A NYT article I'd be more interested in reading if my search of the page had turned up one name — Donna Brazile.

The article: "Trump Questions Fairness of Next Week’s Debate at a Town Hall/Former President Donald J. Trump, at a Fox News event, insisted without evidence that Vice President Kamala Harris was 'going to get the questions in advance.'" 

Why Donna Brazile needed to be there for me to take this "insisted without evidence" business seriously: "Interim Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile is coming under fire Monday after a newly released WikiLeaks email indicated she gave Hillary Clinton’s team an explicit heads-up about debate questions last spring." (October 31, 2016, CBS News).

From the new NYT article: "Pointing to Vice President Kamala Harris’s longtime friendship with a senior executive whose portfolio includes ABC News, Mr. Trump insisted without evidence that Ms. Harris was 'going to get the questions in advance.' The network released agreed-upon rules that no topics or questions would be provided to either candidate or campaign."

How much "evidence" in advance does Trump need before he's entitled to waft his suspicion about something that, if it happens, will be done surreptitiously and where it is something has happened before and, when it happened we only found out after the fact thanks to... of all things... WikiLeaks?

Yes, you can criticize Trump's rhetoric. It's not precisely correct to assert that Harris is "going to get the questions in advance." But we understand what he means. We don't (or shouldn't) trust ABC not to do something like what happened in 2016. And Trump wants to heighten our mistrust and perhaps intimidate ABC in case it's tempted to violate its agreement to keep the questions and topics secret.

Of course, we all expect ABC to frame questions that will not trap or unduly challenge Kamala Harris. The only check on that behavior is that at some point, the coddling is obvious and invites mockery.

Are The Washington Post and The New York Times treating the rise of Kamala Harris quite differently?

Kamala Harris is at the top of the Washington Post home page:

The Washington Post headline expresses bold pride in her takeover of the Democratic Party, ousting the unnamed man (Biden) who had won the primaries and who is still (remember?!) President of the United States. And the next headline down casts doubt on the election in Venezuela. Why not admiration for Maduro, how he "took control"? Because he did it via election?

Over at The New York Times, the top headline is "Venezuela's Autocrat Is Declared Winner of Tainted Election." Then, there is a series of headlines — inflation in Japan, the attack in Israel from Lebanon, Biden's plan for the Supreme Court — before we get to something about Kamala Harris, and it's not cheering for her:

 

She's underneath Biden, who's holding up an I'm-still-here finger, and she's walking downward, and, we're told, her "Honeymoon Phase" is "wind[ing] down." She's isolated and her head is bowed: How will she "Maintain Momentum"?

They'll tell you who they're afraid of.

Texas & Oklahoma: Mini Mike Bloomberg will kill your drilling, fracking and pipelines. Petroleum based “anything” is dead. Energy jobs gone. Don’t vote for Mini Mike!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2020

AND:

Former interim Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile lashed out at RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel during a Fox News appearance, repeatedly telling McDaniel to “go to hell” for claiming the Democratic primary will be “rigged” against Sandershttps://t.co/oJQdyo7UjN

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) March 3, 2020

No soup for you.

"My Democratic friends are mad at me. So what? No gumbo for them."

(Donna Brazil, L.A. Times.)

Have you heard about Dolores?

"There’s a part of my personality that I don’t like anyone to see, a part of me that is my Daddy’s girl. I call her Dolores and she does not like it when she thinks people are not being straight with her. I don’t want anyone to see Dolores but I could feel her rising up inside me as Brooklyn continued to waffle about Tom."

Writes Donna Brazile in her book "Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House." (Tom, in case you're wondering, is someone Brazile wanted to hire at the DNC, where she was interim chair and outraged to be controlled by the Clinton campaign (i.e., "Brooklyn").)

"Dolores" was murderous:

One night when I went home I called Charlie Baker to warn him that I was struggling to keep Dolores contained. “Charlie, I’m about to kill Robby,” I told him. “And it ain’t going to be pretty.”...

"Dolores" had the biggest dick:

[Clinton campaign liaison Brandon Davis] looked at me sternly as if it was annoying him that I would try to take back control of the party as any chair would. Dolores was becoming furious. “You know, this does not feel like a negotiation to me,” I said. “This feels like power and control. Gentlemen, let’s just put our dicks out on the table and see who’s got the bigger one, because I know mine is bigger than all of yours.” The sound on the other end of the conference call was a rustle of confusion. “So what will it be, gentlemen? Because I am not waiting around anymore for permission. What do you say?” After some more deflecting and dissembling, their response was that they would have to get back to me. When the call was done, Brandon left the room, looking disgusted. This day was serious. This whole election was serious, and for a moment there I was concerned that I had taken it too far in the way I had confronted Brooklyn. I recovered from that quickly though. We could not lose this election to Donald Trump and I was not going to play nice or waste time. Dolores might be rude and feisty, but she usually got what she needed. Those boys in Brooklyn probably never wanted to speak to Dolores again.

