Hillary Clinton attended ReCode's conference Code 2017 yesterday.
It was an interesting interview, mainly because of the interesting points about the fact that the DNC has historically been bad at investing in systems. I'm skeptical that the RNC had that much groundwork laid, but I did see what HFA's tech and analytics teams inherited from the DNC. It wasn't nothing as Hillary claims, but it wasn't as much as most candidates need. If HFA hadn't been bank rolling all of the tech and data work for her campaign, it would have been severely lacking. Bernie and also many senatorial campaigns showed that you can pay for a lot of that, but it's different than having a party platform to just lean on.
Hillary's claim that I mention above:
There's a classic line. Democrats give money to candidates. They want a personal connection, so the classic line is, Democrats like to fall in love. Republicans just fall in line. Republicans build institutions. Republicans invest in those institutions. Republicans are much more willing to push and cross the line, and Democrats ... I've talked to dozens of donors since my election experience, and I've said, "Look, I'm all for you trying to figure out who you're going to support in 2020, but what about 2017, and what about 2018, and what about helping the DNC try to leapfrog over its horrible data deficit, and how about supporting some of these new groups, and see what they can do to generate some activity?" We are not good historically at building institutions, and we've got to get a lot better, and that includes content.
And a little hope for the future:
We have to flip 24 seats. Okay? I won 23 districts that have a Republican Congress member. Seven of them are in California, Daryl Isa being one. If we can flip those, if we can then go deeper into where I did well, where we can get good candidates, I think flipping the House is certainly realistic.
Anyways... read the full transcript of the interview. It was good, once you get past the first five minutes of Mossberg asking about Goldman.
/Nat