SUPERTHREAD: 2020 United States Elections

[Dalton]

If there was any conspiracy, wouldn't come from party man Biden, suppressing bad numbers to keep his campaign afloat?

Iowa was never a Biden stronghold, and Occam's Razor applies here.

[Knife]

I'm seeing people in my various feeds who are now trying to claim that Pete is a spook and so OBVIOUSLY he is behind all this.

If he's a spook, he's a bad one because I've labeled him a snake for months. Sure, he has a smooth speaking style that might mimic Obama. But damn his over all positions don't jive with his speech. He wants to be a new thing, a thing that has lived through decades of failed policy and want you to recognize all the failed policy and agree with him... but then advocates the same failed policy.

He doesn't pass the smell test. He's an empty suit pretending to be a real deal. It's hilariously obvious.

I'd still vote for him over Trump. But he's like my 9th choice...

[The Romulan Republic]

Late last week, newspaper reporters inquired about this 'new app' and were told it was made by a secret company and tested by a secret 3rd party. Things are starting to come out late last night. Shadow, a company under ACRONYM which is a DNC affiliated tech/communication company supported by a PAC (PACACRONYM) with people like David Plouffe; who was hilariously on the panel discussion on MSNBC during this debacle.

It gets better. Apparently, the entire executive board of this Shadow company which made the app worked for Hillary's 2016 campaign, and the work on the app was paid for by Buttigeg and Biden. Talk about a clown show.

Source for that?

What happened last night was an embarassing fuck up at best, no doubt about that. But given that there WILL be (and already are) malicious efforts to push a "rigged primary" narrative to supress/split the Democratic vote and aid Donald Trump (Trump himself is engaging in it), I think we should be very, very cautious before assuming conspiracy.

Hmm, was watching last night, funny how this thread wasn't as explosive as I'd thought it was.

I guess we're used to this level of DNC fuckup?

Not saying the DNC meant to do this, but damn is it going to put hesitation and concern into the validity of the vote. The DNC fucked this one up. Also this insane caucus system run by volunteers is overly complicated and dumb. Can we please add a competent national voting system to the list of things to fix?

Yeah, this'll put a whole cloud over whoever actually winds up winning the nomination, a bit like 2016.

I think, or at least hope, that the damage will be relatively minimal if someone other than Buttigieg is the nominee (obviously if Sanders wins, the other likeliest outcome right now, his supporters aren't going to cry fraud over it). If Buttigieg ends up winning, though, this'll potentially cast a shadow over his whole candidacy, which is another reason for me to be all-in behind Sanders from this point out.

The good news is that with seventy-some percent counted, Bernie holds a narrow lead in the popular vote, while lagging only slightly in delegates. Its entirely possible, given that last I checked some pro-Sanders preccints were yet to fully be counted, that Sanders might edge it out. Either way, its basically a tie, and he was stronger going in and will likely win New Hampshire, so I don't think Buttigieg will be able to run away with the momentum here.

Bernie's biggest threat was always Biden, not Buttigieg- and Biden got his teeth kicked in last night.

[The Romulan Republic]

New polling from New Hampshire:

https://bostonglobe.com/2020/02/05/nati ... t-nh-poll/

Biden has dropped from 18 to 15, Buttigieg has risen from 11 to 15, Sanders has held steady at 24.

So far, Bernie is still on-track to win NH, while Biden seems to have predictably lost a few points, likely mostly to Buttigieg. I am a bit disappointed that Sanders hasn't gotten a bump, though given NH has always been a good state for him, he might just be near his ceiling there, I suppose. Still, his lead is larger, due to Biden's drop.

[The Romulan Republic]

So apparently they released some more partial results today, showing that the delegate lead had narrowed for Buttigieg, but that Buttigieg had taken the lead in the popular vote.

They then came out and said basically "Oops, that was a mistake, Sanders is still leading in the popular vote."


Wow. Are they trying to make everyone disbelieve the results?