By the way, I'm getting bored reading Brazile's book. The main thing is that — as she tells it now — she wanted the interim chair position to give her an independent role, making decisions and spending money for the Clinton campaign, and the campaign exercised control. Her predecessor Debbie Wasserman Schultz had — as Brazile tells it — known her place and laid back and enjoyed her perks.

I think Debbie understood the rules of the game. She would not cause anyone any trouble. Now that I was replacing Debbie, it appeared Brandon’s job had expanded to include making sure that I played that game, too. Brandon was the first one in the door on Sunday, and he took a seat on the brown leather sofa across from me. Here was a young man without a boundary facing a woman who has walls built up and barbed wire around them, too. He was the kind of guy who would argue with you about the color of a wall. I said that this pink was too bright for my tastes, and he corrected me saying this was not a bright pink, it was a tropical pink.

What kind of guy argues with a woman about the right name for a particular tone of pink? Is it a woman-with-the-biggest-dick move to make a guy talk about pinkness?

"I am focused on doing the best job that I can to represent my constituents here in Florida’s 23rd District.... My focus, which is what my constituents elected me to do, is to make sure that I can fight for the things they care about."

Said Debbie Wasserman Schultz, reacting to pressure to respond to the many accusations of abject mismanagement lodged against her by Donna Brazile.

Debbie's answer resonated. I felt I heard the voice of Bill Clinton... And I need to go back to work for the American people...

Brain teaser about Hillary Clinton in Donna Brazile's book.

I've been reading Donna Brazile's new book "Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House," and I encountered a (presumably unintended) brain teaser, which I have already figured out.

First, see if you can find the brain teaser in this passage. The context is, some weeks after the election, Donna Brazile –  the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee — is finally getting a telephone call from Hillary Clinton:

She asked me how I was doing and I said I was fine. She sounded rested and confident, as if the Hillary I knew had returned. I told her about the Future Forums and that I felt good about the people who were running to be the new leaders of the party. We were in better shape financially than we had been in months. Before leaving the White House, the president had agreed to do one more fund-raising appeal, and our online fund-raising was outpacing previous months. We had almost $11 million in the bank, which would give the new chair a head start. This was chitchat, like I was talking to someone I didn’t know. This was not I can’t wait to see you. Let’s get together. You stepped up and I really wanted to thank you for doing it. I know Hillary. I know she was being as sincere as possible, but I wanted something more from her.

So does she know Hillary or not? She says "the Hillary I knew had returned" and "I know Hillary," but also that it was "like... talking to someone I didn’t know."

My solution to the brain teaser is: The real Hillary is like a person you do not know.

Donna Brazile's new book reignites suspicions about the murder of Seth Rich.

Several times in her new book "Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House," Donna Brazile writes about Seth Rich, who, as she puts it on page 37, "had been walking home from a local bar—and barely a block away from his apartment in Washington’s Bloomingdale / LeDroit Park neighborhood—when he was shot in the back in what police said was a robbery attempt."

The police were there within minutes, and Seth was still alive and talking when they arrived, but he died later that morning at the hospital.

That seems at first glance like an uncomplicated acceptance of the idea that Rich was killed in an attempted robbery, but my lawyerly eye notices the unclarity. What did Rich say to the police? He "was alive and talking," but did he say this was a robbery attempt or something else? The police later said it was a robbery attempt, but why did they say that? Did they say that because the now-dead man knew or believed that? He was shot in the back. Can you picture an attempted robbery that leaves the victim shot in the back? Doesn't a robber confront you to your face and use the gun to threaten you into giving him money?

And we see that Brazile doesn't seem to accept that it was simply a robbery. On pages pp. xviii-xix, describing her first phone call with Hillary Clinton after the election, Brazile writes:

I had taken all the hits. Hearing [Hillary's] voice was the first moment I understood how tired I was of taking it. What about the Russians? They had tried to destroy us. Was she going to help? I wanted to file a lawsuit. We needed to sue those sons of bitches for what they did to us. I knew the campaign had over $3 million set aside in a legal fund. Could she help me get this lawsuit started? And don’t forget the murder of Seth Rich, I told her. Did she want to contribute to Seth’s reward fund? We still hadn’t found the person responsible for the tragic murder of this bright young DNC staffer.

