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Pierce writes: "The DNC, under the barely perceptible leadership of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has greased the skids for Hillary Rodham Clinton."

Senator Bernie Sanders with Secretary Clinton. (photo: Mandel Ngan/Getty)
Senator Bernie Sanders with Secretary Clinton. (photo: Mandel Ngan/Getty)


Why Did the DNC Let the Bernie-Hillary Tech Story Leak?

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

18 December 15

 

A better question: Would it have leaked if the roles were reversed?

k, now, everyone, listen to me carefully. Take a deep breath. Keep your hands in plain sight, and take two steps away from the Intertoobz.

The breach occurred after a software problem at the technology company NGP VAN, which gives campaigns access to the voter data. The problem inadvertently made proprietary voter data of Mrs. Clinton's campaign visible to others, according to party committee officials. The Sanders campaign said that it had fired a staff member who breached Mrs. Clinton's data. But according to three people with direct knowledge of the breach, there were four user accounts associated with the Sanders campaign that ran searches while the security of Mrs. Clinton's data was compromised.

Let us stipulate a few things. First, the DNC, under the barely perceptible leadership of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has greased the skids for Hillary Rodham Clinton. (A debate on the Saturday night before Christmas, when half the country's on an airplane going to visit the other half? Please.) Second, yes, it's true, if the situation were reversed, and it was the Clinton campaign that had breached the Sanders campaign's data, The New York Times would be screaming bloody murder and talking about a "culture" of slicker, and where's there's smoke etc. etc. Third, it's true that, if I wanted to throw the Democratic primary campaign into a little chaos to distract attention from the fact that Tuesday night's Republican debate more closely resembled a casting call by Roger DeBris, this is exactly the kind of story I would want to have out there. And, last, it's true that, if I wanted to distract from the fact that Sanders on Thursday was endorsed by the Communication Workers of America, and by Democracy For America, this also would be exactly the kind of story I would want out there. So, all your paranoid speculations are as well-founded as paranoid speculations can be.

This is still just a cock-up by a technology company that evidently should be selling lawn sprinklers instead of data access.

The Democratic committee blamed NGP VAN for the software glitch."This was an isolated incident, and we're conducting a full audit to ensure the integrity of the system and reporting the findings to the D.N.C.," said Stu Trevelyan, NGP VAN's chief executive. "The D.N.C. was notified on Wednesday by its data systems vendor NGP VAN that as a result of a software patch, all users on the system across Democratic campaigns were inadvertently able to access some data belonging to other campaigns for a brief window," said the committee's communications director, Luis Miranda. "The D.N.C. immediately directed NGP VAN," he said, "to conduct a thorough analysis to identify any users who accessed the data, what actions they took in the system, and to report on the findings to the party and any affected campaign."

There was some serious dumbassery involved on the part of the Sanders campaign, and the person most responsible has been sacked, so the story's over, right? The DNC could allow the Sanders campaign access to the data again. But what admittedly sends my thoughts up a grassy knoll is how this relatively minor blip made it to The Washington Post in the first place. After all, the bungling was with the vendor, and with the DNC for hiring the vendor, so wouldn't the smart play have been to keep this whole thing in-house? Also, if this story survives through the Saturday night debate, let alone becomes an issue therein, and if the Sanders campaign is shut out from the national party data for longer than this weekend, I'm going to be very, very suspicious. Devious and clumsy are, after all, the hallmarks of the DWS era.

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