How many on the progressive wing of the Democratic party were duped by Putin?.

[Jim Lane]

94. Sorry, no, I don't know as much as you're ready to me credit for.

As I've said, I didn't pay much attention to the whole thing. Some of my fellow Sanders supporters were quite worked up about the email issue but I thought it was a big nothing.

As I understand the flap about the emails, a few of them showed that there were DNC officers and employees who, although required by party rules to be neutral, actually favored Clinton. Well, duh. She had the overwhelming support of the party establishment in the form of its elected officials -- and, say, did you know that Bernie isn't even a Democrat? Under those circumstances, it would have taken extraordinary evidence to convince me that the DNC people did not favor Clinton.

As a result, I don't see how the striking of edits and time stamps fooled anyone about anything. People who disliked Clinton and the party establishment pointed to the emails, as released, as evidence of anti-Sanders bias. If the emails had been hacked and released in pristinely accurate form, with nothing stricken and no spurious "Confidential" tag added, the evidence for that accusation would have been just as strong or just as weak, because the authors of the emails really did write the words that were made public.

So what I don't know is: Was there a specific assertion as to a matter of fact (as opposed to opinion) that was promulgated by Putin, that was false, that was nevertheless believed by some progressives, and that induced a nonnegligible number of them to not vote for Clinton? That's what the word "duped" suggests to me. So far I haven't identified such an assertion. I'm suspecting that other people are using a far broader definition of "duped" and that's why the discussion has been unproductive.