Brazile is interested in getting her hands on Hillary's money, and she purports to need it to solve 2 mysteries, but it's interesting that she leaps directly from wanting to go after the Russians to finding "the person responsible" for killing Seth Rich. If Donna Brazile really believed that Seth Rich was killed by a common street robber, would she really have brought up the murder in this phone call with Hillary and demanded that campaign money be used to offer a reward? If it were a common robber, he'd have melted back into the population of Washington, D.C. long ago. Why would you think a reward would pull anything in?

Later, at pages 148-149, Brazile talks about the Assange interview (on August 9, 2016) that sparked theories that Rich was assassinated.

On the tape I saw of the interview... [h]e dropped his smirk and said, “Our sources take risks.” Assange was implying that Seth was a source for WikiLeaks! When the interviewer pressed him on his relationship with Seth, Assange left it vague, responding, “We do not comment on our sources. We have to understand how high the stakes are in this case.”

I had been saddened by the crazy conspiracy theories that ignited on Twitter and Reddit. They wounded Seth’s family. I knew this accusation was not true. 

She doesn't say how she knew. She just drops that into a description of an encounter with Bernie Sanders. Sanders showed concern about Rich and asked about his family, and Brazile talked about going to visit the family "and help them plan the memorial and scholarship fund."

The story devolves into praise for Sanders. He's "no-nonsense...  always very grateful to people who tell him the truth." And he sent his regards to the Seth Rich family. So Bernie's listening to the story is used to bolster the truth of the story. He likes people who tell the truth, and Brazile talked to him about the murder, so what she's telling us now must be true. And Bernie's a good man who cared about Rich's family, so we ought to be good and care only about the feelings of Seth Rich's family. That packaging of the Seth Rich mystery makes me suspicious.

Brazile also writes about fear that she might be a target of violence. At page 180:

As I was preparing to fly to Las Vegas for the last debate, Julie, Patrice, and Anne took me aside. They were worried about me traveling alone. The attacks on me had become so frequent and so vicious that they preferred that I have someone along who would watch out for me. What they did not know was how I had been cautioning my family that they should be extra careful now. Our name, Brazile, was distinctive, and it would have been easy for my many sisters and brothers and their children to become the target of some crazed person out to harm me. Several of my siblings said they wanted to come stay with me just until Election Night to make sure I was safe, but I told them no. All I could think about was Seth Rich. Had he been killed by someone who had it out for the Democrats? Likely not, but we still didn’t know. 

But you told Bernie you knew! Or, I mean, you told us that you told Bernie you knew. Why did you call the conspiracy theories "crazy" when you yourself were — in real life — afraid that someone might be coming after you?

If they came after me like that, I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt. This became a very heated conversation. I wanted to maintain my autonomy and not to cause anyone harm, but my colleagues were genuinely concerned for my well-being. Anne mentioned several people who had agreed to escort me, but I instructed her to thank those people and reaffirm that I would travel alone.

If they came after me like that.... Like what?!

ADDED: I looked up more details in the L.A. Times:

When police got to the scene, they found Rich had been shot multiple times, and his credit cards, wallet and watch were still on him. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital. Police ruled his death a homicide — an attempted robbery turned deadly. But questions loomed.

"There had been a struggle. His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything," Rich's mother, Mary, told NBC shortly after his death.

It's possible that Rich was confronted and he resisted and was trying to get away when he was shot. The shooter might have chosen to flee at that point rather than to search the body for something to steal.

That's how you add it up to robbery.

A reason not to see assassination is that there was a struggle. An assassin would have come up from behind and delivered the kind of shot that would not have given him an opportunity to struggle and would not have left him in any condition to speak to the police before dying.

Brazile's book left out details that made me less suspicious of the "attempted robbery" theory. So I'm a little suspicious about why she did that!

Donna Brazile — on ABC's "This Week" — is much more hyper, agitated, angry, and scared than her usual.

Her usual demeanor — which I've enjoyed over the years — is slowed down, calm, and slightly jolly. The difference is striking and had me wondering what her colleagues have been saying to her and how much she's afraid that her book will not succeed in shifting blame for what happened to the Democratic Party onto others:



Here's the transcript. Excerpt:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Passionate Democrats who say they feel betrayed by all this. Any regrets?

BRAZILE: Do I regret taking on a job the second time in my life as chair of the party, cleaning up everyone's mess, taking all of the incoming, being unable to spend funds that I raised? Do I regret being on the road 100 percent of the time, being hacked by the Russians, being -- being harassed, getting death threats? Do I regret any of that? George, was worse than Hurricane Katrina in terms of the emotional toll. But do I regret stranding up for what is right, helping Hillary Clinton, helping the Democratic Party? And let me just say this, as somebody who went through the hacking experience, being able to tell the truth about what happened with the Russians, the attack on our government do I regret any of that? No. I wish I could have done more, George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But do you think this helps for the book to come out?

