emptywheel

Neither. Access Hollywood totally dominated, but just for days. Podesta mattered bc it was sustained over time, not bc of immediate impact.

In fact, I would argue that Assange fucked up bc by competing w/Access Hollywood, speech experts didn't get any focus.

I think there are other questions worth asking: how much each campaign/WL knew about what the other (and IC) had coming.

But as someone noted earlier, it is silly to be surprised that both sides released dirt before debate.

What's surprising is that one of the "sides" that released dirt before the debate was, you know, a long-time adversarial foreign country.

Assange's Ecuadorian closet is a long-time adversary?

Russians steal emails. Russians give emails to Assange. Assange publishes emails. Yeah, that sounds like an Ecuadorian closet to me.

See my follow-up post. And RU did not republish them a zillion times in the most credible outlets.