"For the first time since 2004, nobody dropped out after Iowa..."

Says the NYT, in "What’s at Stake in the New Hampshire Primary/Here are the candidates competing in the primary."

I just want to say:

1. 2004 was not that long ago.

2. What do you mean "after Iowa"? We never got to "after Iowa."

3. Maybe that's why we never got to after Iowa — The Democratic Party needed to keep everyone in, so the results were withheld, lest somebody drop out.

"'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.

"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....

Morning Joe on the State of the Union: "We expect the President to crow" about the impeachment acquittal.

I just heard that on the car radio as I was driving home from the sunrise.



Do you expect Trump to use the SOTU to crow about the impeachment? I don't even think he'll bring up the subject! The best political use of the SOTU is not to seem partisan or political at all. I expect Trump to say the state of the union is great, to highlight what he believes are his many accomplishments, and to lay out a future founded on those accomplishments and leading to more greatness. It's weird to think he'd use the SOTU like a rally and go on about the impeachment hoax and the "perfect" phone call.

I remember when Trump was the weirdest thing around. But the reaction to Trump out-weirded him. And here we are on the morning after the Iowa caucus and the Democrats don't seem to have been able to make their way through a predictable, planned event that should have been the height of normality. And here's morning Joe imagining the President behaving chaotically at his well-planned event.

By the way, speaking of Trump and his "greatness" theme, I thought of a slogan for the Democrats, to offset Trump's "Make America Great Again"/"Keep America Great": "What's so great about greatness?"

I also thought of "Oh, great," but you'd have to say it with sarcasm, and a slogan can't depend on saying it in the right tone of voice.

ADDED: Meade said: "We expect the President to crow, and there you have the sunrise.... It's funny that crowing is what a rooster does, and you use the word, but crows don't crow."

AND: Reading the "ADDED," I said: "Morning in America"... and then there's Morning Joe in America.

Only one victory last night...

The Democrat Caucus is an unmitigated disaster. Nothing works, just like they ran the Country. Remember the 5 Billion Dollar Obamacare Website, that should have cost 2% of that. The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is “Trump”.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2020

I wasn't going to stay up late for the Iowa caucus results. They were delayed. Okay. I figured...

... I'd wake up, maybe in the middle of the night, look at my iPhone and, in 4 seconds, I'd see what happened.

I woke up around 12:30. No results yet. Then again at 2:30. Nothing but the increasing weirdness of no result. I had my conspiracy theory already in mind: They're protecting Joe Biden. He did terribly, and they're trying to work something out to protect his candidacy, or they already know it's going to fail, and they want to manage the transfer of votes onto their favored candidate, maybe Amy Klobuchar and not Pete Buttigieg... or is it the other way around.

I wake up for good at 6:33. Still no results! Is this tied to the way the Des Moines Register did not release its last poll? Why the suppression?

Are the Republican results suppressed? No! "Iowa results showed the president winning with roughly 97 percent of the vote over former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld and former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh. The primary challengers walked away with about 1 percent each." (Fox News).

This is solely a screwup with the Democrats. How embarrassing and fishy!