BRAZILE: Well, George, I mean this is a lesson of 2016. If I released it next year, they would say, Donna, you're impacting our 2018. If I released it the following -- Donna, you're impacting. George, for those who are telling the me to shut up, they told Hillary that a couple of months ago. You know what I tell them, go to hell. I'm going to tell my story. I'm going the tell my story, George. Because this is a story of a young girl who started in American politics at the age of 9, who continues to fight each and every week of her life. I went down to Virginia last week, to kick off the canvassing campaign. Nobody paid me to do that. Nobody -- I'm not on the payroll, George. I care about my country. I care about our democracy. And I say go the hell because, why am I supposed to be the only person that is unable to tell my story?

She needs to tell her story, and she needs to get paid. And she will get paid. Her book — "Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House" — comes out tomorrow. I know I've pre-ordered it. And it's #4 at Amazon, beaten only bya Wimpy Kid, Oprah, and Leonardo da Vinci (because those 3 characters never stop fascinating us).

ADDED: As I was doing the tags for this post I wanted to use "Democratic Party in Trumpland" (which is my standard tag for the predicament of the Democratic Party after the 2016 elections), and I realized I wasn't sure if Brazile ever talked about Trump. She's doing a lot of blaming, but she's blaming Democrats. She's kind of messing up their game of blaming Trump for everything. I searched the transcript and found it devoid of mentions of Trump, except in this one passage, after Stephanopoulos asks her whether, during the campaign, she felt "under threat." She said:

Every day, especially when Donald Trump -- especially when Donald Trump would go out there and tweet. You know, look, I have worked on campaigns all my adult life. I have been called some of the the worst things in America. But when Donald Trump would go out there and attack me, I got the threats were just unbearable. My house right now is -- I got every different kind of security device. I had to get my home swept. I had to get the DNC swept twice. It was horrible.

Then Stephanopoulos reminded her that Trump's tweeting now is promoting her book saying it's "the real story" that "Crooked Hillary" was the one doing the "collusion." Brazile said:

Well, Donald Trump likes to distract. I mean, what Donald Trump should be focusing on right now is protecting our country from being hacked again.... Donald Trump loves to distract us and divide us. I'm not playing his game.

She's giving him material he can use in his game, so I guess "not playing his game" is doing what she sees fit within the Democratic Party and not listening to warnings from her own people that what she's saying will help Trump.

"After Clinton’s fainting spell, some Democratic insiders were abuzz with talk of replacing her — and Brazile says she was giving it considerable thought."

"The morning of Sept. 12, Brazile got a call from Biden’s chief of staff saying the vice president wanted to speak with her. She recalls thinking, 'Gee, I wonder what he wanted to talk to me about?' Jeff Weaver, campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), called, too, to set up a call with his boss, and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley sent her an email. Brazile also was paid a surprise visit in her DNC office by [senior Clinton campaign official Charlie] Baker, who, she writes, was dispatched by the Clinton campaign 'to make sure that Donna didn’t do anything crazy.' 'Again and again I thought about Joe Biden,' Brazile writes. But, she adds, 'No matter my doubts and my fears about the election and Hillary as a candidate, I could not make good on that threat to replace her.'"

And: "Brazile writes that she considered a dozen combinations to replace the nominees and settled on Biden and Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), the duo she felt most certain would win over enough working-class voters to defeat Republican Donald Trump. But then, she writes, 'I thought of Hillary, and all the women in the country who were so proud of and excited about her. I could not do this to them.'"

From "Donna Brazile: I considered replacing Clinton with Biden as 2016 Democratic nominee" (WaPo).

Brazile seems to be saying that she had the power to dump the candidate and she would have used that power but for the fact that Hillary is a woman.

To say "I could not do this" to "all the women in the country who were so proud of and excited about her" is to show the downside of getting so deeply into identity politics. Hillary's campaign was about the excitement of getting a woman President, not the importance of Democratic Party policies and values. That message becomes nothing if Hillary isn't the candidate. And they couldn't start over, even by swapping in the well-known Vice President, Biden, because replacing the woman with a man was symbolically awful, especially after all the hopes and dreams were pinned on the (presumed) excitement of getting a woman President.

"I always felt I would be running and winning against Bernie Sanders, not Crooked H, without cheating, I was right."

