RUTHFULLY YOURS

People will continue to debate which Democrats deserve the most blame for their worst-in-the-nation caucus performance on Monday. The latest twist in the tale comes from Jason Clayworth, who reports in the Des Moines Register:

The reporting app that is getting a large share of the blame for the chaos surrounding Monday’s Democratic caucus results was working until the national party required the installation of a security patch less than 48 hours before the first-in-the-nation contest, a recent member of the Iowa Democratic Central Committee said Thursday.

As for the creators of the app, people outside of the political world may find it increasingly difficult to understand how they were ever hired. The company charged with building the essential technology has a short and unsuccessful history. But it does have valuable connections.

Michael Biesecker and Brian Slodysko reported for the Associated Press on Tuesday:

The little-known technology start-up under scrutiny after the meltdown of the Iowa Democratic caucuses on Monday was founded little more than a year ago by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign who had presented themselves as gurus of campaigning in the digital era.

Shadow Inc. was picked in secret by the Iowa Democratic Party after its leaders consulted with the Democratic National Committee…

Just who works at Shadow was not clear on the company’s webpage Tuesday. But resumes posted on the online business networking site LinkedIn show the company’s top executives all worked in the Clinton campaign’s digital operation in 2016.

Who would have thought Bernie Sanders fans wouldn’t be suspicious enough of people seeking profits? Since the app disaster some Sandernistas have been busy online venting suspicions of some kind of conspiracy to rig the caucus results. A more likely explanation is that the Clinton crowd was simply trying to suck revenue out of state Democratic organizations like Iowa’s.

The for-profit firm Shadow run by former Clinton hacks might not even exist without help from a firm called Acronym, which is organized as a non-profit under the tax laws.

At the intersection of money and Democratic politics, it turns out to be a very small world. James Hohmann reported in the Washington Post in 2018:

Tara McGowan, who runs Acronym, oversaw a $42 million digital program in 2016 for Priorities USA, the primary super PAC for Hillary Clinton.

A Tuesday New York Times report from Matthew Rosenberg, Nick Corasaniti, Sheera Frenkel and Nicole Perlroth revealed how crucial Acronym’s support was to the “success” of the tech venture:

Acronym… quietly invested millions of dollars in a nearly bankrupt company called Groundbase, a tech firm that renamed itself Shadow soon after… its main technology, a texting platform designed for campaigns, failed to catch on as users complained that it was slow and cumbersome.

The failure left the firm perilously underfunded, and it was close to shutting down when Acronym stepped in with an infusion of cash… The new money brought new projects…

There were also new clients. According to the most recent campaign filing reports, Shadow earned roughly $150,000 last year working for the Nevada and Wisconsin state Democratic parties and three presidential campaigns — those of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Ind., and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who dropped out of the race in August.

As for the app at the heart of the Iowa debacle, the Times reports:

Shadow was put into a race that engineers at the most well-resourced tech giants, like Google, said could not be won. There was simply not enough time to build the app, test it widely to work out major bugs and then train its users.

Shadow was also handicapped by its own lack of coding know-how, according to people familiar with the company. Few of its employees had worked on major tech projects, and many of its engineers were relatively inexperienced.

How inexperienced was the Shadow workforce? Emily Glazer, Deepa Seetharaman and Alexa Corse report in the Journal:

One of its workers recently was a prep cook for Starbucks. Another was a teacher.

So how on earth did this firm get hired? It seems that the Shadow crew wasn’t going to impress anyone with its technology chops. The Journal reports:

… over the past year, Acronym and its founder Tara McGowan made introductions that allowed Shadow to secure some contracts with state Democratic parties and presidential campaigns, according to people familiar with the matter.

In a Nov. 21 private email to donors and friends, Ms. McGowan described Shadow as “a political technology company owned by Acronym.” She said Shadow had a “trial contract” with the Democratic National Committee and would make its flagship product, Lightrail, available to all the state parties and all the presidential candidates, according to the email that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

But there was just one little recurring problem with this tech company—its tech. The Journal reports:

Over the past year, Shadow pitched products including a texting app and a data integration tool, but got a mixed reception. Several people who saw the presentations or were briefed on them said the technology wasn’t impressive and didn’t stand out among the crowd of vendors. Others were sharply critical.

Democrats may or may not succeed in defeating Donald Trump this November. But regardless of the election outcome, at least a few of them are sure to be winners.

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