Washington (CNN)Democratic data gurus are lashing out at Hillary Clinton after she complained publicly that her campaign was hamstrung by a party that had out-of-date information on individual voters.
Clinton
said Wednesday in an interview with Recode's Kara Swisher that
once she became the Democratic nominee, she inherited "nothing."
The Democratic National Committee's data, she said, "was
mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into
it."
Her
comments drew swift rebuttals from some Democratic operatives
who built, or worked with, that data.
Andrew
Therriault, the former DNC director of data science, lashed out
in two since-deleted tweets, calling Clinton's comments "f---ing
bull----."
"I
hope you understand the good you did despite that nonsense," he
said in a message directed to DNC data staffers.
David
Radloff, the co-founder of the Democratic data and analytics
firm Clarity Campaign Labs, tweeted:
"Used DNC data on numerous campaigns this year, well managed,
efficient, accurate. Real question is who's feeding Clinton
bad info and why??"
John
Hagner, a partner at Clarity, added:
"I worked with DNC data every day last cycle, on winning Gov
races. It was accurate and up-to-date and I'm grateful for
their hard work."
Many
Democrats noted that Clinton -- just like her opponent Bernie
Sanders -- had access to the DNC's data from the outset of her
campaign. Therefore, they said, if there was trouble with the
data, her staff would have known long before she won the
Democratic presidential nomination.
Tom
Bonier, the chief executive officer of TargetSmart, a
Democratic voter-targeting firm, said in using the DNC's data,
the Clinton campaign was "absolutely standing on the shoulders
of the Obama data juggernaut. There's just no question."
"I
can tell you, having worked with the DNC from the outside over
that time period, the DNC not only maintained what was built
as part of the Obama 2008 and 2012 campaigns, but they built
upon it," he said. "And that meant more staff and that meant
better data. They built an in-house analytics team, which they
had not had in the past. And they were constantly adding data
to the file."
Bonier
added: "You can argue about whether or not they were behind
Republicans. ... But it's absurd to suggest that any
Democratic candidate who was using the DNC data in 2016 was
inheriting nothing, as Secretary Clinton said. What they were
inheriting was the best data operation the Democratic Party
has ever seen."
So
what went wrong?
Several
Democrats pointed to the Clinton campaign's use of the data in
making decisions about which voters to target, where to send
the candidate and where to devote its advertising dollars.
That
element of the campaign -- analytics -- is built on top of the
party-provided data.
Speculating
about why Clinton might have complained about the DNC's data,
Bonier said: "The modeling's built on data, right, so maybe
it's a stone's throw from there where you don't want to blame
your own staff who build the models, who told you, you don't
need to go to Wisconsin ... so you go a little bit further
upstream and say it was the data that that was built upon."
Still,
there were elements of Clinton's argument that are difficult
to dispute.
Much
of her criticism of the DNC was an implicit shot at former
President Barack Obama, who many Democrats have complained
kept his own campaign's data and analytics housed separately
and allowed the party's infrastructure to lapse under former
chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz's leadership.
The
Republican National Committee made improving its data and
analytics a priority between 2012 and 2016, erasing the
advantage Obama had in previous elections.
Clinton
also cited the Trump campaign's use of the controversial GOP
firm Cambridge Analytica, which boasts of "psychographic"
profiles of voters based heavily on Facebook information.
Clinton's
campaign did not hire a similar outside data firm, but she
said Cambridge Analytica helped Trump.
"You
can believe the hype on how great they were or the hype on how
they weren't, but the fact is, they added something," she
said.
Tom
Perez, the new Democratic National Committee chairman, also
complained about the party's data operation in his campaign
for the job over the winter. However, when asked on CNN's
"Erin Burnett Outfront" on Thursday about Clinton's remarks,
Perez said, "There are a lot of reasons for not winning that
election."
"We're
totally focused on the future of the DNC," he told Burnett.
"We're totally focused on building an infrastructure for
success."
"We
have to up our game at the DNC," he added, noting the
organization is "getting back to basics" by investing in
organizing, training of candidates and technology.
DNC
spokesman Michael Tyler said the party is in the process of
overhauling its data and technological operations.
"Tom
has said before that the DNC was not firing on all cylinders
and that's why he did a top to bottom review that included
technology. The DNC is now undergoing an organizational
restructuring that will include a new chief technology
officer, who will do an in-depth analysis and maintain the
party's analytics infrastructure needs," Tyler said in a
statement.
"Tom
is already deeply engaged with the outpouring of support from
Democrats across the country, from Silicon Valley to suburban
Georgia, who want to help improve the data and tech, get it in
the hands of more organizers everywhere, and build the
grass-roots funding stream required to support those efforts."
Clinton's
allies say her joint fundraising efforts helped improve the
DNC's positioning.
"She
was intent on leaving the party in the black," a Clinton
associate said Thursday.
Despite
her loss, the associate said, she was pleased to leave the
party without a debt "and she turned over her email list and
her data, something that Bernie Sanders did not do and has not
done. Because we've got to have this in one place so people
can utilize it."