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Comment by patrickaljord | Hacker News Reader

I find it weird that all these critiques from liberals come just when Wikileaks released info that the DNC primaries were rigged. Before that, it was pretty much all praise. Now, it turns out one of their informant may have been the victim of political assassination and you focus on the fact that they released a conversation of a dad and his daughter, which is of course a blunder but still, compared to the other potential news... Not that I want to see Trump win of course, but I don't want to give a free pass to the other side either.

edit: grammar

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I think calling the primaries "rigged" misses a lot of nuance about the Parties in the US and the situation at hand.

First, parties are clubs and they can have their own rules about their internal elections and campaigns. The rules of the normal election at federal level do not apply. The whole free association thing.

Second, Bernie is not "real" democrat. He was prior and plans on returning to the Senate as an independent. He joined/registered early enough before the process started... but essentially he was just renting the ticket. I can understand how the party would try to dissuade that.

Which leads to my third point, the party has to care about its platform, future viability and not just one candidate. The Clinton have a long history with the DNC. Obviously Bill was a generally well liked president before (by the base) but they have done a lot over the years to support other Democratic candidates in State, Congressional and even Mayoral races. They've raised a lot of money for the DNC and down tickets candidates.

Finally, Bernie didn't earn any extra points (my eyes) by claiming a lot of problems with voting and the process it self. He benefit from the system where there were caucuses; in NYC (where the DNC electoral organizer sucks) he voters that were purged were in heavy HRC; and to take the the next level the campaign started claiming at the end it was going to flip the super delegates after bitching about it for a while.

TL;DR Parties have their own rules; Bernie did not pay his DNC dues; parties have to care about a lot more then a single election; Bernie acted like a spoiled child about ballot box issues.

Disclosure: I'm registered independent in NY. Can't vote in either parties primary as a result of that.

>First, parties are clubs and they can have their own rules about their internal elections and campaigns.

Literally no one is saying otherwise. This is such a tired and ridiculous strawman.

> Literally no one is saying otherwise

Nice, Argumentum ad populum.

After following this election pretty closely I have observed that many people do not in fact understand how the parties operate and that the primaries are a party and not a legal construct. It's possible that people either have faulty ideas how the party process is run, or just do not have enough experience with it (many new Bernie voters).

"I have observed that many people do not in fact understand how the parties operate"

This generalization includes people in the party too.

"and that the primaries are a party and not a legal construct."

The primaries and caucuses are legally recognized party constructs.

I'd be more inclined to give the two main parties the benefit of the doubt if their survival wasn't essentially guaranteed by the existing federal election method & media landscape.

I'm not really trying to give either party, or in this case the DNC the benefit of the doubt. I don't have any reservations about either party being particularly democratic (as in the party elites have most of the power).

I'm just not naive about how they work but ultimately I believe they can run however they want to.

If we want to reform the system that we have (two part) it's clearly not going to come from the parties. I'm personally in favor of having open primaries in every state with relatively late voter registration, getting rid of the electoral collage and the rule that if there's mo majority the senate decides the election.

I'm not exactly sure how to find that the requirement of "paying DNC dues" is defensible. We're not talking about a local sports club.

Don't get me wrong. While I supported Bernie, I feel he was outplayed in a masterful game that he wasn't ready for. I'm not sore about it. Frankly, I'm surprised Hillary didn't win by a far larger margin, considering she had a decade to make deals and sway powerful people her way, and apparently, an entire political machine skewed in her favor.

But the idea that the entire DNC teaming up with a single candidate is to be expected and not taken as simply "rigged" seems intentionally obtuse.

I would feel differently about it there was multiple viable Democratic candidates and they were helping out the favorite. Since Bernie was just renting the ticket, I don't feel this applies here.

If Bernie ended up with < 5% of the voters / delegates, I might be obliged to agree with you, but that's far from the end result. It seems he's far more in-line with the democratic party, according to the party itself, than you're suggesting.

The guy joined the party 1 year before the primary and he's planing on coming back to the senate as a independent. Just because he does caucus often with democrats does not change my assertion that he was just renting the ticket.

This is a big difference and it matters to the party (organization).

Currently, the presidency is like a public park bench placed on private land. The bench is public property and everyone has the same theoretical right to sit on it - but there are only two paths to the bench, and both paths' owners charge huge fees.

