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You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Late Night Open Thread: Iowa Is Just Blatantly F*cking With Us, Now

Late Night Open Thread: Iowa Is Just Blatantly F*cking With Us, Now

by | 233 Comments

This post is in: ,

THANK YOU, IOWA.

But seriously: I know you guys take a metric ton of abuse from the rest of us every four years, because civic duty and all, and we are duly grateful for your service.* But even if it is nice to get all this attention (C.R.E.A.M.) every four years, I really really earnestly believe this would be a fantastic cycle to declare that you’re stepping away from the spotlight on your own terms.

Meanwhile, all the candidate seem to be making ‘We’re gonna assume I will win this, because why not’ speeches, so there will be video clips available before the actual results come in…

*I should probably take this chance to personally apologize to commentor Stinger, who thinks I have gone beyond protesting the process to personally insulting Iowans.

I’ll be around till about 6am, because that’s how I roll, so we’ll see if there’s anything to report for the Tuesday Morning Open Thread.

Reader Interactions

233Comments

  2. 2.

    WaterGirl

    *I should probably take this chance to personally apologize to commentor Stinger, who thinks I have gone beyond protesting the process to personally insulting Iowans.

    You are a class act, Anne Laurie.

  5. 5.

    WaterGirl

    Nate Silver:

    At this point, it’s been 3.6 hours since the start of the caucuses and 1.9% of precincts have reported results, which extrapolates out to knowing the results in a mere 189 hours, which would be at 9:30 pm next Tuesday, after voting in the NH primary has already closed.

    That seems kind of snotty to me, maybe Nate needs to go on an apology tour with Iowa, too!

  6. 6.

    Mary G

    @Elizabelle: Comment from the racist:

     

    #IowaCaucuses can remain first in the nation but Democrats must give us a reliable definitive count. The Heart of the Heartland has saved America before. Take a deep breath and count to precision-NO matter how long it takes.— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) February 4, 2020

    They must all be worried that America won’t put up with this system one more time. I remember when it took like three weeks to decide that Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucuses over the Mittbot by a tiny margin in 2012.

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    Not at all upset, as between “ya want it fast or ya want it right” I know which side I come down on.

  8. 8.

    WaterGirl

    @Elizabelle: Call me crazy, but I like that they are going to verify the results before they release them.  They are doing the right thing.

    I would not, however, want to be the Iowa Communications Director right now.

  9. 9.

    dmsilev

    Upside: this will help thin the media-pundit herd, as the weaker ones succumb to heart failure and apoplexy while waiting for results.

  12. 12.

    WaterGirl

    @dmsilev: Silver lining!

    *I do not seriously wish for any media people to be have anything terrible happen to them.

    But I wouldn’t mind if  3/4  9/10 of them were taken away by aliens.  Friendly ones, of course.

  13. 13.

    L85NJGT

    Look… you can go with an off the shelf software product and with some tweaks get 90% of what you want, or…. custom code it, which will be a shit show fail parade, but some politically connected consultants will get real paid.

  15. 15.

    danielx

    Anne, I hope Stinger sees and accepts your apology. But worse things have been said…

    @tbogg
    America: Tonight we begin the process to pick a candidate to oppose Donald Trump and his racist policies, destruction of our environment and ruination of all that we hold precious. Iowa?

    Iowa: We were thinking either rock, paper, scissors or pig rasslin’.

    America: Fuck my life.

  17. 17.

    Elizabelle

    @WaterGirl:   Accuracy is good.  And I do kinda remember 2012, for the result changing several weeks later.

    But this is such an unrepresentative process, from an unrepresentative state.  You would have a cleaner result with a primary.

  21. 21.

    Marcopolo

    @WaterGirl: Another positive is apparently none of the campaigns used the glitch to claim some kind of “process rigging.”  I for one am grateful for that.

