I'm old enough to remember when Clinton supporters were so angry that they'd never support Obama in 2008. People get over shit.
— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) December 19, 2015
Coming to you tonight, from St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, courtesy ABC, which will be livestreaming beginning at 8pm ET. Debate proper starts at 8:30pm. (I’m assuming the Guardian will live-blog as well, but my weak search skills can’t find a link yet.)
The always perceptive Ed Kilgore, now at NYMag, has “5 Things to Think About Before Watching Tomorrow Night’s Democratic Candidate Debate”. I suspect yesterday’s kerfuffle has given more weight to his second point:
… Nobody knows what ABC has planned for the debaters.
All ABC has vouchsafed to the rest of us about the debate is the names of the two moderators (David Muir and Martha Raddatz). We also know who is not going to be moderating: ABC’s own controversial George Stephanopoulos. The original co-sponsor, local TV station WMUR, is also excluded because it’s not behaving well in a labor dispute with its workers. But the format is a bit of a mystery, and so is the attitude of the moderators. Anyone who has watched the GOP debates knows this factor can be crucial. “Speaking of national security, Secretary Clinton, let’s talk about your responsibility for the deaths of Americans at Benghazi … ”One wild card is whether the moderators — or, for that matter, any of the candidates — will get into the strange dustup that broke out [Friday] when the DNC “suspended” the Sanders campaign’s access to party voter files (an indispensable tool) to punish it for an earlier breach of HRC’s confidential voter-info database, which Team Bernie admits but calls an unimportant accident (the staffer responsible was promptly fired). Sanders… could make a rude gesture in the direction of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz if she shows up in Manchester tomorrow night, but it’s hard to see exactly how it figures in a debate…
Speaking of which, several commentors linked to David Atkins’ excellent explanation in the Washington Monthly of “What Bernie Sanders Staffers Actually Did and Why It Matters”:
… The brouhaha over this little fiasco has been intense, and made worse by the fact that only a few thousand people in the United States understand anything about the voter tools involved. Few journalists—to say nothing of armchair activists—have enough campaign and field management experience to truly understand what happened. That ignorance has led to wild accusations and silly reporting from all sides, whether from conspiratorially-minded Sanders supporters or schadenfreude-filled Republicans…
…[I]t made sense for Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC to suspend the Sanders campaign’s access to the data until it could determine the extent of the damage, and the degree to which the Clinton campaign’s private data had been compromised. As it turns out the ethical breach by Sanders operatives was massive, but the actual data discovery was limited. So it made sense and was fairly obvious that the DNC would quickly end up giving the campaign back its NGPVAN access—particularly since failing to do so would be a death sentence for the campaign and a gigantic black eye to the party.
This doesn’t mean that Wasserman-Schultz hasn’t, in David Axelrod’s words, been putting her thumb on the scale on behalf of the Clinton campaign. She clearly has been, judging from the intentionally obfuscated debate schedule and from her demeanor and reaction to this recent controversy. The Democratic Party would have been wiser to bring the campaigns together privately and resolve the matter internally. Instead, Wasserman-Schultz chose to take it public to attempt to embarrass the Sanders campaign, and merely managed to embarrass herself and the Party’s data security vulnerabilities in the process.
Still, the Sanders camp’s reactions have been laughable. It was their team that unethically breached Clinton’s data. It was their comms people who spoke falsely about what happened. The Sanders campaign wasn’t honeypotted into doing it—their people did it of their own accord. NGPVAN isn’t set up to benefit Clinton at Sanders’ expense—and if the violation by the campaigns had been reversed, Sanders supporters would have been claiming a conspiracy from sunrise to sundown. What’s very clear is that the Clinton camp did nothing wrong in any of this. Sanders campaign operatives did, and then Wasserman-Schultz compounded it by overreacting. And in the end, the right thing ended up happening: the lead staffer in question was fired, and the campaign got its data access back.
It’s also another reminder that armchair activists speculating about news stories would do well to actually get involved in campaign field activities. If you want to be involved in politics, there’s no substitute for actually doing the work to gain a real understanding of how and why campaigns and politicians behave as they do. There would be a lot fewer overwrought conspiracy theories, at the very least.
I hope even the most committed partisans among us will agree with that last paragraph, at least.
Bobby Thomson
I agree with the entire Atkins piece and only wish it was published sooner. It’s a great summary.
chopper
i’m just befuddled as to how sanders’ campaign dealt with this whole imbroglio. from beginning to end it was a total shitshow on bernie’s part.
