Hillary Clinton has found plenty of non-Hillary Clinton things to blame for her 2016 loss, including Russia, James B. Comey, debate moderators and misogyny. But her decision Wednesday to add the Democratic National Committee to that list is predictably proving pretty sensitive inside her own party.
A top former DNC aide tweeted overnight that Clinton's allegations were “f‑‑‑ing bulls‑‑‑” and even suggested that the Clinton campaign ignored its warnings about how competitive Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were. Those three states proved decisive for President Trump and, especially in the case of Michigan and Wisconsin, were neglected by the Clinton campaign.
In a Wednesday appearance at Recode's Code Conference in California, Clinton pointed to the DNC's data deficit when she became the Democratic nominee.
“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,” Clinton said, according to a transcript. “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.”
Andrew Therriault, who served as the DNC's director of data science and now works for the City of Boston, took exception to Clinton's criticisms in tweets that have since been deleted.
Another Therriault tweet captured by the Tax Foundation's Alan Cole and another Twitter user pointed to the Clinton campaign ignoring DNC warnings about Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Therriault said the DNC data never had those states as “even close to safe,” but the Clinton team “thought they knew better.”
