I wish I could find something else to write about, but I’m stuck on the Iowa fiasco. Even my usually even-tempered brother texted me last night, angry about how terrible Democrats look. So just look the other way if you are sick of it, because here goes.
Why the FUCK are we at 71% on a Wednesday morning? You realize that we’re counting fewer than 1,700 ballots in the end – the precincts do the tally there, certify it, and send it to the state party. The only artifact caucuses produce is this one piece of paper. Is somebody riding a greased pig to the party HQ carrying the last 30 precincts in a saddlebag?
Why the FUCK did they choose to release partial tallies? This will just encourage shit stirring between the pissed off campaign people. If you’re screwing the pooch, pulling out half way doesn’t make it less of a mistake.
When all this settles down, I think that the natural tendency is going to be something like “OK, Iowa, you shit the bed, but we’ll let you keep first in the nation if you do a primary.” I know some of you think that’s the wrong take, and I hope to hell you’re right, but there are a lot of very influential insiders who sell their “how to win in Iowa” knowledge, and they have a huge stake in the process. We can’t let a lot of hangers on defending their cushy Iowa sinecures run our nominating process.
There’s always going to be a horserace, but the Democrats need to be riding the ponies, not getting trampled by a stampede. Smart media would love a change up in the Presidential race, say, a half dozen “first in the nation” spots that rotate every four years. What an opportunity to have a fresh alternative for new eyeballs who are turned off by the the stale, repetitive insiders-only coverage that Iowa tends to generate. Unfortunately, smart media is not running political coverage at the big networks and papers. The political beat at those places is dominated by Cillizza-level intellects who, like a lot of stupid people, venerate dumb customs like fried Snickers bars and bacon-wrapped corn dogs at the Polk County pig judging contest.
In conclusion, fuck Trump and his pro wrestling SOTU, fuck the gutless Republicans in the Senate, and let’s go knock on doors and give til it hurts for our candidates. Open thread.
Baud
Based on the TV I saw this morning, the preferred GOP/media term is “debacle.”
Betty Cracker
It’s truly mind-boggling, and this fiasco needs to result in significant changes to the process. It was already problematic for a variety of reasons, as everyone knows. Here’s an opportunity to completely overturn it.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
New York Times: even as Trump gave his SOTU while under impeachment, “it was the Democrats who were in disarray”
I split my poor husband’s eardrums in the car this morning.
Jerzy Russian
Hmm, bacon. I. had a bacon wrapped hot dog recently, and it was good. A deep fried Snickers bar seems similar to an orgy: once is curiosity, any more is perversion.
OzarkHillbilly
Yaaaawwwwwnnnnn…..
Dorothy A. Winsor
Last night, I listened to Steve Kornacki give the results he had and I couldn’t make head or tail of them. And I have participated in Iowa caucuses. IMHO, the decision to release several kinds of “winning” numbers was an invitation to chaos and division even before the screw up in reporting the results. And then, partial results? Holy crap. Why would you do that? Are you trying to make everyone even crazier? Do what the Register poll people did. Ignore the clamoring media and do your job right.
Starfish
The media likes to pretend that caucuses are aw-shucks folksy thing where people are really deliberating and hanging with neighbors that they like, but they are not. The last time Presidential caucuses happened in my state, I told my spouse (who wanted to vote for Bernie ?) to have fun because I was not going and was voting for whoever won the Democratic primary over Trump.
Anyway, a lot of people turned out. Traffic was backed up out of the caucus location. People could not get in. The Bernie people felt undercounted or locked out by whoever their precinct captains were, and it all sucked. I texted people laughing at them as I sat at home with my 5 yo.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s how I feel.
Baud
FWIW, for all the legitimate reasons to reform Iowa’s place in the primary system, I don’t think sticking it to consultants is one of them.
JPL
Why is anyone bothering to campaign in NH since Bernie is gonna win there. I’d spend my money elsewhere.
Baud
@JPL:
Second place.
Betty Cracker
@Jerzy Russian: We’re trying to eat healthier because every one of my husband’s siblings (in their 50s) have all suddenly displayed serious health issues. It ain’t easy! Maybe I’ll sneak off to the fair and have bacon-wrapped hot dogs…mmmmm!
tom darga
This is the Fyre Festival of Caucuses.
We are trying to unseat a corrupt incompetent and the Dem party decides to put on a giant show of corrupt incompetence? W. T. F.? “Hey, let’s give this contract to party insiders who can’t even do the job right. Any objections?”
Scott P.
The best answer I’ve seen is the rest of the results are missing or corrupted.
Baud
@tom darga:
There’s nothing corrupt about this situation. It was incompetent, but just a blip compared to what Trump does in a single day.
