“ISIS’ Best Recruiter”: Will Clinton Apologize To Trump? ‘Hell, No’
During Saturday night’s debate, Hillary Clinton raised a familiar concern that has a lot of merit: Donald Trump’s bigoted rhetoric has the effect of helping America’s enemies. We need to make sure, Clinton said at the debate, that Trump’s more hateful rhetoric doesn’t “fall in receptive ears” abroad.
“He is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter,” the Democratic frontrunner added. “They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.”
The syntax got a little garbled, but it sounded as if Clinton was saying there are already ISIS videos in circulation featuring Trump’s rhetoric. Since that does not appear to be the case, Trump is demanding an apology.
That’s not going to happen.
A spokesman for Hillary Clinton says “hell, no,” the candidate won’t apologize to Donald Trump for calling him “ISIS’ best recruiter.”
“Hillary Clinton will not be apologizing to Donald Trump for correctly pointing out how his hateful rhetoric only helps ISIS recruit more terrorists,” said spokesman Brian Fallon in a statement.
It’s worth unpacking this a bit, because the entire story helps capture just how odd this year’s presidential race really is.
First, let’s focus on the substance. Trump’s whining notwithstanding, the truth of the matter is Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric is noticed abroad and has been utilized by radicals. Rita Katz, executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group, recently explained to NBC News that Middle Eastern radicals “love” Trump “from the sense that he is supporting their rhetoric. They follow everything Donald Trump says. When he says, ‘No Muslims should be allowed in America,’ they tell people, ‘We told you America hates Muslims and here is proof.’”
Clinton could have worded this better, but her underlying point is sound: Trump is providing rhetorical ammunition to America’s enemies. There’s ample evidence to bolster the argument.
Second, the lack of self-awareness surrounding Trump’s complaints is astounding, even for him. Without a hint of irony, the Republican frontrunner said this afternoon, in reference to Clinton’s debate comments, “There is no video.” Seriously? Wasn’t the reality-based community using the same four words when Trump claimed he saw imaginary video of thousands of American Muslims celebrating 9/11 in New Jersey?
Third, Trump may not realize this, but for a guy who’s preoccupied with “strength” and “toughness,” watching him whine about Hillary Clinton hurting his feelings isn’t exactly consistent with the image he works so hard to project.
Finally, note that the fight itself is exactly the kind of showdown Clinton and her team want to have. It’s to their benefit to treat Trump like the Republican nominee, and offer a preview of the kind of general-election fight they’d love to have – with the Democrat on the offensive, and the Republican waiting for an apology that will never arrive.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 22, 201
“Hillary Got The Debate Of Her Dreams”: Showed That She’s Well Armed For Any GOP Fight
If Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley could control the circumstances and terms of Saturday’s debate, the third of the Democratic primary, it would have been a very different evening. It’s easy to imagine an ideal Sanders debate: a focus on how inequality is destroying the middle class and why Sanders, unlike Clinton, is willing to stand-up to corporate plutocrats and Wall Street. Martin O’Malley’s perfect debate would be one where his expertise in progressive wonkery could shine, and he would emerge as a sleek, plausible alternative. But world events, the unfolding strangeness of the Republican field, and the sensation-loving mindset of the media all conspired to create a debate that allowed Hillary Clinton to dominate, highlighting the areas where she has the most experience and is most comfortable discussing. Unfortunately for both of Clinton’s rivals, the actual debate felt almost scripted to allow her to present her most persuasive self, the confident and experienced master of a broadly supported centrist foreign policy.
The foreign policy focus of the first half of the debate—the part that will get the highest ratings and linger longest in the memory—happened partially by happenstance. No one could have predicted that the attacks on Paris and San Bernardino would have happened when they did, and cast such a large shadow. But there’s also the fact that the Democratic debates aren’t taking place in a political vacuum: to a large degree the Democrats have let the Republicans set the terms of political argument, and are mainly counterpunching to the GOP. This is in large part because of the outsized personality of Donald Trump and the greater number of debates on the Republican side (combined with much more virulent language) simply dominate political discourse. Finally, the media itself plays a part, since questions about terrorism and war are much more attention grabbing than issues like inequality, taxation, and tuition.
