There was an interesting article out of Time Magazine (http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/07/inside-the-secret-world-of-quants-and-data-crunchers-who-helped-obama-win/) in which they interviewed the tech geniuses behind the Obama victory. Like so much of the exposure of anything pertaining to the President, this piece only raises more questions than the answers it purports to deliver.
For one, if you were in fact the man who successfully elected and then re-elected the leader of the Free World, why would you preferred to remain anonymous?
The narrative of both elections is that Obama twice used the smartest technological campaign teams on his ride from community organizer to leader of the free world. We all know that there were a myriad of campaign irregularities from Black Panthers turning people away to foreign donations using untraceable single use credit cards, and George Soros paying un unprecedented FEC fine for illegally funneling cash to the Obama campaign. Yet we are told, to just stand in awe that the smartest self-professed lazy student with grades he will not share, is so smart and so tech savvy that he just out thunk us.
In his book Megatrends, John Naisbitt discusses how people can accomplish extraordinary outcomes and success by aligning with these trends. Certainly, among the biggest megatrends of this generation is the rise of social media and search engines. While a few privacy advocates have beaten the drum of warning that we were giving away all our most personal data to Facebook and Google, we were so enthralled with the technology and the capabilities that we unwittingly became part of this story line as we were lured to the kill by the notion we could have all that technology for “free.”
Of course we all know that nothing comes for free. We were betting on free stuff, and now we know what we bartered away in the deal—our liberty.
Stalin famously predicted that the US would be destroyed from within. He knew we were way too great a power to ever be taken by force by an external enemy. We celebrated when the dust settled from the Cold War and we stood as the only world Superpower. The communists were defeated. They quit in Russia. They allowed Capitalism in China. We let our guard down as we contemplated how to divvy up the peace dividend.
The Time piece went into great detail about the tactics, and how the genius campaign team used data to target both donors, and potential voters. What was missing from the piece however, was where they acquired the data. We have all known that we are giving away personal data to Facebook, Google, and others. We also know that the highest level executives of these companies are not just democrats, but Obama donors. I’ll repeat the question—where did these “geniuses” GET their data?
Does the left enjoy a monopoly on campaign techno geniuses? Was Romney not using these same strategies? Or is it more likely the case that Obama started his re-election campaign with an overwhelming technological advantage in data gained legally or illegally, from his allies in Silicon Valley?
Worse, perhaps, was the gleeful way these anonymous techno geniuses bragged about their ability to reach that vaunted 1 billion dollar fundraising mark. The article goes into some detail about how the team thought such a goal was impossible, that $900 million was not even debatable. Yet we also know that campaign finance fraud was rampant in both Obama elections. They took pains to hide personal information of the donors and took affirmative steps to hide credit card data of donors. This has been thoroughly documented. Yet Obama could boldly project a $1 billion campaign goal knowing that the loss of one billion dollars is a single bad day in the marketplace when you are George Soros or a Saudi Prince.
The whole article describing the “genius” of the online fundraising acumen of these guys is likely no more than an attempt to whitewash the fact that they knew they had multiple guarantors of the funds to support a billion dollar campaign and campaign finance loopholes to provide the mechanism. All that was missing was a complicit media that would never expose the scheme to the American public. We know that the Obama campaign cannot identify many donors. Has anyone asked the question the opposite way? How many donors, and what total dollar amounts of the $1 billion in donations can be identified? Are we talking about a few million dollars we cannot identify or a few hundred million?
Time Magazine, given exclusive access to break the story is not breaking anything. They are whitewashing the real story of how a hard left cartel willing to win at all costs, twice elected the Manchurian candidate. The question now is, do we have anyone in D.C. with enough spine to investigate these questions knowing that Facebook, Google and Soros combined are all-knowing.
Do we have a Neo?