Jerzy Russian
@zhena gogolia:
Go easy on the poor man. Those drums are probably getting tired after beating several hundred times a second for 170 + years.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I guess I didn’t get the memo, because I thought the word was “clusterfuck”.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Scott P.:
My understanding of the baroque shit show that Iowa calls a caucus is that, no matter what method is used to report results to party HQ, there’s a piece of paper signed by precinct captains and witnesses certifying the results. This has to be retained as an official record. How they fucked that up is beyond me. It’s hard to corrupt a piece of paper, unless you spill on it or something.
Butter Emails
@tom darga:
There’s no singular Dem party. This is totally on the Iowa Democratic Party. They actually implemented the App despite objections by the DNC.
Barbara
MM, It’s time to get unstuck. I don’t think they should have released partial results, but that was due to insane media pressure because of media needs. We waited days and in some cases weeks to get the results of Arizona and California elections in 2018. It’s not only not the end of the world, it’s really not even much of a problem. When you look at the raw numbers in terms of delegates it’s almost laughable that Iowa should or could matter so much. Basically, we have 4 or 5 candidates, and 6 if you count Bloomberg. Nobody — except Buttigieg, IMO — got the kind of boost they wanted. Klobuchar (expected) and Warren (less expected) will have to do better. Steyer and Yang are vanity candidates who are in regardless of their success.
And Sanders did not bring lots of new, young voters into the fold with increases in turnout. But that was always pie in the sky.
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t know about you, but I find it quite easy to resist bacon-wrapped hot dogs. In fact, if you offered me one I would be offended.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Baud:
Just to be clear, my point wasn’t to stick it to consultants, just to ignore their cries of anguish when the process gets changed. I would never formulate a plan to stick it to them, because they’re like roaches, we’re never rid of them.
Also, speaking of consultants, apparently Plouffe’s firm, ABACUS, was an investor/launch partner in Shadow, the firm that created the app. I generally think Plouffe is pretty good, but damn, buddy, he sure fucked up there.
Chris Johnson
@Scott P.: That would make sense if the election is being aggressively thrown from the get-go with heavy cheating and Putin’s thumb on the scales.
This is not the same thing as saying we’re going to get beaten, but I think a lot of people have no idea how many hands are on the steering wheel. Adam Silverman’s been talking about this.
As I see it, it’s not just Putin. Putin is doctoring things in one direction, using Bernie again, and trying to set up a ‘flip table, go home, sulk’ narrative among the left. His real purpose is to make as many people as possible, scorn the Dems and think they’re worse than Trump (which takes some doing!). Meanwhile, several different billionaires are also trying to doctor the process as hard as THEY possibly can, and the Dem establishment would really like to doctor it in such a way that things stay stable and predictable, but they’re seriously outmatched and capable of doing their own table-flipping if an outsider candidate outmaneuvers them… ESPECIALLY if that outsider is clearly and obviously in the pay of Russia… while the left is being told that there is no such thing as even being in the pay of Russia. There is no such thing as Russia! There is only vodka, and good will, and pretty women! o_O
This all is bonkers. I hope I survive all of it and I hope somebody someday tells the story.
For the record, I like Warren’s strategy here: no infighting, just dump on Trump along Bernie-esque ‘privileged malefactor’ lines. Bottom line is, Trump has been a complete asshole and is now a collapsing ruin and STILL an asshole, and the country needs to fall into the hands of the Democrats so we can try to put the wreckage back together. I can accept becoming a failed empire and just another country on the block (granted, a big one). I cannot accept seeing us deteriorate into some Afghanistan.
Governing is NOT THAT HARD. We are just getting fucked with, tirelessly, because we are in a new kind of war and taking it on the chin.
Amir Khalid
@Scott P.:
Then the only right thing to do is junk the entire caucus and hold a proper primary.
OzarkHillbilly
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
Give trump a sharpie and he’ll have it corrupted in about 2 seconds.
cleek
i’m amazed by how much angst this caused.
a state with 1/100th the population of the entire US held a nonsensical farce of a process that will tell us nothing at all about the state of anything, and people are shitting themselves because they don’t have the results RIGHT NOW!!!
settle down, Beavis.
schrodingers_cat
Typical of BS supporters to demand changes that they think will favor their candidate, then when it doesn’t favor their candidate whine about how they are being robbed by the Democratic party. The caucus reporting is more complicated this year because Iowa Ds instituted the changes demanded by BS team after 2016.
His aim is to destroy the Ds from within just like the other candidate supported by GRU did to the Rs.
Jerzy Russian
@Betty Cracker: There is a place down the road that is split into two parts. One part specializes in Texas BBQ, and the other half has deep fried items. On the menu there is fried chicken skins. I just had to try them of course. They were good to try once….
Baud
@download my app in the app store mistermix: Ok, I agree with that.
@Amir Khalid: I hope it doesn’t come to that, but when Obama won, two big states, Michigan and Florida, were not counted at all because they didn’t follow the rules.