    Also seems clear that the delay in announcing numbers will seriously dilute whatever impact the results will have going forward.  Tomorrow’s news coverage is going to focus in on the SOTU address.

  23. 23.

    My Side of Town am

    Now we have the gay guy telling us something. Like he is going to be the queer that saves us all. Man, he doesn’t realize.. I wish he was right.

  25. 25.

    different-church-lady

    @Marcopolo:

    Another positive is apparently none of the campaigns used the glitch to claim some kind of “process rigging.”

    …yet.

  27. 27.

    Major Major Major Major

  29. 29.

    Mary G

    Buttigieg’s Iowa Comms guy is tweeting out photos of precinct results where Mayor Pete came in first, such as

    UPDATE: @PeteButtigieg won this precinct in Cedar County –– a county that swung from Obama to Trump by 23 points in 2016. Pete visited Tipton in Cedar County this summer. #IACaucus pic.twitter.com/YQfWR2T5AI— Ben Halle (@bhalle87) February 4, 2020

     Pete has apparently decided to claim to be the winner:

    Buttigieg says "Iowa you have shocked the nation…" Yes, Iowa has…— Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) February 4, 2020

  30. 30.

    The Dangerman

    I really really earnestly believe this would be a fantastic cycle to declare that you’re stepping away from the spotlight on your own terms.

    The election board should just come out with a song and dance number:

    Iowa’s your shipoopi
    Shipoopi, shipoopi, shipoopi
    The results are hard to get
    Shipoopi, shipoopi, shipoopi
    But you can win the State yet

  33. 33.

    Amir Khalid

    I haz a bigly confused. Can someone explain this “three sets of results” thing to me? Especially, why is it good to potentially wind up with three different candidates claiming the win?

  34. 34.

    Mike J

    We vote by mail in Washington and we NEVER know the winner for several days.  Everyone lives through it. it’s perfectly alright.

  35. 35.

    WaterGirl

    @Marcopolo: I think I’m with NotMax, thinking that maybe Iowa results will help take the spotlight off of Trump’s state of the union.

    I could save him a lot of time:  It’s fucked up.

    But I digress.  This could be a win-win, if each one (SOTU & Iowa) helps take the focus off the other one.

  41. 41.

    Martin

    @L85NJGT: 

    This is not a big system. There’s just under 1700 precincts, so that’s how many simultaneous users you have to deal with, give or take.

    This is a pretty straightforward app. Have a registration process for captains and backups. You have all the time in the world ahead of time. You’re collecting two tallies for a fixed number of candidates, and a photo of the paper(s) being used on site.

    The security around it is the hardest task, but overall, this is a very, very straightforward thing. Done right, you cloud host it, run it off AWS with a failover to Azure.

  44. 44.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    Personally in this goat rodeo of a caucus, I’m going to go with the saying “Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought an idiot, than to open it and remove all doubt.”

  45. 45.

    Marcopolo

    @WaterGirl: If I recall, in 2012 Romney was declared the winner on election night, it turned out Santorum had actually won, then Ron Paul’s folks managed a heist at the state convention that gave his campaign the most delegates out of the state to the RNC.

  48. 48.

    WaterGirl

    @Amir Khalid:

    Iowa, one little state that is not very diverse, traditionally has oversized influence on what happens to candidates.

    It drives the narrative, and it can be make or break for even good candidates, specially because of all the media hype and spin on the results.

    If I can claim I won because I won the first round vote count, and you can claim you won because you won the second round vote count, and Mary G can claim she won because she got the most delegates, based on how the second round vote count…

    Then the media isn’t able to spin it the way it would have the year before, and good candidates whose funding might have dried up because the media has declared that they LOST, could live to fight another day.

    Personally, I’m thrilled about the change.

  50. 50.

    Marcopolo

    @Mary G: Well, word on the street is that Biden fared by far the worst when it came to meeting expectations–like he was in a not particularly close fourth place but for god’s sake the numbers have not been reported.

