After Electoral Victory, Dems Squabble Over Data

Just over a month after a blue tsunami gave Dems control of the House, the Governorships of an additonal seven states, and hundreds of seats in state legislatures, the Dems are displaying a habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. In this case, there's a public squabble between the DNC, led by Tom Perez, and state Democratic Party chairs over who will control vital voter data bases and technology going into the 2020 elections.

The linked article goes into detail about the issues of competing interests, private tech vendors and independent data bases, and how the Dems are struggling to get their act together before the next elections. It's not pretty. While the Rethuglicans have largely integrated their data networks, the Dems are feuding over control of theirs:

"Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez launched an attack on his own party’s state organizations Saturday with a long and angry email over the future of the party’s most valuable asset — its voter data file. [snip]

It‘s the latest fight in a quickly escalating war over the trove of Democratic voter information — a conflict which broke into the open at a gathering of the state parties and the DNC in Puerto Rico late last month. The party’s data is largely owned by the state parties, but there is a considerable amount of other data being collected by outside groups like labor unions and super PACs that could be leveraged to benefit Democratic candidates and the eventual 2020 nominee."

This is the kind of petty personal backbiting that plagues political parties that lose, not win. Why the circular firing squad now? It's bad enough that it's happening, but it's worse that it's unfolding in public.