https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/7643
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/11508
I wouldn't call that professional. I would call that conspiring to commit a civil rights violation, or exploit one.
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/11508
I wouldn't call that professional. I would call that conspiring to commit a civil rights violation, or exploit one.
I do not know what you are reading into those emails but speaking purely objectively, there is remarkably little content in them to go off of. It could potentially have to do with Bernie Sanders in the Kentucky and West Virginia primaries (which were in early May), but that seems somewhat unlikely given the timestamps -- the West Virginia primary was only 5 days after the email was sent, which is almost no time for one to ask the question, get whatever answer, and launch a smear campaign. It could also be not about Sanders at all--WVA is an odd way to refer to West Virginia when WV will work as well, and the name "Sanders" doesn't appear anywhere in the emails themselves.
Even if it's about Sanders, the email doesn't even say whether the guy is rooting for or against Sanders: it could just as easily be "Hey, I heard this rumor that Sanders is an atheist, can we get someone to ask him so that he can squash that rumor like a bug?"
It doesn't strike me as a "civil rights violation" to ask about someone's religious views. I mean, maybe the US people not voting for politicians based on their religious affiliation is a larger civil rights violation that you fear will be triggered if this question is asked, but that seems like several steps away from a sure thing, since it's quite possible that Bernie will play a different political card.
1) The emails refer to two upcoming primaries, which occurred in close temporal and spatial proximity to each other. Literally no other campaign in the nation is in two states. It is hard to imagine any other figure in the nation that that refers to other than Bernie Sanders. I didn't mention Bernie Sanders in my reply, so why did you think it was about Bernie and then attempt to deny it? I think you protest too much.
2) The email is clearly suggesting to use the question against Sanders. Your hypothetical suggestion is plainly unsupported by the facts. Let me just quote the objectionable e-mail:
> It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.
That is clearly saying that knowledge that Sanders is an atheist would hurt him in KY and WVA (by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WVA). It is also implying that someone should directly ask him so he can't "skate by".
3) civil service jobs are not supposed to involve discrimination based on religious preferences and attempts to exploit bigotry by national political organizations is deeply unethical.
Are you talking about political agents being unethical (to which I say, "duh"), or are we talking about what you previously stated, "conspiring to commit a civil rights violation, or exploit one" ? Those are very different things.
People have a right to vote for a candidate as they see fit, based on all the information they have at their disposal. That's a core tenet of democracy. While I would prefer people not use religious views of candidates in most cases, there are cases where I would definitely like to know (for example, if the candidate believes the world will end within the year, I think that's probably the most relevant information in a presidential candidate you can know). While self serving, I can't see the action as purely negative, as it would be increasing true information to the public (as opposed to attack ads that insinuate unverified information).
1. I did not say that you said that those emails were about Bernie; I said that those emails could be about Bernie, because it's something that I do regard as a live possibility. I was just being honest about how little content there is there; it could be about Bernie or not. (Also the "I didn't mention Bernie so why did you think it was about Bernie?" card is extremely lame; we're talking about a WikiLeaks leak and WikiLeaks in parallel with this leak has announced e.g. via Twitter that they interpret this as being about Bernie. Of course it's neither my nor your innovation to read the emails that way; we both received it.)
Like, you say "the emails refer to two upcoming primaries." I am simply saying that this is too assertive for my tastes. It doesn't say anything about primaries; it says "KY" and "WVA" and those can be primaries, they also might not be. (I'm afraid I don't understand your "by the way" here -- you might be trying to point out the disambiguation link up-top, but of course acronyms may also refer to things that are not on Wikipedia. For example, Brad Marshall has a lot more emails from before this time mentioning the HVF; but have fun trying to find that on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVF .)
So, I mean, there's a lot that we're reading into this thing to come to that conclusion. Getting fussy and treating it like it's not a conclusion is not a great idea. It might well be a correct conclusion. But it's a conclusion that we're presently coming to off of limited evidence, and you shouldn't be all like "you cannot possibly be serious!" when someone points out that the evidence is limited, when it is.
2. You have a messed up definition for "clearly" then. That's OK, it seems like a lot of things seem a little muddled in your worldview. For example, you're right that "that is clearly saying that knowledge that Sanders is an atheist would hurt him in KY and WVA," as long as we weaken the word "knowledge" to "belief" (because it would be easy to misread what you said as drive-by-asserting that Bernie is an atheist, whereas Bernie has disclaimed this a few times, even though he has repeatedly asserted that he's not very religious in any organized way).
But it's not "clearly suggesting to use the question against Sanders." That's another conclusion. It might be right, but it's not like the email says "My Southern Baptist peeps would not vote for him if they knew the truth." In fact the whole case for this hinges on the word "skate" (you used, in quotes, "skate by", but that is not even what the email said).
That word by itself is not clear. It is implicitly suggestive via a negative connotation.
3. I am not doubting that the bigotry exists and I am not stating that the DNC for sure acted ethically. However, we would need to know a lot more than this email to know if that were true.
For example, you're treating this as a serious suggestion rather than some banter among friends. The email thread ends on an "AMEN!" which suggests that nobody in this thread considered it a starting block for some sort of conspiracy to actually ask Bernie the quetion to get him to be unelectable. In fact, that earlier thread about the "HVF" I mentioned, there was an official DNC denouncement of claims that the Bernie campaign was making; it came on the backs of a lot of back-and-forth in order to write a formal press release which is not present here... But one of the more interesting (and very hard to interpret) emails comes from Hillary's general counsel, Marc Elias, who was CCed on the question apparently independent of his work on her campaign. https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/5740 . It seems they might, having known him personally, sent him some examples of what Bernie is saying and solicited his legal advice on whether they could meaningfully speak against Bernie, even though they're supposed to be formally unbiased.
So it seems that on serious matters they approach it with sincerity and gravity, whereas the one you're calling a "conspiracy" might also just be a private sharing of personal bigotry, rather than an attempt to exploit it publicly.
Again, I'm not saying that this is surely what happened. Maybe it was a serious suggestion, too. We're on HN, we're both more mature than that; we both know what uncertainties are, and I'd hope we both have a practical knowledge of Bayes' theorem. I am merely saying that you're very convicted based on a conclusion drawn from very little evidence. We may get more evidence, and better evidence, which vindicates you. But the evidence as we have it right now is relatively brittle, as such things go. You multiply the odds ratio by the probability that he would have sent that email if he was trying to conspire against Bernie (relatively high, but he'd probably have been more explicit about it and his listeners probably wouldn't have treated it with such a lack of seriousness) divided by the probability that he would have sent that email if he wasn't trying to conspire against Bernie (which is probably not a tiny negligible probability the way you're making it out to be).
Everything about Bayes theorem etc and probabilities of various other explanations are disingenuous. Consider what Brad Marshall said when asked for comment:
> “I do not recall this. I can say it would not have been Sanders. It would probably be about a surrogate.”
(emphasis mine). https://theintercept.com/2016/07/22/new-leak-top-dnc-officia...
Usually when people deny remembering having sent an e-mail that was clearly delivered it's evidence that they're lying.
Your particular approach to engaging on what we don't necessarily know rather than what occurred prima facie makes me think that if you saw a nuclear explosion, you'd point out we don't know whether mushrooms do indeed grow that fast or not.
I respectfully yield whatever last words are in this exchange to you.