Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

I did not have this on my fuck 2024 bingo card.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Second rate reporter says what?

Let there be snark.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2020 / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Iowa SURPRISE!

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Iowa SURPRISE!

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I liked it better when that was the midwestern joke term for a cheap, filling casserole that included canned water chestnuts along with the tater tots and cream-of-mushroom soup.

…Buttigieg’s speech amounted to a weird capstone to a very weird night.

He said, “By all indications we are going on to New Hampshire victorious.” Perhaps he has some indications but by no means does he have “all indications.” Nor does anyone else.

By the time people get those indications, it’s not clear that they will matter. The very theory of the Iowa caucus was strained by Monday night’s vote-counting debacle. The idea, stretching back to Jimmy Carter’s coming-from-nowhere victory in 1976, is that a small-state could have large impact by going first and leveraging the power of theatrics. A win in Iowa is supposed to vault people to some new orbit in the public mind—the elusive force called momentum—and produce more victories ahead.

But the theatrics of Iowa have been ruined. The crowning of a winner Monday did not happen. Tuesday is Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. Wednesday is the day Trump is supposed to win acquittal in his Senate impeachment trial. Friday is another Democratic debate in New Hampshire, where voters cast primary ballots in a week. Iowa momentum may prove perishable—if it is ever there to harvest in the first place.

The only thing clearly indicated from Monday night’s event was fiasco. At the time of this writing—middle of the night East Coast time—even the dimensions of this fiasco are unclear…

Sensibly, every candidate with a reasonable argument stepped up to explain how the real winner was the friends we made along the way.

From what I was seeing early in the evening, Mayor Pete actually did seem to be doing better than predicted… and that means a lot to a lot of people, so I can’t hate it:

Elizabeth Warren, no surprise, praised all the people who’ve worked to get her here, and who will hopefully keep working as the parade moves on to New Hampshire…


For the last couple weeks, the rumors have been that Biden wasn’t gonna win Iowa. The partial preliminaries apparently looked even worse than predicted, so political lifer Uncle Joe did what any professional in his circumstances would do: Prepare to litigate, or at least argue, the eventual results. This might not have been the best year to do the absolutely predictable conventional-wisdom thing, though — the optics have changed.

Klobuchar and Yang concede nothing. As is their right!

And Bernie Sanders, who is nothing if not consistent, made a half-hearted feint towards ‘optimism’… while his closest aides and surrogates immediately started ginning up conspiracy theories.

If last night was a disaster for any particular campaign, it’s probably Sanders. They had a cunning plan: If the patented Bernista brand of ‘yelling at people until they conceded out of exhaustion’ didn’t work, and the backup ‘if we don’t win, we refuse to vote for anyone else, so you Warren voters better submit or you’ll be responsible for Trump getting reelected’ plan failed to impress the ladykin, his team would boost his stature by releasing raw first-round data to bring in the undecideds and bandwagoneers. Omlettes, eggs, not beanbag, dudes. The lack of crisp totals leaves them… well, there’s always the warm damp comfort-blanket of RIGGGED!!!!

I *hate* having to agree with a RINO, but…

Reader Interactions

134Comments

  4. 4.

    Chyron HR

    Somehow, some way I’m going to get on a plane tonight to New Hampshire.

    It’s just the caucus count, Amy, it’s not the aliens from Independence Day.

  10. 10.

    Mary G

    All those pork chops on a stick 25 different candidates gnawed through at the Iowa State Fair last summer wasted. Sad!
    They must switch to a primary. This is undemocratic.

  11. 11.

    Betty Cracker

    Reposting from obsolete thread:

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

    This tally is incomplete and therefore arguably meaningless, but I trust it more than Jeff Weaver’s press release.

  12. 12.

    David Fud

    Wow, glad I gave it up at 10pm.  Couldn’t have happened to a more archaicly counted state.  Now, if we can get the manipulateable machine marked ballots to crash out the same way in Georgia, we might get everyone back to hand marked, machine scanned paper ballots and get the hackers out of the cracks of our voting systems.

  14. 14.

    SFAW

    Andrew Gillum’s tweet [shades of OH in 2004!] is an interesting bookend for any number of the others collected here. I breathlessly await more Daou-esque pronouncements re: how the DNC rigged the system in favor of Hitlary ABB*.

    *Anyone But Bernie

  16. 16.

    gene108

    Is the primary over yet? Do we have a challenger to Trump?

