February 7, 2020

"'Oh yeah,' Perez should step down as party chairman, said Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio). 'We’re a party in chaos.'"

From "Iowa blowback scorches Tom Perez" (Politico).
For much of the week, the Iowa Democratic Party and its chair Troy Price have taken the brunt of the blame for the failed reporting app and the fiasco it created for Monday’s first-in-the-nation caucuses.

The spectacle of the beleaguered and abandoned state party leader has frustrated a number of his fellow state party chairs, leading some of them to conclude Perez has sought to distance himself from the crisis and scapegoat Price in the process.

“Loads of state party chairs are pissed that he would treat one of their peers like this,” said a senior state party official familiar with the ongoing discussions....

On Thursday, however, the relationship between the Iowa state party and the DNC took another turn as Perez stunned Iowa Democrats by [tweeting] “Enough is enough...In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass.”

According to an Iowa Democrat with knowledge, a Perez assistant gave Price a one-minute heads up before sending out the tweet. That Democrat, who had been involved in preparing for this year’s caucuses, called Perez’s move a transparently self-serving gesture at their expense.

Perez asked for the recanvass at a time when the first count hadn’t even concluded; the DNC knew very well that the way to trigger a recanvass was through a discrete process that initiates when a presidential candidate requests it.

Other state party sources complained that the DNC consistently imposed new rules on a party organization that’s largely volunteer-run, and provided little financial or professional assistance in the run-up to the caucuses.

35 comments:

rehajm said...

Fuck-ups happen, especially when staff turnover is high. I've sort of discounted the 'if they can't run a caucus...' stuff but they sure aren't giving any reason to disbelieve it.

MayBee said...

So are we really supposed to believe the Democrat's tech gurus that it was Russia who got access to the DNC servers? Where is any evidence they know what they are doing?

gilbar said...

perez should step down, because the iowa numbers were messed up?

we should trust that Marcia, wouldn't Fudge the numbers?

rcocean said...

All this "Chaos" certainly helped Biden didn't it? Its almost like it was planned. The most hilarious part was seeing the D's and the DNC-media blaming Trump supporters for "clogging the phone lines" on election night. Evidence? Zero.

Lurker21 said...

Marcia Fudge. She could be the worst person in the world, but I will always smile and my mouth will always water when I read her name. She could be ugly and horrible, but I will always think "delicious and delectable" whenever I think of her.

rcocean said...

National Democrats - and their media allies - don't seem to like Iowa very much. Too white, too rural, too stupid. Maybe the Democrats in Iowa should get the message.

Wince said...

'Oh yeah,' Perez should step down as party chairman, said Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio).

Fudge wants to send him packing?

Lucid-Ideas said...

Hold on. How is the IA Dem primary a fuckup of the central party committee? I was under the impression that Iowa's primary is run by the state party. How does that buck get passed to Perez at the national level? Anyone?

tim maguire said...

What did they do right?

1) The app wasn't properly tested and didn't work. Ok, heads should roll, but it's one thing that went wrong.
2) But then the phone back-up system failed. How did that happen? Phones aren't new technology.
3) But then it takes days to get the numbers in? How did that happen? Iowa isn't THAT big a state. Precinct heads should have gotten in their cars Monday night and driven to the State Party headquarters to physically hand in their numbers. Tally before noon Tuesday.
4) Whatever system they did settle on is still buggy and (4 days later!) still not giving reliable final counts.

I'm ok with Perez hanging the State leader out to dry.

rcocean said...

Iowa is surprisingly liberal. Voted D for President in every election from 1988-2012 - except for 2004 when Bush won by 10,000 votes.

ga6 said...

The latino Lev Bronstein should go!!!!!

rcocean said...

"I'm ok with Perez hanging the State leader out to dry."

IRC, its Perez that demanded they use the APP and that they collect 3 levels of data instead of 1. Further, no resources were provided by the DNC to install additional phone lines and personnel to handle call-ins. After Monday, no additional support was provided to collect data and count the votes. Almost all the precinct workers are volunteers and had no ability to hang around this week counting votes.

If the DNC truly wanted the votes counted quickly - it would've flown in professional support to ensure the votes were counted ASAP. Instead, they did nothing but offer blame.

rcocean said...

Fact is, the DNC wanted to help Biden by slow-rolling the count. And it worked.

MAJMike said...

These are the people who want to micro-manage every aspect of our lives. Remember in November.

MikeR said...

Tom Perez - Troy Price. Come on. Proof that we are not living in a simulation; any author knows better than to give his characters such similar names.

Reg said...

Don’t pinch Fudge. She’ll get you six ways to sundae.

Curious George said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Curious George said...

"Wince said...
'Oh yeah,' Perez should step down as party chairman, said Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio).