Baud
I will probably watch the debate on YouTube later.
charon
Enough DNC people knew this would have leaked anyway if DWS had not gone public. No way this could have been covered up.
Brachiator
There is no rational reason for the vast majority of people to care about this. This ain’t like the Watergate break-in, and even there it was more the cover-up and subsidiary issues more than anything else.
All this aside, I may miss the debate because of dinner plans. I may watch highlights and check out commentary later.
I blame DWS.
Gvg
Actually I don’t agree with the overly hopeful last paragraph. The most over wrought poster here on this matter claims to be very involved with the campaign, so knowing more doesn’t result in knowing enough.
VidaLoca
Aw, hell. What fun would that be?
HR Progressive
If DWS and the DNC had not been so blatantly, obviously partial to Hillary Clinton the entire election cycle…this might not be a big deal.
“Hey a thing happened that shouldn’t have. We have to suspend your access, but as soon as we get to the bottom of it, you’re right back in it, and we apologize for the inconvenience”
“We fired the guy who did it, and we look forward to cooperating with you to continue the campaign”
versus
“Well the other campaign did something they shouldn’t have, even though it was the vendor’s fault, and hey, they fired someone, but how dare they question me, or our operation, or the other candidate? I mean, if the other candidate [who I totes support by the way] had done this, you know, that guy over there would want us to do the same thing. It’s perplexing, I tell you. Per. Plex. Ing.”
Those two scenarios are vastly different from one another. DWS is a tool, and she maintained a straight face while basically trying to ignore that fact.
Sanders’ camp admitted someone did something they shouldn’t have, and they took swift action against him, and may take action against others. DWS and her Clintonista team took a shot when they didn’t need to.
It’s not a conspiracy, because it’s all out in the open for all to see.
SenyorDave
@chopper: The idea that Sanders’ people are playing the aggrieved party is f’ed up. If this were the general election the DOJ would be leading the investigation, and those same people would be receiving subpoenas. Bernie looks like a clown on this. What his people did is certainly unethical and very possibly illegal.
SenyorDave
@HR Progressive: They admitted or they got caught, that’s a huge difference.
Another Holocene Human
ETA: Ha ha, I am A Idiot who didn’t read Anne Laurie’s whole post.
Great article from the great Washington Monthly on VoterDataGate.
Unfortunately, the author doesn’t find the claims of Sanders’ IT guys at all plausible.
raven
I’ll be watching football thank you very much.
Baud
@Another Holocene Human: Dude, that’s in AL’s post.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Wait, you read the OP before commenting? That’s hard core old school.
Frankensteinbeck
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Baud is presidential material.
John Cole
Josh Marshall had a smart take, too:
He’s right.
John Cole
AL- Is your email not working?
Librarian
Of course, there’s no liberal counterpart to Hugh Hewitt as a moderator. We can’t have that in a Democratic debate.
BillinGlendaleCA
@John Cole: The one day suspension was appropriate(there should be sanctions for misbehavior), but now it should be forgive and forget.
Baud
@Librarian: Hewitt is now a standard we should strive for?
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Generally agree. But I’m not on board with arguments that the Clinton camp should not treat this as a competitive primary.
jl
Thanks for the Atkins article, which was informative. The reporting on this has been horrible, with very dubious stuff said by reporters who are too lazy or inept to do any research or find any expert sources. But some of the witless things I’ve read in sloppy and poorly researched news reports, you don’t need a whole lot of expertise to avoid.
Why is DNC using glitchy second rate oudated software? Why should I spend hours working on electioneering and GOTV when bigshot morons act like children and can suddenly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Why do I have to put up with campaign operatives saying childish things and acting like toddlers having a tantrum?
I put these questions to two major campaigns and the DNC and DSCC yesterday through their cheerful ‘Contact Us!’ web pages.
Hope they don’t waste much time on this BS tonight.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I don’t think she will(this ain’t her first rodeo), this is not the hill to die on though.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Agree. But I think the moderators will try to egg them on. They want sound bites.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Reporting on tech issues by our media is absolutely dreadful, maybe they should go downstairs and talk to their IT folk before they file their copy. (But those people look and smell funny.)
In general, software for niche markets(and this is one) is quirky at best and clunky is the norm.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Yes, they will; hence my ‘forgive and forget'(at lease when the kids are in the room).
jl
@jl:
I also asked why DWS still had a job. I hope they know who I was talking about, since I did not add ‘the pixieled incompetent nincompoop’.
