Josh Green's interesting new Atlantic piece on Obama's Silicon Valley money machine offers another entry for the fast-growing Clinton campaign recriminations file:
The Internet was still in its infancy when Bill Clinton last ran for
president, in 1996, and most of the immense fortunes had not yet come
into being; the emerging tech class had not yet taken shape. So, unlike
the magnates in California real estate (Walter Shorenstein), apparel
(Esprit founder Susie Tompkins Buell), and entertainment (name your
Hollywood celeb), who all had long-established loyalty to the Clintons,
the tech community was up for grabs in 2007. In a colossal error of
judgment, the Clinton campaign never made a serious approach, assuming
that Obama would fade and that lack of money and cutting-edge
technology couldn’t possibly factor into what was expected to be an
easy race. Some of her staff tried to arrange “prospect meetings” in
Silicon Valley, but they were overruled. “There was massive frustration
about not being able to go out there and recruit people,” a Clinton
consultant told me last year. As a result, the wealthiest region of the
wealthiest state in the nation was left to Barack Obama.
--Michael Crowley