Tapping phones and breaking into physical campaign and party offices is so old-school. Tonight, the same paper which did the best known reporting on the Watergate scandal broke news that it is the consensus of the intelligence community, that yes, Russia is behind hacking DNC and Clinton campaign emails, and they did it specifically to help Donald Trump. What’s frustrating is that Congressional leaders were briefed in September when the White House wanted to go public, but Obama characteristically punted when he could not get bipartisan support. Mitch McConnell in particular warned the President he would consider release of this information as a partisan act. Dianne Feinstein and Adam Schiff, the ranking Dems on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees respectively, had no such qualms, but the information they released did not get nearly the play that it would have coming from the White House.
… when it was feared that POTUS would would be unduly influenced by the Pope? I mean, given the choice between Vladimir Putin and Pope Francis, I gotta go with Francis…
Particularly galling is the silence, now, of the sons and daughters of the loudest, then…
I guess the president pounded a final nail in that coffin on his way out the door.
To “red states”, huh?
Let’s remember that, at the time, everyone was confident HRC would win. The President was faced with a situation where the GOP would denounce HIM as trying to influence the election. The risk was, could they create enough noise to throw the election to Trump?
Hindsight is 20/20. I agree that they should have said something, McConnell be damned, but I can imagine what the President was thinking.
Obama’s strategy of going high when they go low is/was a complete disaster.
In 2008 and 2012, the Democrats won the popular vote, electoral vote, total congressional vote and total US Senate vote.
In 2016, the Democrats won the popular vote and total US Senate vote.
Yet, next January Republicans will control the presidency, congress, the senate, most governorships, most state legislatures, and most state senates. Soon they will control the judiciary.
Going Low has worked spectacularly for the Republicans. They will have complete control of the the government with only a minority of voters.
While Obama fantasized about good government and bi-partisanship, the Republicans took over.
I wish Obama would summon his inner LBJ in his last month as POTUS: Fire FBI Director Comey immediately; when congress ends their session without voting on a duly nominated Supreme Court Justice, cite Marbury v. Madison as precedent and sit Garland on the Supreme Court immediately; and, in light of Russian tampering in our elections, call for a new general election in 6 weeks.
This is not a parliamentary system and the President is neither Prime Minister nor King.
I want to apply some healthy skepticism.
I’m confident they tried to influence the election, and I’m confident they worked through Wikileaks.
But … what was the effect?
Have they done this in previous elections, or is it new?
Other than releasing stuff to Wikileaks, what did they actually do? It’s been alleged (not credibly, to my mind) that the stuff Wikileaks released was doctored. Is there any truth to that?
It is known that swing state election databases were hacked prior to the election. The CIA contends that the Russian government was behind that hacking. I believe them.
It is known that seals on multiple vote counting machines were broken in Wisconsin, indicating tampering.
It is known that the vote totals in many precincts in Detroit and Philadelphia (normally heavily Democratic voting areas) do not match the total number of voters for that precinct.
It is known that voter turnout in many Western Pennsylvania counties is dramatically higher (almost twice) than it has been for any other election.
It is known that significantly more ballots were thrown out in Florida than in any prior election. The difference is more than twice the vote differential between Clinton and Trump.
Even with these major irregularities, Clinton received 2.7 million more votes than Trump. I suspect that voters actually elected Clinton, but it was close enough so that Russia and/or GOP operatives stole it through the out-dated electoral college.
[BTW. The reason the Constitutional Convention compromised on the odious Electoral College was slavery, pure and simple. Southern states wanted electoral credit for their slave population without giving slaves citizenship. They tried to wrap the Electoral College with flowery language — like protecting us from a con-man (like Trump?), but the reality is our founding fathers created the electoral college because of the ugliness of slavery. It should have been abolished when we abolished slavery.]
…to the extent that House representation was a determining factor and 3/5 of slaves counted toward that. The main motive for EC was a compromise between direct popular election in an age where people were only likely to know candidates from their own states and election by Congress which would have made the President too dependent on their favor.