Of course, Hillary made clear that she was not going to try to undercut Obama, so it was a different situation than the one we are facing today.
flyingwatertanker
Maybe it was just a dopey, preventable software problem. Where 346 people didn’t die. Maybe that’s progress.
SW
No the god damn pig farmers do NOT get to keep their first in the nation status. It skews the entire process in the wrong direction. We are a multi-cultural party and Iowa is a monoculture. Its not their fault but we shouldn’t have to dance to their tune and fuck them for making us do it.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@schrodingers_cat: Um, nope. Writing down two sets of results instead of one on a piece of paper and calling it into the Democratic HQ would have meant an extra few operators on duty.
It’s the use of an idiotic app that’s the problem. CNN et al wanted to hype the first set of results so the app was supposed to give them moment-by-moment coverage. Too bad, so sad, it didn’t work.
delk
At first glance I thought you wrote Iowa Disco.
MattF
@Barbara: Good point about media pressure. People in the news business are practiced at bullying and manipulation. It’s quite possible that the Iowa Dems were lambs led to slaughter.
TS (the original)
@Baud:
Yet to the republicans & the political media this is far worse than blackmailing the leader of a country to investigate your political enemies.
@Scott P.:
I thought I read yesterday (sorry no link) that whoever is responsible for collating/counting the votes (& who that is I do not know) was going to drive around the state collecting the results from each precinct where there was a caucus held. Perhaps this is what is causing the delay.
CaseyL
“No clear winner” in Iowa is no big deal – though Wilmer’s second place makes me smile. Four years, tens of thousands of cultish supporters, a steady income stream, AND a caucus structure jiggered to favor him, and he still couldn’t do better than a second-place plurality? Hahahahahahaha.
Super Tuesday is still the one that matters.
Belafon
In 2012, it took Republicans two weeks to determine the winner. Iowa has determined the Democratic nominee 5 out of 9 times since 1972, thus it doesn’t mean who wins but more so who goes onto the next rounds.
Chill.
schrodingers_cat
This is much ado about nothing. Whining and complaining and shitting on the D voters who you need to win the nomination is an excellent strategy by BS supporters. Please proceed.
सब याद रखा जायेगा
सब कुछ याद रखा जायेगा
waspuppet
Courtesy of the Iowa Democratic Party, the final score of the Super Bowl: Kansas City 31!
Barbara
@MattF: Iowa has very few delegates. Its “role” in selecting a candidate, from an objective standpoint, is small. This is about narrative and momentum. I am sure it’s a bummer that all those already written stories about who had a bad night, yada yada yada had to be shelved.
Belafon
@download my app in the app store mistermix: and there’s no way the party can force the state to change the date. And if the state doesn’t want to pay for the primary, then Democrats will have to pay for it, which will be way more expensive.
Barbara
@CaseyL: Although this year it is likely to be more muddled because it includes California.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Exactly. Having to wait a couple of days for the results of an election is not an earth shattering tragedy.
This reminds me of the media meltdown when ACA website was launched. Junior Broder Ezra Klein led the charge of the light (vacuous) brigade against the bad bad website.
Betty Cracker
@Barbara: You’re exactly right; it is about narrative and momentum. Unfortunately, given our debased political environment, that bullshit is super important. I feel sorry for the candidates and volunteers who spent millions of dollars and countless hours slogging through Iowa only to have this absurd result. It’s not worthy of their efforts.
the Conster
@schrodingers_cat:
They don’t think they need the Obama/Hillary voters to win. They’ve made that clear. They don’t want them, don’t think they need them, haven’t asked for them, and aren’t going to get them. I’ve told all the Berniebrats I know to get busy converting the MAGAs they know to replace the votes they’re not getting from me and millions of others. That’s their strategy, right? They think they’re going to take hostages as part of their strategy, but that ain’t happening.
The Moar You Know
We’re just getting pasted by the press. And that shit matters. It shouldn’t, but there’s plenty of morons who vote out there, and they look to the media for direction. And right now the media is telling them that we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing.
chopper
caucuses are hot messes by definition. making them even more complex and stupid, as bernie’s camp demanded after 2016, makes them even hotter messes.
rp
Reducing Iowa’s role as kingmaker/narrative setter and perhaps putting the final nail in the coffin of caucuses is a great outcome IMO. What’s the problem?
schrodingers_cat
@The Moar You Know: Mission accomplished for the non-D running in our primaries.
Baud
@The Moar You Know:
It’s literally impossible (in the Steve in the ATL sense) for us not to get pasted by the press for something, whether real or manufactured. One lesson we can learn from the GOP is how to deal with it with some composure. I think that matters to voters too. That’s why they liked No Drama Obama.
Baud
@rp:
The discrediting of caucus is nearly universal at this point. It’s amazing to see.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I do miss the time when the President was not a national embarrassment, embarrassing us daily.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Except for tan suit days. Otherwise, I agree.