A hundred years ago, it probably seemed possible to build a third path - but with our modern understanding of game theory, we know a two-party system is the inevitable result of first-past-the-post. Building a third path is impossible.

This creates an inconvenient contradiction - the moral legitimacy of the person sitting on the bench derives from the fact that everyone has the same right to sit on it, but we can quite plainly see the criteria for moral legitimacy are not met in practice.

Some people would say we should aspire to meet the criteria for moral legitimacy; and therefore that, regardless of their private status, their internal elections for access to the path should be free, fair and open to all.

Of course, other opinions are available. Some people would argue that the private property owners' rights were more important, morally, than the legitimacy of the presidency. Or that the idea of pursuing morality in politics is a joke. Or that our consent to our rulers isn't derived from the moral legitimacy of their being fairly elected, but comes from some other source such as habit or force of arms. Or that everything is a shade of grey, america is better than russia or north korea, and improving sounds like a hassle who can be bothered?

Nicely crafted analogy. I don't see it.

I'm very involved in party politics and have run for office.

The Democratic Party isn't a single thing. I can't even summarize it briefly. One facet is a bunch of independent groups sharing the same logo, tribal identity. Another is a hierarchy of squabbling ad hoc volunteer organizations fighting each other for relevancy. A third are the Democratic themed campaigns which are largely parasitic on the party organizations. A fifth are the loose coalitions of like minded interest groups also squabbling for resources and relevance.

The DNC isn't even that influential. Closest analog I can think of is a trade association that hosts conferences.

I can't speak directly to the GOP's structure. From observations and contact with their players, they're similar.

People don't get how candidates are chosen to run for office. Especially at the top of the ticket. I'm talking before the primary / caucus. Special interest groups form and then go candidate shopping. "Superstar" electable candidates, like GWB and Obama, are selected, groomed, promoted to other interest groups (investment clubs, individuals). Note that these groups filled the vacuum left by the decline of the traditional GOP and Dem party machines.

All the other candidates are delusional self promoters. They literally have almost no chance. But they run anyway, to promote their brands, to take one for the team, to get the experience, because anything can happen during the campaign cycle, etc.

Me personally, I'm still gobsmacked that Trump iced out both Cruz and Rubio. My initial post-mortem for the GOP 2016 is Trump's dark horse victory just demonstrates how dysfunctional the GOP has become (the Tea Party has driven away their "moderates").

From my perspective, the DNC leaks really didn't show that the primaries were rigged. It basically just showed that workers within an organization are human and naturally form biases. These were not public communications from the DNC, but private conversations between individuals. Expecting them to practice full-neutrality in every conversation is a little too much to expect.

Most of the infamous emails can be summarized with a "Hey, lets do X" followed by a coded "No". There is no smoking gun whatsoever.

Were establishment Democrats particularly pro-wikileaks during the Manning releases? I don't recall that - in general both parties have been pretty much anti-whistleblower and pro-secrecy.

If anything the Republicans (particularly pro-Trump factions) have been awfully hypocritical on this stance since they've previously called for various leakers (Snowden in particular) to return home and face the death penalty. They definitely previously referred to Assange as a criminal and a threat to national security, but I guess as long as he's anti-Hillary he's a hero?

Assange has a personal vendetta against HRC because while Secretary of State she complicated his life. She wanted to find a way to indict/prosecute him and she made sure a lot of nations doors would be closed to him. Details on vendetta: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/assange-timed-...

I like the mission of wiki leaks; I think they should do some basic editing like not leaking names or ordinary citizens (or low level gov employees). But, I think Assange is terrible front man for the organization. I guess nobody else wants the job.

If it helps, I'm a liberal who has found Wikileaks/Assange increasingly obnoxious for years.

IMHO you see more people upset about Wikileaks now because they're actually doing things that are more objectionable.

Which could also mean they are doing things that are more important.

I'm sure many Sanders supporters were happy for ammunition to help their case that they were treated unfairly, but I don't think catty behavior at the DNC is anywhere near as important as Wikileaks' earlier work uncovering potential war crimes in Iraq.

And I find Assange's overt attempt to influence the outcome of a US election much more distasteful than anything that was in those DNC emails.

I wasn't thinking about the DNC in particular. I was responding to the parents growing annoyance with WikiLeaks.

Or just more objectionable.

Subjectively yes.

Plenty of people have been criticizing Wikileaks since the beginning, not just "liberals."

