“Guccifer2”'s second release from DNC hack
guccifer2.wordpress.com
guccifer2.wordpress.com
E.g. lots of HRC defense docs, oppo research on Biden, prominence given to HRC in candidate position tableaus, etc.
In other words: favoritism in a party primary by the party infrastructure is supposed to be verboten.
They can do whatever they want, but then people can look at this shitshow of a story and draw their own conclusions.
Frame it as "DNC positions themselves as an ally of the predicted nominee given no strong challengers at that time" and it sounds pretty... normal.
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/dnc_chair_democratic_na...
Obviously, what the DNC says publicly and what the DNC does does not line up.
And that's assuming these documents are complete and unmodified. Nothing stopped this hacker from selectively editing and selectively leaking to support their agenda.
It seems relatively obvious that the DNC would have had teams preparing for both scenarios. The only difference is that Sanders has been a viable candidate for a shorter period of time.
Doesn't stop people believing that's what they say, but no - not one single thing says that.
Political parties exist for a reason, and that reason is not to run complete unbiased open primaries so that anyone may call themselves a party member and get unbiased support of the party.
Parties are biased, there's nothing surprising about that. Both Sanders and Trump are in effect, third party candidates, running campaigns trying to usurp the existing two parties into pouring support into their campaign, because third party runs don't work.
However, we shouldn't confuse that with a democratic process. We should also recognize that such actions by the DNC would contradict their public statements to the contrary, that they intend to remain completely neutral in the primary process.
If the situation were as you claim, then the parties would not have much of an argument against stronger, populist 3rd parties, because the 2 candidates served to the voters in the General Election would no longer reflect a representative choice of American voters.
> favoritism in a party primary
Do the documents show that or are you inferring it based on what hasn't been leaked?
Even if we grant that the DNC leadership thinks Hillary is the best... so what? It's a political party that takes public input from voters as one factor in deciding a nominee. The DNC shouldn't stuff ballot boxes and should try it's best to make the primaries as fair as possible, but to pretend they don't have like some candidates more than others strikes me as unrealistic.
Party preferences in a Democrats-against-Democrat competition while publicly declaring the party infrastructure neutral: not okay
That is, the DNC is supposed to be about promoting the chosen candidate to the American people, not actively picking one.
Nobody doubts that official favoritism isn't theoretically _allowed_ in a party primary, it just goes against the theory that it is a truly wide-open contest where the American people decide the direction of their government.
(It used to be wholly decided by party elders in secret. I'm glad we mostly use primaries now, but I can see the merit of that approach. I bet the Republican leadership wishes that's still how it worked right now. )
2) The Democratic party's official position is not that superdelegates are a complement to a 100% democratic process but instead that they exist _solely_ to ensure that party leaders are properly seated at the convention and do not have to compete with grassroots activists for participation at the national convention.
I don't personally believe that (2) is a good-faith defense of what superdelegates are, but that is the DNC's position. And it's worth mentioning that there are valid reasons for superdelegates: how do you deal with a potential nominee like John Edwards, what if the convention is truly contested (with 3+ candidates and no 1st-ballot victory?).
The Republican primary went largely as it should have been, and arguably Trump should have received an even larger share of the final delegates. Voters expressed their preference and that person became the nominee (whatever I think of their preference is irrelevant).
Who said that? I've never heard that before. Of course the superdelegates are intended to have a say in the nominee.
WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Well, let me just make sure that I can clarify exactly what was available during the primaries in Iowa and in New Hampshire. The unpledged delegates are a separate category. The only thing available on the ballot in a primary and a caucus is the pledged delegates, those that are tied to the candidate that they are pledged to support. And they receive a proportional number of delegates going into the — going into our convention.
Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists. We are, as a Democratic Party, really highlight and emphasize inclusiveness and diversity at our convention, and so we want to give every opportunity to grass-roots activists and diverse committed Democrats to be able to participate, attend and be a delegate at the convention. And so we separate out those unpledged delegates to make sure that there isn’t competition between them.