    The most anti-climatic primary, I can remember. I feel like whoever wins, we all lose.

  17. 17.

    Betty Cracker

    I wonder if the caucus reporting face-plant will satisfy the Beltway pundits who usually demand a blood sacrifice from among the candidates to liven things up after Iowa? It’s been 16 years since the “Dean Scream.” Looks like a 538 editor is trying Buttigieg’s “victorious” statement on for size:

    LAURA BRONNER1:53 AM
    I keep returning to Buttigieg’s “victory” speech. A speech like that without any results is incredibly misleading. It might end up fine for him if he does turn out to have won (or done well), but that shouldn’t really distract from how irresponsible it was in the moment.

    Okay then.

  19. 19.

    Biff Baxter

    How a candidate and their staff/advocates react to all this is and will be revealing. Spouting off conspiracy theories is not a good sign.

  20. 20.

    SFAW

    @Betty Cracker:

    how irresponsible it was in the moment.

    Bronner gets paid for that level of inanity? Damn, I should see if 538 will hire me. “Well, Jim, Candidate X’s ground game gave 110 percent today, and on any given quadrennial first Monday in February in I-o-way, that can make all the difference in the horse race  game! Coach Belichick’s Devine’s magic still seems to work!” (or not, depending)

  24. 24.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    As a follow-up to a random recipe conservation from last week: I was able to find canned Great Northern beans. Unfortunately, they were Bush’s, but I bought a couple of cans anyway. When I get a chance to try the Black Bean Cake recipe, I’ll let you know, but I’m looking forward to it.

  27. 27.

    Betty Cracker

    Not sure what to make of the reports that Iowa turnout this year was about the same as in 2016. It’s probably a crap result for Sanders. Even if you take Weaver’s numbers as gospel (and I most definitely do not), this means Sanders lost a lot of voters from 2016 and failed to bring new people in. But I saw a recent poll showing that voter enthusiasm is off the charts nationwide, which led me to expect turnout would be higher. Maybe it’s just Iowa’s onerous process…

  28. 28.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Must see TV: McMillions: the bizarre story of how one man stole $24m from McDonald’s

    It was always a crime story hiding in plain sight. From 1987 to the 1990s, McDonald’s crowned dozens of winners in its promotional Monopoly game, which awarded customers prizes ranging from a free drink to a car to a million dollars. Big-time winners – the rare ticket-finders – were interviewed on the news and profiled in the papers. Except none of the winners was real. Or rather, none actually stumbled upon a lucky ticket. They were picked in a scheme run by a rogue ex-police officer, Jerome Jacobson, involving mob connections, false addresses, smuggled tickets and over $24m in illegal winnings – a genuinely crazy, rabbit-hole story of greed, deceit, and good old American scamming explored in McMillions, a six-part HBO docuseries out this week.

  29. 29.

    SFAW

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Careful, the Bush’s beans may start a war.

    I’m on the East Coast, not in the Middle East.

    And, not that anyone cares, but the reason for my animus is that Bush’s got the FDA (or maybe FTC? Don’t recall) to declare that their steamed beans were OK to be labeled as “baked beans,” unlike B & M which actually are baked. No, I’m not Sicilian, why do you ask?

  30. 30.

    Chris Johnson

    I’m very pleased the strong Left turnout didn’t all go to Sanders in spite of everything he, Twitter, and probably Putin tried to do to make it be ALL his.

    Yoink! Nope. This is a good time to reexamine that ‘unity candidate’ thing Warren’s offering. She ain’t taking votes from Bloomberg. She is an alternative to Sanders (I would say, a greatly superior one, but I would say that here and not in more Bernier places)

  31. 31.

    Barbara

    @Betty Cracker:  It is Orwellian to speak of caucuses as pure democracy when they are structured to make it so complex to cast a vote. Local primaries here have moved to ranked choice voting, which doesn’t require hours of your time. (Not for presidential races I should add, but schoolboard and such.)

  39. 39.

    trnc

    I take it the caucus screwup also affected the republican caucus (to the extent that anyone was even paying attention to it)?

  43. 43.

    Dadadadadadada

    @trnc: Not necessarily, since the GOP might have made different choices about how to vote/report. On the other hand, the only results I’ve seen have a cartoon character getting over 90% of the vote, so yeah, chaos.

  45. 45.

    SFAW

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    I wouldn’t hang my hat on that, Bush attacked the wrong county before.

    True, but they were all in the same approximate region.

