Clinton and Trump hit the ground running
101 days to go until Americans have to decide
• With momentum still high from the historic Democratic convention, Hillary Clinton used a rally Friday to stress the “stark choice” voters will face between her and Republican rival Donald Trump when they vote in exactly 101 days.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that every election is important in its own way, but I can’t think of an election that was more important in my lifetime,” the Democrat told thousands of supporters in the first stop of a three-day bus tour through the Rust Belt battlegrounds of Pennsylvania and Ohio.
“It’s not so much that I’m on the ticket, it’s because of the stark choice that’s posed to Americans in this election,” she said.
She began the tour as reports surfaced that computer systems connected to her campaign were hacked, possibly by Russian spies.
The New York Times reported that the FBI said that it was examining reports of “cyberintrusions involving multiple political entities.” That statement came on the same day that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Democrats’ fundraising arm, said that its computer systems had been hacked.
“The DCCC can confirm that we have been the target of a cybersecurity incident,” Meredith Kelly, press secretary for the organization said in an emailed statement.
“We are co-operating with the federal law enforcement agencies with respect to their ongoing investigation.”
The group’s website was altered so that visitors seeking to make a donation were redirected to a server controlled by hackers linked to the Russian government, said John Hultquist, manager of cyber espionage intelligence for FireEye Inc. The cybersecurity company has not been able to determine if the hackers intercepted the donations or succeeded in planting malware on the computers of those visitors, Hultquist said.
Attacks on Democratic organizations, including the Democratic National Committee, have roiled the 2016 political campaigns.
The disclosure by WikiLeaks last week of purloined party emails forced the head of the DNC to resign as Democrats gathered for their presidential convention. The breach has also stirred allegations that Russia is seeking to meddle in the U. S. election, an assertion Russian officials have repeatedly denied.
“Any of the allegations that circulate here in the U.S. about Russia’s involvement are groundless,” Yury Mel- nik, a spokesman for Russia’s embassy in Washington, said Friday.
“There’s no attempts whatsoever to meddle with the political process or the results of the election. The Russian government is ready and willing to work with the current administration and any future administration.”
Meanwhile, out on the campaign, Clinton’s anti-Trump message was a striking reminder of her own vulnerabilities, as polls show that a majority of Americans question her honesty. Rather than ask people to trust her, she implored them to rally against Trump, who she cast as dangerous and unfit to lead the country.
Trump is also targeting Ohio and Pennsylvania as states where he can make headway.
He is also focusing on working- class voters — and Bernie Sanders supporters — in Midwestern states by emphasizing his opposition to trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans- Pacific Partnership ( TPP) and promising to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.
Sanders’ delegates and party leaders from those states attending the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia are wary that those who blame trade deals for the loss of jobs or stagnant wages will look to the Republican billionaire.
“I’d be dishonest if I said that I wasn’t worried about that,” said Robert Hagan, an Ohio Sanders delegate from Youngstown, a city that has been devastated by the loss of steel jobs. “I’m worried about people jumping ship.”
Trump is making direct appeals to Sanders backers, saying in his July 21 nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland that they “’ will join our movement because we will fix his biggest single issue: trade deals that strip our country of its jobs and strip us of our wealth as a country.”
Signs of the importance of the issue to Sanders delegates were evident during the Democratic convention, including how hard they fought to get language opposing the TPP in the party’s platform and the anti-TPP placards they waved inside the Wells Fargo Center.
Democratic leaders acknowledge the power of the issue for blue- collar voters and others unhappy about the economy. Those voters helped Trump easily win the Republican primary in Pennsylvania and carry manufacturing- heavy and Appalachian counties in Ohio, even with home- state Gov. John Kasich’s victory there.
During the past decade, Ohio has lost 115,400 manufacturing jobs, the third-most in the U. S. during that time, according to U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.