Take a breath
Disclosure -- I am a Sanders supporter.
This data debacle raises fact questions that are absolutely impossible for us in cyberspace to know exactly what happened. So let's take it as a worst case scenario. Let's say that Bernie got to thinking about all those polls showing that Hillary is the inevitable nominee of the Democratic Party and decided to direct his staff to steal Hillary's data base. Somehow, this would help his campaign -- giving him contact and other information for all of his opponent's supporters. Due to whatever glitch, the geeks working for Sanders pulled off this theft.
Does anybody really believe that?
Whatever. Let's assume that is what happened.
With this purloined data, the Sanders campaign could make its own contact with those people and try to get them to switch. There is nothing in the public record to support this scenario, but let's say the folks at the DNC suspect it.
At that point the DNC should contact the Sanders campaign and ask what their story was. And then, if the Sanders campaign denied it or offered a mitigating explanation, some sort of fact finding process should have been initiated, confronting Sanders with the evidence and allowing him a chance to make his case. If it were to turn out that Sanders really was responsible for "stealing" sensitive data, I would support the DNC publicly asking him to withdraw from the race.
Instead of anything like that happening, we are looking at a liar-liar squabble that only helps the Republicans. Instead of establishing a clear cut case proving that Sanders was personally responsible for whatever the hell happened, the DNC acted in an utterly irresponsible fashion and imposed a "remedy" that is a transparent attempt to help the Clinton campaign. Following on the heels of this bizarre and counter-productive game of gotcha, the Hillary campaign disgracefully started to campaign on the issue, putting out snarky words like "steal."
This is evidence of desperation that contradicts all the sophomoric bullshit from her supporters you see on this board about how the election is already decided. It is overkill, based on nothing but dim witted opportunism. The smarter way to play it would be for Hillary to call for an independent investigation to determine "What did Bernie know and when did he know it?" That would put Sanders on the defensive while leaving herself a back door in case Sanders could prove himself innocent.
This shows what a lousy politician she is for starters.
By throwing mud within 24 hours of this story breaking, she makes herself look like Nixon and Bush rolled into one.
So now it is in litigation. There will be testimony under oath. Just as one of the Hillary geniuses on this thread keeps repeating that they bet their life on her winning the nomination, I will also bet her life that Bernie Sanders himself had absolutely nothing to do with the interface between his campaign's IT geeks and the DNC data base. If he had overzealous or simply mendacious IT geeks working for him, he should fire them. Uh, and what else?
By escalating the affair like this, the DNC and the Clinton campaign have turned it into a zero sum game that somebody is going to lose and suffer campaign threatening embarrassment. That is about as poor a decision as I can imagine. Utterly unnecessary and a really dumb way to take advantage of what would be a huge plus for her campaign -- if they could in fact stick this to Bernie personally.
Most significantly, this shows a desperation for a Knock Out Punch that belies the hollow confidence you see expressed so tirelessly by her supporters on this thread. Obviously, she is far more afraid of Sanders than she can afford to admit publicly.
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