Hillary Clinton's team is unsettled by what Bernie Sanders' staffers might have seen in their sneak peek.
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Accusing your opponent of committing evil and unpardonable crimes is basic presidential campaign jujitsu. But Hillary’s Clinton’s team is genuinely jittery about the sneak peek taken by Bernie Sanders staffers into their secret voter file.
The unauthorized fishing expedition into the database housing the names and demographic information of voters Clinton plans to target – which led to the sacking of a top Sanders staffer and the suspension of two more — has embittered the campaigns against one another, even if the two principals made nice on the debate stage Saturday night.
And it’s a source of real and deepening concern for Clinton’s data and voter targeting teams in Iowa – where Clinton leads by single digits — and New Hampshire, where she trails neighboring-state Sen. Sanders by a similar spread.
“We’re down in New Hampshire and we all know Iowa is going to tighten,” said one Clinton staffer on the ground in a battleground state. “[The Sanders team] is full of s--t when they say they didn’t get any intel … It’s like the opposing general getting your battle plans.”
Clinton’s top strategist and pollster-in-chief Joel Benenson, who oversaw two successful Obama campaign operations that set records for maximizing core-voter turnout, says his staff is eagerly awaiting the results of a third-party audit into the hack of the Democratic National Committee-housed lists. The DNC said it is just beginning the process of securing an independent audit by a data security firm.
The Clinton campaign also wants to learn basic details of the narrative — like why, for instance, Sanders’ campaign manager didn’t tell his candidate when he learned of the breach last Wednesday; Sanders was only looped in a day later, after DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz called him personally with the news. Weaver told POLITICO on Saturday he withheld the information from Sanders because he at first believed the breach was a staff-level concern that could be dealt with in-house. “My field director informed me,” he recalled. “I said, ‘let everyone know that no one is to do anything with the Clinton data.' It was not clear immediately there was any problem on our side.”
On Saturday, it was still not clear to the Clinton campaign how much damage had been done. "I don't think any of us will know until this audit is completed how serious this all is,” Benenson said after the debate at St. Anselm’s College — adding that the value of the information is less about the specific voters being targeted than hints about how Clinton’s campaign plans to deploy its resources.
“All of [the data] is extremely valuable, it is work produced by tens of thousands of volunteers. … it is part of a roadmap to how we are running and strategizing in our campaign and how we get to the totals we need to win in Iowa and New Hampshire, especially,” he said, his voice rising with exasperation. Sanders apologizes to Clinton over voter data breach
Sanders apologizes to Clinton for voter data breach
By Gabriel Debenedetti
“We’re talking about precinct-level data, individual-level data, persuadability scores on individuals; we don't know how much they got their hands on when they were downloading. They shouldn't know what numbers we're trying to hit – we're in a three way primary, there are a lot of ways to win these things. They shouldn't know which precincts we're targeting.”
Sanders campaign officials maintained they had gained no useful information about Clinton's plans —and that if they had, there were no plans to use it. But one thing both campaigns agreed on was the value of the voter file.
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told one staffer in the hours before the debate that the breach, was “worse than if they stole $5 to $10 million out of our bank account.”
Weaver claimed that the DNC had inflicted incalculable damage on the Sanders campaign itself by shutting down its access to the voter file during the 48-hours of key canvassing before the debate. “You cannot calculate a dollar figure,” he said. “What is the cost of not being able to contact thousands and thousands of voters over a two-day period? There is not a dollar amount.”
He claimed the voter file was even more important to Sanders.....
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Poster Comment:
Can you imagine the horror in the halls of the DNC if Sanders,a genuine socialist,defeats Mrs Bubba,their pretend socialist in the primary,and they have to figure out how to have him booted out of the slot and install her without losing their biggest voter base?
The SOW Gang,the NAACP,the homos,and other fringe groups are icing on their cake,but their cake is made from ignorant voters that lean left because they think the government is their daddy and will provide for them. If they alienate the left,the Dim Party is history.
That's going to take some mighty spectacular dancing to pull off. Bubbette! is going to be shrieking so loud people in China will wonder what that horrible noise is because she knows her shelf life has ended after this primary. She will be a nobody with no power and nobody fearing her anymore. Nobody kissing her ass for favors,and nobody politely smiling at her lies because they can't afford to offend her.
Who knows,once out of power and access to classified files,she might even be put on trial at some point in the future because she won't be able to blackmail anybody anymore and get away with it.
I'm am thinking there are a LOT of Dims in elected office that have felt the stomp of her combat boots on their fingers over the years that would get wood at the thought of rubbing her face in it.
Damn shame we don't have a real Republican to run against them.
