A primer for rich donors who got taken to the cleaners by GOP consultants

See, my rich friends, you think you are in charge. But go ask your Super PAC friends where the data is. Tell them you want the data. More importantly, ask them how they did the layers for the data. Did they layer consumer information on top of voter data or the opposite? Surprisingly, you can get completely different results putting voter data on top of consumer data, instead of adding consumer data to a known, quantifiable pool of voters. The latter is more accurate, saves time, and is what the Obama team did that the GOP largely did not do. It is what the Democrats did with their Catalist program.

Instead, you rich donors funded a bunch of Super PACs that spent a lot of money on ads, making killer commissions for the ad guys, did a lot of mail that made killer commissions for the mail guys, and did a lot of technology smoke and mirror baloney that made you feel like you were reaching persuadable, when really you were peeing money down a rat hole.

You got played.

Now I’ve just explained how to do real voter outreach to you. Now I’ve explained what the real data is and why it is so valuable. There are groups out there like Gravity doing this with smart donors and giving it to Tea Party groups so everyone can use the data, instead of setting up some consultant to be the king maker and power broker.

So rich guy, you want to win or you want to be the gate keeper? Right now, you are a gate keeper and you aren’t even keeping your money. Time to do better. Time to understand what the data is and that you want it collected, but not hordes if you want to win.