When Obama commuted Manning’s sentence, all the criticisms were the same: she only served one-third of her sentence, and that was wrong.
Hm.
Had the judge sentenced her to 8 and Obama commuted at 7, I bet the outrage would have been a lot less.
Still 7 years tho.
But we latched onto that sentence. It was the (pretty arbitrary and policywise-unneeded) baseline.
Manafort’s is outlier, when it shd be seen as more the baseline.
It’s just that it essential to call out, and push back against, these powerful bipartisan anchors.