I always felt I would be running and winning against Bernie Sanders, not Crooked H, without cheating, I was right.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017

ADDED: Other Trump tweets reacting to Donna Brazile's spilling her story (in order from oldest to newest and with one in italics because I'm only suspecting that it belongs in the set):

Donna Brazile just stated the DNC RIGGED the system to illegally steal the Primary from Bernie Sanders. Bought and paid for by Crooked H....

....This is real collusion and dishonesty. Major violation of Campaign Finance Laws and Money Laundering - where is our Justice Department?

My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact.

Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn't looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems..

...New Donna B book says she paid for and stole the Dem Primary. What about the deleted E-mails, Uranium, Podesta, the Server, plus, plus...

....People are angry. At some point the Justice Department, and the FBI, must do what is right and proper. The American public deserves it!

The real story on Collusion is in Donna B's new book. Crooked Hillary bought the DNC & then stole the Democratic Primary from Crazy Bernie!

Pocahontas just stated that the Democrats, lead by the legendary Crooked Hillary Clinton, rigged the Primaries! Lets go FBI & Justice Dept.

Bernie Sanders supporters have every right to be apoplectic of the complete theft of the Dem primary by Crooked Hillary!

The rigged Dem Primary, one of the biggest political stories in years, got ZERO coverage on Fake News Network TV last night. Disgraceful!

"Debbie [Wasserman Schultz] was not a good manager. She hadn’t been very interested in controlling the party—she let Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired..."

"...so she didn’t have to inform the party officers how bad the situation was. How much control Brooklyn had and for how long was still something I had been trying to uncover for the last few weeks. By September 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart," writes Donna Brazile, who took over as interim chair from Wasserman Schultz. There's a lot of blaming (blame-shifting?):

Obama left the party $24 million in debt—$15 million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors after the 2012 campaign and had been paying that off very slowly. Obama’s campaign was not scheduled to pay it off until 2016. Hillary for America (the campaign) and the Hillary Victory Fund (its joint fundraising vehicle with the DNC) had taken care of 80 percent of the remaining debt in 2016, about $10 million, and had placed the party on an allowance.

If I didn’t know about this, I assumed that none of the other officers knew about it, either. That was just Debbie’s way. In my experience she didn’t come to the officers of the DNC for advice and counsel. She seemed to make decisions on her own and let us know at the last minute what she had decided....

Brazile presents herself as a very passive, inert member of the committee. Why didn't she exercise responsibility (or quit the committee if the chair is preventing her from taking responsibility)?

Brazile finds out about the debt after the convention, from Gary Gensler, the chief financial officer of Hillary’s campaign:

“Gary, how did they do this without me knowing?” I asked. “I don’t know how Debbie relates to the officers,” Gary said. He described the party as fully under the control of Hillary’s campaign, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearing house. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party’s national committee.

Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund—that figure represented $10,000 to each of the thirty-two states’ parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement—$320,000—and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.

“Wait,” I said. “That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You’re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?”

Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse...

Read the whole thing. There's much more.

I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did not want to disappoint him. I kept asking the party lawyers and the DNC staff to show me the agreements that the party had made for sharing the money they raised, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the other way....

Can we get a special prosecutor?

I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary.... The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity....

I'd like a neutral outsider, a respected prosecutor, to investigate whether this was criminal. I'm not accepting Brazile's self-interested assertion. It was bad, really bad, she keeps saying, but — magically — it was not criminal. My impression of campaign finance law — and I'm not an expert — is that many things that don't even seem wrong have been criminalized. Brazile has it the other way around.

I told Bernie I had found Hillary’s Joint Fundraising Agreement. I explained that the cancer was that she had exerted this control of the party long before she became its nominee. Had I known this, I never would have accepted the interim chair position, but here we were with only weeks before the election.

And yet you're only telling us all this a year later. Brazile wants us to see her as a victim:

I urged Bernie to work as hard as he could to bring his supporters into the fold with Hillary.... I knew he agreed with me, but I never in my life had felt so tiny and powerless as I did making that call.

When I hung up the call to Bernie, I started to cry, not out of guilt, but out of anger. We would go forward. We had to.

Disgusting. 

"Strict laws prohibit government officials from disclosing secrets, yet leaking has been a constant feature of American political life."

