war vote I think that she is much more likely to favor using the military than Sanders would be.
Applejinx
@Marc: If we can win Bernie the nomination, then we can win the presidency.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but Hillary Clinton is a WAY smarter, more ruthless, dirtier fighter than any of the existing Republicans including Trump.
I mean, whoo! We’re gonna know we’ve been in a mother of a fight, clearly. They will stop at nothing, and they have the media more in their pocket than Trump does, and they really don’t give a shit about democracy or anything at this point. Winning is the only thing, by any means necessary.
I used to think we could co-exist with that but now it’s making me nervous.
At any rate, it should be really obvious that Hillary is a WAY better opponent than anybody else in politics. I’m genuinely impressed at the lengths to which her campaign will go. We’ll just have to go hit the bricks and canvass harder (and get more small donor contributions to help us do that)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Wait, you have more than one datum? Are there any codetalkers left?
Baud
@Marc: She’s more hawkish than Obama. But some folks compare her to the most hawkish Republicans, which is not supportable IMHO.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I own a couple of datum..
They said they were Navajo. Stupid Craigslist.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Applejinx: I think you’re underestimating the Republicans.
Bobby Thomson
@Applejinx: she is crafty. It’s amazing how she got Uretsky to own goal. How nefarious!
Applejinx
@Baud: That’s true. There’s a big difference there. I’m inclined to cut Obama some slack with his foreign policy, and the same would be true for Hillary: she could have some hawkishness but it wouldn’t be nearly the same scenario as what we’d get with a Republican.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Prior to your edit, it sounded like you owned a couple of codetalkers.
ETA: IANAL, but I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.
Bobby Thomson
@geg6: yep. Exactly.
Davebo
@Baud:
Hastiin Yidiists’a’ Hashtaał?
Oh yeah, you’re screwed!
Chyron HR
@Applejinx:
Were you born insane or did your parents raise you that way?
Applejinx
@BillinGlendaleCA: That’s a form of a compliment, my friend. Remember when Democrats didn’t fight and were pushovers for aggressive Republicans? Boy, have we moved on beyond those days.
Hillary is meaner and tougher than any Republican. That doesn’t make her good, but respect. Respect for the fierceness of the opponent. She really will do anything, absolutely anything to win.
Frankensteinbeck
@Marc:
Then, and I’m very serious about this, not ragging on you, why do you think they happened at all? Whenever we got to check them, insider stories about the Obama Administration were a nonstop parade of lies encompassing Village wishful thinking. The hardest thing I’ve heard her say was, when specifically asked about what she would have done differently, that she would have armed the Syrian rebels more – followed by a lengthy orgasmic paean by the writer about how he was sure she would repudiate Obama’s peacenik approach. When asked on the campaign trail, she’s said she supports his approach. Is there anything except rumor that she’s a hawk? What she’s said and done suggest she’s ‘limited interventionist’ in the style of Obama, and more dovish than her husband.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
That’s why it’s so important I win. When the President does it…you know the rest.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Remember, I’m old enough to have watched that guy say that.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
…a special prosecutor is assigned, and the New York Times becomes the ringleader of a media carnival?
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck: The way the NYT has been lately, I’m starting to wonder if Nixon was innocent.
Marc
@Baud: Agreed; there is a huge difference between the “bomb at random” crowd and any of the Democrats. But we’ve seen the enormous pressure for military intervention that Obama has had to resist; it’ll be even worse with ISIS etc. It’s not too hard to see Clinton going with the flow, especially since this is closer to her preferences. We won’t get idiocy like the unprovoked Iraq War from her, but we very well could end up with a lot of troops on the ground in Libya, Syria, Iraq for years fighting ISIS.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: He was just testing the DNC’s physical security.
Baud
@Marc: The pressure will be there regardless of who the President is.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: FTW!
wondering
Christmas came early.
Sanders campaign responds appropriately and looks good. Clinton campaign responds appropriately and looks good. Optics for the DNC are terrible and likely to get worse. Good times.
Again, when does the DNC make its firing(s) of those who knew about the security problem for months and didn’t fix it?