     

    [Re: Bush’s: that whole thing occurred 20-plus years ago, and probably didn’t get a lot of play on the Left Coast. Especially since B & M is in the real Portland, not that West Coast pretender.]

  47. 47.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Betty Cracker: Is it that Iowa is old and white? These people are the most reliable voters, but they may not be the ones with heightened enthusiasm this year, unless it’s for Trump.

  48. 48.

    Shalimar

    I made the mistake of having Morning Joe on.  Geist and Scarborough were talking like the Democratic party had just committed suicide, apocalyptic, this is the end.  Had to turn it off.  Maybe the Iowa Caucuses committed did kill themselves, but everyone else will move on from this by evening.

  49. 49.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The founder of the Netherlands’ anti-immigration Forum for Democracy (FvD) party, one of several European far-right and nationalist leaders due to speak on Tuesday at a gathering in Rome, tweeted about the incident on Friday evening.

    “Filing a complaint is of course totally pointless,” Baudet, a flamboyant former academic and columnist, tweeted. “Oh dear, childishly naive Dutch people! Vote now finally for change. Break free of this politically correct nonsense! Save this country. #FVD”
    ……………………….
    After several passengers on the train refuted his version of events on social media, the Dutch national rail operator NS said the men in a photo Baudet subsequently posted to his Instagram account were three ticket inspectors and a police officer.

    As is common practice to avoid people dodging checks, none were wearing uniform, the operator said. It said the women did not initially believe that the men were NS employees so refused to show their tickets, prompting them to identify themselves and call the police officer.

    A company spokesman added that the episode was “not a noteworthy incident” and that its employees had behaved entirely correctly. A police spokesman said charges could be pressed if it was concluded an offence had been committed.

    Oh nooooooes… That brown man challenged the inherent superiority of my whiteness.

  50. 50.

    WereBear

    Heck, tech can crash and burn with real testing, which I gather this piece did not get.

    Caucuses always seemed horse and buggy to me, anyway. And they certainly are buggy.

  52. 52.

    PsiFighter37

    @Betty Cracker: There’s no way Biden got 6% of the vote.

    That said, I am pleased as punch that Iowa completely fucked this up. All the easier to take away their status as the first voters. Now nobody will have meaningful momentum into NH. Bloomberg must be having a ball – completely skipped the whole thing, and they can’t even count the results right.

  53. 53.

    Betty Cracker

    @Barbara: Ranked choice voting seems like a sane and logical alternative.

    @Baud: Huh. That is odd. I think the comparison to 2016 turnout levels I heard came from an IDP source, but I’m not 100% sure. Of course, 2016 was a race with no incumbent. Maybe that accounts for the difference?

  56. 56.

    SFAW

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Didn’t Trump tell us he was “really rich”?

    I’ve been saying he is legit a thousandaire for a few years now. Although with all his emoluments/grifting  since 500 million persons attended his coronation, his net worth might have topped the $ 1 Mil mark.

  58. 58.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Bloomberg missed a golden opportunity to get some rent free space in trump’s head after being called Mini Mike. He should have replied, “Yes I’m shorter than you, but my billions stand 5 times higher than yours.”

    Probable more like 20 times higher.

  59. 59.

    Betty Cracker

    @PsiFighter37: I’d be shocked if Biden got less than 10%, but several campaigns (not just Bernie, and yeah, they’ve all got a motive to fudge) say he came in a “distant” fourth by their counts. That’s a terrible result for Biden, if true, so this massive reporting fuckup could be a godsend for him.

  61. 61.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Here’s the statement I saw:

    But you’re right — reporters on-scene are saying it’s high. Hmmm.

  62. 62.

    OzarkHillbilly

    No linkee but headline at the Guardian: Trophy hunting event to auction ‘dream hunt’ of Donald Trump Jr

    Ooops, wait a minute, that’s “with”, not “of”. My bad. Sorry if I got the jackals’ hopes up.

  63. 63.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Whatever Mark Cuban’s other faults, he nailed it in 2016 when he said/implied that Trump wasn’t a billionaire. Bloomberg’s net worth is something like $50+ B? That might be 100 times that of the Liar-in-Chief’s.

    In a not-quite-rational world, Bloomberg would buy Trump Tower, have it razed because of not-up-to-code construction, and then not pay the Grifter-in-Chief because of the G-i-C’s fraudulent (mis)representation of its condition. Hilarity would ensue.

  66. 66.