Jinchi
Any time someone claims that the DNC has rigged the Democratic election, just remind them that Republicans cancelled primaries in Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Kansas, Nevada, South Carolina, and Virginia (despite there being 3 Republican challengers), in order to be sure that Trump was the only viable candidate.
zhena gogolia
Amusing Bloomberg clip
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: He should have worn a leather jacket instead! Can you imagine the MSM meltdown?
Baud
@Jinchi:
Absolutely. But the one caveat is don’t implicitly concede that the DNC rigged anything. Call it what it is, a conspiracy theory.
Steeplejack (phone)
@the Conster:
I can’t remember if I saw this here last night, but it’s worth repeating, about the Sandernistas. Comments are hilarious, as often on Twitter. (“The snarl of a man whose father will make sure you never work in midtown publishing again.”)
BellyCat
More weirdness: The Des Moines online results are up, but Warren isn’t on their map (viewing on mobile)?!?!
Betty Cracker
Biden must be thanking sweet merciful Jeebus for the caucus cock-up. Otherwise, the top story would be how the “most electable” candidate got pasted, assuming the current trends stand.
Felanius Kootea
My brother sent me this anti-Trump ad from Eleven Films (I’d never heard of them). It uses Adam Schiff’s words during the impeachment trial to powerful effect.
MattF
@zhena gogolia: He’s right. People should keep banging away at Trump’s lies. It’s tough because there are so many, but necessary. The cultists insist that he never lies, the absurdity of this attitude has to be put up front.
Jinchi
Especially since it isn’t winner-take-all. Whether Bernie wins by a couple of extra delegates, ties with Pete or loses by a couple, the result will be virtually identical. The only really useful outcome of the Iowa caucus is to weed out non-competitive candidates (Steyer, Tulsi, Wang, Patrick etc.). At this point only Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders, Warren and possibly Klobuchar can claim to have a real chance at the nomination.
rivers
@Baud:
Completely agree. This seems huge right now, but a week is a lifetime in politics. Because the stakes are so big for this election, we have a tendency to panic when something goes wrong. But precisely because the stakes are so big, we need to show confidence that we’re on the right side, that people are right to trust us with the future. This is not the time to indulge ourselves in self-pity and despair.
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud:
Thank you. The DNC does not run these elections; the state and local parties do. I am currently managing 21 pre-primary ward elections in our county and it’s damn difficult to do, although thankfully not caucus-level difficult. We’re ALL volunteers, with the good and…challenging…that brings. There are always complications and unforeseen events, no matter how thoroughly you prepare. The conspiracy-mongers have clearly never run a thing in their lives.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: Biden is everyone’s third choice.
Mai naem mobile
Why can’t Iowa just have a regular primary or ranked choice primary? Keep their stupid first in the nation status but not this caucus crap. I am worried ifs going to get down to Bloomberg vs Sanders by the time they come to Arizona. Warren better make it to AZ.
zhena gogolia
Wow, Bloomberg’s twitter feed fact-checked the SOTU in real time last night.
https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
MomSense
My objection to Iowa is and has always been that caucuses are anti-democratic. My objection to Iowa going first is that it is one of the states which is least representative of the Democratic Party and the nation.
Until this year they have always run their caucuses well. The big lesson from this debacle is DON’T NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS. The Sanders campaign insisted on major changes to the caucus process and reporting which were intended to give Sanders an advantage and solve a non existent problem from the 2016 caucus results. The problem is that Sanders didn’t like them. Desperate to prove a Russian disinformation campaign they liked, they forced these impossible changes on the Iowa Democratic Party. We all went along with the bullshit Sanders campaign demands because they were holding a unified convention hostage. They didn’t keep their side of the deal. I’m shocked, shocked that they didn’t.
They are now blaming the chaos they created on the DNC and using it to fuel more of their fucked up resentment and paranoid persecution fantasies.
They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be counted on. The more we do to please them the worse it will get.
O. Felix Culpa
QFT. And everything else you said as well.
Jinchi
I think the only reason they keep the caucus is to keep the first-in-the-nation spot. New Hampshire has decreed (by law) that it must be the first primary. I don’t know why the rest of us should care what New Hampshire law says, but Iowa and NH have basically reached a detente by agreeing “you get to be first caucus, I get to be first primary”.
Iowa coming to it’s senses and moving to a primary system would be a declaration of war.
WaterGirl
@BellyCat: It’s true. Warren is in the lists, but she and Yang are not on the map.
delk
Meanwhile republicans in South Carolina are encouraging their people to vote for Sanders.
Betty Cracker
@MattF: Not a fan of Biden at all, but I hope he can buck up his donors enough to keep Bloomberg from becoming a real factor rather than a sideshow. A Bloomberg-Sanders race for the nomination would be a nightmare on multiple levels.
OzarkHillbilly
@The Moar You Know:
Right now the media is running a Get Smart marathon every Tuesday evening from 7-midnight, and an F Troop marathon on Weds nights (same time) and Adam’s Family on Thursdays.