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud: and @Marc:
I can’t imagine her under more pressure to be hawkish than as a candidate in a major public debate immediately after a terrorist attack. What she said then was that the locals would have to do their own fighting.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I think containment is the best we can hope for, until there is a political solution(redrawing the borders).
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck: She also didn’t back down on Syrian refugees. It’s a good sign.
DCF
@FlipYrWhig:
My recollection of that period is that after two (2) terms of Ronald Reagan and one (1) of George H.W. Bush,
the Democratic party surmised that it needed to appear more ‘conservative’ – at least fiscally.
IMO, the ‘liberal’ Republican is as extinct as the dodo, and ‘moderate’ Republicans are an endangered species. The ‘independent/swing’ voter is, at present, the mythological cohort of an earlier time.
The Clinton presidency may well have been a necessary stepping stone, although the equivocal policies of that administration were succeeded by the tragedy of the GWB election(s). Did Bill Clinton make ‘compassionate conservative’ a more appealing position, and make Al Gore and John Kerry appear (by contrast) to be too ‘liberal’? Sounds like a great thesis project ;>) ….
It is my firm belief – and feeling – that our country stands at a crucial crossroads. We cannot afford to follow a path of neo-McCarthyism and Christianist mythology advocated by ‘true believers’.
Linnaeus
@Frankensteinbeck:
I could see it. She has to tailor her message somewhat, since she’s still running for the party nomination. Once we get to the general, it’s a different ballgame.
Chyron HR
In other news, an MMO recently suffered an item-duplicating bug that some players exploited to great profit. But (surprise) the game managers were entirely able to track who did it and hand out bans for doing so. And of course various forums for the game are now overrun with spoiled children screaming that the GAME DEVELOPERS were at fault for letting the bug exist in the first place, and that they didn’t do ANYTHING wrong.
And now we know where the Sanders campaign goes to recruit top-tier staff like Apple “let me lay some righteous redpill on you” Jinx.
Applejinx
@Baud: Yeah, that’s good. As savage as the intramural fight is, it’s still a big difference between any Dem and the Republicans.
I want the Dem that’s NOT calling off the democratic process over a technical foul :D
Applejinx
@Chyron HR: I entered data into the computers for Bernie. That’s OUR data, and I did nothing wrong, and my boss in the field office did nothing wrong, and Bernie’s done nothing wrong: in fact he fired the guy who was playing with the servers, even though that guy went straight to the database company to tell them what was up.
I did nothing wrong. Give us our FUCKING data back. Far as I know we are still locked out of running a political campaign and you’re there snarking like I’m some whiny baby.
I enter data for the Sanders campaign. That’s my job. Give me my job back or explain why it’s right for the DNC to take sides and call off one of the campaigns against our will.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Frankensteinbeck: If she’s the nominee I hope she says something about “pants-wetting Republicans” and her pantsuit being dry. There’s a great one-liner in there for someone to assemble.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Applejinx: Two technicals will get you ejected in the NBA.
BillinGlendaleCA
@ThresherK (GPad): She’s already said how Presidents get old and grey and that won’t be a problem for her; she’s dyed her hair for years(I have as well, currently black).
someofparts
@John Cole:
If she loses to Ted Cruz, it really will be time to get the hell out of here. Cruz is the real thing – in the worst sense possible. If he becomes president, the end times will be well and truly underway.
liberal
@Marc:
He’s not a socialist. A socialist is someone who thinks that government should own or control the means of production.
lonesomerobot
It’s very, very hard for me to believe that the Sanders staffer(s) didn’t know that their data access would be logged. Knowing that, proceeding in a manner that was meant to be unscrupulous would be a pretty stupid thing for a database professional to do. Almost incompetent. I guess we’ll find out. Also, if you have found a breach, often the first thing you do is try to figure out the extent of the breach. You can’t actually tell from your own data, because you’ve always had access to it. An easy way to get an idea is to query the newly available data – if all of theirs is available, all of yours could be available as well.