    I’m going to bed.  No doubt there will be a gazillion takes on it in the morning for me to mostly ignore.

  56. 56.

    different-church-lady

    IT IS NOW FEBRUARY FOURTH, AND I AM MIDDLE AGED AND A GODDAMNED RACIST FREAK IS STILL PRESIDENT OF THESE HERE UNITED STATES.

    (DCL AND I’M NOT EVEN PLUS ANYTHING…)

  57. 57.

    Marcopolo

    @WaterGirl: Really like Brian Schatz’s idea to make HI the first in the nation contest.  Hell, I might even go to HI for a few weeks in January to volunteer for a candidate I’m not even that excited about.

  61. 61.

    stinger

    Anne Laurie, your apology is both gracious and unnecessary — if you ever wrote here that my entire state stinks like pigshit, I missed it, and I read all your posts — but thank you, and I certainly accept.

    The results reporting tonight is a mess — I’m reminded a bit of the ACA rollout, among other technology failures — and I’m as eager as anyone to learn the overall results. We do have a paper trail of individual “votes” this year, for maybe the first time since caucusing began. Caucusing is annoying, fascinating, informative, not accessible to too many people, slow, loud, and fun. But there are still 49 states’ worth of people to weigh in, and the media makes far too much of one state’s results.

    There is a WHOLE LOT about the American election process that needs to change, and I’d love to have a reasoned, informed discussion of it here.

  63. 63.

    WaterGirl

    @Shalimar: @Major Major Major Major:

    Maybe this is a good time to pull random items from the comment policy.  I’ll start with this one:

    Things That Will Get You an Immediate Timeout

    Sexism, racism, ageism; homophobic outbursts, targeting of marginalized groups, etc. We’re not going to put up with personal attacks beyond a joking nature, nor will we tolerate targeted harassment of commenters. Take your shit somewhere else.

  70. 70.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Marcopolo: None of the campaigns, but I’m seeing a lot of “Bernie wuz robbed by the DNC” whining on facebook already.

    Those people are mostly being laughed at by everyone else. I wonder if they’re finally getting too ridiculous for the rest of the Dems.

  73. 73.

    cokane

    I think people could have some power themselves on the issue of Iowa. The results are going to be important for some of the marginal candidates like Klobuchar or Buttigieg, who might not be able to stay in the race without a strong showing. But it’s not going to decide the nominee. It has a low number of delegates and those are likely to be split, without anyone getting a strong advantage. We don’t have to make a bigger deal of it than that.

    And in a month or so it could easily be forgotten who even ended up the winner.

  74. 74.

    Anne Laurie

    @My Side of Town am: Our only hope is to elect a younger woman.

    Buttigieg / Harris, then?  I’d be happy to vote for that ticket!

    Or Buttigieg / Gillibrand.  Or Buttigieg / Abrams, if you wanna watch *all* the RWNJ heads explode…

  76. 76.

    Anne Laurie

    @stinger: EVERYBODY HUG!

    (Don’t think I’ve ever been to Iowa, so I can’t complain about the climate.  But I have met a number of perfectly lovely Iowa natives… )

  77. 77.

    James E Powell

    As a left coaster, I assumed this would all be settled and we would know who the next president of the United States will be before I went to bed. I am disappointed in the entire state of Iowa.

    Well I’ll be back tomorrow for the punch line of the joke.

  81. 81.

    PJ

    @My Side of Town am: James Buchanan would beg to differ.

    But the point is that you aren’t making an argument that America is too homophobic to elect an openly gay man, which is just like the arguments that America is too misogynistic to elect a woman, or too racist to elect a black person – it sounds reasonable based on history, but the effect is to dissuade gays, and women, and people of color from running, or to dissuade other people from voting for them.  And then one of them runs and wins and that argument is done until its ready to be deployed against the next marginalized class of people.