JPL
@zhena gogolia: I saw and howled. He didn’t even hesitate
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Don’t forget the bowing days.
rp
@Betty Cracker: that’s why I don’t get the Pete conspiracy theories among the Berniebros. Pete was always expected to do well in Iowa, so it’s hard to see how this situation helps him or why he would have needed to “rig” the outcome. If anyone sabotaged the caucuses, it was Biden because it buries the story of his weak showing. (Note: I am NOT saying Biden played any role in this.)
Jinchi
Well Pete was left off the last poll, so it’s only fair that someone else gets left off the map. Plus it looks like they just ran out of shades of blue to identify candidates. Do they not have reds, greens or yellows at the DMRegister? Looking at that map I honestly can’t figure out who is leading anywhere.
Betty Cracker
@Jinchi: I read that about NH having a law too, and I don’t understand how that works. The DNC enforces the rules about state order. I understand the DNC doesn’t want to piss off any state, but it shows its teeth when it has to; it threw out millions of primary votes in FL and MI in 2008 when those states tried to jump the line. Won’t the DNC have to wade in an fix this shit, NH “law” be damned?
Kent
Yawn……
In two weeks everyone will have forgotten Iowa. We will all have moved on to super Tuesday and the next big Trump horror.
Betty Cracker
@rp: I don’t think Buttigieg was expected to win, was he? IIRC, the polls showed Sanders and Biden at the top.
Spanky
@MomSense: That is the most cogent and bang-on explanation of where we are today than anything I’ve read
Edited: “Where we are today”. Damned fingers …
zhena gogolia
@JPL:
I’m no fan of Bloomberg, or of people buying power, but goddammit we have to stop this Devil! If Bloomberg can do it, so be it. He’s the only one really taking the wood to Drumpf, as far as I can see. Focus, people!!!!
Mo MacArbie
@BellyCat: I read that to mean that she wasn’t first in any county.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Berners will probably say this is an eleven-dimensional chess move to make people think they want to run against Bernie, when in reality….
The Truffle
@Betty Cracker: Honestly, I can’t see Bloomberg as the nominee. It’s fun to watch him troll Trump (“who’s the second billionaire?”), but he would be more useful contributing to campaigns and funding ads.
Yes, I live in NYC. No, I didn’t vote for Bloomberg.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: You can get state legislators to vote in favor of all sorts of things, particularly if they don’t cost anything. My fave is the legislated value of pi.
JPL
@zhena gogolia: If he stopped at next year elect a real leader this would be a good bloomberg
Aleta
Excuse the repeat if this information about Shadow Inc. (produced the app) and its (well-funded) main backer Acronym is already well-known.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: I think that infamous DMR poll that was spiked because of complaints from the Buttigieg campaign showed him winning, and somebody on twitter said he flooded local TV with ads the weekend ahead of the caucus.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: He should not have been allowed to run as D again.
Another Scott
I was listening to Jane O’Brien’s BBC reporting on Iowa and the SotU speech. I used to like her a lot, based on her presentation skills and interviews that I’ve seen her give, but I was flabbergasted by her reporting. It was incredibly sloppy. Manchin and Jones are “moderate Republicans”. Donnie is having a “tremendous week” as a result of Iowa and the acquittal today. How he’s on the road to re-election because the economy is doing “great”. Nothing but horse-race stuff. No context, no reporting on the implications and recent election results (fired up Democrats independent of the tempest in a teapot in Iowa).
Just really, really bad.
Cheers,
Scott.
rp
@Betty Cracker: I don’t think he was expected to win, but my understanding is that he was known to have a good ground game in Iowa and that it was considered his strongest state. IOW, looking at this objectively and rationally (and I know that’s asking a lot of online berniebros), his win shouldn’t be that surprising.
Jinchi
@Betty Cracker: Polls for Iowa were all over the place, mainly with the top 3 (Sanders, Biden, Buttigieg) clustered closely. Warren exceeded her polls, Biden missed by a lot. I think Sanders and Buttigieg did about as well as predicted on the first count. Buttigieg surged in the second count.
zhena gogolia
Alexandra Petri nails it.
germy
randy khan
@Steeplejack (phone):
These are the same people who said it was blackmail to bring up SCOTUS in 2016, right?
Geminid
E Warren has a lot of good plans. I wish she would pound her Green New Deal more. Climate policy is a winning issue both in the primaries and in the general, and her plan contrasts well with both Biden’s ( half-hearted) and Sanders’, which uses climate change as an excuse for massive disruption that won’t work and would not be politically sustainable. Her plan is well thought out and emphasizes the positive: stimulating the new green economy, expanding U.S.D.A. conservation programs 10-fold, increasing weatherization funding. Infrastructure investment. Jobs. She could claim the issue, say she has the best , most effective plan, and let Sanders try to refute it.
