February 4, 2020

"7:40 AM Sen. Durbin says it’s time for Iowa caucuses to end/7:35 AM Howard Dean says Iowa shouldn’t be first caucus anymore..."

I'm reading headlines at the Washington Post.

You see what they are doing? They're blaming Iowa. It's not the fault of the Democratic Party. It's Iowa's fault. After the citizens of Iowa put up with all that interaction with candidates swarming the state for the past year (and more) and after they showed up for this elaborate nighttime gathering in groups in gyms and showing support with their bodies, they are blamed for the screwup of the party!

The other blame-shifting I'm seeing is: The computers did it. There was an app and it somehow caused all the trouble. Reminiscent of Hillary's wipe-it-with-a-cloth computer problems. I really don't want to hear excuses that have to do with computers getting things wrong. This cannot have been a complicated app, and the backup was to use the phones, yet they want to blame the phone lines too! It's just not credible.

AND: There's also room to blame the Clintons: "Tech firm started by Clinton campaign veterans is linked to Iowa caucus reporting debacle" (LA Times):
An app created by a tech firm run by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign is taking heat for the unprecedented delay in reporting Democratic caucus results from Iowa. The firm behind the app reportedly is Shadow....

“When a light is shining, Shadows are a constant companion,” its website says....

255 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   201 – 255 of 255
Seeing Red said...

Paper ballots.

No hanging chads or inventions.

How hard can this be?

Seeing Red said...

Indentions.

Hand count.

Original Mike said...

"Here’s the deal: this is taking forever because the data are 100% corrupted and they can’t track down all the original ballots, which were never secured and have zero chain of custody verification, for a manual recount. Even odds that they nuke the entire election at this point. - Some blue check"

Yeah, it's beginning to look that way.

The democrats are in luck. Robert Mueller recently became available. He could get to the bottom of this.

Jim at said...

It would take a heart of stone not to laugh.
Fortunately, that's not me.

Seeing Red said...

What are the odds they’ll keep counting until they get the result they want?

This is right out of their playbook since 2000.

Seeing Red said...

This is what they are and what they do.

It finally blows back.

Jim at said...

Who else would you blame other than Iowa? It is their caucus. - ARM

Well, considering the Republicans had no such problem, maybe you could put a finer point on your blame other than just Iowa.

Hint: It's starts with a D.

Seeing Red said...

Silly me, I’m from Chicago. They’ve been doing this a lot longer.

Yancey Ward said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Yancey Ward said...

Any candidate that sues to block the release of last night's results (assuming it ever happens), will end their campaign right then and there. It would be a colossal blunder.

Seeing Red said...

This is 100% the DNC, Arm.

IF what I posted wasn’t a joke, Tom Perez sent out a tweet that said they’ve been working on this for 3 years.

Seeing Red said...

It happened in Iowa. It could have happened in another state.

Yancey Ward said...

So, supposedly, the "majority" of the results are going to be released at 5 p.m. It will be interesting to see what isn't reported.

AllenS said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
AllenS said...

As far as the problem with Bernie running in the Democrat primary goes, the blame rests on the Democrat Party not telling Crazy Bernie, that since he is an Independent, he cannot run in their primaries. Too late now.

Original Mike said...

"As far as the problem with Bernie running in the Democrat primary goes, the blame rests on the Democrat Party not telling Crazy Bernie, that since he is an Independent, he cannot run in their primaries."

I have never understood this.

Bob Boyd said...

How'd you like to be the poor caucus sucker who pulled the trigger on using the whiz-bang new app?

ga6 said...

It is rumored that Durbin and his lobbyist wife want the nations first caucus to be split between Chicago and Est Saint Louis Illinois..

Bay Area Guy said...

In the 60s at the United Nations, the Soviets used to have a phrase:

Colonialism => Chaos => Communism.

Here's it's:

Caucus => Chaos => Clinton

narayanan said...

@John Scott:

Trump should start his State of the Union speech with, "Before I get started I want to congratulate the winner of last night's Democratic caucus...whoever that might be"
_____________+++++++++++++
He should invite "whoever is winner" to White House for 2 scoops.
whoever declines did not win

Bay Area Guy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Seeing Red said...

404 Not found Bay

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Arashi said...

I am a retired software engineer. The app actually would not have to do any tabulation. All it would need to do is report the three numbers from each caucus site to a central location, where the data would get put into a database. Then software at the central location code access the database and run the tabulations.

I am a laid-off software engineer. Tf they spent money on a custom app to do that they deserve every bit of this screw up.

mockturtle said...