Bernie pretty much has to be the nominee now. Because after this, I doubt anyone else will have a scrap of credibility. Even Biden is crying foul. Even CNN is crying foul.

[RogueIce]

(obviously if Sanders wins, the other likeliest outcome right now, his supporters aren't going to cry fraud over it)

Kind of ironic, given their antics in the last Primary.

[The Romulan Republic]

(obviously if Sanders wins, the other likeliest outcome right now, his supporters aren't going to cry fraud over it)

Kind of ironic, given their antics in the last Primary.

Not ironic, nor even hypocritical. The situations are totally different, and not just because of who ended up winning (in this hypothetical). I doubt even the most hard-core Bernie-hater envisions the DNC rigging the primary on Sanders' behalf.

Also, you're painting Sanders supporters with a rather broad brush, there. I know some people like to pretend that hard core Bernie or Bust is representative of all Sanders supporters, but they really aren't.

[The Romulan Republic]

New poll has Sanders set for a landslide win in New Hampshire:

https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/202 ... ts-in-poll.

32%. Buttigieg is second, at 17.

[The Romulan Republic]

Latest numbers from CNN: With well over 90% in, Bernie is dominating the popular vote, while Mayor Pete has a .1% lead in the delegate count (basically, they'll end up splitting the delegates evenly).

If the outstanding few precincts are lean Sanders, then we're looking at a clean Sanders win, and a very embarrassed Buttigieg.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Latest numbers from CNN: With well over 90% in, Bernie is dominating the popular vote, while Mayor Pete has a .1% lead in the delegate count (basically, they'll end up splitting the delegates evenly).

If the outstanding few precincts are lean Sanders, then we're looking at a clean Sanders win, and a very embarrassed Buttigieg. :D

I'm really not sure how anyone can claim to "dominate" the popular vote with just 27% of (does some quick math) less than 170k people. Especially when the next most popular guy trails by a mere ~2.6K votes (as of a quick look at the results, just now.) The turnout in Iowa is on-par, or even a bit worse, than the turnout in Iowa for 2016 (when nobody could be bothered to show up because it was supposedly Hillary's year, and she'd be running on the coat-tails of the relatively well-liked Obama); which ought to be alarming, as it suggests a disconnect between Democrats' public enthusiasm to get rid of Trump, and their actual enthusiasm for the rogues' gallery assembled to fight for the privilege of taking him on.

The story here is not that Sanders got 27% of the vote. It's that 73% of the voters would rather vote for anybody else.

Sanders should have more to show for the last four years than a quarter of an unenthusiastic Democratic base who put him in a statistical dead-heat with a guy whose previous job was running a city with a population of 2/3rds the number of Democrats who could be bothered to show up to caucus in Iowa; especially since that guy tied Sanders by gaming its hilariously-broken system, and is broadly expected to evaporate like the insubstantial wisp that he is, come Super Tuesday.

I guess I was hoping to see more enthusiasm outside of the choir; since enthusiasm among Democrats is really going to be the only way to beat a man who enjoys the support of 90% (!) of his party, and over 40% of independents.

[Vendetta]

Remember as well that this is the "popular vote of people who have several hours to spend in a sports hall on a week night".

The story here is not that Sanders got 27% of the vote. It's that 73% of the voters would rather vote for anybody else.

That's not really a sensible way of looking at it at this point because there are still loads of contenders for people to hang their hopes on and only people who picked one of the comedy candidates actually had to consider their second choices.

[The Romulan Republic]

Latest numbers from CNN: With well over 90% in, Bernie is dominating the popular vote, while Mayor Pete has a .1% lead in the delegate count (basically, they'll end up splitting the delegates evenly).

If the outstanding few precincts are lean Sanders, then we're looking at a clean Sanders win, and a very embarrassed Buttigieg.

