Taibbi writes: "As is sadly the case with most political stories these days,
whether or not you care about the so-called 'DNC leak' probably depends on
which candidate you supported in the primaries."
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former U.S. president
Bill Clinton greet supporters during a primary night gathering on April 26,
in Philadelphia. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
DNC Leak Shows Mechanics of a Slanted Campaign
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
26 July 16
Documents released by Wikileaks detail how the DNC worked with the Clinton
camp to downplay a key story about questionable fundraising
As is sadly the case with most political stories these days, whether or not
you care about the so-called "DNC leak" probably depends on which candidate
you supported in the primaries.
If you supported Hillary Clinton, it probably won't bother you that the
Democratic National Committee is revealed in these documents to have
essentially acted as an arm of the Clinton campaign during the contested
primary season
Most people guessed at this anyway. But it wasn't until these documents were
dumped last week under mysterious circumstances that the extent to which the
party both advocated for Hillary and against her opponent Bernie Sanders was
made plain.
Nowhere is the discrepancy on greater display than in an episode involving
the DNC's reaction to a May 2nd article by Politico reporters Ken Vogel and
Isaac Arnsdorf, which itself pointed at a backdoor advantage for the Clinton
campaign.
The exchanges over this Politico story were barely mentioned in the wake of
the DNC leak, except by right-wing media that shortsightedly dinged Vogel
for submitting a draft of his piece of the DNC before publication,
suggesting "collusion."
Vogel maybe shouldn't have sent a whole copy for review, but his intent
wasn't to give the DNC or Hillary a break far from it. It seems pretty
clear that he wanted to make sure he didn't miss with a piece full of
aggressive, original reporting that took on a very powerful target.
In the piece, headlined "Clinton fundraising leaves little for state
parties," Vogel and Arnsdorf discovered an anomaly in Federal Election
Commission filings.
A joint fundraising committee called the Hillary Victory Fund, ostensibly
designed to funnel money from rich donors to local party committees, had in
fact been used as a cut-out to funnel money back to the national party and
the Clinton campaign.
As an example, take couples who paid or raised $353,400 to sit at a table
with George Clooney, a sum that Clooney himself called an "obscene amount of
money." The figure represented the maximum allowable donation given the
structure of the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint venture between the Clinton
campaign, the DNC and 32 state committees.
Donors can give a maximum of $5,400 per election cycle to Hillary's
campaign, $33,400 per year to the DNC, and $10,000 per year to each of the
32 state committees in the fund.
If you assumed that the Clooney guests had already given their maximum
$5,400 to the Clinton campaign, that left just over $353,000 for the DNC and
the committees.
But Vogel and Arnsdorf found that less than 1 percent of the $61 million
raised by the Hillary Victory Fund went to the state committees.
Actually it's better to say that only 1 percent of the money "remained" with
the committees. In talking to state sources, the Politico reporters found
that large sums of money would sometimes appear briefly in state committee
coffers, and disappear just as quickly, and then just as quickly be
deposited into DNC accounts.
The money sometimes came and went before state officials even knew it was
there. Politico noted that the Victory Fund treasurer, Beth Jones, is also
the COO of the Clinton campaign.
This was problematic at the very least because large sums of money were
going to the DNC that came from donors who in many cases had already given
the maximum amount to the DNC.
Vogel-Arnsdorf also noted that of the $23.3 million spent directly by the
fund, most "had gone toward expenses that appear to have directly benefited
Clinton's campaign, including $2.8 million for 'salary and overhead' and
$8.6 million for web advertising that mostly looks indistinguishable from
Clinton campaign ads."
The context was significant. Technically, Sanders raised more money than
Hillary Clinton in each of the first three months of this year. Sanders
early in the year also had a massive advantage over Clinton among small
donors, raising $67 million from them through January 31st, compared to less
than $22 million for Clinton during the same period.
What the Vogel-Arnsdorf story pointed to, then, was the Clinton campaign
with the aid of the DNC using large-money donors like Clooney's friends to
get around a fundraising shortfall among small donors.
This is also significant because one of Clinton's campaign talking points
throughout emphasized that she was aiding down-ballot Democrats, while
Sanders was not.
