Of all people, listen to one of the most partisan hacks of all time, Maxine Waters, describe the value of the Obama data-mining machine (she thinks its great).

 "The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life.    That's going to be very, very powerful.  That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that
it's never been done before and whoever runs for President on the
Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They're going to go down with
that database and the concerns of those people because they can't get
around it. And he's been very smart. It's very powerful what he's leaving in place."
--  Waters in a Roland Martin interview.