I'm really not sure how anyone can claim to "dominate" the popular vote with just 27% of (does some quick math) less than 170k people. Especially when the next most popular guy trails by a mere ~2.6K votes (as of a quick look at the results, just now.) The turnout in Iowa is on-par, or even a bit worse, than the turnout in Iowa for 2016 (when nobody could be bothered to show up because it was supposedly Hillary's year, and she'd be running on the coat-tails of the relatively well-liked Obama); which ought to be alarming, as it suggests a disconnect between Democrats' public enthusiasm to get rid of Trump, and their actual enthusiasm for the rogues' gallery assembled to fight for the privilege of taking him on.

The story here is not that Sanders got 27% of the vote. It's that 73% of the voters would rather vote for anybody else.

Voting for someone else does not mean you're Never Sanders. Sanders is a lot of peoples' second choices.

It would be pretty exceptional if someone got a majority in the first contest in a primary with a dozen candidates. Bernie got by far the most votes of any single candidate, and trying to spin this as a loss for Sanders is ludicrous.

Sanders should have more to show for the last four years than a quarter of an unenthusiastic Democratic base who put him in a statistical dead-heat with a guy whose previous job was running a city with a population of 2/3rds the number of Democrats who could be bothered to show up to caucus in Iowa; especially since that guy tied Sanders by gaming its hilariously-broken system, and is broadly expected to evaporate like the insubstantial wisp that he is, come Super Tuesday.

I guess I was hoping to see more enthusiasm outside of the choir; since enthusiasm among Democrats is really going to be the only way to beat a man who enjoys the support of 90% (!) of his party, and over 40% of independents.

I feel that primaries will be a better gauge of enthusiasm. Caucuses are by nature a higher bar to participate in, which is one of several reasons why they should be (and hopefully soon will be) relegated to the dustbin of political history.

Remember as well that this is the "popular vote of people who have several hours to spend in a sports hall on a week night".

The story here is not that Sanders got 27% of the vote. It's that 73% of the voters would rather vote for anybody else.

That's not really a sensible way of looking at it at this point because there are still loads of contenders for people to hang their hopes on and only people who picked one of the comedy candidates actually had to consider their second choices.

Exactly.

Anyway, the scale of this clusterfuck keeps getting worse and worse:

https://democracynow.org/2020/2/6/iowa_ ... shadow_app

Results from Monday’s Iowa caucuses continue to trickle in, with 97% of precincts reporting as of Thursday morning. Senator Bernie Sanders and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg are now in a virtual tie. Sanders maintains a lead in the popular vote, but Buttigieg has a slight advantage in what’s known as the “state delegate equivalent” race. Buttigieg has 26.2% of state delegate equivalents, while Sanders is at 26.1%. The New York Times is now predicting Sanders has a greater chance of winning overall, in part because of the Vermont senator’s overwhelming strength in satellite caucuses. Responding to widespread criticism for the inexplicably slow reporting process, Democratic officials have attributed the chaos in Iowa to a newly created app built by a little-known firm called Shadow, which has financial ties to the Democratic establishment as well as the Buttigieg campaign. For more, we speak with Chris Schwartz, chair of the Black Hawk County Board of Supervisors in Iowa and state co-chair for Bernie 2020.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Democratic officials in Iowa are continuing to release official results from Monday’s caucus. Senator Bernie Sanders and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg are now in a virtual tie with 97% of precincts reporting. Sanders maintains a lead in the popular vote, but Buttigieg has a slight advantage in what’s known as the “state delegate equivalent” race. Buttigieg has 26.2% of state delegate equivalents, while Sanders has 26.1%. The New York Times is now predicting Sanders has a greater chance of winning overall, in part [because] of the Vermont senator’s overwhelming strength in satellite caucuses in Iowa and around the country.

AMY GOODMAN: And world. Democratic officials have attributed the chaos in Iowa to a newly created app built by a little-known firm called Shadow, which has ties to the Democratic establishment as well as the Pete Buttigieg campaign. Democratic leaders in Iowa are also facing widespread criticism over its slow release of results and, in some cases, for issuing incorrect results. In one case, Black Hawk County, delegates for Bernie Sanders were mistakenly given to Deval Patrick.

