For months now, Democrats have watched the Republican primary battle with its cast of political Twilight Zoners and smiled. They could sit back and enjoy the spectacle of a weakened and threatened GOP political establishment battle the party’s increasingly powerful talk-radio-show and Tea Party fueled base — political debate encased within razor-thin layers of anger, rage and resentment, all of which suggested some party members could stay home on election day if they felt cheated or dissed. Now its the Democrats’ turn to be wracked by anger and seeming chaos, although Democrats have sitting out an election to teach their party a lesson when they don’t like the nominee down to a fine art. The catalyst: charges that the campaign of Bernie Sanders accessed Hillary Clinton/s voter files and the DNC’s response to it. The latest twist: Sanders’ campaign is suing the DNC.

As that great pundit Bugs Bunny once said: “Of course you realize this means war.”

A civil war erupted within the Democratic Party on Friday after news that Bernie Sanders’ campaign took advantage of a technological glitch to access, search and save one of Hillary Clinton’s most valuable campaign assets — her voter files.
Tension rapidly escalated throughout the day as the Democratic National Committee cut off Sanders’ access to his own voter files, effectively crippling his field operation, and the senator retaliated by suing the party and accusing its leaders of plotting to hand the presidential nomination to Clinton.

By the end of the day, the front-runner’s campaign struck back, accusing Sanders’ team of stealing millions of dollars worth of data, all to raise cash off a narrative that the establishment is against him.
“They stole data as a reason to raise money for their campaign,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters Friday night after Sanders’ campaign sent supporters a fundraising email titled, “Urgent: DNC tipping the scales for Hillary Clinton.”
Mook characterized the data that was taken as the “fundamental keys of our campaign” and the “strategic road map.”
But to Sanders’ camp, that was beside the point. The saga, to Sanders’ aides, was proof of the Clinton favoritism it has long suspected at the DNC.

The operative phrase here is the “besides the point.” The first issue is what happened to the voter files. Should there be consequences and, if so, what are fair consequences? The second is whether the DNC is overreacting and whether it’s pushing to do what it can to help Hillary Clinton — or whether what its doing is actually unwelcome to Clinton due to backlash. To many Democrats, the dreadful scheduling of Democratic Party debates during times and days when viewership will be predictably low suggests the DNC has its finger on the scale.

So “the point” is indeed important, whether the DNC is reacting in a fair way, and whether the Sanders campaign is now seizing on the controversy to maximize political gain by fanning resentments against the DNC and Clinton.The quickest most certain, emphatic answers will right now be found among those on each side who have a vested interest in a candidate. Expect this to be a story with legs, as the media sorts out more details (versus supporters of candidates trying to show the other side in the worst possible light and cherry picking their facts).

“The leadership of the Democratic National Committee is now actively attempting to undermine our campaign. This is unacceptable,” said Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver, on the eve of the third Democratic debate. “Individual leaders of the DNC can support Hillary Clinton in any way they want, but they are not going to sabotage our campaign — one of the strongest grassroots campaigns in modern history.”
Even as the Sanders’ campaign admitted its staffers had inappropriately reviewed and saved Clinton’s data, it emphatically accused the party of sabotage.
The controversy centers around the Friday morning revelation that Sanders staffer Josh Uretsky — along with other, more junior aides — took advantage of a software error this week by political technology company NGP VAN that allowed them to access the voter file that contains vital information used by campaigns to identify and monitor voters and potential supporters.
The Sanders campaign fired Uretsky.

Which shows the campaign did take quick action.

In its suit against the DNC, filed Friday evening, Sanders’ campaign argued the data breach was the fault of the party and its data vendor and that the freeze on Sanders’ files amounted to a breach of contract. “The DNC may not suspend the Campaign’s access to critical Voter Data out of haste or desperation to clean up after the DNC’s own mistakes,” the complaint said.