Aleta
You could say this song is not OT (App-related).
On vimeo, w/ video directed by Ewen Wright Gideon Irving – Woke Up Lookin
eta trivia: did not use CGI or green screen
germy
Miss Bianca
@Steeplejack (phone): All the responses on that Twitter thread are hilarious, but the one that almost made me snort coffee out my nose was: “Children of the farm-to-table corn”.
Omnes Omnibus
@rp: But Biden was never expected to do well in Iowa. His campaign knew it and all but blew it off. He is also not expected to do well in NH. If he does poorly in SC, it will be time for his campaign to worry.
Jinchi
I don’t think anyone wants more candidates at this point. Let’s round it down to a top two and see who can get a majority of Democrats behind them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Aleta: Did you ever try to read a quote this long on a phone?
dnfree
@Betty Cracker: amen to everything here. When I looked at the manual calculation for dividing up the delegates among the candidates, I thought there is no way this has been done correctly in every caucus location every year. Releasing those numbers will just prove that, I think. I bet that’s what they’re trying to fix. “Rounding” versus truncating versus next higher whole number is the problem.
JPL
@Omnes Omnibus: Republicans are encouraging folks to cross over and vote for Bernie.
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack (phone): The other day when you were not around I shared some videos of Waheeda Rahman on her 82 birthday.
Besides being in Gurudutt’s Pyaasa, Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam and Kagaz ke Phool. Her other memorable movies include Guide (with Dev Anand) and Teesri Kasam (with Raj Kapoor) where she plays a dancer. She is an accomplished kathak dancer.
GPW
Iowa hasn’t released the caucus results for the last 30% because they don’t have them. Some number of people relied too heavily on the phone app and didn’t properly write everything down. When they lost the phone app results, they were screwed.
Just my wild conspiracy theory, but its never wrong to first assume incompetence as a cause of anything.
Betty Cracker
@The Truffle: You’re probably right, but it worries me. Someone (Kay, maybe?) pointed out the other day that Bloomberg has kind of an under the radar ground game via the partnerships he formed with mayors nationwide with his gun reform initiatives (and good for him for that work). History says a campaign like Bloomberg’s is unlikely to gain traction, but who knows these days?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Seeing a lot of “Tom Perez must resign! The DNC better get its act together! How will the DNC stop this from happening again! How ill the DNC stop this from happening in Nevada?! ” I don’t know…. talk to the Nevada Dem party and ask them?
If I, a dumb rando of the internets, get the difference between national and state parties, why is it so hard for people who are paid to go on the television (“gobshites!” as Pierce reminds us) to grok that?
MattF
@zhena gogolia: NYT:
Yes, precisely.
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You’re not being paid to be stupid.
rp
@Omnes Omnibus: Exactly, which is why he would have had the most to gain from creating this situation and should be the more logical target for conspiracy theories. (AGAIN, I don’t think Biden had anything to do with it.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@sdhays: you mean I’m doing it for free! God dammit!
OT:
germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I wonder if he’ll simply ignore the subpoena.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: I’d say it’s fifty/fifty. He clearly wants to talk, but he’s still a right wing nut job.
So… shrug emoji
SiubhanDuinne
O/T, but CNN just announced that Sen Doug Jones (D – Profiles in Courage) will vote to remove Trump from office.
Good for him.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Even Louisiana rage-fetus Jim Carville was calling for Perez’s head on CNN last night, and you’d think he would know the damned difference! Perez is a mixed bag for sure, and it’s certainly fair to question why he went so far to accommodate the Sanders anger-bears with new caucus rules, etc., even if one understands why he felt he had to do that. But yeah, holding him responsible for state-level decision-making is dumb and counterproductive.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Why wouldn’t the House continue to do its job? The Senate is broken under the GOP. The House under Nancy isn’t.
Eyes on the prizes…
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@MattF: I didn’t watch anything but the various clips, but I thought she looked shaking mad in at least one of them, and I imagine it took every bit of her self control to sit there while he bloviated.
Another Scott
@SiubhanDuinne: +1
Excellent. He might not win re-election (but he still might!), but doing the right thing shouldn’t be optional for Senators.
Cheers,
Scott.
Spanky
Rhetorical, surely, else I’ll be tempted to exhume Sinclair Lewis once again.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I was sure he would. I think he’s the kind of person (patriot) who do that very thing, if he thought it was the right thing to do, even if he were absolutely certain that it would mean he would lose the election.
Too bad the Rs don’t have anyone with backbone or integrity.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker:
Thank you, Betty!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: Perez should stay the hell off TV, that’s for damn sure.
Somebody tweeted something yesterday about how nobody knows what the hell the DNC does– ‘glorified party planners’, i.e. the convention. I went looking for what the DNC does a couple of weeks ago, and the only thing I could come up with was $6M program for paid young organizers, which is big, it’s the kind of things Rs do, not relying on volunteers, and all three candidates for DNC Chair had this proposal, and it took two years to put it together. We don’t have the Rs limitless cash.