That’s it, am I correct? If not, please tell me what I missed.
Through Russian hackers, we learned that the DNC was subverting democracy within its own party at the direction, or at least with the knowledge, of Hillary Clinton.
How dare they!
Which is another reason we need to know more. Did they just start this this year, or is it just the furthest they’ve gone?
But only a naive person would believe that this is an isolated or premier incident. Further, why did the Clinton campaign not complain more about this earlier, prior to the report when just about everyone was certain that the Russians hacked the DNC & other campaign’s computers? Maybe, just maybe it was because they realized that the emails exposed the reality that they were, in the least, not being honest with the American people and they were being very unfair to Sanders supporters, by subverting the democratic process within the system?
Just another unforced error on the part of this deeply flawed candidate running a poor campaign, a candidate whose honesty many doubted, with justification based on this information.
Trump will be in the White House soon and not because of Russians or Comey, or misogynists, or anything other than the fact that Democrats nominated the wrong candidate, the party leaders deliberately sabotaged the better candidate (or in the least , contaminated the process with unethical behavior), and failed to listen to the public at large.
If we do not admit this, if we continue to blame the Russians or the KKK or the ignorant hayseeds in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Trump will have an easy re-election in 2020.
Clinton received more votes than any other Presidential candidate than Barack Obama.
She lost because turnout among minorities was slightly down in Midwest urban areas. [Maybe slightly more rural white voters turned out and voted for Trump, but note that 2016 Trump’s total vote is approximately the same as 2008 John McCain’s and 2012 Mitt Romney’s.]
What makes you think more minorities would have turned out and voted in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee for Bernie? In the primaries, Bernie struggled mightily getting minorities to vote for him.
This has nothing to do with the bloody primary. Foreign intelligence agencies have messed with our electoral integrity and we need to find out how, why, and how to prevent it in the future. There should be bipartisan majorities behind this effort and preventing Trump from undoing the sanctions against Russia or redeploying out of Europe.
…for the first time ever I was tempted to accuse a major party nominee of treason. The ends absolutely do not justify the means here, especially when the conclusion (DNC subverting democracy) is wildly inaccurate. The worst we learned is that DNC staffers couldn’t keep their opinions to themselves. There is NO evidence that they actively tampered with the election to benefit a candidate, nor is there evidence of direction or official knowledge on the part of the Clinton campaign.
” worst we learned is that DNC staffers couldn’t keep their opinions to themselves.”
So that’s why Wasserman-Shultz resigned?
It was clear that the party was doing all it could to stop a Sanders victory.
In another e-mail, dated May 21, 2016, DNC press secretary Mark Paustenbach wrote to communications director Luis Miranda suggesting they plant a story that the Sanders campaign was in chaos.
In one message dated May 5, 2016, with the subject line “No s–t,” the chief financial officer of the Democratic National Committee, Brad Marshall, plotted how to portray Sanders, who was raised Jewish in Brooklyn, as an atheist.
“It might [make] no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief,” Marshall wrote, apparently referring to Sanders and upcoming Kentucky and West Virginia primaries.
The chief executive officer at the DNC, Amy Dacey, responded with a single word: “Amen.”
Marshall told The Intercept that he didn’t recall the sleazy e-mail.
But then he claimed it wasn’t an attempted hit job on Sanders.
“I can say it would not have been Sanders. It would probably be about a surrogate,” Marshall told the Web site.
He did not explain why the DNC would try to slime a Sanders surrogate.
Maybe Marshall should have gone to work for Clinton instead, but again, I am aware of no evidence this was acted upon. I also understand why DNC staffers might be a bit resentful of somebody who is not a Democrat seeking their nomination. Keep in mind these emails were intended to be private and people let off steam. As they were not government emails there was not even any reason to believe they would ever be subject of a FOIA request. Do you compose every one of your emails with the consideration that somewhere down the road the whole world will read them?
I most definitely do. And anyone who doesn’t shouldn’t complain when if and when the whole world does read them.