We go now to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where we’re joined by Chris Schwartz. He’s the chair of the Black Hawk County Board of Supervisors, the state co-chair for Bernie 2020. He’s also the state director of Americans for Democratic Action.

Chris Schwartz, welcome to Democracy Now! Why don’t you just — this is such a confusing story about what’s taking place in Iowa, still so unclear, so much secrecy. Maybe the word “shadow” is appropriate here. Take us through what has taken place so far in Iowa.

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: Yeah. Thank you, Amy. It’s an honor to be here with Democracy Now! here today.

And so, caucus night, things seemed to be going relatively smoothly in my very diverse precinct in Waterloo, which is the most diverse city in the state of Iowa. We were in and out of our caucus site in less than an hour and left feeling good, like, “Hey, this thing ran smoothly. We’re going to know results tonight.” And then the hours just went on and on and on, and didn’t have a sense of what was going on, then finding out that the app wasn’t working for reporting. And then they didn’t have the backup phone lines operating with enough people. And we were finding out that precinct chairs, who were all volunteers, who did a pretty good job of running their sites, were just waiting on hold for hours and hours and hours —

AMY GOODMAN: Had you practiced before the day of —

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: — and finally giving up and going to bed.

AMY GOODMAN: — the caucus, Chris? Had you practiced? Had you ever seen this app? Had people tried to put some information in to see if it would register?

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: No, I had never seen the app. Only people that were precinct chairs running it had access. And it’s my understanding that most of them just saw it just the weekend before. Some of them were trying to download the app at the actual caucus site that night. And so, there had not been enough of a practice run.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Chris, it seems extraordinary, given the stakes in this election, that Democrats would take a risk of this sort by trying an app that hadn’t even been tested. And you say that only precinct chairs saw it, and that, too, just the weekend before.

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: Yeah, no, it was a pretty, pretty remarkable thing. And, you know, sometimes you’re recruiting precinct chairs up to the last minute to run these caucus sites. So, to think that they could be trained on this new technology, there really should have been some other kind of dry run to see if that was a route that was worthy of going for the Iowa caucuses.

AMY GOODMAN: So, keep going. So the hours drag out.

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: The app doesn’t work. How do you get the Black Hawk County caucus information —

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — to central command or whoever it is that is counting this up?

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: Yeah, so the hours are going on. It was about 2:00 on Tuesday. I had gotten an email from our county party secretary, just letting me know that Sanders won in a big, sizable margin Black Hawk County, and he knew that I would want to have that information. About an hour later, I went down to our county party office to volunteer and help stuff the envelopes of materials that get sent on to the Iowa Democratic Party in Des Moines, at which point I was shown the breakdown of what the first round of voting and what the final delegate count would be for our county convention, at which point it showed a good almost thousand-vote lead in that first round for Senator Sanders, something that increased when you went even to the second round of viability. And so, this was at about 2:00 that day I knew what was going on, that we had won Black Hawk County really big. But it still wasn’t included in that first initial round of 64% of precincts that was released. And I was getting concerned. Nobody in our county party understood why those numbers weren’t included.

AMY GOODMAN: Because you had reported them.

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: And so, finally, that evening, I reached out to Troy Price, the state chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, and asked, you know, “What is the process that this needs to go through to get released?” you know, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, trying to understand what their process was they were going through. And I just heard crickets. I heard nothing back, when he’s usually been very responsive to me on things. And so, finally, the next day, I reached out again. I said, “Hey, you know, I’m still waiting on this stuff.”

And then I just like was feeling guilty that I knew the results for our county, but the constituents that I represent didn’t — the volunteers of all these different campaigns, the volunteers that ran these caucus sites and worked really hard to do it, all the people that came in from across the country to get out the vote. We had 40 people staying at our house that weekend doing get-out-the-vote vote efforts. And these people had a right to know what the results of their work was. And so, we tweeted it out. I was actually driving, so my fiancé Logan was handling my phone, and I just told him what to tweet out.