It’s also vague to say data was “saved on their computer.” Metadata can be saved. Queries can be saved. Data that is relevant to what you are accessing is saved on your computer all the time without your knowledge. The Clinton campaign’s statement says, “data was saved into the Sanders’ campaign account,” which is an entirely different thing than being saved on one’s personal/work computer. That’s no smoking gun.
Reading through this thread, two things are clear: not a lot of database experts here, and some fervent assholes supporting both campaigns. You know who you are. Cue “but they’re worse!” in 3… 2… 1…
Davebo
@lonesomerobot:
Either you aren’t up to speed on the specifics of the story as they exist or you couldn’t write a select statement to save your mother’s life.
“Database Professional” is a pretty elusive term these days. Especially when one can’t determine the difference between users and administrators.
Citizen Alan
I genuinely think at this point that the greatest threat to Hillary’s campaign is DWS. She is becoming the Mark Penn of 2016.
J R in WV
I’m voting for the employees of the Corp supposed to be managing the Dem’s data as the most incompetent staff in this cluster-fk.
They are the folks who allowed access to the crown jewels~! You can’t blame data guys for looking to see what they can pick up after they notice those jewels just scattered there on the floor. Well, you can, and should, but you should understand the compulsion. Then fire them. Right after you fire the folks who allowed the crown jewels to fall our in public like that. And their managers! You know who I’m thinking of, too.
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: Then again, NPG VAN is the really the only game in town for progressive political IT and emerging media. 90% of Dem pols use them and their reputation among campaign staff is really good. Yes, they fucked something up here, but it does not necessarily make them incompetent.
Applejinx
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, you can’t fault us for trying to consolidate on a known, consensus data system even when it means trusting the vendor, even when there have been lapses before (this isn’t the first time they dropped the security and left all the campaigns exposed to each other).
We’re trying to work together and not have foolish duplication of effort. We’re trying to consolidate the data. I get that. I’ve had no problem with the idea that the data entry I was doing for Bernie, would end up serving Hillary in the event that she was the nominee. We were all in this together and on the same team.
I did NOT expect to not be able to get my own data back out again or to have my work, done specifically for Bernie, not to be available for Bernie. That is not what I signed up for, and now in the best case scenario I need to be able to go back to work and keep putting more fresh data into the system that’s still under the control of the DNC and used as a political football. The fact is, we should be using a common system and sharing data when it comes down to the final campaign with all the primaries over.
How would people have acted if Bernie wanted to use only his own system and not share information? We could have avoided all this so easily, but we wanted to work within the system and cooperate, in spite of there being a lot of suspicion of the other camp.
Competent or not, NPG-VAN is what you use if you’re a Democratic pol. I don’t think that’s wrong, it just poses challenges. And somebody’s inevitably going to run those companies, and we have to be able to work with conflicts of interest and not expect massive catastrophes and weird security lapses.
And in the end we gotta work with what is, not what we’d wish it to be…
MathInPA
@AxelFoley: You mean other than the fact that he kept believing that the Republicans would play nice? Other than the healthcare law, which I applaud, one of the reasons he’s done much better in his second term is that he’s grown up and has decided to do what he can with what he has.
See here’s the other thing that I meandered past: Sanders isn’t Obama. He has better positions, but less suave, less cool, and overall less charisma. He’s petulant, didactic, and has a keystone kops organizational style. Compare that to the leaps Obama made with his org, even if his goals weren’t ever the best.
I still honestly would have preferred Hillary in ’08. I definitely prefer her now. Bernie seems like he’s got good ideas but shadows of McCain’s temper. He doesn’t know how to outreach, mostly because I suspect he’s never had to. And worse and worse are his supporters. The people who rant on about how there was a conspiracy to ‘lure’ the Sanders campaign in, or go for horrific ‘worse than Republicans’ and so forth. There have been some folks I respect who are his supporters; I see a lot of them on hullabaloo. But the loudest ones remind me of fauxgressives and sandwich liberals whenever anything dares to burst the bubble. Sanders can’t entirely control the environment around him, but that’s sort of the point: he doesn’t seem to even be trying. I hope that’s not because he doesn’t want to; I hope it’s just because he isn’t able to do so.
