Hillary Clinton has laid blame on many things for her loss in November’s presidential election. The latest to carry that weight has her own party firing back at her. Speaking Wednesday at Recode’s Code Conference in California, Clinton detailed how she was shocked at the state of data operations within the DNC once she won the party’s nomination. She added that if not for her campaign and personal additions, she would have had zilch to work with according to The Washington Post:
“I set up my campaign and we have our own data operation. I get the nomination. So I’m now the nominee of the Democratic Party. I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party…
“I mean it was bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it — the DNC — to keep it going.”
As one might imagine, the comments drew ire from those who were involved with the data collection, and apparently know better of Clinton’s comments. Andrew Therriault, the DNC’s director of data science until mid-2016, was especially irate over the insinuation the DNC data cupboards were bare and took to Twitter to express his displeasure in a string of since-deleted tweets that The Washington Post was able to screengrab:
Other DNC staffers spoke out, including Tom Bonier, a political strategist with TargetSmart, who plainly says that what Clinton claims about the lack of data within the DNC is the opposite of reality:
Fwiw, the data operation Clinton "inherited" was the most robust data operation the DNC has ever seen, including during the Obama re-elect.
— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) May 31, 2017
One more thought: the Clinton team was using DNC data throughout the primary. If it was that bad, they knew that for 2 yrs but did nothing.
— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) May 31, 2017
One more: Clinton literally inherited some of the most talented/dedicated staffers I've seen, who moved from the DNC to Brooklyn after June.
— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) June 1, 2017
John Hagner, a former aide to the DNC and Democrats’ House and Senate campaign committees, also weighed in and defended the hard work of the DNC, calling the data “accurate and up-to-date”:
https://twitter.com/JHagner/status/870255781278617600
https://twitter.com/JHagner/status/870256408876462080
https://twitter.com/JHagner/status/870256978051858432
https://twitter.com/JHagner/status/870261624879423488
Clinton has said much in the past few weeks regarding Election 2016, pointing fingers at Russia, James Comey, the DNC, Wikileaks, and even herself for the loss to Donald Trump. Today the election is over, but we continue re-hashing the results at almost every turn. Tom Perez, the new Democratic National Committee chairman, was asked on CNN’s Erin Burnett Outfront for a reation to Clinton’s latest finger pointing, but took the high road in explaining how his mission is to improve the DNC from top-to-bottom with a heightened budget that stresses the need for innovation in it’s data collection and methods of voter acquisition. We’ll have to see if these efforts are fruitful in the upcoming 2018 mid-term elections.
.@HillaryClinton used the words "mediocre" and "poor" in describing the @DNC. @ErinBurnett asked @TomPerez to react https://t.co/7BIqzLVss9
— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) June 2, 2017
(Via The Washington Post and CNN)