Just switch to OMOV and have each state democratic party vote on a leader and have them run for president would save a vast amount of cash being wasted.
Neither the DNC or any other political party is obligated to hold elections at all. They're perfectly free to nominate a candidate by fiat if they want to. Clearly, as a matter of marketing, they want to be as inclusive as possible and not appear to be picking favorites. But that's purely a PR consideration, not a moral one. As a practical matter, one of the intermediate goals for anyone running for high office is to make sure they have a lot of supporters in the party infrastructure. Only in the general elections do "the American people decide the direction of their government." The parties are free to do as they wish, democratically or not.
According to what?
Since when? says who? I doubt there has ever been a time where that statement has been true.
If the DNC would just "appoint" its favorite candidate, that would be fine. It's kind of a normal thing to do in Europe, actually. But then, just like in Europe, the Dem and Rep parties would have to allow other parties in the general election as well, and set up a system that works for third parties, because chances are more often than not people wouldn't be happy with the main parties' "appointed candidates".
Both the DNC and the RNC want to maintain the pretense of "fair elections" within their parties, so that people think their voices are heard, so they don't need to join another party and form a competitive grassroots movement.
There is no such thing as the DNC's primary. The only Presidential nominating election run by the DNC is at the convention, when they delegates vote on the nominee.
State parties in some states hold elections in the nominating process in the form of caucuses. Primaries, where they are used, are run by state governments, not the DNC or state Democratic parties.
> If the DNC would just "appoint" its favorite candidate, that would be fine.
That's actually what the convention is: its where the DNC appoints its favorite candidate.
> It's kind of a normal thing to do in Europe, actually. But then, just like in Europe, the Dem and Rep parties would have to allow other parties in the general election as well, and set up a system that works for third parties, because chances are more often than not people wouldn't be happy with the main parties' "appointed candidates".
No, they wouldn't, and even when there was no pretense that the nominating conventions were anything other than insider-driven affairs (which only ended fairly recently with reforms in both parties to rest more heavily on either state-run primaries or relatively-open -- compared to how they used to be -- party caucuses to select delegates, or at least inform delegate selection) the electoral system did not support third parties any better than it does now.
The GOP already did this to Trump at one of their debates[1], and no one threw a big fit about it then. Not a Trump supporter or claiming that it's justified, just saying it's not unheard of.
[1] http://www.vox.com/2016/2/13/10987776/republican-debate-audi...
They do. Every year my ballot has a multitude of other parties' candidates that I can vote for.
If you can find something before an actual opponent does, you can pre-emptively deal with it.
That isn't exactly a balanced approach to adversarial research (which, I agree, is not a poor idea in and of itself).
I bet they have similar files on Lincoln Chafee and Martin O'Malley, but it would have been foolish to invest as many resources in developing those as they did in the HRC file.
One of the people who work at the library contrasted it with when Howard Dean was running for president. There were opposition research guys from that election. However, instead of dressing like hipsters, they wore black suits.
[0] http://www.npr.org/2015/12/23/460762853/how-hillary-clinton-...
Of course, my bias in accepting a narrative too easily isn't real evidence that the DNC did not act as allies: there is too much existing (confirmed) evidence corroborating that.
And, as mentioned downthread, the DNC could release documents showing that they did oppo research on HRC as well.
The game theory of publicly hacking the DNC before an election makes zero sense (what happens when/if Clinton wins), but that doesn't mean some other organization couldn't be doing it just to mess with them.
I’m having a hard time following this. The game theory of… Russians?… hacking the DNC for what purpose? How would a Clinton win affect this?
> In an earlier statement, Trump said the hack was a political ploy concocted by the Democrats. (Bloomberg)
Or maybe you’re referring to that?