But somebody at the DNC, or some non-controversial ex DNC bigwig, ought to do some kind of “This is what we do” piece that people can circle around. Berners will still believe they’re a malevolent tri-lateral commission type, but if it could at least put a brake on the twitter/cable hysterics, it would be useful
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I read on leftist Indian Twitter yesterday that DNC is going to vote for the Orange One to keep the St. Sanders from getting the nomination.
It made zero sense, I didn’t even know where to start, so I muted that account.
Gravenstone
Before diving into the comments, I just wanted to note that there is a giant banner ad for the fucking Moonies at the top of the page. Maybe someone needs to nudge the ad service about their alleged standards?
J R in WV
@TS (the original):
That would be the stupidist possible way of accumulating the results into a central location, especially when compared to how long it would take every caucus organizer to take their paperwork to HQ, that shouldn’t take more than a few hours total.
Doesn’t it take weeks for a candidate to visit every county in Iowa? Granted that would be a slower process than just stopping at every county for the precinct documents for that county, but still…
Is no one allowed to think for a moment about problem solving in Iowa? Do the fumes from pig lots cause a major drop in IQ? Is the GRU in charge of this process? CNN demands answers!
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: But that take would also be wrong. I thought “tanking” meant under 15%. Sure, it wasn’t a great showing but it’s also the case that too many campaigns spend disproportionately on Iowa because that’s what winning a caucus requires. Biden didn’t do that and his natural constituents are probably less likely to have time and energy for the caucus format. The real “loser” from that perspective is probably Warren, who put in the time and energy and got bested by two others.
So, let’s be happy that it seems like, first or not, it is now blindingly clear that Iowa won’t be a bellwether this year. Too bad, so sad.
Steeplejack
@schrodingers_cat:
Thanks! I missed that.
Marcopolo
@Betty Cracker:But also history tells us advertising/propaganda works and Bloomberg is throwing unprecedented funds into advertising across all the platforms. In case you missed it (and this is anecdata so take it for what its worth), on Monday I was at a GOTV postcard writing event and within earshot I had 3 fellow Indivisible folks indicate they were Bloomberg curious–based on the ads they had seen. That was discouraging. I suggested they go read up on what he’s done over he past 20 years and maybe view it through the lens of a person of color living in NYC at the time.
tom darga
@Baud:
It’s an embarrassing fiasco regardless of how it looks relative to Trump. If your main election argument is that “We are more honest and competent that that guy”, it REALLY hurts to have any episode that makes you look both corrupt and incompetent.
Maybe the blame is entirely the Iowa Dems and maybe the reality behind the fact that the contract was given to party insiders isn’t as bad as it appears … but in elections appearances matters and this is a shit show.
Steeplejack
@Betty Cracker:
I think the thing about Bloomberg is that, because 2016 left us gun-shy about everything, a lot of people fear that Bloomberg could slide into the nomination in a parallel-universe version of how Trump did it to the Republicans last time.
Steeplejack
@Miss Bianca:
Almost everything on Twitter is better because of the comments.
Kent
You would rather have him running as a Green like Nader? Or as an independent like Ross Perot?
Betty Cracker
@Barbara: The Biden people are spinning it that way, but donors are skittish. They didn’t see a fourth-place finish coming (if that holds).
@Marcopolo: Excellent point. I’ve watched a fair amount of sporting events over the last month, and Bloomberg ads are wall to wall.
Aleta
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sorry for the inconvenience. In the past some people here asked for text instead of links if paywalled, which also seemed reasonable to me. I have a request of you too, but I’ll leave it for another time.
Jinchi
This doesn’t surprise me. He won his seat on a campaign rallying African Americans, knowing that the odds were 10-1 against him. That showed courage enough. It might be long odds on his re-election too, but no Trump supporter would vote for him over a Republican candidate just because he voted to acquit. On the other hand, many in his own base think Trump deserves to be in jail.
J R in WV
@Gravenstone:
That is probably technically a campaign ad for Tulsi Gabbard, who was — wait, stop. She was raised in the Krishna movement, not the Moonie movement. Never mind!
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: I can believe that donors are skittish. I just don’t see Buttigieg as a realistic alternative, and I assume that after Super Tuesday, it will be clearer whether Warren has any realistic hope either.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
Actually, election standards in the US have no method for “Not Allowed” to run, with the possible exception of a plea agreement not to run again after a conviction of election laws. But as much as I hate Senator Sanders and his campaign, he doesn’t appear to have been caught conspiring to violate those laws and rules.
BellyCat
@Jinchi: Who knew that people in Iowa were apparently entirely colorblind. WTF?!?! The fact that this still remains so flawed is simply further proof that the entire thing is run by not highly competent people.