Even the likes of Clooney thought the money was going to the committees.
"The overwhelming amount of the money that we're raising," the actor told
Meet the Press, "is not going to Hillary to run for president, it's going to
the down-ticket."
Politico's "1 percent" report put all of this in question.
In the leaked DNC documents, we see remarkable exchanges between
high-ranking officials, talking about how best to deal with the potential
scandal.
In the most bizarre and darkly comic moment, DNC Communications Director
Luis Miranda emails his colleagues about which local Democratic official to
put on Morning Joe to rebut the story.
Miranda asks DNC Deputy Policy Director for State Party Programs Maureen
Garde, then-DNC National Political Director Raul Alvillar, and DNC CEO Amy
Dacey if they should put Indiana State Chair John Zody on the show.
But Miranda had a problem. The Vogel-Arnsdorf story had quoted a state
official and a party operative who were pissed about their disappearing
money.
Since those complaining were unnamed, they could be anyone. Even Zody! In
which case, putting him on TV might not be a good idea.
Miranda, anxious to know if Zody is "in a good place" on the issue, writes
(emphasis mine):
"From: Miranda, Luis
Sent: Monday, May 02, 2016 4:33 PM
To: Maureen Garde; Alvillar, Raul; Dacey, Amy
Subject: FW: Can we use John Zody for TV tomorrow?
"Do we know if the Indiana State Chair is in a good place on the Victory
Fund before we book them? Any concerns with helping them get on air? Given
the Sanders claim of money laundering I don't want to help book if they're
one of the parties that are complaining off the record."
To which Alvillar responds:
"I just talked to him last week. He didn't mention anything to me. Let us
check really quick."
What this exchange shows is that the DNC officials, hilariously, didn't know
which local chiefs they'd screwed to the point of off-the-record revolt with
their Victory Fund maneuvers.
Later, they discussed how to deal not with Politico, but the fact-checking
site PolitiFact. The site had earlier rated George Clooney's claim about
most of the money going down-ticket "mostly true."
But after the Vogel-Arnsdorf story, PolitiFact reporter Eugene Emery was
understandably exercised and reached out to Miranda for an explanation,
hinting that he was considering re-doing his rating.
The leaked papers show the DNC officials consulting with the Clinton
campaign about how to deal with the meddlesome Emery.
"I spent about half hour on the phone with Gene pushing back on the Politico
story," an exasperated Miranda writes, to Clinton campaign spokesman Josh
Schwerin.
Miranda added: "He's hung up on the notion that if a state party chair wants
to keep some of that money, they don't get to decide."
Schwerin responds, "He seems to think the DNC has nothing to do with
electing down ballot Dems which is just crazy."
In fact, as he says this week, "crazy" Gene Emery was "hung up" on a very
reasonable question.
"I just kept asking them," says Emery, "what are the odds that all of these
committees would get this money and turn right around and send it all back
to the DNC? They wouldn't keep a thousand dollars? Coffee money even?"
The campaign never really answered that question, and still hasn't.
In any case, Schwerin later went on to write: "I'm speaking with the editor
tomorrow before they post anything."
To its credit, PolitiFact deflected the "pushback" and ultimately downgraded
their rating of Clooney's claim to "half-true."
What's patently obvious from these emails is that there was virtually no
distinction between DNC and Clinton campaign officials when it came to the
handling of this media problem. They were all on the same team, working in
tandem to try to talk down the likes of Vogel and Emery.
Meanwhile, the Sanders campaign is treated as an enemy. After Vogel's story
came out, Sanders campaign chief Jeff Weaver sent DNC Treasurer Andrew
Tobias a letter asking him to sign a petition calling for the state
committees to receive "all the money allowable" from the Victory Fund.
Weaver, with pointed irony, signs his letter:
"In solidarity,
Jeff Weaver"
Tobias circulates this letter to other DNC staffers, saying, "Seems awfully
unfair and inaccurate?"
Soon after, communications chief Miranda circulates a note to staffers
asking them to search "if there's any coverage of Bernie Sanders camp
calling the victory fund 'money laundering.'"