    Matt McIrvin

    So, my understanding is there are paper records, and the only thing that’s broken is the tech designed to give us instant results? And people are wringing their hands about how the tech fucked this up, and we should… go back to paper and not wish for instant results?

    So what are they complaining about? Wish granted.

  69. 69.

    rattlemullet

    Corn kernels and apps, never shall the twain meet.

    OK folks here it is, only technology of the highest order is required for accurate voting and counting. It’s very expensive but must be used everywhere in order achieve true and accurate results. Now listen to me carefully and read what I write.

    Paper ballots counted in public.

    Think people can comprehend the difficult concept of this technology?

  70. 70.

    Jinchi

    @Betty Cracker: :Laura Bronner, “I keep returning to Buttigieg’s “victory” speech. A speech like that without any results is incredibly misleading.”

    But the candidates don’t have “no results”. The caucuses are public events. Certainly they have people in the room who can report back whether the campaign exceeded expectations and whether other candidates were falling. Pete probably has a pretty good sense of how he did and if the results look like the partial results you showed above he’s basically looking at a 3-way tie with Klobuchar close behind and Biden tanking.

    If those numbers are close to true, I’d expect Sanders to be celebrating victory (even a 3-way for first puts him at the top), Buttigieg and Warren to be celebrating a strong night. Klobuchar happy to have exceeded expectations and Biden deeply concerned about problems with the count.

  71. 71.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    After reading your note, I decided to check. I was wrong.

    He’s apparently worth $60 billion. (According to Forbes.) I doubt that the Grifter-in-Chief is worth $600 M, but that’s just me opining out of my ass. [“So what else is new,” I can hear you say.]

  73. 73.

    bjacques

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Bwahahaha! I’m glad that story got some play outside NL. My Dutch friends were having a field day.

    Iowa was just gearing up when I called it a night.

     

    Spirillus
    Bacillus
    Caucus

    Gonocaucus
    Staphylocaucus aureus
    Pneumocaucus

  76. 76.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jinchi: Sounds about right. Beltway press gotta Beltway press, though. Everyone seems to assume the news cycle will move on due to impeachment, SOTU, etc., and maybe that’s right. But if the IDP releases results today showing Biden finished a distant fourth, it’s hard to imagine that won’t be a top story. Ditto strong finishes for Buttigieg, Warren and Sanders, if that is, in fact, what happened.

  77. 77.

    Jinchi

    @SFAW: I doubt that the Grifter-in-Chief is worth $600 M.

    I’d be happy to pretend he’s worth $10 billion when they calculate his share of Warren’s wealth tax.

  78. 78.

    Another Scott

    ‘morning all.

    One for NotMax and Capt. Mnemo:

    "The Wizard of Oz:" A witch, who misrepresents herself as being a “good” one, misleads a young girl who is lost into thinking she's powerless to get home, and only reveals the truth after the girl murders the witch's biggest rival. #DescribeAMovieBadly

    — Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) February 3, 2020

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  84. 84.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Sounded to me like he might be a semi trans Baud fan. Your unforced non denial denial make me wonder what other skeletons are hiding in your closet.

  85. 85.

    debbie

    I can definitely relate:

    I don’t think I’ve ever watched anything as confusing as the Iowa caucuses.

    And I watched ALL of “Lost.”
    — BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) February 4, 2020

  87. 87.

    Mr. Mack

    I think I’m with Matt on this.  If the results will eventually get correctly counted…what is the big issue?  That the press has to wait?  The cast of Morning Joe all seem to think this is the end of the world for Democrats, but the integrity of the results are far more important than the speed by which they are tallied.

    Or have I missed something?  And apologies…good morning everyone.

  88. 88.

    Ken

    @Another Scott:  There was a game where you had to guess the movie from a summary.  I remember some of them were collected for a website, though I can’t track it down.

    One entry for The Wizard of Oz was  “A young girl travels to another country and kills the first person she meets. Then she teams up with three others to kill again.”

  89. 89.

    Gin & Tonic

    @debbie: I’ve commented on this before, but in the spring of 2019, Ukraine held a Presidential election. Over 30 candidates in the first round, around 19 million voters, down to two candidates in the second, and about 18 million voters. The challenger turfed out the incumbent (who was running) 70-30. Results were available in a few hours, posted on the (well-run) site of the Central Electoral Commission, everybody accepted them, the incumbent gracefully stepped aside and the challenger was inaugurated within weeks. All internal and officially-accredited foreign observers agreed the election was clean and fair.