1) which I am explaining, not advocating
2) It actually follows a The West Wing episode (without the hacking, just using the mail, same process - different parts)
3) polling shows people who believe she did something wrong weren't going to vote for her anyway
4) as we see Trump's personnel changes this week
// my person got beat and I hate all of the above
* People who follow this stuff uniformly don't believe the DNC staged it.
* If you were crazy enough to stage a hack of the DNC, George Kurtz's company is probably not the one you'd pick to collaborate with.
(Also: we're on opposite ends of the political spectrum, me and GK, but I would bet all the money I have against a claim that he'd done something shady here. CrowdStrike might be wrong about the Russian attribution, but they aren't making it all up.)
On a side question, I know a lot of groups that have side channels where they discuss "inside baseball" type stuff away from non-insiders. Do security experts have a "hey did you hear about ...?" network or is it more of an I have other friends in the business type thing?
It is awfully high risk and awfully low reward for Russia to hack the DNC right before the 2016 election. The Democrats are likely to win, and they'll come into office with a fresh memory of Russia having screwed with them.
On the other hand: if they did hack the DNC, but screwed up by getting caught, maybe it makes sense to recast the operation as some sort of Wikileaks-esque information liberation strike?
Or, some faction either inside or outside of Russia is actively trying to mess with some other faction inside of Russia by implicating them in such a cartoonish plot.
The thing I don't see being taken very seriously among security people is the idea that there is a random hacker somewhere in eastern Europe who pulled this off on their own. Not because it would be hard to do, but because the specific traces that apparently got left don't make sense for a freelancer.
The Russian government is jonesing rather openly for a Trump win, so even if it is a bad decision on their part it seems quite likely they went ahead and did it anyway. If Clinton does win it certainly wouldn't be the first time that Putin's eagerness to square up to the US has left him in a situation where he generated American antagonism for no particular benefit to Russia. I get the impression that the Russian government enjoys its own infowars escapades a bit more than is healthy for it, and likely overrates their effectiveness a bit.
Besides, I'm not sure it really is a clearly bad decision (from a Machiavellian perspective, of course). Relations between Russia and the Clintons, the US foreign-policy set etc. seem to have already got so bad that it's not clear that even a fairly big provocation like this is likely to cause US actions to be that much more hostile than they would be anyway. For example, if Clinton gets in it seems there's a near-certainty of a big and imminent intensification of US/Russian proxy conflict, especially in Syria. Conversely if Trump does win the likely changes in US foreign policy promise to be a major and enduring victory for putinismo: it's a rare opportunity, and Trump's odds of winning aren't (yet, at least) a hopeless long-shot.
On the other hand - there are foreign interest in American politics. Just look at the big donations from Norway and Saudi Arabia. (Top donors though are "Children's Investment Fund Foundation" and other charities "for the children" :-).)
And why is anyone paying nearly 1 mio. USD for a speech? You must be getting more than what you can get by watching TV.
Access is what you buy. Facetime. Your name in their rolodex.
These leaks show Donald Trump paid $115,000 for a Clinton speech, and as he says in his own words, he used that influence to buy the Clinton presence at his wedding.
No one cares about the speech, he paid $115k to get them to show to a wedding
https://motherboard.vice.com/read/dnc-hacker-guccifer-20-int...
Also, I find it interesting that the Clinton Foundation has come out saying they have been breached as well. [1]
[0] http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/hacker-releases-clinton-fo... [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-21/clinton-fo...
paragraph of interest:
"Clinton Foundation officials said the organization hadn’t been notified of the breach and declined to comment further. The compromise of the foundation’s computers was first identified by government investigators as recently as last week, the people familiar with the matter said. Agents monitor servers used by hackers to communicate with their targets, giving them a back channel view of attacks, often even before the victims detect them."
Campaigns have members and volunteers with such varied skill sets. Putting security policies in would be a big ask.
What I think you're referring to is when "we all" got mad at the FBI for trying to force Apple to hack an iPhone. "We all" objected to the idea of a national government compelling a private company to invent new lock-picking tools.