If you really want to be fair about not giving people a free pass, don't give Assange one either. He's made his anti-Clinton bias clear, and it's obvious that his leaks only serve to benefit one specific party, not the cause of truth in general.

And let's not pretend that "the DNC rigged the election" is actually an assertion that's supported more by the leaked documents than by Trump-camp propaganda.

*Critiques from liberals

But yes, agreed; Wikileaks wasn't an issue until the leaks started showing corruption of the DNC.

Now that it has, apparently the corruption isn't the problem, that evidence of corruption can be leaked is the problem.

Hmm.... Really makes you think.

Time to Correct The Record.

I'm not sure this is accurate. In fact, conventional wisdom says that Assange is pursuing this as revenge against HRC, who has historically been a major opponent of his. If he isn't pursuing revenge against her, then why isn't he going after the RNC?

I feel compelled to point out that your question has 2 assumptions: - that the RNC is equally corrupt as the DNC - that Assange has (or could obtain) evidence of that corruption.

If either of these assumptions is incorrect, then your question is meaningless.

Based on your two points, I'm kind of leaning toward the question having some meaning.

There is precisely zero evidence the DNC primaries were rigged in the Wikileaks DNC content.

Did the DNC favor one candidate over another in any way?

They had a clear preference, just like the RNC preferred a non-Trump candidate. Imagine what you'd read about Trump in their emails.

That's not evidence of election rigging.

It was not just preference, they interfered with the media to change their peaces on Clinton. It's not just opinions here, they acted on them.

The context of the "interference" is that people affiliated with the Sanders campaign were accusing them of rigging the Nevada primary, which very obviously did not happen.

It's very reasonable for the DNC to work with the media to defend itself against nonsense allegations.

This is false, and your "correcting the record" is only spreading mistruths.

This e-mail in particular is clear discussion of acting on promoting a narrative (i.e. shopping it to news organizations) to discredit Bernie's campaign: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/11056

I'm sure you'll find a way to explain that away though.

This email is dated May 21, just 2 weeks before AP called the primary for Clinton. It was pretty clear by that point to everyone that Clinton would win the primary.

I'm not surprised to see DNC discussing narratives for the point when the primary is over.

This is no evidence that the primary was rigged.

Bernie had not conceded and the DNC still was obligated to be neutral. And yet, they were not.

So strange that they forgot to mention to shop this story around after the primary. How did you pick up on this intent of theirs without them saying it?

I feel like I'm just a curious bystander here - I haven't read much about the emails, nor looked at any of them individually until clicking on your link, so I really haven't formed an opinion on how noxious they are - but I don't see the smoking gun you seem to see in that email... Could you provide some more perspective on the issue, for those of us who are new to this debate?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/24/he...

The religion, "Bernie's campaign is disorganized" talking points, and Hillary Victory Fund e-mails are the most odious in my opinion.

This is a weak talking point. The DNC has in its charter that it must be neutral. What the RNC may have thought of Trump is irrelevant. Anyway, you really want to be playing moral limbo with the RNC right now? That is where the moral high ground is?

As others mentioned, there was coordination on talking points as well to discredit his campaign.

The DNC also has in its charter that they must work to get Democratic candidates elected and work towards getting the ideals of the Democratic Party implemented.

Sanders didn't lose because the DNC said mean things in their internal email system. He likely lost because he never made much of a dent in the heavily black Democratic voting population in the South.

Did I say anything about why he lost? In fact most of these e-mails released so far occurred after he had little chance of winning. Nope, pure distraction in an attempt to deflect from my points.

Also see: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/11056

I'm sure you'll be back to "correct the record"!

> In fact most of these e-mails released so far occurred after he had little chance of winning.

That would seem to deflate your point a bit. Surely the DNC isn't violating its neutrality promise if the candidate has effectively been already chosen?

> I'm sure you'll be back to "correct the record"!

I've seen this thrown around several times in this thread. Is it an accusation I'm being paid by the Hillary campaign? If so, LOL.

Not at all. They are to remain neutral as long as they claimed they were. Sanders was still an active candidate through the DC primary, and he actively contested the California primary.

The candidate had not been chosen, but the DNC lackeys (edit: sorry, top officials) were coordinating media coverage against him.

Accidentally downvoted you on mobile, apologies.

For the record, there's a new "undown" button for when that happens.

Except for a few people who had to quit their jobs and clear favoritism from the DNC chief which is supposed to be neutral:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Commi...