BellyCat
@Mo MacArbie: if that’s true, how did she get delegates? Not saying that this is not possible, just that I have been trying to decipher the rules now for days and still have very little clue about how this idiotic caucus thing truly works!
WaterGirl
@Gravenstone: We’re back to the old ad people who don’t have any standards. :-)
That happened after the new ad people didn’t like our swears.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Barbara: agreed on all points. I’m torn between Warren and Biden and wondering if I’m gonna have to wind up voting for Bernie or Bloomberg.
J R in WV
I didn’t watch much of the Trump speech last night. Too bad he didn’t have a speech garble that went on for 20 or 30 seconds. But almost as good was having First-Third-First Lady Melania install the American Medal of Freedom on Rush Limblad’s Hoary neck. That went smoother than I expected, given that Melania isn’t qualified nor authorized to award a medal like that.
I also noticed that the Joint Chiefs all managed to be statues, immobile figures throughout the speech.
I seems to be really sleepy, yet I need to go to town to run errands of all sorts. Perhaps a brief nap before firing up the SUV truck. . . . Ya’ll wish me luck on that mission, please!
Barbara
@J R in WV: My thought on the Rush episode is that he is indeed very ill. My brother lasted exactly three weeks after getting a similar diagnosis. Stage IV lung cancer by definition means it has spread to other organs. Liver and brain are the most common organs for lung cancer metastasis. The only treatment that seems to provide hope is IF your particular tumor is susceptible to immunotherapy based treatments. If so, (it’s the minority that are) even metastases can be held in abeyance.
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t want either for vastly different reasons, although, if you look at it from a “what will happen next perspective,” I don’t actually see Bernie accomplishing what he wants, and thus, not really giving us a different outcome from Bloomberg. But it says terrible things about our process were Bloomberg to win.
Betty Cracker
@Barbara: & @Jim, Foolish Literalist: You both make excellent points. For me personally, having to choose between Bloomberg and Sanders is the stuff of nightmares and would probably get me exiled from the blog! ;-)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Barbara: god help me, I think Bloomberg is the stronger candidate vs trump and has more of a chance at having coattails than Sanders
a month ago I thought he was setting his own money on fire at the altar of his ego, now…. ? ? ? ?
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Some people get in it for one reason, but get that whiff of possibility, and suddenly everything changes.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: Yup, I’d put Buttigieg, and Bernie ’16, in that category
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: In my heart of hearts, I wish both Sanders and Biden had sat it out, even if they strongly advocated for a candidate that best embodied their own political positions. I want Trump gone. I don’t need any other reason to vote for someone. I think Bloomberg is less likely to alienate swing voters for the midterms and subsequent elections.
Elizabelle
@Barbara: Agreed. I think Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Amy Klobuchar all would have done way better without the two aged white men in there. Enough.
Betty Cracker
@Barbara: Couldn’t agree more about wishing Sanders and Biden had sat 2020 out. I’ll go further and say I think they’re both selfish old farts who have no business running for one of the most difficult jobs on the planet at nearly 80 years old, and if either of them cared about the issues more than their gigantic egos, they’d throw their support to someone else to carry their respective torches. But that’s how egos work, I guess: they think they alone can do it.
You and Jim are probably right about Bloomberg and swing voters. But I also agree with what you said above: a Bloomberg nomination would say terrible things about our process. I really don’t want to have to choose between a somewhat benign oligarch and an incompetent lefty crank in the Democratic primary.
Be Bernie's Valentine
If it was Warren who was neck and neck with mayor cheat, the tune played by this liberal gateway pundit commentariat would be altogether different.
Schmendrick
@BellyCat: I think I can explain the DMR map (based on my familiarity with the Nevada caucus rules — for these purposes I think the rules are similar enough.)
A candidate will get delegates based on the number of people who chose him/her as long as that candidate meets the threshold of viability. For example (using made up numbers) if a precinct is allocated 5 delegates, and 100 people show up, then there is roughly one delegate per 20 caucus goers. In this case, a candidate needs at least 10 caucus goers to be viable. I scrolled through all of the county data at the DMR site, and it appears to me that while Elizabeth Warren did not win a plurality of delegates in any particular county, she she came in second or third in most of the larger counties, which explains how she finished with more than Biden and Klobuchar (who did manage to win a plurality in a couple smaller counties; and thus show up on the map depicting county “winners”.
J R in WV
@Mo MacArbie:
Pretty sure Iowa awards delegates proportionally, not winner take all. So actually, not being first in a county only moves the needle a tiny bit. And if the top 4 candidates are close, they all get nearly the same delegate count. I think…
burnspbesq
Good f’in grief, y’all- GET A GRIP.
Every California election is worse than this. It takes weeks to count all the mail-in and provisional ballots. We all got used to logging on to the Secretary of State website a few minutes after 5 every business day to get the latest update.
Jeez …