    The point is that you’re just saying, “Ha Ha, the gay guy thinks he can win – what a joke!”  You are treating Buttigieg’s candidacy like a joke because he’s gay, and it’s not.  He’s probably not going to win this time, but for someone who was basically unknown at the beginning of 2019, he’s come a long way, and when the next openly gay person runs for the Presidency, it will be easier.

  82. 82.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mary G:  Yeah, for the last couple weeks it’s been conventional wisdom that Biden wouldn’t win, but early reports from IA are that he was doing even worse than expected.  Legal letter has been sent to the Iowa Democratic Party ‘questioning irregularities’.

    Which is absolutely predictably traditionally how Retail Politics Has Been Done.  Entirely within the Biden campaign wheelhouse… and probably the best recourse at this point… but one more factor in the ‘never again an IA caucus’ argument!

  86. 86.

    different-church-lady

    @L85NJGT: Bernie is going to become the second president in a row to complain he was cheated out of the presidency after he’s inaugurated.

  87. 87.

    My Side of Town am

    @PJ: I am making that argument. I don’t like doing so, but if you want to lose, what can I say.

  88. 88.

    Anne Laurie

    @My Side of Town am: If Klobuchar’s at the top of the ticket, we don’t need to take another Democrat out of the Senate.  I could see Klobuchar/Buttigieg… or Klobuchar/Castro… I’d suggest Klobuchar/Biden, but I doubt Joe would go there.

  89. 89.

    hilts

    The people overseeing this Iowa farce are the Keystone Cops of the 21 st century.  It’s time for an economic boycott of Iowa until they agree to give up their first in the nation voting status.  Either that or vote this goddamn state out of our Union. Fuck Iowa and fuck their stupid caucuses.

  95. 95.

    Anne Laurie

    @WaterGirl: Look on the bright side — maybe they’re just, um, elevated from an undue consumption of adult beverages?

    Lotta people on political twitter seem to have been hitting the bottle tonight; gonna be a bad day tomorrow for the State of the Union…

  96. 96.

    NotMax

    Interview with one precinct captain just now reporting that it took him 15 or 20 minutes on the phone, once connected, to report all the data that is required in the format required.

    Multiply that amount of time by lots of precincts and an unexpected demand for reporting by phone and one can see what’s behind some of the cunctation.

  101. 101.

    Kraux Pas

    @My Side of Town am: I certainly don’t want to see Buttfuck.

    Ok, now that’s beyond inappropriate. Besides, when was the last time you were made to watch what was happening in a president’s bedroom?

  104. 104.

    Kent

    Here’s an idea.  Let Iowa go first but embargo their results until after Super Tuesday.  They can still be first, we just don’t actually know who won until after CA has voted.  Heh!

  106. 106.

    John Revolta

    Well now admittedly this looks pretty bad people, but don’t let’s forget that they only had THREE YEARS TO GET THEIR SHIT TOGETHER FOR THIS, THEIR BIG FUCKING MOMENT ON THE NATIONAL FUCKING STAGE FOR GOD’S SAKE

  108. 108.

    Kraux Pas

    @My Side of Town am: Real talk. If someone came along who was in every other respect your perfect candidate, but happened to be homosexual, would you refuse to vote for that person?

    Even if they already had the nomination and were by definition one of the only two people with a discernible chance?

  109. 109.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    I ❤️ it!

    This was supposed to be Wilmer’s BIG night.  He waited 4 years for this.  The triumph of Bernism!

    and pooooooof!

     

    The Bernouts on MSNBC look so depressed.

  110. 110.

    West of the Cascades

    @Kent:

    Here’s an idea.  Let Iowa go first but embargo their results until after Super Tuesday.  They can still be first, we just don’t actually know who won until after CA has voted.  Heh!

    Isn’t that pretty much what’s happening tonight?

  130. 130.