Which is, again, not evidence that anything got rigged.

The RNC had a similar anti-Trump preference. There's similarly no evidence they rigged anything against him.

It is disappointing to see simple statements of facts down voted.

I wouldn't get too hung up on it. I've found, on HN, downvote abuse usually gets reversed over time.

Agreed. Looks like it already has.

There is proof that the RNC did not rig the elections against Trump, he won. That's impossible if it was rigged.

While there may not be proof that the DNC rigged it against Sanders, that doesn't prove it wasn't rigged. It only proves that no evidence has come to light that it was rigged.

> That's impossible if it was rigged.

That's simply false. The accusations against the DNC of "rigging" primarily revolve around bias (revealed in the email dumps), not actual electoral fraud. The RNC was almost certainly biased in a similar (likely more intense) manner against Trump.

It's also entirely possible to rig an election unsuccessfully.

>There is proof that the RNC did not rig the elections against Trump, he won. That's impossible if it was rigged.

And yet Trump has accused the RNC process of being rigged many times. Strange how the current narrative seems to be that only the DNC is exceptionally corrupt, to the point of rigging an election, and possibly having Seth Rich killed as if the Democratic party was literally a crime syndicate.

There really isn't proof of anything, either way, other than "rigged elections" being the current political accusation du jour.

>It only proves that no evidence has come to light that it was rigged.

That is all that anyone is really arguing here, contrary to this assertion:

>..just when Wikileaks released info that the DNC primaries were rigged

Take a look at the evidence. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-23/leaked-dnc-emails-c...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge

> The site was described by CNNMoney as offering a "deeply conspiratorial, anti-establishment and pessimistic view of the world." Financial journalists Felix Salmon and Justin Fox have characterized the site as conspiratorial. Fox described Ivandjiiski as "a wonderfully persistent investigative reporter" and credited him for successfully turning high-frequency trading "into a big political issue," but also termed most of the writing on the website as "half-baked hooey," albeit with some "truth to be gleaned from it." Tim Worstall described the site as a source of hysteria and occasionally misleading information.

> Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman describes Zero Hedge as a scaremongering outlet that promotes fears of hyperinflation and an "obviously ridiculous" form of "monetary permahawkery." Krugman notes that Bill McBride of Calculated Risk, an economics blog, has treated Zero Hedge with "appropriate contempt."

> Lokey, a former paid Zero Hedge writer who left the website in 2016 over disagreements in editorial direction, characterizes the site's political content as "disingenuous," summarizing its political stances as "Russia=good. Obama=idiot. Bashar al-Assad=benevolent leader. John Kerry=dunce. Vladimir Putin=greatest leader in the history of statecraft."

You'll excuse me wanting a slightly better source.

Zero Hedge clearly has a pro-Russia bias just like CNN has a pro-US bias. Doesn't mean you should ignore everything CNN or zerohedge say. Every once in a while, cnn and zerohedge publish interesting stuff, just keep in mind their bias while reading them.

> like CNN has a pro-US bias

Only if you believe it is pro-US to abolish the right to bear arms, the right to free speech (hate speech laws) and to impose Socialism on US citizens.

This is precisely highlighting the point from the parent comment. Is ZeroHedge an untrustworthy source? Heck yes it is! The problem is so is CNN, MSNBC, NYT, and Fox. Nearly every traditional American news source is now viewed as untrustworthy by a very large amount of people.

You can argue with me on it, but what matters is that MANY people now believe this, for example nearly all Trump supporters (and there's a lot of them).

In my opinion, this is the single biggest issue in our new political climate. There is a large, and growing base of people who no longer trust either politicians or the media reporting on them. Conspiracy theories flourish in environments like this, and when enough people believe conspiracy theories are true... sometimes they take actions.

I guess the 'problem' is the internet. Without the internet people would be blissfully ignorant of how the media works.

These things have been happening for a long time. Businesses, governments and other entities all have the ability to manipulate the media. I view it as a power struggle that sometimes bubbles up in public.

Oh, and social media is a part of it. Just it's slightly more difficult to control without people noticing.

Zerohedge is just the inverse of the New York Times.

>Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman

You'll excuse me wanting a slightly better source.

Good thing there are five others in the section I quoted alone.

Did not want to repeat myself. :-)

Every source is biased. It is up to the reader to understand the biases, read from differently-biased sources and then make up his/her minds.

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