As was the case with DNC officials teaming up to look for a negative
"narrative" about how Bernie Sanders "never got his act together," and
pondering the possibility of a negative story about his religion, the DNC
actively searched for a negative angle on the Sanders reaction to the
Politico piece within hours after its release. They focused on the use of
the term "money laundering."
In fact, the use of the term first came from Democratic Party state
fundraising sources in the Politico story.
As Vogel and Arnsdorf wrote, "[state fundraisers] worry that participating
states
could see very little return investment from the DNC or Clinton's
campaign, and are essentially acting as money laundering conduits for them."
When the Sanders campaign put out a press release citing those quotes, the
DNC complained that the Sanders camp was jumping the shark in its language,
and pointed reporters toward a legal expert who pooh-poohed the notion that
the law had been broken.
By evening that day, news outlets were describing this not as an exposé
about the DNC and Clinton, but as an inside-baseball fight between the
Sanders and Clinton camps.
"Clinton and Sanders spar over joint fundraising efforts," wrote one CNN
headline.
That CNN story even added language that "a Clinton campaign aide refuted
some of Politico's report Monday." This was despite the fact that the
"refuting" amounted to a promise that more money would reach the state
parties in upcoming months.
What does it all mean? If you're a Clinton fan, probably nothing.
To anyone else, it shows that the primary season was very far from a fair
fight. The Sanders camp was forced to fund all of its own operations, while
the Clinton campaign could essentially use the entire Democratic Party
structure as adjunct staff. The DNC not only wasn't neutral, but helped with
oppo research against Sanders and media crisis management.
DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign as a result of this
mess, which exposed to Sanders voters the extent to which they were viewed
organizationally as annoyances to be managed. The immediate question going
forward for the party is whether the two camps can put aside their
differences in time to defeat the more-than-a-little-scary Donald Trump.
But down the road, someone will have to address the problem of a Democratic
Party structure that effectively had no internal advocates for a full 43
percent of its voters. As we've seen with the Trump episode on the other
side, people don't much like having to fight against the party claiming to
represent them.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former U.S. president
Bill Clinton greet supporters during a primary night gathering on April 26,
in Philadelphia. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/dnc-leak-shows-mechanics-of-a-
slanted-campaign-w430814http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/dnc-le
ak-shows-mechanics-of-a-slanted-campaign-w430814
DNC Leak Shows Mechanics of a Slanted Campaign
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
26 July 16
Documents released by Wikileaks detail how the DNC worked with the Clinton
camp to downplay a key story about questionable fundraising
s is sadly the case with most political stories these days, whether or not
you care about the so-called "DNC leak" probably depends on which candidate
you supported in the primaries.
If you supported Hillary Clinton, it probably won't bother you that the
Democratic National Committee is revealed in these documents to have
essentially acted as an arm of the Clinton campaign during the contested
primary season
Most people guessed at this anyway. But it wasn't until these documents were
dumped last week under mysterious circumstances that the extent to which the
party both advocated for Hillary and against her opponent Bernie Sanders was
made plain.
Nowhere is the discrepancy on greater display than in an episode involving
the DNC's reaction to a May 2nd article by Politico reporters Ken Vogel and
Isaac Arnsdorf, which itself pointed at a backdoor advantage for the Clinton
campaign.
The exchanges over this Politico story were barely mentioned in the wake of
the DNC leak, except by right-wing media that shortsightedly dinged Vogel
for submitting a draft of his piece of the DNC before publication,
suggesting "collusion."
Vogel maybe shouldn't have sent a whole copy for review, but his intent
wasn't to give the DNC or Hillary a break far from it. It seems pretty
clear that he wanted to make sure he didn't miss with a piece full of
aggressive, original reporting that took on a very powerful target.
In the piece, headlined "Clinton fundraising leaves little for state
parties," Vogel and Arnsdorf discovered an anomaly in Federal Election
Commission filings.
A joint fundraising committee called the Hillary Victory Fund, ostensibly
designed to funnel money from rich donors to local party committees, had in
fact been used as a cut-out to funnel money back to the national party and
the Clinton campaign.