They should be considered private communication subject only to duly executed warrants, just like phone calls or letters.
…I wouldn’t include anything that absolutely had to be kept secret, but the biggest secrets I keep are along the lines of what I got you for Christmas.
The reason she shouldn’t have mingled her classified and unclassified email accounts was precisely because it increased the risk of a foreign intelligence agency reading them. She knew this since I’m guessing she has the same briefing I did, albeit one with better intelligence and more specific instructions for her office and the threats it was under.
The Congressional GOP has repeatedly discredited itself by treating these serious breaches of security from Benghazi to emailgate to this latest revelation as part of the partisan sideshow in Washington and ways to play gotcha politics against their opponents rather than important ways for the government to learn from its mistakes and secure its information for all of our sakes.
…any reference to Clinton emails has been about emails to and from campaign staff, in particular John Podesta. I am not referring to the controversy surrounding the whole private server for official business or what was or was not classified and I don’t believe anyone else on this thread is either.
I just reread the subthread and realized I wandered a bit into private server territory when responding to johntmay. I was trying to make the point that like Trump he was practically cheering Russia on which I find unseemly, but the comparison was to Trump’s inviting them to look for the supposedly deleted emails from the private server. My diary and the WaPo story on which it is based IS about campaign emails and this subthread got back on track a couple of comments later as well.
We’re talking email, right?
I’ve had email accounts for over 30 years. I’ve probably seen almost every sort of “breach” possible, both accidental and on purpose, both by the person originally sending the message and the people receiving it. Messages sent to the wrong account (including some lovely messages from someone who for some reason had my address auto-complete when he was trying to email his daughter). People hitting “reply all” for something meant just for the message author on a list. People forwarding private correspondence onto mailing lists or to other parties. It just happens, and anything you or I write could end up in a very public place – without any malicious hacking or any government entities getting involved.
Sometimes the result is just embarrassment. I’ve also seen it almost end careers. And one time the Secret Service got involved.
If there is anything I want to say to someone that I don’t want to have to explain publicly later, I do in a way such that there is no paper, recorded, or electronic trail.
And I’m not nearly as careful as some people.
…and I can’t say with absolute certainty that I’ve never been the cause of examples like that, but I also refuse to be paranoid about it or else I would go nuts.
… that once you send any form of electronic message, you’ve then lost the control over where it goes. It’s as simple as that.
You gotta have more on the “DNC croaked Bernie’s campaign” than this. I’ve seen the emails – everyone has – I’ve seen snark but not actual sabotage. You know, nothing like breaking into someone’s email and posting it selectively.
“DNC press secretary Mark Paustenbach wrote to communications director Luis Miranda suggesting they plant a story that the Sanders campaign was in chaos.”
Snark or Sabotage?
This is the party, the same party that I used to donate money to (but no longer) using my donated funds to work against a candidate that I preferred and donated to, during a party primary. How on earth is that fair, ethical, honest?
I’ll say it again. If Hillary Clinton was honest, open, and caring about the American people, if she fought a fair fight against Sanders, the Russian hackers would have found nothing and this would all be a moot argument.
It’s like Bill’s boorish behavior in the Oval Office, just more Clinton mess that we Democrats have to clean up. Frankly I am delighted the scandal ridden Clintons are gone.
…that the DNC spent money while the primary was still contested against one of their own candidates for nomination. You are still WAY too forgiving of the Russians for my tastes. It doesn’t matter what they found. We should as patriots be just as outraged if they did it to the GOP. Clinton’s allegedly boorish behavior took nothing away from his presidency; it was just grist for the mill of the VWRC which you adhered to at the time.
He isn’t even president yet. But Clinton having illicit and predatory employer relations in the WH with (unexpected) forensic evidence to back up allegations took nothing away from his presidency?