    Kent

    @WaterGirl: I think Slate is actually owned by Microsoft, or MSNBC or something.  So that is actually what they are doing!  Dishing on CNN.  The whole story reads like that:

    Soon, very soon, we’d have the results of all this action. They’d be trickling in any minute now, Wolf said, on this momentous night. But then they didn’t trickle, like, at all. And Wolf started getting antsy, or maybe a little agitated. And then CNN totally lost it.

  134. 134.

    Anne Laurie

    @stinger: Fifteen years at a state agricultural college in Michigan.  As a raw 17-year-old from the Bronx, I met some fellow freshpersons who were astonished at the urbanity of Moo U!

  136. 136.

    WaterGirl

    @mrmoshpotato: That was the final show I gave up on at MSNBC. I loved Chris Hayes in the morning for 2 hours on Saturdays.  Then he moved to 7pm, and i tried to watch, but he turned into a hack.

    I watched Steve K. in his place all the way through Bridge-Gate, and then he started to suck, too.

    That was the final straw, and I broke up with MSNBC.

  138. 138.

    different-church-lady

    Maybe in the future don’t place your election results onto a technology that everyone believes can’t spell correctly?

  142. 142.

    BethanyAnne

    And an app? To collect like 6000ish numbers and do addition? Sounds like something to solve with a damn shell script.

  147. 147.

    Kent

    So over on Lawyers Guns and Money (which I read when this blog starts getting slow) they are reporting in the comment thread that apparently it wasn’t just Iowa, the DNC or DNC-affiliated venders were responsible for this crap-tacular app.

    So, my proposed solution.  Ditch Tom Perez and put Buttigieg in his place, which was what he originally wanted to do anyway.  Buttigieg needs a place to land if he doesn’t win out which seems unlikely but who the fuck knows.

    I also learned that the biggest force arguing for keeping the Iowa caucuses instead of going to a primary were the Bernie-stans.  So this cluster is 1/2 Bernie and 1/2 Perez as well as the Iowa Dem Party apparatchiks.

  148. 148.

    Kent

    @Major Major Major Major: OK, somehow I thought it was Microsoft.  Maybe in the distant past and they sold it?

    EDIT…yep:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_(magazine)

    It was created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. In 2004, it was purchased by The Washington Post Company (later renamed the Graham Holdings Company), and since 2008 has been managed by The Slate Group, an online publishing entity created by Graham Holdings. Slate is based in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C

  154. 154.

    WaterGirl

    I see that over an hour and a half ago I declared that I was going to bed.  Being a woman of my word, I will now proceed to do just that.

    Good night, all.

  157. 157.

    moops

    @BethanyAnne:    Pen and Paper and Cars are more than adequate to count all of the Iowa ballots.  Give it two hours and you can do two more manual recounts before you announce the winner.

  160. 160.

    BethanyAnne

    @moops: Yeah. I was thinking of the old “Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script”. But truly, there are problems that don’t need any sort of new tech to solve.

  161. 161.

    BethanyAnne

    @moops: And I do love that my first reaction to “Pen and Paper and Cars” was to immediately wonder if that was an RPG :)

  165. 165.

    joel hanes

    @BethanyAnne:

    I could do a first implementation in perl in a day, maybe —

    but testing it adequately without a verification engineering staff …

    So would you use tcsh, bash, or what ?

  166. 166.

    Patricia Kayden

    November can’t come quickly enough. Until I read these comments, I had forgotten that SOTU was tonight. Boycotting as usual.

  169. 169.

    Ninedragonspot

    Coronavirus Update from the past couple of hours:

    2800 medical workers in Hong Kong go on strike, demanding the government close the border with Mainland China.

    Taizhou and parts of Hangzhou (c 9 million people) join Wenzhou and Ningbo on lockdown.  Each family can send one member out every two days to collect supplies, everyone else has to stay home.  These four cities have about 20 million people and are located in Zhejiang province, not Hubei.  Will this happen to Shanghai?

    Macau is closing its casinos for half a month.

    Taiwan is refusing entry to all foreigners who have been in China for the past 14 days, except under special circumstances.