Fudge wants to send him packing?"

That's gold Jerry! Gold!

exhelodrvr1 said...

"Fudge wants to send him packing?"

Not that there is anything wrong with that!

narciso said...

https://fox6now.com/2020/02/06/gop-opens-milwaukee-campaign-office-to-pursue-every-vote-some-in-community-question-motive/

AllenS said...

Anyone listening to Marcia Fudge is a complete idiot. Fudge is dumber than AOC.

Clyde said...

Fudge says Pack it in.

Anonymous said...

Perez is a worm.

Dan said...

Not to mention the problems with the DNC planning problems for this years convention in Milwaukee.

Yancey Ward said...

I have been studying all the worksheets that I can find online from the Iowa caususes, and there is a pattern overall- there are numerous incorrectly assigned SDEs- the metric that Buttuvwxyz supposedly "won". The overwhelming trend in those is that Sanders is consistently losing SDEs that he should have been awarded just on basic math. The secondary trend, not as strong, is that those Sanders SDEs were awarded to Buttuvwxyz (a few were awarded to Biden and Warren). There are only a couple I have found where it is Sanders that benefitted from the mistakes (there are about 20 "mistakes" I have seen so far, but there are reports of several dozen).

I think it would be to Sanders' benefit to quietly request a recanvass, but he probably won't given that he won the metric that actually counts the most- actual voter support.

Yancey Ward said...

The slow roll wasn't designed to save Biden- you really can't hide his collapse in Iowa. The slow roll was to keep Sanders from declaring victory on Monday night. This is why Buttuvwxyz did declare victory, and the DNC provided the cover for him. That has worked- Buttuvwxyz has gotten a boost at the end of the week in New Hampshire polls. Buttuvwxyz is within striking distance of winning in New Hampshire, which I think Sanders has to win to have a real chance at the nomination.

Caligula said...

Maybe the D. Party just needs a Clintonectomy?

The Minnow Wrangler said...

The "app" that malfunctioned was developed by Shadow, whose owner is Acronym, a company which employs several former Hillary staffers, and whose biggest funding comes from...George Soros. What could possibly go wrong? Yeah I know this sounds like a wacko conspiracy theory but it is actually true in this case.

https://theintercept.com/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-app-shadow-acronym/

wildswan said...

"Lucid-Ideas said...
Hold on. How is the IA Dem primary a fuckup of the central party committee? I was under the impression that Iowa's primary is run by the state party. How does that buck get passed to Perez at the national level? Anyone?"

Don't forget Iowa ran caucuses for years without problems but its own way of doing things was cast aside by order of the DNC. The DNC required the use of an app it developed. This app meant that fewer people would be needed to man the phones to receive call-ins with counts from caucus sites. Many fewer volunteers were trained and on site to take phone calls than in previous years. Then the app failed. There was no back up. No group of trained volunteers able to man the phones and probably no supply of forms for them to write down the complex series of totals from the "alignments" which were also new this year. Also "Iowa" people were voting in foreign countries in "caucuses." (I kind of think the "final totals" are coming off random sheets of paper that neither the party nor the DNC dares to show but that's just my guess.) Anyhow. all these changes were done by order of the DNC and none of them show any sensitivity to "grass roots democracy." They're faculty lounge reforms of a centralizing nature implemented by loyal, compliant incompetents and they are what socialism in the USA would look like right down to blaming the voters and citizens of the heartland for the incompetence of coastie socialist loyalists.

Corky Boyd said...

Few people have tied the spiking of the Des Moines Register's final polling results to the screwed up vote count. But both smell of tipping the scales against Bernie. Dems are counting on millennials in November. The DNC is killing any chance of winning by antagonizing them

The Minnow Wrangler said...

I'm still trying to figure out what motivated the Iowa Democratic Party leaders to adopt this app from Shadow/Acronym. Was there guidance from the DNC? Of course it is nice to blame the hicks in Iowa but I don't know why they chose the app from this company with connections to former Clinton staffers. Maybe someone else can fill me in.

The Minnow Wrangler said...

wildswan - apparently the phone number for "plan B" was widely publicized, so the line was jammed with calls from people who wanted to interfere with the process, and the precinct leaders could not get through. It is a sad situation all around.

narciso said...

the Dominican with the tourettes mandated this app be engaged, legitimately sanders was cheated out of it, maybe they should have done this to block Corbyn from leadership, but frankly there were no good candidates,

narciso said...


https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-iowa-app-and-the-clinton-cabal-11581099603

The Minnow Wrangler said...

I realize that the DNC leadership does not want Sanders to be the nominee. If I was a Sanders supporter (which I am not) I would be extremely angry and paranoid at this point. It seems like everything that has happened so far has been aimed at delegitimizing Sanders.