"Since the passage of the Espionage Act, in 1917, the federal government has prosecuted only about a dozen cases concerning media leaks of state secrets. That’s an astonishingly small number. [David] Pozen, a Columbia law professor, cites one estimate that, between 1949 and 1969, 2.3 per cent of the front-page stories in the Times and the Washington Post were based on government leaks. Another study looked at just the first six months of 1986 and found that a hundred and forty-seven stories in the country’s eight major newspapers were based on leaks. The entire career of Bob Woodward, perhaps the best-selling political writer of his generation, is based on leaks. And yet, with a few symbolic exceptions, nothing is done.... Pozen easily dispenses with the idea that Administrations don’t prosecute leakers because they can’t find them. They can: information—particularly sensitive information—has a pedigree.... Pozen argues that governments look the other way when it comes to leaks because it is in their interest to do so.... 'For a strategy of planting to work, it is critical that relevant audiences not immediately assume that every unattributed disclosure they encounter reflects a concerted White House effort to manipulate the information environment. The practice of planting requires some amount of constructive ambiguity as to its prevalence and operation..... Plants need to be watered with leaks'...."

Writes Malcolm Gladwell in "Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, and the Modern Whistle-Blower/From their backgrounds to their motivations, the two men have some striking differences." There are leaks, left unprosecuted because they camouflage plants from our government. But then what of hacks? Hacks are something else altogether — and that's the big difference between Ellsberg and Snowden. Ellsberg was a leaker. Snowden is a hacker.

Leakers... are interested in using and exploiting secrecy: they believe that secrecy, by its preservation and strategic violation, serves an essential purpose. The hacker, on the other hand, is a skeptic of secrecy. The anthropologist Gabriella Coleman has described hacking as the “aesthetic disposition” of craftiness and guile. “When lecturing to my class one security researcher described the mentality: ‘You have to, like, have an innate understanding that [a security measure is] arbitrary, it’s an arbitrary mechanism that does something that’s unnatural and therefore can be circumvented in all likelihood,’ ” she writes.

I was thinking about Gladwell's article when I was watching "This Week" this morning. Martha Raddatz was interviewing Donna Brazile:

RADDATZ: Well, do you bear any responsibility, does the Democratic National Committee bear any responsibility because they weren't prepared for something like this, or even have a chain of command going from, as you say, the Geek Squad up to more senior leadership.

BRAZILE: There's no question. I took full responsibility, Martha. I went to the Democratic convention. I spent the entire month of July, August apologizing because of the leaked, stolen emails....

As I watched that live, I thought Brazile said "leaked" then caught herself and substituted the word "stolen." I think she did not mean to say "leaked." That made me suspicious! Did the truth slip out?

Here, I've clipped out the precise point. Check my suspicion:



I hear resonance with what Julian Assange said the other day: "Our source is not the Russian government... We’re unhappy that we felt that we needed to even say that it wasn’t a state party... We have ... a strong interest in protecting our sources, and so we never say anything about them, never ruling anyone in or anyone out.... [W]e’ve had to come out and say 'no, it’s not a state party. Stop trying to distract in that way and pay attention to the content of the publication.'"

"CNN said on Monday that the network has severed ties with the Democratic strategist Donna Brazile..."

"... after hacked emails showed that she shared questions for CNN-sponsored candidate events with friends on Hillary Clinton’s campaign...."

The network’s announcement came shortly after a new batch of hacked emails, released by WikiLeaks on Monday, revealed a note from Ms. Brazile sent on March 5 — a day before a CNN-sponsored debate in Flint, Mich. — with this subject line: “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash. Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint,” Ms. Brazile wrote to John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, and Jennifer Palmieri, the candidate’s communications director.

It was a debate in Flint, Michigan, so it was completely predictable that there would be questions about Flint's water problem. The help isn't even that helpful. Why cheat for so little reason? It suggests cheating means just about nothing to you.

"Let's stay on the Democratic Party plantation, recommends Donna Brazile..."

Writes Glenn Loury.

Unfortunately, Ms. Brazile -- the veteran Democratic strategist, who personifies the enduring legacy within the Party of Jesse Jackson's presidential aspirations from the 1980s -- makes no reference in her piece to the substantive policy issues -- jobs and education -- where her party's establishment has repeatedly failed to foster the interests of poor urban blacks....

By sweeping such difficult issues under the rug, Ms. Brazile misses the key point: it's a "Negotiation 101"-level observation to note that a credible threat to withhold our votes from the Democrats gives black people more leverage WITHIN the party, as it endeavors to manage what are the necessarily conflicting interests of its varied constituencies...

This commonsense observation is not a plug for Donald Trump (though Democratic party leaders will hope blacks construe it that way, the better to avoid accountability and to silence dissenting voices like my own...)....

"In case you missed it, there's some news out of Colorado that's better than hot pancakes and syrup. (If that's even possible.)"

Email, received just now, from Donna Brazile, the longtime Democratic Party character, identified in the email as Vice-Chair for Voter Registration and Participation/Democratic National Committee.