There are clear problems now for the Sanders campaign, for the Clinton’s campaign’s imagery and for how the DNC is perceived. The Hill:

The DNC barred Sanders from accessing the party’s voter file, which includes much of his campaign’s voter data, after a campaign staffer improperly accessed private data belonging to front-runner Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The vendor hired by the party to maintain the data accidentally created the security vulnerability during an update, the DNC says.
The Sanders campaign fired a supervisory staffer involved in the incident and has gone on the warpath Friday claiming that the DNC overreacted and is trying to aid Clinton’s campaign.

The suit claims that the loss of the voter file could “significantly disadvantage, if not cripple, a Democratic candidate’s campaign for public office.” It also argues that the agreement between the candidate and the DNC mandates that a candidate get 10 days written notice to fix any issue before the party can restrict access.

“The DNC’s unwarranted, unilateral suspension of the Campaign’s Voter Data access directly impacts one of the nation’s most important electoral races, and carries political implications on a national scale,” the suit says.

“The DNC should not be permitted to tip the scales of the Democratic presidential primary without clear justification and contractual cause. The fairness of this pivotal national election should not be compromised because of security flaws introduced by the DNC and its vendor.”

The suit asks for “immediate restoration” of the campaign’s access to the voter data system, damages “presently known to exceed $75,000.00” and whatever else “the Court deems just and proper.”

Sanders’s campaign manager Jeff Weaver threatened earlier Friday that the campaign would take the DNC to federal court if the national party committee didn’t lift the suspension. But the DNC did not budge, arguing that it needed to restrict access in order to conduct a full investigation.

Sanders’ team only had hours to prepare the lawsuit, shown in some typographical errors present in the court filing.

Now the DNC is entering into a political perception danger zone:

One senior Democrat told The Hill that while it’s clear the Sanders campaign committed a violation, the DNC has to be wary of not feeding into the narrative that it is aiding Clinton.

“The DNC is very susceptible and has taken a lot of incoming attacks for being in the tank for Hillary and its response has to be proportional,” he said.

“Not saying this isn’t proportional, but you have to be very careful.”

He also noted that both sides are looking to take control of the message amid the controversy.

The Sanders camp is recasting the story away from one about a Sanders staffer stealing data and emphasizing the alleged overreaction as proof that the DNC is in the tank with Clinton.

The Clinton camp had remained quiet for the majority of the day, refusing comment outside of a brief and benign statement that summarized the situation. But that changed by the later afternoon, when spokesman Brian Fallon began to take a more aggressive tack on Twitter and the campaign hosted a press call with reporters early Friday evening.

The Clinton camp notes that Sanders’ campaign is now fundraising off of this controversy — usually a clear sign that something is being used for political fodder.
The Los Angeles Times:

A technological transgression is threatening to derail the insurgent White House bid of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and it set off a fierce battle Friday between Sanders and the national Democratic Party, which cut off his campaign from a crucial voter database.

The dispute was rooted in Sanders staffers peeking at confidential voter files owned by rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign. By the end of the day, after a dizzying volley of charges and counter charges, it had landed before a federal judge. That was after the Sanders technology advisor who oversaw the snooping had been fired and open political warfare had erupted between the party and progressives backing Sanders, who accuse it of meting out a punishment that doesn’t fit the crime to give Clinton a leg up in the race.

It was all an unwelcome development for Sanders on the eve of a presidential debate Saturday in New Hampshire, where he is under pressure to rekindle some of his early momentum. The senator needs a strong showing at the event, in a state that has become almost a must-win for him. He has struggled to gain leverage over Clinton since the focus of voter attention shifted from the economy to national security, an area where she has considerably more experience. Now Sanders is faced with having to answer questions about the data breach.

The dispute also underscores the ever-growing role that data play in modern presidential campaigns, where resources are marshaled around precise formulas that factor in such details as where voters live, their latest purchases at big-box retailers and what magazines they read. The lawsuit the Sanders campaign filed against the Democratic National Committee late Friday alleges the party is breaking its contract with the campaign by cutting it off from a database that is the lifeblood of the campaign.

There’s now a call for Sanders to run as an independent:

One of Bernie Sanders’ biggest union supporters has called on him to consider running as an independent candidate if Democratic party leaders continue to refuse to give him access to his campaign’s voter records.

