The most ironic part of the Clinton camp using the term "rigged" is that the original use of the term was by Bernie Sanders against Clinton during the primaries. His claims were proved by the emails that were released by Wikileaks. But somehow this has become a discussion of whether the Russians were behind it, rather than the uncontested content of the emails showing the Clinton campaign's malfeasance.

It has also morphed into a large percentage of the population believing that Russia hacked voting machines and vote tallies, for which there is absolutely no evidence. This furthers the agenda of deligitimizing the election results.

Classic distraction strategy. It's sad watching people on facebook/twitter even believe one word from the White House and the MSM about Russian hacking. Putin isn't a nice person, but even so the facts simply don't support the government's claims. If you ask me, they went with the Russian angle because of how ruthless Putin seems to be, and they thought it would be easy to sell. It was with a lot of people, it seems, that or they were all too eager to believe a lie.

And now we look petty and they look magnanimous for not opting for an in-kind response. I don't know how long it will take us to rebuild our humint network but I'm assuming it won't be easy to identify all of the new spies coming in with new and improved methods.

How were Sanders's claims of Clinton rigging the elections proved by the emails released on WikiLeaks?

I didn't follow the Sanders campaign closely enough to be able to identify the more relevant items, but looking at the Wikileaks data gave me the impression that he was a token candidate who they controlled with various bits of leverage (e.g. when they cut him out of the DNC voter systems). There was also that time when they staged violence at the Trump rallies and blamed it on Bernie supporters. Refer to the controversy regarding Zulema Rodriguez & co.; she was also later tied to the 'Trump Ducks' thing via a photo credit, which was said to come straight from Hillary.

Here's a list of some of the findings from the leaks, though not all are relevant to this -

http://www.mostdamagingwikileaks.com/

How was Sanders a token candidate controlled by the DNC? My memory of the primaries is far different, with Sanders suing the DNC over access to NGP VAN (which the DNC had cut off until the Sanders campaign showed they had deleted their copies of Clinton's data), loudly complaining about the DNC following the existing rules at the Nevada Convention (http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff...), and generally loudly making unfounded allegations of rigging. If Sanders was a token candidate, whom would you consider a big name Democrat worthy of challenging Clinton not as a token opponent?

> There was also that time when they staged violence at the Trump rallies and blamed it on Bernie supporters.

The DNC did not stage violence at Trump rallies and blame it on Bernie supporters. You're probably thinking about http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/18/politics/project-veritas-actio..., who incited Trump supporters to violence, which is different from pretending to be a violent Sanders supporter. Zulema Rodriguez also had nothing to do with "rigging the primaries."

Elizabeth Warren is probably the top of the list. I also remember various questionable vote counting during the caucuses, but I'm basing this on what Bernie supporters were saying at the time, so you might be right about it being inaccurate. I wasn't personally paying much attention yet, as I'd already assumed Clinton had the nomination in the bag.

I am thinking of that incident and there's a lot going on in that one. You can see Bernie supporters getting blamed here, though:

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/sanders-supporters-divided-trump-...

> I also remember various questionable vote counting during the caucuses.

The caucuses were heavily skewed in Sanders's favor. Caucusing requires a large time commitment, which favored Sanders supporters over the poor minority Clinton voters. You're probably thinking about the Nevada Convention, which I explained in my previous comment.

> I wasn't personally paying much attention yet, as I'd already assumed Clinton had the nomination in the bag.

She certainly had it in the bag, which makes the claim that she would resort to rigging the primaries even more ludicrous. She got almost 30% more of the popular vote than Sanders. Despite the media wanting to make the race seem close and interesting, it was obvious to even a casual observer like you that it was a landslide.

> You can see Bernie supporters getting blamed here, though:

The people quoted in that article are actual Bernie supporters.

As a non-American, the long history of the US meddling in elections may make the claims hypocritical, but it makes me very open to suggestions that Russia would do it too.

Are you European by chance? If so, don't worry, your country also likely has a long history of meddling on local affairs either through colonialism or parts of the cold war, especially if you are British!

Yes, the US has meddled in international affairs but let's not pretend that US is unique in doing so or that Russia is some benign country that has no history of actively working against the interests of Europe/US/NATO or that Russia doesn't have its own agenda.

For all of the faults of the US/Europe I'm glad I grew up in the "west" rather than behind the Iron curtain. I also don't see millions of people who fled western nations to Russian states - the single direction of political and economic migrants over the last 70 years speaks for itself.

"But they did it, it's ok"

please, are you going to use that argument to bring back slavery? trite and baseless.

Who said anything about slavery? We are talking about meddling in the political affairs of other countries and espionage. That's been going on ever since lines were drawn on a map.

Correct, your defence of the US Govt's meddling was "but Europeans did it"

Which is an absolutely incorrigible position.

I didn't say anything about it being justified. I said "let's not pretend that US is unique in doing so" to someone who implied the US deserves it...

First there are many countries in Western Europe with no significant colonial history. Greece for example. Italy's colonial history is insignificant.

As to being glad that we grew up in Western Europe during the cold war, I have an Albanian friend who is now a professor of economics in the USA. He said that, although living in communism as an adult (Albania had the worst communist, btw) would have sucked, he wouldn't trade his childhood for anything.

I've never met tougher mofos than my Albanian friends or my wife. They know how to have fun, how to behave in groups and nothing scares them. By comparison how many of my peers (or myself) suffer from anxiety, are anti-social (being on your phone in public is very anti-social) or just weird?

Most do have a colonial history though, a history often partly responsible for much of the strife we see today - was Italy not involved in Ethiopia/Eritrea/Somalia? And Greece certainly had political strife during the Cold war and world wars.

Libya and Ethiopia would like a word with you.