What subdivision of the supposedly sophisticated Democratic Party database am I in that my email address got selected for this especially folksy presentation of the news? Does the Democratic Party think I look fat? Does it see me as self-indulgent and pleasure-seeking? Does it assume I'm the kind of person who won't find it offputting to use Donna Brazile as the African American woman coming at me with a plateful of comfort food? And why pancakes? If I were cooking up this propaganda, using Brazile as the email signatory, the last comfort food I would choose is pancakes! And syrup... Like that's going to stir up sweet, mystic childhood memories without causing me to think that's racial and wrong.

(Cue the usual: If a Republican had done it....)

ADDED: Full text of the email:

Ann --

In case you missed it, there's some news out of Colorado that's better than hot pancakes and syrup. (If that's even possible.)

Governor John Hickenlooper signed a new elections bill into law that will make it easier for Coloradans to vote -- and takes some of the most proactive steps to do it that we've ever seen.

Under the new law, every registered voter in the state will be mailed a ballot, while keeping the option to vote in person. They're creating convenience centers for in-person early voting, and making it easier for people to register to vote.

Colorado is modernizing their voting process to make it consistent with how we are living our lives these days -- something that every state should be trying to do.

Agree? If you do, join me in thanking Gov. Hickenlooper for taking such an important step to improve the voting process in his state -- and for creating a model for other states to follow.

Republicans across the country have carried out an assault on voting rights over the past several years -- and we've been fighting them at every turn. But this new law in Colorado reminds us that it isn't enough just to fight efforts to restrict voting rights -- we have to find innovative ways of making it easier for Americans to participate in our democracy.

This past November, thousands of Americans stood in line for hours and hours to cast a ballot. That's not right -- and we should be taking every step we can to make the voting process easier for people to participate in.

Colorado just took a great big step in that direction. Join me and thank Gov. Hickenlooper -- let's make sure that Colorado isn't the last state to pass a law like this:

http://my.democrats.org/Colorado-Voting

Thanks,

Donna

Donna Brazile
Vice-Chair for Voter Registration and Participation
Democratic National Committee

I see that when I click on those links, the URL opens up with some elaborate code (which I'm assuming gives them information about what prompts me to click). 

Gloria Steinem and the turtle.

#4 on Donna Brazile's rules to live by is "Ask the turtle":

I'm proud to call Gloria Steinem a friend, and this advice came from her. While on a field trip in college with her geology class, she discovered a giant snapping turtle that had climbed out of the river, up a dirt path, right to the edge of a road. Worried it would soon be run over, she wrestled the enormous reptile off the embankment and back down to the water.

At that moment, her professor walked up and asked what in the world she was doing. With some pride, she told him. He said that the turtle had probably spent a month crawling up that long dirt path to safely lay its eggs in the mud on the side of the road and that she had destroyed all that effort with her "rescue."

Gloria tells this story to illustrate the most important political lesson she ever learned: Always ask the turtle.

First, the turtle's message is obviously leave me alone. How am I supposed to believe that this is a message that liberals hold dear?

Second, like Jim Lindgren reading an essay by Michael Bellesiles, I'm getting twinges of doubt about this story. The characters are just too perfectly drawn, and the events unfold in a predictably tragic yet meaningful way.

Third, just try to picture of Gloria with an enormous snapping turtle. Possibly with zombie makeup.

Live-blogging night 2 of the Republican Convention.

5:22 Central Time: Just setting up the post. Let's watch!

5:31: Ugh. CNN is still going over and over the hurricane. Would they be making so much of a hurricane of this dimension if it was the Democratic Convention?

5:32: I'll have to run off at some point to go to a hair appointment. Feel free to tell me how you think I should get my hair cut. Pictures especially appreciated.

5:49: The subject is whether Sarah Palin should stay home with her "special needs" child. Can you be a mother and pursue a career? Gloria Borger, a self-identified "working mom," says you can't make "generalizations," and everyone must make her own decision.

5:57: Wolf Blitzer is pushing the meme -- which I've heard elsewhere -- that McCain is a "maverick" and that means he makes impulsive decisions like the choice of Sarah Palin. He doesn't add -- but there are versions of this meme where it is added -- that this supposedly gut level choice of Sarah Palin should stand as a warning about the way he will make decisions about foreign policy.

6:38: Super-serious singing of the the national anthem, but I really don't like the singer's enunciation. Weird to have the flag waving on a digital screen.

8:22: I'm back. Hair cut. Just scrolled through all the stuff I missed, and it seems like virtually nothing.

8:43: Very moving presentation of the story of a Medal of Honor winner, Michael Monsoor. I see from the NYT that Senator Lieberman spoke, but I didn't see that in my scroll-through, so I didn't mean to count that as "virtually nothing." What I saw was a lot of Blitzer et al. commentary. [ADDED: No, that was just a preview. I didn't miss it.]