I really have given this some thought in an effort to check my own confirmation and partisan biases, but I have come to the conclusion that Trump really is misogynistic while Clinton is not. Would it have been nice if Clinton hadn’t fooled around with Lewinsky? Sure, both morally and politically, but let’s remember the record suggests that she initiated the contact. Clinton does not brag and make light of grabbing women in the crotch. He does not fantasize about dating Chelsea or comment lewdly about her figure. I am not aware of him ever calling a woman a pig or commenting about one’s menstrual cycle. To be clear, if this were just about affairs I wouldn’t care. Trump would hardly be the first President to have them and some who did were very good Presidents. In Clinton’s case allegations of non-consent have not been proven and have been denied.
If my wife knew that I was heading out on a ski trip with a guy who acted like Trump OR Clinton, she’d not be happy about it. Sure, Trump is more openly boorish, but Clinton is hardly the poster child for a faithful husband who respects his wife. I see a distinction without a difference.
written by DNC staff that showed a clear bias for Clinton and against Trump.
Sure, I am concerned that Russians have alerted us to the reality of the corruption within our party and they obtained this information through illegal means, but it concerns me as much that you don’t seem to mind that our party has betrayed its own members and not remained impartial, as they claimed to be.
I’m happy to stipulate DNC staffers had their preferences, but you accused them of spending money. Where’s the TV ad trashing Sanders paid for by the DNC? Where are the receipts or FEC reports showing the DNC donated money to the Clinton campaign? Where are the wiretaps or emails showing actual co-ordination between the party and campaign? You’re right, at the end of the day I can’t quite as worked up about a political party (gasp!) playing politics, if they in fact did, than about a hostile foreign power tampering with our election (not just by email dumps, but possibly actually hacking the election itself). Is your Hillary Derangement Syndrome so acute that it’s OK for Russia to play those games to, what, counterbalance the alleged bias of the DNC?
Open conversations with DNC officials plotting to disrupt the campaign of one candidate in the midst of a primary are not enough for you because it’s just conversation?
Okay, when Trump said he’s like to grab a woman by the …..that was just conversation, not action……and yet you seem very concerned over that.
Why the double standard?
A candidate for President vs. a party staffer
Playing politics vs. sexual assault
I can’t imagine why I might not see them as equal!
Trump’s boorish behavior, Clinton’s boorish behavior, and the Democratic primary are actually irrelevant to this conversation. This is an unprecedented cyberattack on our political institutions from a foreign power. That is the only issues at play right now.
I agree with Republican speechwriter David Frum, the only response from Trump should’ve been ‘I too support this investigation and hope both parties in Congress can work together to get to the bottom of this for the American people!’. Instead he has used it as yet another instance to bully his domestic opponents and question the legitimacy of the political process and the very efficacy of our armed forces and intelligence apparatus he will be charged with leading.
This is probably the worst crisis in our foreign policy and civilian military relations in quite some time, and nobody outside of the FP field seems to be appreciating that other than the laudable reporters at the Washington Post.
I repeated, I DO NOT CARE about anyone’s partisan vendettas.
What did the Russians know, when did they know it and why did they do it? And did any Americans aid or abet this?
That’s it. Those are the only questions that matter here.
So much has been made of false equivalence that all equivalence is deemed false. That was why I asked why Clinton’s behavior is condonable while Trump’s words (no behavior to date) places him beyond the pale.
I voted for Carly Fiorina as the only candidate talking about cyber-terrorism, the new ‘boots on the ground’ as she called it. I take it seriously.
I do not think BMG does, other than as a source of gossip for the 2028 elections (2024 is SO last week)
I find that a lot more important than continuing to troll Clinton and her supporters here, which you and John T May seem to find more important than holding the Russians accountable for this very severe constitutional and foreign policy crisis.
I stand with McCain, Collins, Graham, and not Mitch McConnell in calling this a serious issue and one that will require a non-partisan investigation to solve.