  170. 170.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ninedragonspot:

    We have a vendor in Singapore that sent us an email telling us what their plan is to try and avoid having coronavirus spread. Good thing our folks aren’t scheduled to head back there until the end of March.

  171. 171.

    lgerard

    I long for the 1970’s when “Uncommitted” won a resounding victory in both the 1972 and 1976 Democratic primaries.

  172. 172.

    Barb 2

    @Elizabelle:

    What a clusterfuck.

    No more Iowa caucuses.  No more.  Enough.

    ————————-

    what she wrote re caucuses — they are the most undemocratic way of voting. Plus Sanders’ cult members are experts at rigging the results. I know – I was a witness in 2016 when the Bernie slobs invaded WA state.

  174. 174.

    HeleninEire

    JFC. CNN is now reporting that Caroline Kennedy is endorsing Joe Biden.

    Who the fuck cares who she endorses? Honest to God. Her endorsement means nothing. Not a goddamn thing.

    Really.

  179. 179.

    TS (the original)

    We are going to hear for months about the democrats who can’t organise a vote count – how can they possibly run the country.

    The main positive being the meltdown of the media. That I can enjoy.

  181. 181.

    opiejeanne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Yes, lots of Iowans in California.

    The town of Downers Grove, IL used to hold a big picnic in LA every year because so many from that little town had moved to SoCal.

  182. 182.

    Zzyzx

    The Bernie conspiracy theorists are out in force now. i like how Sanders released a partial internal count – one where we just have to take them at their word of that it’s accurate and not cherry picked – and declared himself the victor.

  183. 183.

    HeleninEire

    @Morzer: But they still do it. Honest to Goddess. Who cares?

    No offense to her. She’s been through a lot. But I honestly did an Abe Vigoda on her. Is she still alive?

    Talk to Baud. He is way more tuned in than Caroline.

  185. 185.

    Dan B

    @WaterGirl:  This My Side person seems weird using arguments that are all over the map.  It fits with my intuition that Pete has been slammed with accusations that are weak tea or without context but not examined carefully.  We don’t all have time to really dig deep and some accusations serm to be basically, ‘I can see through his mask and he’s slimey / racist / corporate toady.  Every candidate has imperfections.  Some are disqualifying to some people but not others.  I could make lists.

    My favorite is Warren but she is not ideal and has madr some missteps.  Getting a woman elected is tough in this USA.  But I’d work for her.  My Side won’t consider Pete at all even though he might win Iowa and it’s 9 months to election.  And My Side wants to lecture us on how we are so blind we can’t see the light.  All the logic of a bot.  Insult people and they will wake up….

  186. 186.

    Mel

    @Mnemosyne:I recently purchased comfy / hideous velour “lounge pants” with oversized pockets to conveniently tote all my old lady stuff (chapstick, kleenex, ink pen, reading glasses, change) around the house so, right there with you!

  187. 187.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    This is just to say that the timed-out commenter above has already changed his nym slightly once, right after I pied him the first time.

  189. 189.

    JPL

    Mediate has a clip of a spacey trump pretending he’s a band conductor while everyone else is standing at attention for the flag.   Because of the news out of Iowa, I’m sure it will not receive the attention it deserves.

    bah humbug

  190. 190.

    Dan B

    @WaterGirl:  It seems like My Side”s entire point is “There is lots of homophobia.”  Like Jackals don’t know that?

    Everything I’ve seen of Pete’s retail politics is he seems to win over people who meet him face to face.  That doesn’t translate very well into a national campaign.  It would be nice if it did but you can’t meet one hundred million citizens face to face.  We’re factoring in lots of data and, no, we didn’t miss homophobia.  But it might not have been the most important factor in who we support.

    And how do we think Pete will do in South Carolina?  How will Warren do?  The trajectory of the campaigns is likely to be wild.  And if Pete did “win” Iowa (51% -nah, 20% maybe) he’ll be getting noticed by undecideds and Putin’s minions.

