[ohwello]

How on earth did a leak of DNC emails, but no corresponding RNC leak, help people figure out the lesser of two evils or provide a level playing field?

Seems obvious that leaks assisting the pro-Putin candidate were not altruistic.

[AnthonyMouse]

Assuming Clinton had those dirty secrets and Trump had nothing equivalent, that's what a level playing field looks like.

If you want to assume there were also some dirty Trump secrets that didn't come out then it seems like the only way to "level the playing field" would be for e.g. Venezuela to hack the Republicans and air their dirty laundry too.

And people are running around saying how terrible this is and asking "what if everybody did this?" But it seems like the answer to that question is, then people would know more relevant information about their political candidates. Or politicians would get better at computer security. Which of those is supposed to be bad?

[coolgeek]

> Assuming Clinton had those dirty secrets and Trump had nothing equivalent

Those are two rather incredulous assumptions considering that:

- Clinton released all of her tax returns, whereas Trump didn't release any

- The Clinton Foundation has been audited by at least three well respected, independent, organizations (garnering top ratings from all), whereas we know comparatively little about the Trump Foundation (or whatever it's called), yet it's admitted within the last six months to several inappropriate expenditures or donations, and is likely being investigated for more

- Trump sits atop a network of literally hundreds (if not thousands) of "independent" corporations designed solely to evade disclosure, liability, taxes or some combination thereof

[rdtsc]

Level is relative here. But remember DNC candidate had 6 or more multibillion dollar mass media corps actively supporting their candidate, POTUS was campaigning for them, had a top strategy team, support from tech giants, Wall St., huge contributions from countries like Saudi Arabia and so on. A few emails leaked I would say still wasn't a level playing field but it was close?

[the_why_of_y]

"mass media corps actively supporting their candidate"? How? By wasting hours of coverage on irrelevant emails instead of relevant policy issues?

https://shorensteincenter.org/pre-primary-news-coverage-2016...

Look at figure 7, Clinton media coverage 84% negative in tone, twice the ratio as Trump's!

Now compare that to the many millions worth of free coverage that Trump got, because he knew how to exploit the media's lust for controversy.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/10/26/study-confirms-netwo...

100 minutes of Clinton emails vs. 32 minutes of policy issues for all candidates combined - who do you think benefits from that, the candidate with realistic policy proposals, or the one who wants solve all problems by building a wall?

[beowulf_cluster]

To be fair, he called Trump the "lessor" of two evils. Though, that seems like a low-ball figure.