    There was a time this would have been a ludicrous statement, but I hope this year’s US Presidential election is as fair and well-run as Ukraine’s was last year.

  91. 91.

    debbie

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Me too, but that’s not likely. I think the main issue is the campaign season is too damn long. That, and not sticking to technology known to be reliable.

  92. 92.

    Ken

    @schrodingers_cat: They caucused; I’ll assume you’re no more confused about that process than everyone else.

    Then they tried to report the totals to Caucus Central using a snazzy new app that perhaps hadn’t been as extensively tested as one might wish.  So instead of results being instantly available, to the great joy of one or two candidates and a whole bunch of reporters and “analysts”, it will be a few days before the totals are in.

  93. 93.

    Cameron

    @schrodingers_cat: Approval voting is a lot simpler (vote for all the candidates you want, but you don’t have to rank them), and would turn out better results than first-past-the-post.  AFAIK, Fargo, ND is the only place that has it here in the USA, although there’s a push to get it implemented in St. Louis,

  94. 94.

    Nelle

    My take after caucusing last night is Iowa needs to go to primaries.  Too many can’t participate.  But I didn’t mind it.

    At my precinct, Bernie wasn’t selling.  Amy was the most popular.  The Bernie people either walked out after the first round, when Bernie wasn’t viable and they would not support anyone else or came to Warren with scowls.  Though they were treated well and soon were chatting away.  But there were a ton of bored kids at the back (Warren people brought crayons and coloring pages, though).  My son didn’t participate..wasnt taking a 2 yr old and a baby out.

  95. 95.

    Butter Emails

    @Mr. Mack:

    There’s criticism to be made about the poor implementation and testing of the new app, but really this is just people stomping their feet because they want their pony and they want it now.

  96. 96.

    rp

    I think the criticism of Pete is completely fair. He has some results, but declaring victory in the current situation is ridiculous.

    the best outcome would be for sanders supporters to bitch and moan for two days about dnc conspiracies and then the real results show him winning by a small margin. (Of course they’ll still complain…)

  99. 99.

    Kay

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg or Sanders, Buttigieg, Warren

    Which is what it looked like all night and what the candidates probably have on their own counts- which they all have.

    What I don’t know is Biden or Klobuchar, which is 4th or 5th.

  100. 100.

    Betty Cracker

    @Nelle: Was hoping you would weigh in with a first-hand account!

    @Mr. Mack: The media caterwauling I’ve seen focuses on the winner of the caucus being robbed of a full news cycle bounce, etc., because of the delay. SOTU and impeachment will supposedly drive out any advantage or fail to expose a major weakness. I am skeptical. If the results are truly out of line from what was expected, we’ll hear plenty about it.

  104. 104.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    Well, yes. The chaos is a gift to Biden though- the story would have been he did poorly. I have to say I don’t really buy Biden’s story for why he would so so poorly in Iowa. I think he should be competitive in Iowa. I think he’s done a really good job of lowering expectations, which is fine for now, but not fine for the general.

  105. 105.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mr. Mack: The Democrats have proportional delegate allocation anyway, which means who “wins” a closely contested primary or caucus doesn’t even matter. It’s effectively a tie.

    If there’s a big story here, it’s that Biden didn’t do well. That’s it.

  108. 108.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Ugh. I get that Biden is strong in South Carolina. Granted. But it’s never been the case that “strong in South Carolina” means “weak and Iowa and New Hampshire”. I’ll give him the New England thing- Sanders and Warren have an advantage there. Okay. But WTF? Why would Biden be this weak in Iowa?  “Strong in South Carolina” isn’t an answer. That’s a different question.

    He supposedly has labor support. They have a huge influence in caucuses. Where were they?

  111. 111.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Maybe. I only watch cable on election nights but I’m listening to these pundits tell me Biden is the strongest with “white working class” or “suburban ring in Pennsylvania” while at the same time telling me it is a given that he would tank in Iowa and New Hampshire and…that doesn’t make sense. White people in Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t incredibly and uniquely different in those states. He should be competitive there and saying “he’s very popular in South Carolina” is not an answer to my question. Popularity in South Carolina does not exclude the ability to have a respectable showing in Iowa and New Hampshire. Joe Biden has convinced pundits it does, but it doesn’t.

  113. 113.

