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from the something-there-is-that-doesn't-love-a-wall dept.
As you probably already know, Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign was involved in some recent hijinks involving improper access to campaign data from the Hillary Clinton campaign, after a buggy software patch applied by the contractor maintaining the Democratic Party's voter database, NGPVAN, inadvertently opened a data firewall. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) suspended the Sanders' campaign access to Democratic voter lists (a subscription that the campaign had paid for); Sanders responded by suing the DNC; after a brief negotiation, the DNC restored the Sanders campaign access; and Sanders apologized to Clinton for the hack in Saturday night's debate. Clinton accepted the apology, and noted that most Americans don't care anyway.
Present company (possibly) excepted. Veteran Democratic campaign consultant David Atkins, who evidently has hands on experience using the software in question, pieced together what he thinks happened; including useful background on NGPVAN's software and its use by the Democratic party.
Atkins' bottom line:
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.
Atkins also had some choice words for DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, agreeing with David Axelrod (Obama's former chief campaign strategist) that the DNC overreacted.
DNC CEO Amy Dacey blogged that the suspension of access to Sanders wasn't punitive:
This action was not taken to punish the Sanders campaign — it was necessary to ensure that the Sanders campaign took appropriate steps to resolve the issue and wasn't unfairly using another campaign's data.
(Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Sunday December 27 2015, @06:37AM
It's easy to suspect that Sanders was set up here.
The DNC's clear favorite, is Clinton.
The R/DNC is the most powerful and successful campaign selling corporation in the world. The are insanely good at vetting public opinion and putting up a public face.
You don't know anything about them except what they want you to know about them.
Ron Paul isn't running this term, and the incumbent is a democrat who isn't running again. That means that there is a huge void for the "we are different from the last guy" vote and no one to fill it, although Trump seems to be trying to pull as much of that as he can.
So, it is far more likely that Sanders (and the DNC on his behalf) is trying to get the anti-incumbent vote, and setting up Clinton to be the establishment candidate (an easy sell) as a foil to promote Sanders. I strongly doubt the DNC campaign experts are deluded into thinking that Clinton would better promote their political power rather than Sanders; to call her a favorite is somewhat of an obvious storyline for them to craft.
In the end, they only need 1 candidate to win.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 27 2015, @07:01AM
That does make a kind of sense, but I see two problems with that. 1. Hillary has access to hundreds of millions of dollars, and she is more able to pay off political favors than anyone in the field, except for Trump. 2. As had been repeatedly pointed out in this discussion, Wasserman-Schultz and her brother are both Clinton people. It is possible, but probably unlikely, that they are setting things up to betray Clinton. With Clinton in the White House, they both expect to be rewarded for their faithful service. With anyone else in the White House, they can expect to be exiled to the dog house. Sanders certainly couldn't be expected to trust them, after they betray Clinton, now could he?