It seems the Democrats, or at least the Democratic National Committee (the DNC) may be poised to steal the crown from their republican counter parts.
Ok so a lot of the Chaos on the republican side comes from the fact they had 16 guys running for president, half of them are crazy and the RNC wont really step in to stop the crazy people saying they want the primary to play out without interference and to reflect the choices of the people. (the problem being the people in their party are crazy)
The Democrats meanwhile had 5 candidates, all of whom were comparatively sane. Despite that, it seems the DNC, or at least its chairwoman Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, long ago decided who's going to win this primary, no matter what the people want, and keeps interfering to ensure the outcome she wants.
Ok so our story starts much earlier this year in august. At the time the RNC announced a total of 12 debates for their candidates.....the DNC only 6.
This of course led to outcries from the Democrats for more debates. After all debates build recognition and cededing that many extra debates to the GOP meant voters would likely have a much better idea of what the eventual Republican nominee stood for as opposed to the democrats.
And that wasnt the only problem with the debates. See its not unusual for the DNC/RNC to annouce the number of debates early on in the election cycle. But the DNC took the unsual step of also announcing dates for most of theirs, specifically October 13, November 14th, December 19th, and January 17th.
Or to put that another way, Thursday, Saturday, Saturday and Sunday. Thing is, its well known that on Saturday NO ONE is watching TV at all. its the lowest viewership day of the week. (and Sunday is the second lowest night of the week) And one of those saturdays also happens to be the saturday before christmas, A day in which there has NEVER been a debate before, because viewership also drops across the board near Christmas.
And as FOX news was fast to gloat about (correctly in this case), that appears to have been the case, as only a bit under 7 million people watched the Christmas debate. (this in comparison to the 13.5 million that watched the least watched GOP debate)
Oh, the other Saturday debate? 8.5 millon viewers is all. (compared to say the one democratic debate on Thursday, which got 15 million...and is the 4 most watched debate of the 8 so far)
Oh and that upcoming Sunday debate? that would be the sunday of the MLK 3 day weekend...and scheduled to run against an AFC playoff game. So what do you think the chances are anyone is going to be watching that night?
So why would you schedule 3 of your 6 debates on days no one is watching?
Well there are two possible theories.
1) you are absolutely horrible at your job
2) you know the debates usually harm the candidate with the most name recognition, as people change their minds and support lesser known candidates once they realize they agree with them, and you really really really want the candidate with the most name recognition to win.
Or, to put that second one another way, your in the tank for Hilary Clinton.
Now to be fair to Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she claims that, despite being the national campaign co-chair for Hilary Clinton in 2008, she is totally NOT in the tank for her.
In fact, per Mrs Schultz, she consulted with the 4 previous DNC chairs before announcing the debate line up and they all agreed to these dates.
Except that it seems 3 of those 4 DNC chairs cant remember that conversation....and the 4th isnt commenting.
Oh and leaked memos from inside the DNC also seem to show that 80% (or 4 of 5) of the candidates wanted more than 6 debates. The lone holdout who wanted less debates? Hilary Clinton.
And seeing as how 2 of the 6 debates basically wont be seen well
Oh by the way, it might also be worth pointing out that when DNC Vice Chairwoman Tulsi Gabbard backed the movement for more than 6 debates, she found herself dis-invited from the first debate by Congresswoman Shultz's office.
Its also worth noting that Mrs. Gabbard was also complaining that she and the rest of the DNC officers hadnt been consulted on the debate either, a charge again refuted by Mrs. Shultz who claimed that she had in fact consulted them, just as she had consulted the former DNC heads.
And thats not actually sarcasm....it turns out it WAS the same kind of consultation...non-existent. At least according to another DNC Vice Chairman R.T. Rybak who said he hadnt been consulted either....a claim backed up both for him and Mrs. Gabbard by the DNC's chief of staff.
And by the way, the story doesnt stop there....we are just getting started.
Ok so early last week a story broke that a Bernie Sanders campaign staffer had illegally accessed proprietary information of the Hilary Clinton campaign that was stored on the DNC servers.
Now to be fair, this part is indisputably true. Which is why the Sanders campaign when notified of this fired the staffer in question.
But then things got complicated.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz reacted to the "hack" by suspending the Sanders campaign's access to ITS OWN DATA stored on DNC servers. This data by the way would be Sanders list of voters, volunteers for the campaign, support and doner lists, basically everything a campaign needs to function
Which honestly makes no sense. Schultz tried to defend it, but none of her varied defenses have logic. For example:
"They are prohibited from accessing another campaign's proprietary information, and we have the ability to suspend that campaign's access to the voter file in order to make sure that we can preserve the integrity of the voter file and ensure that there is confidence in it"
Ok so. if your worried your voter file isnt secure, that would imply ALL of the campaigns can access ALL of the other campaigns information. So shouldnt EVERYONE be suspended from the database until its secure? Not just 1 of 3 campaigns?