I mean, look, if DWS wants to be a corrupt influence peddler who puts her thumb on the scales when she should be sagely leading the national Democratic Party to victory next November, I get it. That kind of things happens in politics. But, it is unacceptable to me that she poke her thumb around in such an incompetent dangerous way. Used to like her, but now I think she is an abject and patent toxic fool.
beltane
@jl: The sole defense for keeping DWS as DNC chair is that she’s an outstanding fundraiser. Well, if there is nothing to show for all that money raised other than incompetent database management and crushing midterm losses, maybe DWS isn’t the person who should be leading the party.
The media coverage sucks, of course, but all the talk of high drama may get more people to tune into the debate which is a good thing.
jl
@beltane:
” but all the talk of high drama may get more people to tune into the debate which is a good thing. ”
thanks. I will try to be optimistic. I was in a blind rage about the whole thing yesterday. Wonder if I will get responses and the explanations and apologies I requested before I lift a damn finger for the Democrats again this cycle. I haven’t checked my email yet today.
I’ll hope for the best, and try not to finish the debate drinking game before the thing starts.
BillinGlendaleCA
@beltane: I’ve never thought that party leader should be a part time job, a former elected official is fine, but not a current office holder.
Heliopause
@John Cole:
Yeah, all of this really goes without saying. The smart reaction from the DNC and Hillary’s people would have been, “there was an unauthorized blah blah blah, the staffer responsible has been fired and we have been assured by the campaign that going forward blah blah blah. We consider this matter closed.” Even if you’re genuinely pissed off at what happened that would be the minimally smart thing to do. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by being heavy-handed, but we saw this same shit in 2008, didn’t we.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: I agree.
@Heliopause:
Clinton’s campaign did nothing wrong as far as I can tell. It appears that it’s Bernie’s camp that had hired 2016’s Mark Penn.
jl
@BillinGlendaleCA: If this was a DNC effort to help HRC, and I were HRC, I would gone over there and tried to strangle the fools. HRC does not need that kind of help.
I think one of the topline job functions of organizations like the DNC is to keep crap like this from busting out all over the news and causing problems.
I wrote both campaigns yesterday and told them I haven’t decided who to vote for in the primaries, but that some of the crap their campaign hacks pump out enrages me, and how they ran their campaigns would be a part of my decision who to support.
jl
@Heliopause: I will say that I thought the statements actually made by HRC herself were good. But, maybe I missed something where she went into hack mode.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: I agree, DWS should have stayed off the TV machine. Her press office should have issued a statement about a one day suspension and left it at that. I’ve only seen limited comments from the Clinton campaign and they’ve been pretty measured.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Agree again. You are smart.
jl
@Baud: Oh gosh, I should have wrote them that my one and only true vote belonged to Baud! Because Baud is good and Baud is great, and their political hacks said mean things that upset my delicate feelings. A Dear John letter always makes a big impression.
Baud
@jl: I am DWS’s worst nightmare.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl:
‘Whatever Get’s You Though The Night…’.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
That’s right. You’re a Democratic candidate who neither needs nor wants her money!
Robert Sneddon
@BillinGlendaleCA: There appears to be a common acceptance by many people that barring the Sanders campaign from accessing the VAN database for a day or so was some kind of extra-judicial punishment. I don’t see it myself.
If there’s a data breach like this then the system gets locked down and nobody other than the security and forensics people get to examine it, to figure out if other data got accessed or if the actual software was tampered with, to provide back doors or other malware to be used later. Now that’s been done the Sanders team is back online. Sanctions or punishment makes no sense to anyone, the DNC, the Clinton campaign or anyone else.
I’ve read some comments that all this happened earlier in the week, the DNC contacted the Sanders campaign to find out what was going on with the unauthorised data searches and they got no reply until the Sanders workers were locked out of the VAN system at which point they were suddenly communicative. I don’t know how true this is.
I’m getting deja vu all over again seeing the Sanders people making operational mistakes like the Clinton team did in 2008. If nothing else the current Clinton campaign people appear to have learned from their principal’s experiences back then.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck: Truth be told, I would just waste it on hookers and blow.
Heliopause
@jl:
A couple of Clinton spokespeople were quoted saying some heated things. Like I said, the Clinton camp has nothing to gain, from what I can see, from being anything other than magnanimous in a situation like this If they don’t want to be seen as a soulless political machine then maybe they shouldn’t play straight into that image.