What are the odds they’ll keep counting until they get the result they want?

Very high. Given a choice between looking incompetent and looking corrupt, they will always choose the former.

Bay Area Guy said...

Des Moines Register, on Feb 1, tells us what we will learn on caucus night!

Heh!

tim in vermont said...

I remember walking past Dick Gephardt in Manchester, NH on the sidewalk downtown the morning after his Iowa win, and he looked like cock of the walk. Bernie has been denied.

Todd said...

Yancey Ward said...

So, supposedly, the "majority" of the results are going to be released at 5 p.m. It will be interesting to see what isn't reported.

2/4/20, 1:05 PM


"majority" of the results. That is funny. What they will release is:

a) there was a caucus
b) it was in Iowa
c) it was for the Democrats
d) "lots" of folks showed up
e) there were "slight" issues

And that is it. The "minor" thing they won't release is the totals/ranking.

n.n said...

Democracy dies with Democrats.

Seeing Red said...

That was priceless.

More than enough blame to go around.

That’s incest.



They might have had something functional if they used Their universities’ computer programs. And bragging rights.


There by the Grace of God....

rehajm said...

Yancey Ward said...

So, supposedly, the "majority" of the results are going to be released at 5 p.m. It will be interesting to see what isn't reported.


Yah, the partial data is meaningless. The tell the fix is in is when there's a long delay in releasing the rest of the data, if at all. If/when we see some excuse to draw it out, somebody doesn't want us to know who won.

Quaestor said...

The Frankfurt School of Information Technology.

Laslo Spatula said...

Petey B's connection with Shadow shows how comfortable he is going by the back door.

I am Laslo.

mandrewa said...

ARM said, "The Republican caucus, with a single viable candidate, is not comparable to the Democratic caucus. The Republicans have had their own problems with the process in past elections. The problem is the process - it is antiquated and no longer viable."


I wondered what ARM was talking about. I just checked. I'm still wondering. My source was Wikipedia, which is a biased source, describing Republican voters as "far right" -- and somehow I doubt Wikipedia ever describes Democratic voters as being 'far left' -- so if there was any controversy one would expect them to highlight it.

But I found nothing real. Certainly nothing even vaguely or remotely on the scale of what has just happened in the Democratic caucus. Somehow the Republican caucus has never had anything remotely like this, including the many elections when there have been many viable Republican candidates at this stage.

It's just amazing: the Republicans don't seem to have a problem counting.

mandrewa said...

hombre said, "The Obama campaign was reliably reported to have bused in caucusers from Illinois and other states."

Yes. That is typical behavior of the Democratic Party. That is the more normal, standard sort of way that they run fake elections. Of course somehow the media rarely reports on it.

Who would be surprised to learn that people voted in this 2020 Iowa Caucus that weren't really from Iowa?

I wouldn't.

Now let me make it clear, I don't think what is happening now is any worse ethically than what Obama is alleged to have done in 2007.

My hunch, already stated by others, is that someone got caught rigging the vote, and they are struggling to come to an agreement, among the candidates, without it all coming out.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

rehajm said...

Yah, the partial data is meaningless. The tell the fix is in is when there's a long delay in releasing the rest of the data, if at all. If/when we see some excuse to draw it out, somebody doesn't want us to know who won.

It's a big job for them to erase 'TRUMP!' out of the write-in portion on all those ballots!

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Commentators averred ignorance of the 2012 Republican Iowa caucus problems looks like selective amnesia, but it could be age-related.

Seeing Red said...

Daily Caller via Lucianne:

The firm responsible for the app that caused delays in counting votes during Monday’s Iowa caucuses had a role in developing an outlet promoting Democratic propaganda outlets ahead of the 2020 election. Campaign consulting nonprofit ACRONYM owns Shadow Inc., a company that operates the app Democrats hoped would simplify the process of counting the votes in Iowa’s roughly 1,700 precincts. Officials across the state struggled to use the app, leaving the results of the caucuses in limbo. (Snip) Tara McGowan, a digital producer for Obama for America in 2011 and the proprietor behind ACRONYM, raised at least $25 million from wealthy liberals to create a media company called Courier Newsroom that is designed

Ray - SoCal said...

ACRONYM is a 501C4

501C4 is supposed to be organized to focus on social welfare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_McGowan

mandrewa said...

Sorry ARM. I did miss that. I thought I went through the list of recent caucuses on Wikipedia for the Republican Party. Somehow I missed that. I'm puzzled.

