The right thing to do on this is for all Democrats to condemn Russian interference. There are plenty of legitimate issues to bring up if Sanders isn’t your preferred candidate. One thing we know for certain is that any candidate on the debate stage on Wednesday would be terrible for Putin, especially compared to the current occupant of the White House.
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Baud
The soft bigotry of low expectations.
smintheus
A better statement would have been: “As president, I will do everything within my power to make Putin regret that he ever toyed with the idea of gaming the US election in my favor, and even more, that he has repeatedly interfered to promote his lapdog Donald Trump.”
TriassicSands
If the Russians are trying to help Sanders, it’s because* they believe he will be the easiest Democrat for Trump to beat. I think they’re right. They want Sanders to be the nominee, not president.
*And because he is likely to be the most divisive Dem candidate.
Chris Johnson
Nice stating of the gratituously obvious.
He lost me when it became apparent he wasn’t controlling the obvious Russian troll contingent within his organization. He ain’t gaining me back with “some of the ugly stuff associated with our campaign may not be coming from real supporters”.
No SHIT, Sherlock (sparrow-lock?). The problem is, you’re expected to do something about that besides go oh dear, what a shame, how unseemly. And you didn’t. No SHIT it’s coming from Russia. This whole time you’ve been making leftists look bad by allowing trolls to caper and be the public face of your operation.
Fuck him, so hard. I trusted him. Warren 2020.
Baud
Rachel is going with the same theme as Josh.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris Johnson: It’s because there are no indications that they are Russian trolls.
Chyron HR
“Why do all these
homosexuals keep sucking my cockRussian spies keep helping my campaign?”Mr. Kite
I don’t understand trying to bash Sanders not disclosing this earlier. It was a confidential briefing I take. At the same time Sanders himself should have acted dignified and said it’s not his habit to disclose classified information unlike you know who. But we got some beneath himself paranoid grievances darkly hinted at instead.
Chris Johnson
@Adam L Silverman:
I worked for him. I was there seeing the strange ferocity of some of his folks against Clinton. I was there when the guy raided shared data files and threw our whole team on the defensive: in retrospect, a very embedded-russian thing to do, wreck stuff on Bernie’s behalf. I was already done with my part when they hit Nevada and had people brandishing chairs (allowing for the ‘throwing chairs’ narrative, probably also stoked by Russians!)
I don’t buy that acting like bomb-throwing Bolsheviks is automatically the guise of the hard left. We’re Americans, we tend to assume we can get everything easy thanks to our exceptionalism. I don’t buy that it’s not obvious Russians have been pushing Bernie’s campaign. If it seems obvious to me in retrospect, for 2016, and if I can look at some of the hard left haunts in 2020 and it’s outrageously, blatantly obvious they’re being managed (and worked into a frenzy) then it should have been obvious to some other people on the hard Left as well.
Sab
What I love about being in a superTuesday state is I get to vote for the candidate I love, because nobody is ahead yet. No need for strategy. Just vote for the candidate I really love.
On the other hand, Supertuesday in March sucks. We break all the canvassing safety rules. Never get invited inside. It’s 20 degrees. You expect me to talk to the voter with the door open on the porch? She’s freezing. Also she is poor, and all her house heat is leaking out.
Mnemosyne
As an observation, I will say that any con man will tell you that the easiest person to con is the one who thinks he’s smarter than the con man and will be able to use the con man to his own ends. This never, ever works.
download my app in the app store mistermix
If I had seen that Adam was working on a post I wouldn’t have posted this – his post has a lot more color and nuance than this.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris Johnson: I know that the guy who runs the DFRI Lab has stated he and his team have not seen anything in open source that would indicate that the worst behaved of Senator Sanders’ supporters online are really Russian trolls and bots. If Senator Sanders has other information that indicates otherwise, then it is on him to provide it.
Adam L Silverman
@download my app in the app store mistermix: You’re on the list…//
JaySinWA
@Chris Johnson: It seemed obvious to Mueller that Russia was pushing Bernie in the primaries:
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/16/bernie-sanders-russia-2016-election-interference-415691
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
The worst behaved of Sanders’ online supporters are his actual IRL staffers like Sirota and Grey, so ….
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: I am quite aware. Also, the Man Who Ate Flint Michigan, Sarandon, the Justice Democrats, etc, etc, etc.
Chris Johnson
@Adam L Silverman: Have you monitored r/chapotraphouse? For a while, I was in that camp. They started losing me over specifically denialism of what was coming out of Russia. The next time I looked, they were full-on /pol/. And while /pol/ is loaded with people actively and eagerly collaborating with the Russians and Trump, /r/chapotraphouse became a place where the narrative was aggressively moderated by teams of posters up/downvoting in brigades to the point that the subreddit got quarantined (!) for obvious brigading. And the subjects they would either pump up, or bury instantly, were always Russia-related.
Circumstantial, I guess, but if you want ‘worst behaved of Sanders’ supporters’ it’s right there and super-obvious. For that matter, Twitter is an absolute cesspool and another key place for bots and trolls.
Adam L Silverman
@Chris Johnson: I don’t spend a lot of time there, but I’m aware of what goes on.