Ultimately, I live in Washington State. My opinion is meaningless in the general, let alone the primaries, so I just focus on not letting creeping libertarianism in to our rural district. But Sanders would have to demonstrate some serious campaign discipline– and make me think he actually cares about anything other than an idealized point a to point b movement.
Alex
So as an update– the data director of the Sanders campaign was not trying to document the breach. — https://storify.com/DemFromCT/ia-starting-line-on-today-s-bernie-sanders-dnc-dat
And the Clinton campaign is now calling for Sanders’ campaign to regain access to the data —
https://twitter.com/EvanMcSan/status/678032637861208064
DNC is also calling for an independent audit.
Karen
Trump’s people are infesting Raw Story posing as Dems and claiming that they’d never vote for HRC and if Bernie doesn’t win they’re going to “bern the house down” and vote for Trump.
a different chris
This issue has finally convinced me that Hillary is the best candidate. She has all the behind-the-scenes tools to bring to bear against her enemies and isn’t afraid to use them, that’s exactly what we need. Finally, someone with a [D] after their name who isn’t afraid to get out there and do whatever it takes to WIN! WINNING! Who gives a shit about being right, the world loves a winner.
Applejinx
@Alex: That’ll do. Yes, please.
Politics is a rough game sometimes. You have to be able to weather some crazy stuff. I know I’m not going to forget this day, but it will be REALLY great to put it behind me and get back to work.
All Democrats benefit from the DNC not unilaterally and illegally shutting down active political campaigns.
An independent audit would be a wonderful idea what with all the Clinton staff involvement in so much of this.
Hell, we can roll with the penalty of a day of downtime (a HUGE DEAL) just fine. Just let us get back to work getting out the vote! :)
Omnes Omnibus
@Applejinx:
Put up or shut up. What Clinton staff involvement?
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus:
Perhaps this
chopper
@Alex:
and apparently now bernie is suing. dude really isn’t covering himself in glory here.
Applejinx
@Omnes Omnibus: Almost everybody is working closely with Clinton, has long-standing Clinton history, was working for Clinton in ’08, etc. etc. etc.
There’s a series of screenshots said to be a list of the database operations run by the renegade Bernie guys. They’re fascinating. They’re released by the DNC and by an Iowan guy who worked for the Hillary ’08 campaign. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was the campaign co-chair for the Hillary ’08 campaign. That’s working pretty closely with Clinton, and she sure as hell hasn’t come over all hostile in the interim.
Politics is working with people who have a LOT of history, in all directions. In no way are we expecting that the Democrats aren’t absolutely joined at the hip with the Clintons, all the way down the line. It’s just that you can’t dismiss entire campaigns because they’re not your favorite, and especially in 2015 the dynasty pols don’t necessarily win: see Jeb Bush.
Thank you for keeping this localized to a relevant thread and not spamming Clintonista rants over absolutely every thread no matter how irrelevant…
Omnes Omnibus
@Applejinx: So no evidence of actual “Clinton Staff,” then?
And WTF is this?
Tripod
@Omnes Omnibus:
The wheels falling off a campaign.
Alex
@chopper: The Bernie campaign suing is “ok”… they really need access to the data.
I just don’t understand why they aren’t bending over backwards to accommodate the DNC because of how much they screwed up.
Omnes Omnibus
Reports are that the Sanders campaign will have access restored tomorrow morning. Per Twitter.
a different chris
Bernie should do the only honorable thing and fire himself and stop trying to Destroy America.
Socraticsilence
@Cacti:
Honestly if we want to avoid destruct give in fighting DWS should have resigned months ago, she’s essentially a Clinton campaign surrogate pretending to be a party chair and quite frankly she sucks at both jobs ( see Democratic elected being at essentially Andrew Jackson levels), as she’s not r just a heavily performance biased observer clearly still scared by what happened when Hillary’s 2008 inevitability ran up against those annoying Voter types and she’s somehow even worse at running the DSCC, the DSCC and the DSCC which are all at or near all time lows.
Just Some Fuckhead
What happened to poor old Martin O’Malley, Cacti? With supporters like you..