Or this one:
"Over the course of approximately 45 minutes, staffers of the Bernie Sanders campaign inappropriately accessed voter targeting data belonging to the Hillary Clinton campaign. Once the DNC became aware that the Sanders campaign had inappropriately and systematically accessed Clinton campaign data, and in doing so violated the agreement that all the presidential campaigns have signed with the DNC, as the agreement provides, we directed NGP VAN [the vendor that supplies access to the database] to suspend the Sanders campaign's access to the system until the DNC is provided with a full accounting of whether or not this information was used and the way in which it was disposed."
Ok, so on its face this one doesnt look as bad, until you know FACTS try to get involved.
Ok so to be fair to the DNC there some evidence that implied multiple staffers took advantage of the breech, although so far no one seems to be able to link anything back to anyone other than the dude who was fired. And the guy who was fired claims all he did with the information was forward it to the vendor to alert them to the size of the potential breech......a claim that as of yet can not disproved or supported.
Although its worth mentioning the DNC also claims it was the Vendor that was made aware of the breech first. Admittedly this could be due to an internal check, so it doesnt inherently support sanders.
However its worth noting the Sanders campaign didnt actually hack anything despite the implications. The vendor (by their own admission) dropped the firewall while attempting to update the system. Which at least suggests a lower likelyhood of an internal check catching the breech since that would have triggered when they first dropped the firewall.
Also this means that the DNC gets some of the blame here for failing to keep the information secure. Which goes back to that first quote, if they believe they cant keep the information secure (and evidence shows they cant) shouldnt they be suspending EVERYONE until they can?
But real the problem comes at the end, where Wasserman Schultz references the agreement where they can terminate campaign access. It reads like this
"Either party may terminate this Agreement in the event that the other party breaches this Agreement; the non-breaching party sends written notice to the breaching party describing the breach; and the breaching party does not cure the breach to the satisfaction of the non-breaching party within ten (10) calendar days following its receipt of such notice."
Problem is, the Sanders campaign was suspended the same day the DNC was notified of the breech....not at the end of the 10 days they are given to resolve the problem to the DNC's satisfaction.
Which it should be pointed out, Sanders fired the one name the DNC gave them as responsible for the breeches...so clearly they were attempting satisfactory resolutions.
Oh and remember the part where I said the Vendor dropped the firewalls and therefore its arguably the DNC's fault for not keeping the data secure? yea well the agreement backs me up
"This Agreement requires the DNC to "use security measures, with respect to the Campaign Data, that are consistent with good practices in the data processing industry."
Which is why a couple days later the DNC reversed itself and restored Sanders access to his own data....just not fast enough prevent Bernie Sanders from suing the DNC in court for banning them illegally.
And even thats not the end of the story, See Sanders campaign manager claimed the day they were banned that this wasnt the first time this happened
“On more than one occasion they [the DNC] have dropped the firewall between the data of the competing Democratic campaigns. This is dangerous incompetence. It was our campaign months ago that alerted the DNC to the fact that the campaign data was being made available to other campaigns,”
Now I know what your thinking, "funny I havnt heard of anyone else getting suspended", and youd be right.
Now according to the DNC this is because no previous breeches ever happened.
According to the vendor on december 19th however
"Late last night we were directed by our client the DNC to restore the Sanders campaign's full access to VoteBuilder. NGP VAN staff worked through the night to ensure Sanders campaign staff were up and running by early this morning.
For clarification, NGP VAN played no part in the October data issue that has been mentioned.
We look forward to working closely with the DNC and our partners on the important next steps that will ensure Democratic success around the country in November.
Everyone see that? that would be the vendor claiming that yes the firewalls HAVE come down before...but that time wasnt their fault.
Which means the Sanders campaign is telling the truth that this isnt the first time.
So why wasnt the other campaign, whoever it was (strongly implied by the Sanders campaign to be Clinton), punished? In fact, by all accounts the DNC did NOTHING at the time.
Furthermore the DNC and the Clinton Campaign have been claiming that the Sanders Campaign downloaded and saved all of her records, hence the justification for banning them in the first place As Debbie Wasserman Schultz put it:
"Staff on the sanders campaign not only viewed the Clinton campaign's proprietary data, but from what we're being told, downloaded it, exported it and downloaded it,"
problem is, that doesnt appear to have been possible at least according to the vendor:
"On Wednesday morning, there was a release of VAN code. Unfortunately, it contained a bug. For a brief window, the voter data that is always searchable across campaigns in VoteBuilder included client scores it should not have, on a specific part of the VAN system. So for voters that a user already had access to, that user was able to search by and view (but not export or save or act on) some attributes that came from another campaign"
In otherwords the Sanders campaign couldnt have saved anything....and only could see Clintons information on voters they themselves also had information on. Which is not even remotely what the DNC is accusing them of.
But then again, when youve already decided who you want to win your parties nomination, and burying the debates isnt stopping other candidates from gaining momentum, I suppose selectively and illegal enforcing agreements, possbily ignoring wrongdoing of your preferred candidate and accusing that other candidate repeatedly of things he didnt actually do to make him look worse, is totally justified. Amirite? Debbie Wasserman Schultz seems to think so.
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