Last September, Politico published a long-form feature on Elan Kriegel, Hillary Clinton’s analytics wizard and the principal architect of her campaign’s leviathan data strategy.

One of the highest-paid staff at Clinton HQ in Brooklyn, Kriegel developed a devilishly complex algorithm called “Ada” that reportedly guided all of the campaign’s most critical strategic decisions — from which states to send the candidate and her surrogates to where and when to run ads and invest resources. So panoptic was Ada’s reach that it frequently overrode the judgment and local knowledge of Democratic activists on the ground.

As the election finally reached its denouement, Clinton’s big data algorithm was supposed to be her secret weapon. Instead, just like her candidacy, it proved to be a historic dud.