Iowa Caucus confusion

What I heard was something about the app not being tested properly and it was an issue with the development of the app nothing else.

No, I do not think it is anything nefarious. Merely incompetent.

And I am SURE that the most rabid Bernie supporters will agree with the conspiracy theory idea and use it as an excuse if he doesn’t do as well in later primaries. So yeah—this sucks all around. We do not need a repeat of 2016. 

FTR, the DNC does not run the Iowa Caucuses. The Iowa Democratic Party does. 

From now on anytime something wonky happens, I think a lot of us are going to go straight to "election tampering" whether it is or isn't. We shouldn't have to be worrying about this shit.

I agree.

This is from the LA Times:


"On a tense, chaotic night, with the eyes of the nation trained on the Iowa caucuses, that state’s Democratic Party was counting on a slick new smartphone app to make everything go smoothly.



The app was coded by a tech firm run by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, one of them a former Google engineer. It was designed to meet new requirements instituted after that year’s contentious Iowa caucuses, in which Clinton narrowly edged out Bernie Sanders. To provide more transparency this time around, the state party promised to report not just the final results but voters’ initial and second choices as well."

Full disclosure - not a Hilary fan. But this is politics - there is always, ALWAYS a connection. I don't believe there was any tampering. Just incompetence.  LA Times

Phooey..

I was going to ignore this but I’m really tired of misinformation being spread. We get enough of it from the right without the left chiming in with their version.

The DNC did not set out to sabotage the Sanders Campaign.

Sanders, who had never run a national campaign before, did not put in place the ground game he needed to win the nomination.  His greatest strength was not from registered Democrats but from independents who wanted to vote for Sanders in a Democratic Primary.   For whatever reason the Democrats in some states have closed primaries, some Democrats have open primaries and some states have a version of an open/closed primary.  And these versions were put into place long before Sanders decided to become a Democrat and run for President.  And for some reason some of his supporters couldn’t figure out how to register to vote as an independent and get a Democratic ballot.

Some of his supporters whined about CA so I decided to see how hard was it for an Independent to get a Democratic Ballot in California.   On  the online form there is a question “If you are an independent and want a Democratic Ballot check here”. Really hard.

It was at this time Sanders started to repeat over and over again “let the people vote”

What he should have done is have some sort of “get out the vote” ground game in each state to help these budding Bernie Bros register to vote so they would get a Democratic Ballot.   

As far as the emails go. Kurt Eichenwald a reporter for Newsweek at the time pointed out the date the “offending” email were written.  He pointed out it was May 2016 when both the DNC and the Clinton campaigns switched from primary mode to general election mode.  By May, it became clear Hillary would get the nomination because after each primary Sanders was not cutting Hillary’s lead and all the polls showed that Hillary would win CA, which Sanders needed if he had any chance of getting the nomination.  Premature on the part of the DNC and the Clinton Campaign maybe, but by then the dye had already been casted.

What Sanders did, even before the emails were released, was lead his supporters to believe that the “fix was in” against him even though that wasn’t the case.  That “they” set up the primaries so they would favor Hillary over Sanders , even though the states decided what type of primary they would have long before Sanders became a candidate.  A candidate who’s support consisted mostly of Independents and not Democrats in a Democratic primary.  Then there were the “super delegates” who in the end didn’t matter much because Hillary had 3M or so more votes than Sanders.  

The bottom line was the Democrats voted for Hillary in the Democratic Primary and Sanders did nothing or very little to make sure his independent supporters knew what to do to register or re-register so they could vote for him in the  Democratic primary in their state.

Sanders was a sore loser and many of his supporters were even more of a sore loser than he was.

Don’t believe any of this, ask google and do your homework.

Partial results:

Buttigieg 26.9%
Sanders 25.1%
Warren 18.3%
Biden 15.6%
Klobuchar 12.6%

blue no matter who. i can get behind Buttigieg if necessary.

As has been pointed out by CNN people, the Iowa caucus system is extremely transparent and public. Every caucus had vote totals announced throughout the evening and everyone who was at one would know what those were if they stayed till the end. Reporter pointed out that they knew who won the caucuses they were covering. And one mentioned that they thought every major campaign had a person at each of the 1700+ caucuses, which means those totals could have been relayed to the campaign headquarters - which kind of explains Mayor Pete being pretty confident that he had done well.

There is also a paper trail to support those vote totals.

But, there will be people who continue to question.

BERNIE people will question it. 

Bernie is NOT a Democrat.

He’s using the resources of the DNC, plain and simple.

Why is it fair for him to do that when he’s an independent!?!

It’s crazy that the Bernie supporters seem to forget this little factoid when they’re raking Dems over the coals screaming how unfair the Democratic Party treats Independent Bernie Sanders. 🙄🙄🙄🙄

Since Bernie is an independent, will the DNC ever make him the nominee?