The Daily Vertical: Kremlin Hack -- Should We Be Surprised?

This is the problem, getting us to care. Mrs Clinton and co are happy to spy on our emails, sexy webcams etc etc GCHQ is alleged to watch Yahoo webcams and find out how many contain nudity.... We have Hague and Cameron screeching Goebbels phrases at us "Nothing to hide nothing to fear". I agree we should be concerned at people hacking and damaging our democracy I just worry less about the Russians than out own rubber boothed webcam watchers. Russia can add to misinformation but in the UK would surely lag far behind seemingly MI5's compliant BBC and Guardian say in setting the agenda or being in a position to temper say the Wikileaks and Snowden revelations. Ideally Russia and others would stay out. Really not sure they gain either from the instability they may fan to a limited degree. Problem is they are not the biggest threat to my freedom of expression etc indeed the DNC & Mrs Clinton knock them into a cocked hat.

What do you expect the Russian hackers to do for their pay-check ? Anyway... this infighting between humans will never end. I'm getting bored. This ****** takes a pause.

While the Kremlin may have been involved, I was surprised that you didn’t mention the essence in many of these purloined e-mails. The para below is from a story from the NY Times on Monday. I know you dislike “whataboutism,” but it doesn’t sound all that different from the shenanigans in Russia. “The emails capture a world where seating charts are arranged with dollar totals in mind, where a White House celebration of gay pride is a thinly disguised occasion for rewarding wealthy donors and where physical proximity to the president is the most precious of currencies.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/us/politics/dnc-wikileaks-emails-fundraising.html?_r=0

So the blame here is on the messenger and not the message. The DNC have now been shown to have rigged the campaign in favour of Mrs. Clinton and it turns out that their computers had the same level of security as Mrs. Clinton's homebrew server which she denied ever having in the first place. Perhaps we should be thanking the Russians for showing us what the people behind Mrs.Clinton are willing to do to get their candidate elected. This isn't Mr. Putin influencing American politics but rather a light being shone on the inner workings of the Democratic Party. Something that the American media should have been able to do on their own if they weren't apparently taking their orders from the DNC.

Bernie Sanders did rather well in his campaign. He has had significant impact on the Democrat platform and in negotiations for how Democrat electors should be handled in the next presidential race. Sanders ran to the left of Clinton and his second showing reflects the smaller tail on the voting left as against Clinton's more centrist appeal. Whatever advantages the DNC gave Clinton, they were quite marginal against Sander's considerable effort. The DNC game now is to win the electorate center along with the left against a Republican Party that could well be splitting between its historical conservatism and what used to be an undercurrent of white nationalism. Bernie Sanders is not the man for that fight. Clinton needs to move right toward the center and try to undercut the conservatives, something Bernie Sanders would not do. Sanders would push to the left and lose the center.