Remember when we used to hear about the Democrats’ great database?

Clinton said Wednesday in an interview with Recode’s Kara Swisher that once she became the Democratic nominee, she inherited “nothing.”

The Democratic National Committee’s data, she said, “was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it.”

Her comments drew swift rebuttals from some Democratic operatives who built, or worked with, that data.

After the voters returned Obama to office for a second term, his campaign became celebrated for its use of technology – much of it developed by an unusual team of coders and engineers – that redefined how individuals could use the Web, social media, and smartphones to participate in the political process. A mobile app allowed a canvasser to download and return walk sheets without ever entering a campaign office; a Web platform called Dashboard gamified volunteer activity by ranking the most active supporters; and “targeted sharing” protocols mined an Obama backer’s Facebook network in search of friends the campaign wanted to register, mobilize, or persuade.

But underneath all that were scores describing particular voters: a new political currency that predicted the behavior of individual humans.

The campaign didn’t just know who you were; it knew exactly how it could turn you into the type of person it wanted you to be.