  191. 191.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    As we close the night, here’s how campaigns are reacting:

    Pete: I won!
    Bernie; here’s less than 40% of my internal data to give the impression I won
    Biden: please stop counting
    Warren: it’s close, wait and see, and we’ll see you in New Hampshire.

    Team Warren has class and grace

    — ?Dante Atkins? (@DanteAtkins) February 4, 2020

  197. 197.

    Raralex

    @Ninedragonspot: Singapore-based commenter and long-time lurker here. Singapore was probably ahead of Taiwan, but yes, similar. They barred entry to mainland travelers last week with a 14-day quarantine. 18 cases here so far, all people who had been in Wuhan or Hubei province. All quarantined and recovering. As you might expect, in a place where memories of SARS are very fresh and with a fully competent, well resourced,  and empowered government, the response has been aggressive and efficient. At the same time, clear and frequent communication and thoughtful messaging from the PM down on treating people with decency and kindness, and avoiding misinformation. Other than proximity, which probably means less and less, I’d rather be here than almost anywhere (including the US, where Trump can be guaranteed to screw it up).

  204. 204.

    joel hanes

    @Raralex:

    the US, where Trump can be guaranteed to screw it up

    The Trump maladministration has spent three years defunding and tearing down the pandemic response apparatus that the Obama administration constructed in the wake of SARS.

    So yes, you’re absolutely correct.

  205. 205.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    The irony is during the Unity Reform Commission, Bernie’s representatives unsuccessfully pushed for more caucuses and less primaries.

  211. 211.

    Betty Cracker

    @JPL: Maybe later? Looks like there are a couple of posts in queue in the back room. I saw that clip, and the most remarkable thing to me was how tiny Trump’s hands are. But we knew that.

    @rikyrah: The logic of that tweet escapes me. What does a Twitter rando’s apparently unfounded accusation have to do with anything?

  216. 216.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: I haven’t seen a plausible explanation for why this happened yet, and I’ve been looking! One reporter said there’s a numbers discrepancy that affects delegate allocation. There was a total of caucus participants, then a recording of the SECOND alignment but no recording of the FIRST? The numbers didn’t jibe because not everyone sticks around through the whole thing?

    Sounds like a big fat WTF all around. There are paper trails, apparently, so that’s good. Maybe our caucus goer (Nelle?) will give us a first-hand account later.

  219. 219.

    Betty Cracker

    Limited and therefore arguably meaningless info:

    Top line results:
    Sanders 30.54%
    Warren: 26.48%
    Buttigieg: 21.67%
    Klobuchar: 13.49%
    Biden: 6.57%
    Other: 1.26%

  221. 221.

    Jinchi

    @Betty Cracker: Limited and therefore arguably meaningless info:

    I don’t know. If those numbers are accurate and represent 10% of the vote, they’re better than any recent poll.

    Biden at 5th with half the support of Klobuchar?! When all the polls had him basically tied with Sanders? That would be a pretty severe hit on his “electability”.

  222. 222.

    Jinchi

    @rikyrah: Pete is at 0 -2% with Black voters.

    I first read that as Pete is at -2% with Black voters.

    Which I guess would be within the margin of error.

  224. 224.

    Mel

    @Steeplejack (phone): I don’t. It’s a reflexive habit from years spent teaching. Kid’s a quarter short for lunch? Reach in the pocket. Need some caffeine? Change for vending machine is at the ready.

    I just broke the habit of sticking a few safety pins in my pocket every morning. One thing at a time!!!

  227. 227.

    Mo MacArbie

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: This is just to say that the timed-out commenter above has already changed his nym slightly once, right after I pied him the first time.

      This seemed inadvertent. He made a comment with the ” am” added and then another immediately complaining about the fucking moderation.

    I say this not to defend him but because I thought it was funny.

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