Sanders was more comfortable talking about foreign policy than in the second debate, but he still suffers in part from a disconnect between his realist critique of Hillary’s foreign policy and his general profile as an idealistic socialist. Sanders’s approach to national security is fundamentally a nationalist and realist one. It’s the sort of argument one hears from the likes of George Kennan and Henry Kissinger. Strange as it may seem, Sanders’s major critique of Hillary came across as almost conservative: that her advocacy of regime change leads to destabilization. Sanders kept reminding the audience that (unlike Clinton) he voted against the Iraq war, which he blamed for the chaos now engulfing the Middle East. “I voted against the war in Iraq because I thought unilateral military action would not produce the results that were necessary and would lead to the kind of unraveling and instability that we saw in the Middle East,” Sanders said. The problem for Sanders is that this critique doesn’t fit neatly with his calls for a democratic socialism in America. After all, if democracy is the answer to America’s problems, isn’t it also something we should wish for the Syrians?
Hillary Clinton, by contrast, spoke in more traditional centrist liberal terms, advocating policies very similar to those already being carried out by President Obama, but with more vigor. In a tweet, Matt Bai of Yahoo News drew a sharp distinction between Sanders and Clinton: “Important exchange here: is the real enemy of world order repressive states, or is it the stateless threats they create? The answer matters.”
Clinton’s advantage is that the answer she provides—a dual focus on spreading liberty and counter-terrorism—is the one that has broad-based centrist appeal. Moreover, her years as Secretary of State give her a confidence in speaking of these matters that her rivals lack. As for Martin O’Malley, his wonkish attempts to interject himself into the debate—as in his suggestion that USAID be raised to a cabinet-level agency—merely made him look more desperate and out of place.
One striking fact about the argument between Sanders and Clinton was that both candidates were much more substantial and informed than the discussions of the same issues in recent Republican debates which have amounted to little more than competitive chest-thumping. The Republicans have made it clear that they plan to use national security and fears of terrorism to win back the White House next November. Perhaps one other advantage of tonight’s debate for Hillary Clinton is that it showed that she’s well armed for that fight.
By: Jeet Heer, The New Republic, December 19, 2015
“Debate Upshot: Democrats Are The Only Responsible Party”: GOP Wants To Make Life Miserable For Anyone Who Isn’t Older, Wealthy, White, Straight And Male
The third Democratic debate is in the books, having been conveniently held on a night that featured both college football bowl games and the opening weekend of the new Star Wars movie.
It’s just as well, though, because it was a largely uneventful night. Politico has a decent rundown of the main highlights, from Sanders personally apologizing for the data breach to the candidates’ renewed push on gun control. There isn’t much reason to believe that debate will move the polling needle in a significant way, which obviously plays well for Clinton as far as the contest goes.
But debates aren’t just about sorting out the differences between primary candidates. They’re also about promoting a political party’s worldview and illustrating how its leaders would manage the nation’s problems. That’s one of the biggest reasons why the DNC’s debate schedule is so frustrating: it’s not only that infrequent and low-viewership debates prevent a healthy and vigorous contest, but also that they deny the American people a chance to hear from the party.
Those who did tune in had the opportunity to hear from three candidates who can be trusted, to varying degrees, to lead the nation. There are some obvious differences between them that don’t need restating here, but the distinction between the Democrats and the Republicans in their debates could not possibly have been sharper. The GOP wants to drop more bombs on anything that moves in the middle east, cut taxes on every corporation and rich person it can, and make life miserable for almost anyone who isn’t older, wealthy, white, straight and male.
It’s not just about morals, though: it’s about basic responsibility. Republican foreign policy wouldn’t just needlessly kill untold numbers through needless military aggressions–it would also generate a massive increase in terrorism and instability just as George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq did. Republican tax policy wouldn’t just benefit the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class–it would also bust the budget, create massive deficits and hurt the demand-side consumer economy. Republican climate policy wouldn’t just benefit fossil fuel companies and increase pollution–it would also put the entire planet at risk of eventual civilization and species collapse.
Republican candidates are catering to a furious and fearful population of resentful paranoiacs. Their policy platforms are predictably wildly irresponsible.
The Democratic Party may still have a way to go in becoming as progressive as it needs to be. But there’s no question that only one of America’s two parties can be counted on to do the basic job of running the government.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, December 20, 2015
“How And Why Campaigns Behave As They Do”: An Explanation Of What Bernie Sanders Staffers Actually Did And Why It Matters
After a spat lasting just over 24 hours, it appears that the top news story of the day is already resolving itself: the DNC has come to an agreement to return voter database access to the Bernie Sanders campaign after top staffers were caught snooping into the Clinton campaign’s records.
The brouhaha over this little fiasco has been intense, and made worse by the fact that only a few thousand people in the United States understand anything about the voter tools involved. Few journalists–to say nothing of armchair activists–have enough campaign and field management experience to truly understand what happened. That ignorance has led to wild accusations and silly reporting from all sides, whether from conspiratorially-minded Sanders supporters or schadenfreude-filled Republicans.