    Immanentize

    I think the DNC should make this a real race.  Maybe the top 5 can run say, a 440, with delegates awarded for win (100), place (50) and show (25).

    At least that would be good TV and done (sort of) quickly.

  116. 116.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @trnc:

    The R and D caucuses are completely separate, though they happen on the same night. In 2016, the Ds in the precinct I lived in at the time caucused in the UAW hall. I don’t even know where the Rs caucused, but not there.

    I never went to an R caucus, but as I understand it, they don’t have the viability/two-round voting thing. And they cast paper ballots.

  118. 118.

    Kristine

    @Betty Cracker:

    It’s been 16 years since the “Dean Scream.” Looks like a 538 editor is trying Buttigieg’s “victorious” statement on for size:

    As an aside, that “Dean Scream” was bs. His mike deadened crowd noise. If you were in the crowd, the cheers were deafening–Dean had to shout to be heard. I still remember Tweety showing both clips and wondering if the press had erred. Um, yeah.

  119. 119.

    chopper

    @PsiFighter37:

    another bright side is, if it ends up being bernie who won, we won’t immediately be subject to berners telling us ‘it’s all over, get in line’ like we would if the results were clear.

  120. 120.

    kindness

    Mayor Pete is obviously a nice guy but I expect a presidential candidate to have paid some dues to us all.  Mayor of a small midwestern town doesn’t qualify as dues.

  121. 121.

    trnc

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Thanks to you and others who responded. I heard after I posted that it was software specifically used by the Iowa Dem Party. Really looking forward to all the crappy memes this spawns. NOT!

  123. 123.

    Vlad

    Hi Peter. It was Bernie people who fought hardest to keep the caucus system during the Unity Commission, and they did it because they dominated the caucuses in 2016 and wanted a repeat in 2020. Don’t come complaining to anyone now.

    I don’t recall Sanders demanding that Iowa hire an incompetent vendor and implement the new reporting system in the most half-assed way possible. Shows what I know, I guess.

  124. 124.

    tam1MI

    As tempting as it is to say what happened last night was just media tantrums over not getting their results RIGHT NOW WE HAVE A DEADLINE DAMMIT, it’s worth noting that Iowa had set up a backup plan in case the new app didn’t work out, and that crashed as well.

  127. 127.

    Soprano2

    Just came here to say that after last night I’m completely worn out by all the Bernie supporters claiming that the only way he lost was if the DNC cheated him.  Don’t they realize they sound just like Trump supporters?  How about, if you lost you need to work harder to get more support rather that constantly whining about being cheated?  I haven’t decided for sure who I support, but I can’t support Bernie just because his followers sound just like Trump’s supporters.

  128. 128.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kay:

    Why would Biden be this weak in Iowa?

    I can’t find it right now, but someone tweeted last night that the IA party skews younger than the national, bad for Biden in general and bad for him in caucuses. Add to that, Buttigieg was pretty much tied with Biden in IA, while in national polls he’s stuck in single digits. I think a bigger problem for Biden is he’s been trailing in fund-raising for pretty much the whole cycle.

    Also I didn’t see it this time, but I remember in 2016, there was a nugget of conventional wisdom going around that the IA Dem party actually skewed left of the national party, too, in contrast to the state electorate as a whole. I think the fact that the two Dems who flipped congressional seats– won in a general election– sound more like Biden than Bernie speaks to that.

  129. 129.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Soprano2: I’m completely worn out by all the Bernie supporters claiming that the only way he lost was if the DNC cheated him.  Don’t they realize they sound just like Trump supporters?

    Lindsey Graham@ LindseyGrahamSC

    What are the odds that:most anticipated poll of the year (@DMRegister) is cancelled.

    voting system completely crashes. ….and it has nothing to do with a Bernie blowout and a Biden crash?

  132. 132.

    MomSense

    I’ve been wondering about chain of custody issues for the ballots and tally sheets.  Apparently many of the caucus organizers just took them home with them because they couldn’t report them at the end of the night.

    I guarantee the Sandrnistas will dispute the results and this will be an issue.

  133. 133.

    cokane

    Honestly, this non-result actually gives voters a better perspective on the true importance of Iowa. We were never under any obligation to treat its result as important. It’s a relatively small state, with a relatively small number of delegates. And it’s not a state anyone won by a large enough margin to get a majority share of those delegates.

    People should do what they can to not contribute to any panic or conspiracy thinking about the thing. Caucuses suck, let’s agree. And move on to the larger and more important primaries.

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