Posted on 05/01/2017 4:07:40 PM PDT by Kaslin
The May 1 issue of The Weekly Standard led its “Scrapbook” section with a nice dig at Politico for a story last September touting the strategic genius who mined data for the er, President Hillary campaign. The headline was "Clinton's Towering Fiasco."
Elan Kriegel’s “erasable marker scribblings reminiscent of A Beautiful Mind that amount to some of the earliest drafts of the computer algorithms that underlie nearly all of the Clinton campaign’s most important strategic decisions.”
They didn’t mock Politico’s Shane Goldmacher by name, but did enjoy the sound of his beautiful-mind gush back then:
To understand Kriegel’s role is to understand how Clinton has run her campaign — precise and efficient, meticulous and effective, and, yes, at times more mathematical than inspirational. Top Clinton advisers say almost no major decision is made in Brooklyn without first consulting Kriegel.
The Standard said don’t blame the geek squad. “The reason Hillary Clinton lost, first and foremost, is that Hillary Clinton was the dismalest, dreadfulest of candidates.” So “more mathematical than inspirational” is quite the slogan. As the Standard wisecracked, it “was of a piece with Hillary’s overall awfulness.”
Hillary foes can giggle over passages like this one from Goldmacher:
Now, with Donald Trump investing virtually nothing in data analytics during the primary and little since, Kriegel’s work isn’t just powering Clinton’s campaign, it is providing her a crucial tactical advantage in the campaign’s final stretch. It’s one of the reasons her team is confident that, even if the race tightens as November approaches, they hold a distinctive edge. As millions of phone calls are made, doors knocked and ads aired in the next nine weeks, it is far likelier the Democratic voter contacts will reach the best and most receptive audiences than the Republican ones.
Earth to the liberal media: When you tout an advantage that doesn’t turn out to be advantage? You’ve just written fake news. It’s Wishful Thinking dressed up as “news.” Guess who turned out to be right in this analysis?
Some Republicans aren’t just nervous about losing to Clinton in November. They’re alarmed at the possibility of falling multiple cycles, even a generation, behind in creating a culture of data-intensive campaigns. Romney hardly had an autonomous analytics department. Trump has called data “overrated.”
The media cranked out tons of bullshiite to support Hillary’s campaign. I guess that they haven’t really stopped.
Horse-race data probably is. Let's recall some "fake data" too -- the egregious oversampling of Democrats by almost everybody in almost every poll.
And let's also recall some other "data" that was poo-poo'ed by our betters. Some comes to mind immediately:
- Halloween mask sales
- Yard signs ("deplorables are too dumb to use Facebook")
- Rally attendance ("isolated data points")
- Rally enthusiasm ("hicks are easily entertained")
If only no decision was made in ISIS without consulting Krieger... (Archer reference)
Am I the first guy to notice that Clinton got just 62,000 fewer votes than Obama got in 2012?
Total turn out in 2016 was 7.6 million higher than 2012.
Trump got 2 million more than Romney.
Clinton almost tied Obama.
And the Independent Parties got 5.6 million more than the Independents got in 2012.
In Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, the Green Party votes alone would have given Clinton a majority in each state.
As for the Libertarian vote, usually I would say that trends Republican - but not in 2016.
In 2016, the Libertarian presidential candidate supported Open Borders, and the vice presidential candidate said he would vote for Clinton if he was not running as a Libertarian.
Clinton was not a good candidate.
In spite of that, Trump just barely beat her.
Getting 5 million illegal votes was a much bigger advantage for Clinton.
Good post.
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