As an example, take couples who paid or raised $353,400 to sit at a table
with George Clooney, a sum that Clooney himself called an "obscene amount of
money." The figure represented the maximum allowable donation given the
structure of the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint venture between the Clinton
campaign, the DNC and 32 state committees.
Donors can give a maximum of $5,400 per election cycle to Hillary's
campaign, $33,400 per year to the DNC, and $10,000 per year to each of the
32 state committees in the fund.
If you assumed that the Clooney guests had already given their maximum
$5,400 to the Clinton campaign, that left just over $353,000 for the DNC and
the committees.
But Vogel and Arnsdorf found that less than 1 percent of the $61 million
raised by the Hillary Victory Fund went to the state committees.
Actually it's better to say that only 1 percent of the money "remained" with
the committees. In talking to state sources, the Politico reporters found
that large sums of money would sometimes appear briefly in state committee
coffers, and disappear just as quickly, and then just as quickly be
deposited into DNC accounts.
The money sometimes came and went before state officials even knew it was
there. Politico noted that the Victory Fund treasurer, Beth Jones, is also
the COO of the Clinton campaign.
This was problematic at the very least because large sums of money were
going to the DNC that came from donors who in many cases had already given
the maximum amount to the DNC.
Vogel-Arnsdorf also noted that of the $23.3 million spent directly by the
fund, most "had gone toward expenses that appear to have directly benefited
Clinton's campaign, including $2.8 million for 'salary and overhead' and
$8.6 million for web advertising that mostly looks indistinguishable from
Clinton campaign ads."
The context was significant. Technically, Sanders raised more money than
Hillary Clinton in each of the first three months of this year. Sanders
early in the year also had a massive advantage over Clinton among small
donors, raising $67 million from them through January 31st, compared to less
than $22 million for Clinton during the same period.
What the Vogel-Arnsdorf story pointed to, then, was the Clinton campaign
with the aid of the DNC using large-money donors like Clooney's friends to
get around a fundraising shortfall among small donors.
This is also significant because one of Clinton's campaign talking points
throughout emphasized that she was aiding down-ballot Democrats, while
Sanders was not.
Even the likes of Clooney thought the money was going to the committees.
"The overwhelming amount of the money that we're raising," the actor told
Meet the Press, "is not going to Hillary to run for president, it's going to
the down-ticket."
Politico's "1 percent" report put all of this in question.
In the leaked DNC documents, we see remarkable exchanges between
high-ranking officials, talking about how best to deal with the potential
scandal.
In the most bizarre and darkly comic moment, DNC Communications Director
Luis Miranda emails his colleagues about which local Democratic official to
put on Morning Joe to rebut the story.
Miranda asks DNC Deputy Policy Director for State Party Programs Maureen
Garde, then-DNC National Political Director Raul Alvillar, and DNC CEO Amy
Dacey if they should put Indiana State Chair John Zody on the show.
But Miranda had a problem. The Vogel-Arnsdorf story had quoted a state
official and a party operative who were pissed about their disappearing
money.
Since those complaining were unnamed, they could be anyone. Even Zody! In
which case, putting him on TV might not be a good idea.
Miranda, anxious to know if Zody is "in a good place" on the issue, writes
(emphasis mine):
"From: Miranda, Luis
Sent: Monday, May 02, 2016 4:33 PM
To: Maureen Garde; Alvillar, Raul; Dacey, Amy
Subject: FW: Can we use John Zody for TV tomorrow?
"Do we know if the Indiana State Chair is in a good place on the Victory
Fund before we book them? Any concerns with helping them get on air? Given
the Sanders claim of money laundering I don't want to help book if they're
one of the parties that are complaining off the record."
To which Alvillar responds:
"I just talked to him last week. He didn't mention anything to me. Let us
check really quick."
What this exchange shows is that the DNC officials, hilariously, didn't know
which local chiefs they'd screwed to the point of off-the-record revolt with
their Victory Fund maneuvers.
Later, they discussed how to deal not with Politico, but the fact-checking
site PolitiFact. The site had earlier rated George Clooney's claim about
most of the money going down-ticket "mostly true."