The Democratic National Committee suspended all access for the Sanders team to a shared database system as punishment for a data breach in which a number of staff accessed records belonging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign during a software glitch.

But in a further escalation of an already bitter row over the breach, Sanders’ supporters claim the heavy-handed response of the party leadership is further evidence of their repeated efforts to favour Clinton’s campaign and “sabotage” the insurgent Sanders threat.

RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, said splitting from the party could be the only response if access to crucial voter information is not restored.

“If he doesn’t get access to his voter list, what choice does he have?” she said, stressing she was speaking in a personal capacity, not the union. “I think that’s crossing a lot of people’s minds if the process is so rigged.

An independent run would be interesting. After all, in 2000 many Democrats argued there was little difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush so they taught their party a lesson by voting for Ralph Nader. Bush governed exactly as Al Gore would have.

Conservative blogger Ann Althouse:

It’s not exactly the Watergate break-in — is it? — but Bernie Sanders’s campaign broke into Hillary Clinton’s confidential voter information.
I guess the defense is she was asking for it, being out there in the DNC database with a software error.

The Verge:

Unfortunately, it’s a common problem — and past election years are peppered with similar data breaches. In 2009, 5,000 donors’ private information was exposed during a Minnesota Senatorial race. Both President Obama and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) had their campaign websites compromised in cyberattacks in 2008. Obama’s own 2012 campaign “call tool” exposed voters’ names, locations, telephone numbers, and political preferences. This information was open to any website visitors, Mother Jones reported. Tea Party supporters even used the phone bank to harass Obama supporters.

Obama also released an app that used Google Maps for campaign supporters to find Democratic households. Every flagged address displayed the first names, ages, and genders of voters who lived there. This was available on the public App Store. An Obama campaign spokesperson at the time told ProPublica this app didn’t infringe on voters’ privacy and continued that “anyone familiar with the political process in America knows this information about registered voters is available and easily accessible to the public.”

For political campaigns, that data is too valuable to do without. Every campaign begins with a roll of party-affiliated voters, identified by name, address, birthdate, ethnicity, and social security number. The ground work of a campaign is primarily building on that list and making sure as many of those people as possible turn out on Election Day. That means building up more targeting information, like whether they own a firearm or a small business. If they donate to the campaign, payment information can also be added to the mix. By the end, there’s often more than enough data to steal someone’s identity.

Still, that data isn’t always protected even at the level of the voter roll. Earlier this year, the personal information of 6 million voters was released to a dozen groups accidentally, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. That breach also came down to a third-party contractor that was hired to manage voter data. When data was requested, the contractor accidentally added the data to the state’s existing statewide voter file, which was automatically sent to political parties, news organizations, and Georgia GunOwner Magazine.

This week saw the first data breach of the 2016 campaign. Last night, BuzzFeed News reported that one of Bernie Sanders’ staffers accessed confidential information from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, made possible by a larger security failure by a third-party vendor. It’s still unclear how many staffers saw the data — the Sanders campaign says only one, while the Democratic National Committee says as many as four — but it doesn’t seem to have traveled farther than those staffers. Still, the consequences have been dire. Since the news came to light, the DNC has barred Sanders from accessing its records until the matter is resolved, hobbling the campaign.

As breaches go, it’s relatively mild — none of the data was publicly released — but it shows that the ability of campaigns to protect data hasn’t kept pace with their use of it. The Clinton breach was only possible because of a poor software patching process by a third-party database operator, hired by the DNC. Once the data was exposed, the Sanders campaign either didn’t realize how serious the breach would be taken or how easily it could be caught. In either case, the root of the scandal comes down to political organizations with massive stores of sensitive data and none of the sense required to safeguard it.

As I’ve often noted, Democrats have a long history of teaching their party a lesson by staying home, then complaining about how those mean, old Republicans somehow were able to get in power and do little things such as transforming the Supreme Court, or gerrymandering districts at the state level to protect and grow the party’s control of the House of Representatives.

By most accounts, it’s likely the next President will get to appoint three Supreme Court justices.

Now it’s the Republicans’ turn to smile….

PHOTO: Everett Historical / Shutterstock.com

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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