I don't think Debbie Wasserman Schultz gets how bad she is making the DNC look to Sanders and non-Clinton supporting Democrats right now. I'm not just talking about the NGP data story either. The party looks like it's trying to stick it to Sanders. The debates are on Saturday nights, when absolutely no one is going to watch. There are state parties that have virtually turned their whole organizations into pro-Clinton operations. Now this. I am not saying Clinton shouldn't be our nominee. I'm supporting her. I'm saying, to people who disagree with me, this is how it looks- and that's a huge problem.
We need Bernie Sanders and his supporters, a lot more than they need us. I see very few paths to victory for the Vermont Senator, even if he won Iowa and New Hampshire in February. I do see several more months of him having a campaign though, and pressing his issues, which happen to appeal to a large portion of our base voting block. On the morning after Hillary Clinton likely clinches the Democratic nomination, I am far less concerned about whether or not we were byzantine with our data policies as a party, as opposed to how concerned I am that the average Sanders volunteer and voter feels that Bernie Sanders had a fair shake at the nomination, ran a good race, lost fair and square, and they are now willing to follow him over to Hillary Clinton's camp. If even a large chunk of these folks feel that Bernie was screwed out of the nomination by a pro-Clinton party, it's highly likely that the next President is a Republican. Nothing about the 2016 election screams "blow out" right now, and Hillary is going to need the energy and enthusiasm of the Sanders camp on her side. You don't get that by turning off his data service 45 days before the Iowa Caucus. You get a bunch of resentful voters who think their voices were silenced by Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC.
I get that this isn't as black and white as we think. NGP has a monopoly on establishment Democratic data work, and the DNC therefore has a stake in defending the performance of their software. I also get that we'd like to imagine this as a "hack," rather than a glitch in the software that made Hillary data visible on Bernie accounts. Yes, Bernie's camp got a leg up by taking the data in front of them, and yes we'd like to think they would not look at that data when it's there. Most political professionals would absolutely use the advantage in front of them though. The Clinton campaign did nothing wrong to make this happen though. The Sanders campaign did not do anything to get this data either. NGP-VAN messed up and this happened. I won't entertain a debate about their quality (their product has always worked well enough for me), but let's not make this into something it's not. It's a technology failing, which happens a lot in this world.
The only thing that should matter though in this case is the final outcome. It's the Democratic Party's job to elect a Democratic President. Fighting with Bernie Sanders over his NGP-VAN access is not helping us get there. It's not about being "right" in this case quite frankly, and the DNC should have moved heaven and Earth to keep this private. If Sanders campaign wanted to call it accidental and fire a couple of low-level people to show they weren't wrong, that should have been enough. The DNC should have made certain it was.
There's nothing good about this story, and it should go away. Now. Or Yesterday. Or as soon as possible. Just make it stop now. It does not help us reach our final goal, which is really their number one job.
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