As for cyber security, I have witnessed a Russian cyberattack and have been warning about their capabilities here and elsewhere ever since. I’ve been probably the harshest Assange, Greenwald and Snowden critic on BMG precisely for this reason. It’s only now that they turned their leaks against the Democratic Party that they have become pariahs to the broader BMG community. Which is fine, war time makes good allies. And we and our allies like Estonia, Ukraine and Georgia have been at cyberwar with Russia for many years and losing badly.
Why doesn’t the President-elect take this as seriously as the rest of his party’s leadership in Congress and you and I are?
While the hacking is troubling, the actions of one political party to “fix” elections is equally troubling.
When people discover that the election process does not matter, that powerful and wealthy people within the party are doing as they please, it’s no wonder voter turnout it low, and getting lower. If that is not of concern, please tell us why.
And again, if our party was not corrupt, there would be NO STORY HERE
Sanders lost fair and square. So did Hillary Clinton. This is a much more serious issue than petty partisanship for one candidate or another. Christ, will the 2016 campaign ever end around here?
-The DNC loses the election with or without Russian interference
-Sanders loses the primary with or without DNC interference
-Russian interference is a massive unprecedented breach of our national security and is FAR more problematic and detrimental to the long term viability of the American republic than any particular election. Until we find out how they did this, where they did this, and who helped them do this, all of our government is vulnerable. Up to and including our nuclear arsenal.
Get over it. The DNC did not play fair. And that’s why I stopped supporting it.
IMO, up until then there will be fairy tales about Gingerbread Electors dancing with Estonian Nesting Dolls.
Maybe then the election can end, just in time for the Ten Minutes Hate…whoops, Ten MONTHS Hate…to begin.
I don’t give a rat’s ass what the DNC did or did not do for or against Bernie.
The DNC is so incompetent, they could have put their entire effort into the Clinton campaign, and they would still have had ZERO, I repeat ZERO, influence on the Clinton versus Sanders primary.
Do you think any action by the DNC changed even one vote?
On May 21, Sanders was done. So this only matters to people who would rather attack Clinton than Trump.
There were other reasons she wasn’t a great chair, but on this particular point she got unfairly railroaded IMO. Don’t forget, state law and party rules govern the nomination contests, not the the DNC. Delegate allocation rules are consistent and based on results. Debates are scheduled by the DNC, but contrary to popular complaint I’m not convinced that helped Hillary.
Clearly a violation. Shit, when we had a primary in our district for state rep, our town committee ran a pizza booth at the 4th of July festival and all participants were reminded to NOT wear any campaign buttons for either primary candidate while working at he booth..because that would be against the rules, unethical, and not impartial.
Clinton corrupted the DNC and now we all suffer for it.
As I did with the party I need to ask for actual evidence. Where is the evidence she directed the DNC to help Clinton and hurt Sanders? Where is the proof that Clinton held the DNC over a barrel? Where is the evidence that she rigged state primaries and caucuses over which she has no control in the first place? Where are her speeches endorsing Clinton while the primary season was active? I have zero patience for speculation and innuendo!
I knew this before the leaks simply since so many DNC employees were Clinton folks. It didn’t change any outcomes and the embarrassment of this defeat discredited the old guard that they are finally out the door. It’s not Debbie’s fault Weaver ran a bad campaign down the stretch just as it’s not Putin’s fault Mook did the same to Hillary.
It is his fault that he wanted to interfere with our elections and that is cause for serious concern. So quit with the blame game and come together to save the entire country from these external threats. Next time it’ll be bigger than an election.
I used to do stand-up comedy. Open Mike stuff, amateurs. I did okay most nights, even won a spot as the opening act for the weekend show with national headliners.
In contests involving hundreds of people, I always made the top 10. Always.
A few years ago I decided to get back into it. I didn’t do as well this time. I started to blame the audience, “the other comedians brought more friends to the show”. I blamed the host, “He just does not get my style”. I blamed the venue, “This place is not a real comedy club”. And at times, I “blamed” my higher standards, “Nope, I’m not going to drop F-bombs and sexual innuendo to get cheap laughs!”.
I mean really, I was funny. I still have the press clippings to prove it!