Villago Delenda Est
DWS, the sugar whore, needs to go. Period.
Alain the site fixer
Mobile users, enjoy the tweaks. I’ll get the link in your nym tomorrow. I’ve got a short list of cosmetic items also on the list for tomorrow.
Enjoy the debate everybody!
Botsplainer
@Baud:
You act as though hookers and blow are inherently bad, and that money spent on them is wasted.
I posit that hookers and blow are valid stress relievers, equally moral with aromatherapy, exercise, prayer, meditation and sport. I would like to be your official campaign chaplain.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: You are using the word waste incorrectly.
Botsplainer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Perhaps he was really trying to say overspend or overuse…
VidaLoca
@beltane:
If that’s true, I think I see your (as in, all of your) problem right there…
Omnes Omnibus
@Botsplainer: Still…
geg6
All I know is that this entire thing has started pushing this undecided Dem in one direction. And that is solely based on the behavior of the Sanders supporters I’ve come across online and IRL the last 24 hours. It is Paulites and PUMA levels of crazy. I really am not interested in their persecution complexes and paranoid screaming. Completely nutso.
jl
@Botsplainer:
” You act as though hookers and blow are inherently bad, and that money spent on them is wasted. ”
Any fool knows that hookers and blow for other people is a waste, by definition.
max
Guardian Liveblog went live at 7 pm here.
max
[‘HTH.’]
Amir Khalid
@Anne Laurie:
The Guardian’s Democratic debate liveblog is now up. I just refreshed its US news page and there it was.
Keith G
@geg6:
I don’t know where to start when I read things like this. Bernie either has quality ideas or he doesn’t. He is either capable of leading the executive branch or he is not. Basing voting choices on the manners of online encounters with presumed supporters is……ah…..words fail.
Senator Sanders is a smart man with a good heart and I have seen very little from him that has convinced me that I want him to be my president.
Myiq2xu
I’m still not over it.
yegg
@Robert Sneddon: Immediately suspending access was clearly against the terms of the contract.
DWS has reminded me how insular, petty and incompetent some parts of greater Clintonland are. I’m resigned to Hillary, but I’m really not looking forward to dealing with 4-8 more years of this crap.
gwangung
Common sense computer security, but I guess against contractual terms.
Hmph.
Well, I guess we can all agree DWS hast to go.
Ruckus
@yegg:
You’ve read the contract? You’re a lawyer specializing in contracts?
Omnes Omnibus
@yegg:
How is DWS a part of greater Clintonland?
Thoughtful Today
…
Obligatory condemnation:
Bernie’s data managers handled this badly, if Clinton hires had done this I’d assume it was done for nefarious reasons.
I understand some of the outrage.
But there’s a perverse double standard being pulled by Clinton’s nastier supporters:
Hillary’s clearly unethical, and prosecutable, decision to evade archiving laws and hide from FOIA requests with her secret private server was something she _personally_ was involved in.
No one, including the person who Bernie FIRED for the data breach, has indicated that Bernie knew anything about this. (If I’m wrong I’m sure I’ll be promptly notified.)
Hillary personally knew the server evaded archiving law, she pulled the same ‘disappearing government emails’ offense pulled by the _BUSH II_ administration.
Republican BUSH’s administration’s deletion of emails was criminal., Hillary’s replication of Republican Bush’s tactics didn’t suddenly make them ‘okay’.
Republican overreach simply eclipsed the underlying crime.
So,
Until I hear that Bernie knew what was happening (which I trust he didn’t), it’s toxic to read Clinton’s supporters try to Benghaziemailgate Bernie for something Bernie didn’t have a hand in.
There’s one to five staffers who made some seriously bad decisions.
The fifth is Debbie. She’s been trying to gut Bernie’s chances from the beginning. A debate on the Saturday before Christmas? Of a fraction of the debates that were crucial in propelling Obama to the Presidency? Debbie is hurting the Democratic Party’s opportunity to take advantage of free media and talk to a larger audience.
Hillary knows all this.
Hillary’s choosing to hurt the Democratic Party for her own advancement.
It’s shameful.
gwangung
Snicker.
Do better. Your paymasters should get their money’s worth.
Ruckus
@gwangung:
Do better.
Don’t bother us with your bullshit.
Fixed it for you.
Chyron HR
@Thoughtful Today:
It must be because she’s so toxic.
a different chris
I’m so glad to see this play out exactly as it should have, where everyone (who matters) agrees that only one side’s supporters are irrational and unhinged conspiracy theorists, while the other side’s supporters are rational, thoughtful, and clearly in the right and never engage in any sort of over-the-top histrionics.
