Call me skeptical At a mixer last night, a friend mentioned the Democratic Data Exchange referenced recently at Axios: The database, run by an independent firm called Democratic Data Exchange (DDx), allows Democrats and allied groups — campaigns, state parties, super PACs and hundreds more — to bridge a longtime inability to share information. It’s a legal workaround. DDx allows 501(c) nonprofit groups to pool data with campaigns and the party that their nonprofit status otherwise prohibits. They cannot formally coordinate. Here groups just dump data into a pool that other allied groups can draw out of. The GOP has one too. Efficiency, huh? Back in the corporate world, when buzzwords like “efficiency” and “shareholder value” began circulating in the office it was time to update your resume. Listen, I do a lot of voting data analysis. Enough that I regularly hear Darth Vader in my head insisting, “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed.” Not that this DDx effort is not worthwhile, but it’s doubling down on microtargeting. What it’s not about is Democrats growing their voter pool. Again: Michah L. Sifry commented on the recent “The Experience of Grassroots Leaders Working with the Democratic Party.” One complaint that jumped out at me involves our targeting being too narrow (something I’d already concluded about independent voters): Most volunteer leaders see their state Democratic party’s efforts to organize outreach as “too little, too late.” One in four call their party unresponsive. A majority of respondents said the party does a…