8:53: It's Laura Bush, extolling her husband as a man of principle and resolve. She praises his achievements: the appointment of women and 2 new Supreme Court Justices, the faith based initiative, the fight against AIDS -- "you might call that change you can really believe in" -- "and let's not forget, President Bush has kept the American people safe." Will Laura's husband ever be honored? Does she believe he will? She introduces him.

8:56: And here he is, on the video screen. "I know the hard choices that fall solely to a President. John McCain's life has prepared him to make those choices. He is ready to lead this nation."

9:09: A film clip about Reagan. In the car, I heard the film clip about Abraham Lincoln. The Republican Convention, much more than the Democratic Convention, highlights the heroic individual. This fits the party's ideology. John McCain was "a foot soldier" in "the Reagan Revolution." Reagan "broke the self-confidence of the Evil Empire of Communism." And he had Nancy. He put "country first." ("Country First" is the new McCain campaign slogan.)

9:14: And now: Fred Thompson. Ah! He springs to the defense of Sarah Palin. "I say give me a tough Alaskan Governor who's taken on the political establishment of the largest state in the Union and won over the Beltway 'business as usual' crowd any day of the week!"

9:18: Fred says Sarah has got the other side "in a state of panic." And she knows "how to field dress a moose." Now, he's telling the story of John McCain's life, "putting his country first." He's putting a lot of passion into the delivery. The harrowing story of McCain's imprisonment. "We hear a lot of talk about hope these days. John McCain knows about hope. That's all he had."

9:29: Remember. After the comments go over 200, you need to click on "post a comment" and then "newer" to keep the conversation going. I know a lot of you know how to do that.

9:35: "The respect [John McCain] is given around the world is not because of a teleprompter speech designed to appeal to America's critics abroad... *ahem*.... no, it's not that."

9:38: Obama is "history-making" all right: he's the most inexperienced, left-wing candidate the Democrats have ever run -- says Thompson.

9:52: The CNN commentary is insufferable. After Thompson, they all just kept saying "red meat."

9:55: It's Joe Lieberman. I kind of love this guy. I voted for him one time. Man, he is a boring speaker though. I can't imagine him as the VP candidate. Palin is a much better speaker.

9:59: "I'm here to support John McCain because country matters more than party."

10:05: "Eloquence is no substitute for a record," Lieberman says of Obama. Now, he compares Obama to Bill Clinton. Clinton stood up to interest groups and worked with Republicans for major achievements. [ADDED: He was saying Clinton was better than Obama: "In the Senate [Obama] has not reached across party lines to get anything significant done, nor has he been willing to take on powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party. Contrast that to John McCain’s record, or the record of the last Democratic President, Bill Clinton, who stood up to some of those same Democratic interest groups and worked with Republicans to get important things done like welfare reform, free trade agreements, and a balanced budget."]

10:07: Sarah Palin is a "great lady."

10:12: He's warming up. Maybe it's not so boring now. "These are not ordinary times and John McCain is no ordinary candidate." He says what he thinks is right... ah... too much repetition. John McCain has character and experience....

10:17: After-speech commentary. Donna Brazile is talking fast but stumbles in a way -- "Look, Joe... Lieberman is a man... " -- "speaking at this conviction, this convention" -- that makes me feel sure she's reading from a teleprompter.

10:21: David Gergen thinks Lieberman has "extremely annoyed" some Democrats by not only supporting his old friend McCain but also really going after Obama "in a very personal way."

10:43: That's it for me. A decent convention night. The highlight was Fred Thompson's dramatization of McCain's Vietnam experience. Or was it Joe Lieberman telling everyone we should vote against his party?

“Eggheads and African-Americans."

A memorable phrase, a classic encounter:



Man, if my head looked like Paul Begala's, I would not use the term "eggheads." But anyway, isn't he right? Donna Brazile does an excellent job of getting mad on camera, but it's pure pretense. Everyone knows a political strategist has to analyze the various demographic groups.

"Democratic superdelegates may have the legal right to thwart the will of Democratic primary voters and caucus goers..."

"... but they do no not have the moral right to do so," writes Chris Bowers, threatening — like Donna Brazile — to quit the party if the superdelegates determine the nominee. What's morally wrong with following the rules that everyone knew all along? Parties aren't morally obligated to use a purely democratic approach to picking a nominee. The Democrats set up a system with some delegates who were there because of their position in the party and not as representatives of people who voted in primaries or caucused. They were authorized to exercise their independent judgment about who the party should nominate, in what looks like a check on freewheeling democracy. Why should they now be told to subordinate their independent judgment?