Quit Tickling My Taint And Just Stick It In Already
Atkins doesn’t know WTF he’s talking about.
Josh Uretsky from the Sanders campaign did nothing wrong. As a matter of fact he did exactly what he was supposed to do exactly the way he was supposed to do it in that situation. What he did is the definition of white hat hacking. He found a security vulnerability in a system he had a right to access and documented the flaw he found and every step he took to exploit it to the fullest extent he possibly could and then turned that information over to the people whose system had the giant gaping hole in their security. You do this sort of thing because if your data is stored in a system with other people’s data and you can access their data then they can probably access you data as well. How is this so difficult to see?
Satby
@Quit Tickling My Taint And Just Stick It In Already: Well, his boss fired him, so his boss thought he did something wrong.
chopper
@Satby:
no, officer, the reason I’m in my neighbor’s living room is, you see, their door was a bit ajar and I wanted to make sure everything was okay. the reason why I have all their jewelry in my backpack is I just wanted to protect it from someone else stealing it. yeah, that’ll do.
thalarctosMaritimus
@Baud: “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.” — George Best
Quit Tickling My Taint And Just Stick It In Already
@chopper: Which is not in any way an accurate analogy to what happened.
Applejinx
@Quit Tickling My Taint And Just Stick It In Already: Oh, come on. No. I’ve seen the logs, unless they were totally made up. You’re mistaken.
I’m with you as far as the ‘using a system he was supposed to use, and seeing a security lapse that was not his doing’. So far, so blameless. Here’s where you are wrong.
He had the opportunity to do what you said, but something in the data he saw got him so excited he flipped over to ‘tell all your campaign friends’ mode. Concealed news that could be advantageous to Bernie? We do enter in a lot of ‘undecided’ data, or stuff like ‘strong Clinton’ supporters who nonetheless sign up to volunteer knowing they’re talking to the Bernie campaign. Whatever he saw, he lost all decent judgement.
So he started doing obvious things (a) to document that he was in fact over in the system, things that were outright labeled ‘Bernie’ in some cases, but he also started grabbing data to show what he saw, and he brought people in who were doing things like making folders (by mistake?) and then deleting (suppressing?) them. It was a disorganized mess in there. And then they reported what they’d done, and the key guy responsible got immediately canned for it, as he should: and anybody else ever doing that will also be canned, as they should.
The DNC’s response was to toy with the idea of unilaterally canceling the Sanders campaign for us, which would’ve been the effect of taking our own data away and refusing to give it back. That’s why Hillary got involved a day later (not right away, but a day later: probably as much as she could get away with, costing us $600,000 which has largely been regained through emergency donations from small donors) and a day that can never be regained).
I don’t know who you are but duh, Uretsky did something wrong, otherwise Bernie wouldn’t have fired him. Bernie doesn’t do stuff like that for no reason, and having seen the logs (assuming they’re real) I would have done the same thing. They did some things right (putting markers in there with Bernie all over ’em to show they had access) and some things very wrong (hey, look at THIS stuff! Get a copy of that to show others!) and the ringleader got rightly fired and Bernie says he’ll fire again if necessary. I believe him, he doesn’t lie about stuff.
Applejinx
I’ll also add that I got to enter my PRECIOUSSSS data the other day, as I’d hoped ;) so I consider Bernie’s apology accepted and consider this a done deal. And ALSO would like to point out that I am a volunteer politics-nerd ‘running’ a massive ‘data team’ of like five people, several of which I’ve never seen again after getting their phone numbers, in a little bitty office in Keene NH where we have to call up on a cellphone to get the door opened after hours, because we’re using an office in a building owned by a bank and don’t have our own door.
It may be that the Clinton campaign has massively important national campaign operatives taking centralized orders to go onto Balloon Juice and post under multiple usernames to hassle and mock Ber-nuts, but it seems like projection to go on about talking points and marching orders. You know what we have in a little closet-like room in the office? A shredder and trash barrels, for printouts that aren’t needed anymore.
It’s marked the ‘Twitter activism center’, because we think that stuff is useless. Leave it to Donald Trump. We’re getting together Democratic voters, using the database tools the DNC standardized on, to win two elections. Primary, then national.
That’s done through volunteering, patching up differences, and putting in the hours… not through making a bunch of sockpuppets and taking cheap shots and mocking opponents in nasty, belittling ways.