But anyway, even though it did have a counting problem, notice how the Republican Party handled it.

They stated early that it was a close election and that they were having a problem verifying some of the caucuses. Despite Wikipedia's attempt to put a negative spin on it, it seems clear the Republican Party was quite open about the difficulty they were having verifying the vote in nine places, or what sounds like no more than a couple hundred people.

The only allegation of intentional wrong-doing comes from one person -- and it concerns twenty votes.

Ray - SoCal said...

Republican Caucus is majority vote, done one time.

Democratic Caucus has revotes, with those at 15% getting disqualified.

And Biden played some tricks on the count. He had extra votes at one caucus, so he gave them to other candidates. Getting them over the 15% threshold.

Rusty said...

It was a clusterfuck, Arm. Just admit it. Don't go blaming Iowans because they're rural and don't go blaming republicans, "Look they did it too!". Own up to your incompetence.

chickelit said...

Whoever called it first that this whole mess is a way to delegitimize the Iowa caucus was spot on. California made an attempt last year to move its primary forward (earlier) in order to have more impact. They were rebuffed. Don't you people understand that wealthy California donors are sick and tired of flyover states like Iowa calling the shots? Get with the pogram!

Drago said...

ARM: "Commentators averred ignorance of the 2012 Republican Iowa caucus problems looks like selective amnesia, but it could be age-related."

Small, minor issues that were resolved rather quickly in 2012 and didn't really hold up anything vs what the dems screwed up last night--------In ARM world they are completely equivalent!!

LOLOLOL

Keep trying to sell that one ARM! I'll bet you can create a "Great Awakening" to the "horrific" 2012 republican minor snafu that no one cared about even at the time because it was no big deal and maybe it will overwhelm stories about the idiot dems performance last night.

Endeavor to persevere!

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

The Iowans ran both this caucus and the 2012 caucus. Both fuck ups. They did this knowing that there was already considerable dissatisfaction with their position in the voting schedule. They did not stress test the application in question. They actually made the caucusing even more Byzantine this year than it had been in the past. Of course I think they are responsible. Man up.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

"The Republican Iowa caucus was held on January 3rd. Mitt Romney was declared the winner by nine votes. But 17 days later a certified vote count announced that Rick Santorum actually won Iowa by 34 votes, and worse yet there were nine precincts that to this day have not been found."

Santorum's prospects were severely damaged by the Iowa Republicans incompetence/maleficence.

Drago said...

ARM: "Santorum's prospects were severely damaged by the Iowa Republicans incompetence/maleficence."

LOL

Gk1 said...

Boy oh boy the gentry liberals out in the Bay area are super pissed. This makes sense as they send their kids to coding camp and they can do apps that are 10 times more complicated than the one that went tits up last night.

Out of respect for the dead I have not commented to them but this can't be a good omen heading into 2020.

rcocean said...

All they're doing is counting heads, and reporting the numbers to a central location. Why does that need an APP? Send an email. Make sure you have enough phone lines and telephone operators.

Or they literally could have had someone get on a horse and ride the results to the nearest central location. Yet, they used a completely unnecessary APP that wasn't tested and didn't work, without any backup plan.

Only the Democrats.

rcocean said...

"Whoever called it first that this whole mess is a way to delegitimize the Iowa caucus was spot on."

The Iowa Central Committee seems to have been in on it. Or they're too dumb too live.

Original Mike said...

Blogger Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said..."The Republican Iowa caucus was held on January 3rd. Mitt Romney was declared the winner by nine votes. But 17 days later a certified vote count announced that Rick Santorum actually won Iowa by 34 votes, and worse yet there were nine precincts that to this day have not been found."

Santorum's prospects were severely damaged by the Iowa Republicans incompetence/maleficence."


Uh-huh. On Planet Earth we call that a tie.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

No we don't. A tie has an equal number of votes.

Ty said...

mikee said...

Given the field of candidates available, were I the software designed to calculate results, I, too, might have chosen self destruction rather than report a Democrat "winner" last night.


The app became self-aware.

Scientific Socialist said...

An iPhone X has 3 GB RAM. Neil Armstrong got to walk on the moon with only 32 THOUSAND bytes RAM in Apollo 11's guidance computer. The Dems might not have had such an epic fail computer/phone app clusterf%^$ if they had just hired a few rocket scientists!

Nichevo said...

If ARM is swallowing this sort of explanation from the Democrats, then he should change his handle to ATM.

The avatar, I leave to you.

«Oldest ‹Older   201 – 255 of 255   Newer› Newest»