The first thing to understand is that NGPVAN is a creaky voter database system that looks, and feels like it was put together in the 1990s. It has been the mainstay of Democratic campaigns all across the country and has intense loyalty among national campaign professionals–though it should be noted that the California Democratic Party uses one of its more robust and more expensive competitors PDI (PDI, hilariously, sent an email this morning to its users with the subject line “At PDI Data Security Is Our Top Priority.”) I myself have extensive experience running campaigns on both platforms, both as a campaign consultant and as a county Democratic Party official in California.
The DNC contracts with NGPVAN, meaning that firewalls between competitive primary campaigns within NGPVAN are incredibly important. But they also have been known to fail. When that happens, campaign professionals are expected to behave in a moral and legal manner. But they would also be stupid not to, since every action taken by an NGPVAN user is tracked and recorded on the server side.
The other important piece of information to note is the difference between a “saved search” and a “saved list.” NGPVAN’s voter tracking has the option of being dynamic or static, meaning that you can run dynamic searches of voters whose characteristics may change as NGPVAN’s data is updated, or you can pull static lists of voters who currently fit the profile you are seeking. Most voter data pulls within an NGPVAN campaign will be dynamic searches–and in fact, that is the default setting. You really only want to pull a static list if you’re doing something specific like creating a list for a targeted mail piece–or if you want a quick snapshot in time of a raw voter list.
However, merely pulling a search or a list doesn’t mean you can automatically download all the information on those voters. You can see topline numbers. You can take a few screenshots–though it would take hundreds of screenshots and the data would be nearly useless in that format. To download the actual data, you would need to run an export–a step that requires extra levels of permissions only allowed to the highest level operatives. Despite the breach that allowed them to run lists and searches, Sanders staffers apparently did not have export access.
However, the access logs do show that Sanders staff pulled not one but multiple lists–not searches, but lists–a fact that shows intent to export and use. And the lists were highly sensitive material. News reports have indicated that the data was “sent to personal folders” of the campaign staffers–but those refer to personal folders within NGPVAN, which are near useless without the ability to export the data locally.
Even without being able to export, however, merely seeing the topline numbers of, say, how many voters the Clinton campaign had managed to bank as “strong yes” votes would be a valuable piece of oppo. While it’s not the dramatic problem that a data export would have been, it’s undeniable that the Sanders campaign gleaned valuable information from the toplines alone. It’s also quite clear that most of the statements the Sanders campaign made as the story progressed–from the claim that the staffers only did it to prove the security breach, or that only one staffer had access–were simply not true. It’s just not clear at this point whether the campaign’s comms people knew the truth and lied, or whether they were not being told the whole truth by the people on the data team who were still making up stories and excuses to cover their tracks. I suspect the latter.
In this context, it made sense for Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC to suspend the Sanders campaign’s access to the data until it could determine the extent of the damage, and the degree to which the Clinton campaign’s private data had been compromised. 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.
This doesn’t mean that Wasserman-Schultz hasn’t, in David Axelrod’s words, been putting her thumb on the scale on behalf of the Clinton campaign. She clearly has been, judging from the intentionally obfuscated debate schedule and from her demeanor and reaction to this recent controversy. The Democratic Party would have been wiser to bring the campaigns together privately and resolve the matter internally. Instead, Wasserman-Schultz chose to take it public to attempt to embarrass the Sanders campaign, and merely managed to embarrass herself and the Party’s data security vulnerabilities in the process.
Still, the Sanders camp’s reactions have been laughable. It was their team that unethically breached Clinton’s data. It was their comms people who spoke falsely about what happened. The Sanders campaign wasn’t honeypotted into doing it–their people did it of their own accord. NGPVAN isn’t set up to benefit Clinton at Sanders’ expense–and if the violation by the campaigns had been reversed, Sanders supporters would have been claiming a conspiracy from sunrise to sundown. What’s very clear is that the Clinton camp did nothing wrong in any of this. Sanders campaign operatives did, and then Wasserman-Schultz compounded it by overreacting. And in the end, the right thing ended up happening: the lead staffer in question was fired, and the campaign got its data access back.
It’s also another reminder that armchair activists speculating about news stories would do well to actually get involved in campaign field activities. If you want to be involved in politics, there’s no substitute for actually doing the work to gain a real understanding of how and why campaigns and politicians behave as they do. There would be a lot fewer overwrought conspiracy theories, at the very least.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, December 19, 2015
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