But after the Vogel-Arnsdorf story, PolitiFact reporter Eugene Emery was
understandably exercised and reached out to Miranda for an explanation,
hinting that he was considering re-doing his rating.
The leaked papers show the DNC officials consulting with the Clinton
campaign about how to deal with the meddlesome Emery.
"I spent about half hour on the phone with Gene pushing back on the Politico
story," an exasperated Miranda writes, to Clinton campaign spokesman Josh
Schwerin.
Miranda added: "He's hung up on the notion that if a state party chair wants
to keep some of that money, they don't get to decide."
Schwerin responds, "He seems to think the DNC has nothing to do with
electing down ballot Dems which is just crazy."
In fact, as he says this week, "crazy" Gene Emery was "hung up" on a very
reasonable question.
"I just kept asking them," says Emery, "what are the odds that all of these
committees would get this money and turn right around and send it all back
to the DNC? They wouldn't keep a thousand dollars? Coffee money even?"
The campaign never really answered that question, and still hasn't.
In any case, Schwerin later went on to write: "I'm speaking with the editor
tomorrow before they post anything."
To its credit, PolitiFact deflected the "pushback" and ultimately downgraded
their rating of Clooney's claim to "half-true."
What's patently obvious from these emails is that there was virtually no
distinction between DNC and Clinton campaign officials when it came to the
handling of this media problem. They were all on the same team, working in
tandem to try to talk down the likes of Vogel and Emery.
Meanwhile, the Sanders campaign is treated as an enemy. After Vogel's story
came out, Sanders campaign chief Jeff Weaver sent DNC Treasurer Andrew
Tobias a letter asking him to sign a petition calling for the state
committees to receive "all the money allowable" from the Victory Fund.
Weaver, with pointed irony, signs his letter:
"In solidarity,
Jeff Weaver"
Tobias circulates this letter to other DNC staffers, saying, "Seems awfully
unfair and inaccurate?"
Soon after, communications chief Miranda circulates a note to staffers
asking them to search "if there's any coverage of Bernie Sanders camp
calling the victory fund 'money laundering.'"
As was the case with DNC officials teaming up to look for a negative
"narrative" about how Bernie Sanders "never got his act together," and
pondering the possibility of a negative story about his religion, the DNC
actively searched for a negative angle on the Sanders reaction to the
Politico piece within hours after its release. They focused on the use of
the term "money laundering."
In fact, the use of the term first came from Democratic Party state
fundraising sources in the Politico story.
As Vogel and Arnsdorf wrote, "[state fundraisers] worry that participating
states
could see very little return investment from the DNC or Clinton's
campaign, and are essentially acting as money laundering conduits for them."
When the Sanders campaign put out a press release citing those quotes, the
DNC complained that the Sanders camp was jumping the shark in its language,
and pointed reporters toward a legal expert who pooh-poohed the notion that
the law had been broken.
By evening that day, news outlets were describing this not as an exposé
about the DNC and Clinton, but as an inside-baseball fight between the
Sanders and Clinton camps.
"Clinton and Sanders spar over joint fundraising efforts," wrote one CNN
headline.
That CNN story even added language that "a Clinton campaign aide refuted
some of Politico's report Monday." This was despite the fact that the
"refuting" amounted to a promise that more money would reach the state
parties in upcoming months.
What does it all mean? If you're a Clinton fan, probably nothing.
To anyone else, it shows that the primary season was very far from a fair
fight. The Sanders camp was forced to fund all of its own operations, while
the Clinton campaign could essentially use the entire Democratic Party
structure as adjunct staff. The DNC not only wasn't neutral, but helped with
oppo research against Sanders and media crisis management.
DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign as a result of this
mess, which exposed to Sanders voters the extent to which they were viewed
organizationally as annoyances to be managed. The immediate question going
forward for the party is whether the two camps can put aside their
differences in time to defeat the more-than-a-little-scary Donald Trump.
But down the road, someone will have to address the problem of a Democratic
Party structure that effectively had no internal advocates for a full 43
percent of its voters. As we've seen with the Trump episode on the other
side, people don't much like having to fight against the party claiming to
represent them.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
