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| How to destroy your wealth: Tech billionaires prepared to blow many millions (again) to boost sadsack Dem candidate | |
| 2020-05-28 | |
In Silicon Valley’s new political moment, four billionaires in particular — LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt — have the most ambitious plans, according to Recode’s interviews with over 20 donors and operatives. The chess moves of this power set are instrumental to fulfilling Democrats’ — and much of Silicon Valley’s — four-year quest to oust Donald Trump. And yet each of these billionaires is moving their pieces with varying levels of secrecy, and often with minimal disclosure, scrutiny, or accountability. INSIDE THE DEMOCRATIC DATA WAR Four years after the Democratic Party’s data was described by Hillary Clinton as “bankrupt” and “on the verge of insolvency,” tech billionaires are regrouping and pouring millions into the party’s digital infrastructure, even to the point of building competing power centers that threaten the Democratic establishment. Republicans have invested far more steadily as of late than have Democrats in the data that powers modern campaigns. And so, a decade after a generation of tech wizards helped usher in a new era of digital campaigning that helped elevate Barack Obama to the presidency, it is Democrats who are left playing catch-up. Even if it was self-identifying progressives that created today’s digital tools, it was conservatives who mastered how to use them, and none more than Donald Trump. Now, some tech leaders, particularly Hoffman and Schmidt, are racing to master a sphere that, theoretically, is firmly in their bailiwick. But this determination has fueled competing, even rivalrous approaches from multiple tech billionaires. Some Democrats are concerned that both efforts, for all their urgency, are indeed too little, too late — at least for November. The data wars are a stand-in for the broader tensions between the party and this quartet of Silicon Valley billionaires. While Democratic megadonors on Wall Street tend to route their donations to the party, tech billionaires like to claim they are offering more than just a check — and they want to be more in control. “My problem is when Silicon Valley folks think that they know how to do our jobs better. I would never walk into Google or anywhere else and say, ‘Your model sucks,’” Jane Kleeb, the chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, told Recode. “I don’t second-guess them, and I’m asking them not to second-guess us.” Kleeb and others in Democratic politics have been particularly incensed by a political startup that Hoffman has invested about $18 million, his single-biggest bet this cycle, in called Alloy. The startup is attempting to build a warehouse to store the data that various progressive groups collect on voters and use it to try to get them to the polls. As part of its data acquisition, Alloy has bought some lists of voters’ cellphone numbers, a data source that people say Hoffman’s team, like other donors, sees as key this year due to the new need for digital campaigning. But Alloy, despite all its promises to revitalize the left’s voter file, has had an at-times frosty relationship with party officials like Kleeb, who have their own voter file that they’d prefer to improve rather than circumvent. And some of the party’s most senior digital operatives consider Alloy to be an underachievement, saying that it has produced few tangible accomplishments, no publicly announced clients, and, most importantly, squandered significant time and money as it struggled to figure out its role in Democratic politics. “We’re already putting data into the hands of Democrats and progressives on the front lines of this critical election cycle,” said Luis Miranda, an Alloy spokesperson. “We’re proud of our work, and we’re just getting started.” And it’s not as though all tech billionaires on the same team are backing Alloy as the singular solution. Some are funding other rival revisions to the party’s data deficit. Where Hoffman sees a product to be replaced, Schmidt — a technocrat’s technocrat — sees a product that can be tweaked, perhaps with some executive coaching. Sources say he has sunk money into the Democratic Data Exchange, a modest, competing effort by the Democratic National Committee to encourage data sharing by state parties to improve the party’s beleaguered digital backbone. Somehow, despite the somewhat duplicative efforts, Democrats still broadly fear that they’re at a disadvantage compared to the rival efforts of the GOP, which were created a decade ago. Schmidt, a longtime Democratic powerbroker, may be working more closely with the party than Hoffman. But he is still critical of the party’s operatives and so is doing things his own way with his own skunk-works projects. In 2016, Schmidt effectively funded and embedded a group of technologists within the Clinton campaign. Many Silicon Valley hands, including some Biden allies, think the Schmidt effort was largely unsuccessful. | |
| Posted by:Lex |
| #7 They would support a doofus and criminal in order to get rid of Trump? You're talking about a party that put Obama in office. |
| Posted by: Marilyn Tojo7566 2020-05-28 22:05 |
| #6 They would support a doofus and criminal in order to get rid of Trump? These people are nuts. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2020-05-28 17:17 |
| #5 I wish we were 1/10 as smart as the other side thinks THEY are. |
| Posted by: Barbara 2020-05-28 15:58 |
| #4 Wish we were 1/10 as smart as the other side thinks we are. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2020-05-28 15:30 |
| #3 Speculative "investment" in rent-seeking can be extremely "profitable" (redistribute wealth created by middle class work into your pockets).. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2020-05-28 05:20 |
| #2 Yes folks, they really believe this. That’s because, after having ignored and pooh-poohed as hard as they can, over and over they’ve had to report on all the things that their stupid and ignorant conservative relatives have spoken of so knowingly on Facebook and at holiday dinners. Clearly this is the result of deliberate Republican planning. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2020-05-28 01:09 |
| #1 Well, they did take the House in 2018. And while sadsack Ryan and the GOPe had a lot to do with that, it's always a good idea to keep a close watch on what the oligarchs are doing. Particularly concerning is the following: Acronym aims to raise $25 million to set up seven of its own media properties in swing states, creating local news sites that portray moderate Democratic candidates in a favorable light, but appear to be objective, homespun outlets. Democratic operatives see what one calls an “Upworthy model” as an effective way to mobilize their base voters who are reluctant to turn out. You'd like to think the GOP will be ready to push back on things like this, but... And then there's this: “For far too long right-wing media has dominated our discourse and Facebook news feeds,” said Tara McGowan, the founder of Acronym, a political group backed by Powell Jobs and Hoffman. Yes folks, they really believe this. Or at least some of them do. Such delusion coupled with vast financial resources and power is a scary thing. And so much for non-lefty views getting a fair shake from social media if this is what they believe. Biden is pathetic, but this infrastructure will still be around and developing, and evolving, and growing even if he's relegated to richly deserved obscurity. These people need to be destroyed, but too many "Muh Free Market Prinapullz" "conservatives" simply want to run interference for these creatures. |
| Posted by: charger 2020-05-28 00:51 |