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Comment by Jglueck46 | Hacker News Reader

Yes, to address as part of Hawkfish, it's a data and tech platform for progressive candidates and causes, including voter segmentation and digital activation and engagement. Really Dems have been quite behind the Republican data trust which has been funded for a decade by right-wing special interests, and the goal of Hawkfish is to level the playing field, for democratic candidates up and down the ballot, and advocacy groups for climate, women's rights, education, gun safety common sense, and more.

For folks interested in jobs from the data science and full-stack Eng side, job postings are here:

https://boards.greenhouse.io/hawkfish/

Jeff Glueck

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> it's a data and tech platform for progressive candidates and causes

Are you able to share any other candidates or causes you have worked with? Bloomberg isn't exactly the most popular candidate among progressives and without knowing the other customers this looks like a vanity company with the primary goal of getting him elected.

I'm quite surprised to hear this.

When I was finishing up school (2013), our professor had worked out an agreement with the two congressional campaigns to allow our class to volunteer on both sides of the aisle. At that time, Republican data might as well have been non-existent when compared to the Democratic Votebuilder system.

the R version of votebuilder sucks, but the larger for-profit data-warehousing model has been a big asset almost a decade before Ds caught on (and are still losing digital).

Rs have been leading here for a long time. Kochs funded for-profit i360 which seems to me to be the first, most successful model. They enabled programmatic access to voter data (and even as a D buyer I was able to execute against) while most D campaigns below presidential weren't even really buying programmatic.

> Really Dems have been quite behind the Republican data trust

Do you have any actual evidence for that? Because mainstream media have been saying the opposite since Obama.

What you said is exactly what a company looking for dem dollars would say. Which is pretty much what Cambridge Analytic said to the gop candidates.

Here's a mainstream article: https://www.wired.com/story/democrats-fix-crumbling-data-ope..., I have heard that both the previous setup and the new setup are worse than reported.

On a different level, Obama drastically reduced the funding for the DNC and weakened the organization, possibly as part of a grand bargain with Hillary (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/2/brazile-says...).

Additionally, the consensus is that Trump's team embraced FB ads / other digital much more than Clinton's team. FB embedded "representatives" (presumably sales/operations people who understood how to best use FB ads) with both campaigns but only Trump's really listened: "Hillary Clinton’s campaign didn’t have Facebook employees stationed on site, according to people familiar with the campaign. One former Clinton campaign official said the campaign didn’t want to give Facebook employees “24/7 opportunity” to sell more ads by embedding with its staff. A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton didn’t respond to a request for comment." (https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-facebooks-embed-in-the-trum...).

Of course, to Kick's point, the specific company being discussed here is a Bloomberg operation, not a Democratic or "progressive" operation, whatever those terms mean. If Sanders or Warren win the primary, will Bloomberg redirect the company to their control / use?

You're thinking of Project Narwhal: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/02/project-narwhal-...

I think the distinction here may be "the Obama campaign" vs "the DNC" but yes, the media lauded expansive data collection, microtargeting, and get out to vote (gotv) efforts in the ancient days of 2012-2015.

Is this platform also against certain things, like getting weaponized against universal health coverage?

Bloomberg's own campaign site promotes universal coverage and specifically promotes adding a public option to the ACA. (Disclaimer: not a Bloomberg supporter and don't plan to be, I just know how to use Google to find stuff like this out.)

public option generally does not equivocate to universal coverage. If he advocated against public option for Single Payer, then you could call it universal/progressive.

Public option doesn't address runaway drug spending. 1 bulk purchaser of drugs could set the price basically that we're willing to pay, the federal government could also strip patents of companies found price-fixing or price-gouging.

I mean he's rich, so he def. could be progressive in that maybe he doesn't need the money the pharmacy/insurance companies would give him to not be progressive, but I'd have to see it before I believe it. I mean there are progressive billionaires - Nick hanover has given tons of Ted talks on income inequality.

There's definitely other options this cycle though if you're skeptical and want a real progressive, so why take the chance?

Single payer may guarantee universal coverage, but it is not the only route to achieving it - there are multiple counter-examples among advanced nations. If your goal is to improve health care and reduce costs, you should consider all options, not just the ones that flatter your ideological biases. That doesn't mean accepting clearly bad-faith arguments like "let's abolish malpractice lawsuits" at face value, but it does mean you have to explain why (for example) Germany's multi-payer health insurance system would be unacceptable for Americans. (Germany is significantly more socialized than the ACA, but significantly less socialized than Warren's current M4A plan. EDIT: or maybe not, as comment below suggests, but it definitely includes private health insurers, which Warren has said she would abolish.)

Germany's multi-payer system has significantly stricter consumer cost controls and Germany in general has more government-run health providers (eg: your out-of-pocket costs are effectively capped at a low % of your household's income). It's a good bit more socialized than Warren's and might, taken as a whole, be more socialized than even Sander's M4A plan.

Perhaps a German HNer can chime in on how frequent medical bankruptcies are in their country.

You used "equivocate" incorrectly. Also, as Kevin Hart says in the 40yo virgin, you're throwing too many terms at me (public option, universal, single payer, progressive) and I'm gonna take it as disrespect.

This reminds me we need counterweights and counters for the counters.

With some of the health and drug plans being pitched I noticed a huge influx of negative ads about them.. the pharma and insurance coompanies have tons of money to push 'facts' - and there is no counter balance aside from some of the media.. other parts of the media we weaponized into do commercials for them and for some the paychecks or residual percentages kept them quiet about any possible discrepancies..

So we have some good counterweights with some media fact checking numbers and ways for plans from Warrren and Sanders - which was good because it has kept the conversation going.. but where is the counter to that counter?

Transparent facts and callouts of the false facts in ways that are easier to find perhaps?

I tried to reverse image search a hoax pic someone had posted on fbook the other day and it was not as simple as it should of been - no wonder people are having a hard time determining truth.. partial truth.. plain lies / intent.. etc..

bloomberg promising public option? Is he paying for it? How is it going to happen? If him and all his Dems win? Let's see we had that once - Obama and both sides of congress had full control of all the laws and purse strings, promised affordable health care and keep our docs.

That did not really work out the way everyone thought, and I see similar with these kinds of promises on a candidate's site. How they intend to do these things is just as important as promises them imho.

It's not really clear to me either how Bloomberg expects to pass his health plan, but the same objection applies to everyone on his left too. While my preference is similar to Bloomberg's in this case, I still find it a bit frustrating that the debate is focused mostly on what is possible in our broken political system rather than what kind of policy would lead to optimal outcomes.

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