Finally, I realized that times had changed and the audience just did not think I was that funny, and no matter how much I blamed them, the venue, the host or my purity, I just wasn’t funny anymore.
Is that a consolation?
I keed, I keed.
Or, not. 😉
1) Did the Russians deliberately interfere with our election?
2) Did they do this to benefit one party over another?
The answer to both appears to be yes. This should be very troubling regardless of who you voted for. Every American should be outraged and appalled that both parties were apparently hacked by the modern KGB and that they used Wikileaks to disseminate this information.
I’ve long been a progressive concerned about Assange, Snowden and Greenwald and I now fully doubt the credibility and independence of those sources since they are obviously an arm of Russian intelligence.
What the leaking revealed is immaterial, just as the advantage gained by Nixon was marginal and immaterial. It’s the idea that the President broke into his oppositions headquarters and then covered it up that was so constitutionally troubling.
Foreign powers interfering with our democratic institutions are explicitly forbidden by parts of the Constitution and all the framers opposed this. So no. I could care less about whether this effected the result. I would argue it did not do so in a decisive manner. And frankly it was obvious the DNC favored Clinton throughout the primary, we didn’t need hacks to prove that. And I’d rather live in a universe where both parties were safe from foreign intelligence services manipulating our process. That’s the central question.
If Trump had any common sense or decency he would be out front with Hillary demanding an independent investigation and putting in place processes to protect all our government institutions from these attacks. Instead, which is far more troubling, he and his Republican allies in Congress seem to be making this a partisan issue and downplaying the severe crisis that it is.
That the President is appointing General Clapper to tell us the truth about this,
That the people who are shocked because DNC secrets were revealed are now citing a secret CIA report to keep the story going.
Or that anyone can say with a straight face that they are horrified that a foreign government would interfere with us, while Charlie Backer and a dozen state legislators are getting free vacations on behalf of a foreign government.
A Boston based organization led by American citizens, not on the retainer of a foreign government. The two individuals I know who worked there are hard working people highly knowledgeable about state politics. Comparing a junket sponsored by Bay Staters who have a cultural affinity for Israel to foreign intelligence agent working to disrupt our democracy is a massive stretch.
There is a bill to punish the BDS movement pending in the state legislature–in effect punishing non-violent protest of Israels settler policies.
That’s not a cultural affinity issue–it’s a political issue. Putting Massachusetts officials on the take just before a vote is scheduled is interfering with democracy. Especially since the bill that is under consideration is intended to stifle non-violent dissent.
You made a very wide comparison and it missed the mark. BDS is an issue for another thread, suffice to say I disagree with your take.
Baker and the state legislators are allowing themselves to be the objects of charity. The object of their trip is expressly political. It sounds like interference to me.
Even conceding your points I disagree with. That it’s undue influence and it’s influence from a foreign government. There is are several orders of magnitude between an allied foreign government of a minor power influencing members of a state legislature to vote against a largely symbolic bill they find disfavorable to a foreign intelligence service of a great power rival of the United States actively interfering with the election of our most powerful office.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, and a fib from a friend doesn’t excuse a massive conspiracy from a foe.
If this were the only instance of elected officials on trips of this sort you might have a point. But you know that is not the case. The total effort to influence Congress is orders of magnitude greater, and so successful that no one even blinked at the vote taken a couple weeks ago in the House of Representatives.
For me, the “jury” is out on this. I would need not talking heads, not hearsay, but actual “evidence” that meets the standards of the federal rules of evidence.
I took an alleged email, with all the right bits, and was able to revise it so it looked as though the judge in the case had a lovely picnic on the MOON with opposing counsel – and the print out with all its “bits” looked 100% authentic and there are folks out there far more tech savvy than I. I am no fan of Donald Trump. I likely met Putin in 1967 and he plays a mean game of chess and a “long game” of politics – a decade is short term planning in his playbook, folks. I do wish Americans had longer attention spans, I really do.
A former acting CIA Director is calling this the political equivalent of 9/11!