Donald Trump is losing, and he’s losing so badly that even he’s making excuses for why he’s losing.

To turn it around, Trump and his team are looking to how Ted Cruz ran his campaign.

Ted Cruz made his campaign data-driven from the start. Even before he won Iowa, it was getting widespread attention. It paid off, too, as Ted Cruz won many states that the mighty Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio could not.

At the center of the Ted Cruz data operation was Cambridge Analytica, a firm that is getting dismissed sharply by the establishment despite helping Ted Cruz and the British Leave campaign overperform greatly.

But Donald Trump has hired Cruz’s data wizards at Cambridge despite those complaints, reversing from his previous claims that he didn’t need a data mining operation.

Trump’s fundraising is terrible, and that he’s gone back on his word to sell a building in order to keep up with Hillary Clinton’s fundraising. Given all that, this actually seems like a smart decision for the Trump campaign. He’s going to have to try to win votes on a shoestring, and microtargeting is a good way to get the best value for your money.

Hillary Clinton probably won’t be worried by this, but she should be.