And we put the results out there on Twitter and Facebook, apparently just at the same time that the Iowa Democratic Party was releasing another round of results, to find out that they had given all these Bernie Sanders delegates in Black Hawk County to Deval Patrick. Deval Patrick — and it shouldn’t even come as a surprise to Deval Patrick himself — didn’t have any support in Black Hawk County that evening. And so, we’re just finding out that as we were putting out these results, they were putting out results that are totally contrary. And I think it forced them to immediately walk back what they had put out.

AMY GOODMAN: So, to be clear —

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: And so, it really questioned that —

AMY GOODMAN: To be clear, Chris —

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: You know, it’s taking so long to get these results out, yet they release them, and then they still get it wrong. You know, what is going on? What is the process? Nobody is being told this. I’m a member of the Democratic Party. I’m an elected official in the state. I still can’t even get my answers, you know, answered.

AMY GOODMAN: So, to be clear, Chris, I mean, we got this information because you posted it. Black Hawk County — Black Hawk County caucus results: Sanders, 2,149 votes, that’s 155 county delegates; Buttigieg, 1,578 votes, that’s 111 county delegates. So, that’s like a 44-county-delegate lead for Sanders. And you had given it to them early. It’s not that they didn’t have yours, that you weren’t able to get through. When he finally got through, you then saw results after results posted by the Iowa Democratic Party, but Black Hawk County was not included. And then you saw it was counted as the former Governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick’s votes?

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: Yeah. At first, things were not being included. And then, when they finally were included, they had all these precincts going to Deval Patrick, which just didn’t make any sense. You know, like I said, my caucus was done in under an hour. And it took almost 48 hours for the Iowa Democratic Party to finally report those results correctly.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, in our lede, we talked about a number of places now predicting that actually Bernie Sanders — I mean, it’s a virtual tie between him and Buttigieg now, but could pull ahead because of the satellite caucuses. Now, if you could explain? This is such an obscure process, that people in this country, I don’t think, even understand.

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Maybe even in Iowa. Satellite caucuses take place in Iowa, in the United States and outside, around the world, for the Iowa caucus?

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: Yes. So, the satellite caucuses were a new thing this year, one of the reforms to try and make the caucuses more accessible, because as most people looking at this, the caucus is — there’s a hurdle to accessibility, whether you’re disabled or a working person who can’t get off work to come out and participate for a one-hour or two-hour, three-hour-long process. And so, they at first proposed doing a virtual caucus. That was shut down. And so they decided to do these satellite caucuses, that were geared — held in union halls. There were some satellite caucuses that were geared for persons with disabilities. There were satellite caucuses that were Spanish-language.

And it’s my understanding that we’re waiting on a lot of them in the — that were located in the 1st Congressional District in eastern Iowa. And Bernie Sanders was very strong at all of those. I’m hearing that Pete Buttigieg was not viable at a number of those satellite caucus sites. So I think that it’s going to be very interesting to see if that tips the scales here when we get those results. But what’s clear to me is that more Iowans came out and supported Bernie Sanders on caucus night. And so, if there’s such difficulty figuring out the accuracy of the delegates and what the state delegate equivalents are and what that proper equation is, then let’s just go with the popular vote. And that just clearly shows that Bernie Sanders had the most amount of support in Iowa on caucus night.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Chris, could you explain, before we conclude, why is it that a new app was introduced in the first place? I mean, were there difficulties or problems with the app that was used during the Iowa caucus in 2016? What was the justification given for the introduction of an app that was not tested?

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: Yes, it’s a very good question. So, there was no app used in 2016. I was someone who ran my caucus site as the precinct chair in 2016, and we just phoned in our results. There were enough people answering the phone that night. I got through right away and really had had no issues. And so, that’s why — you know, it was very close that night, and that’s why I believe it went late into night, because it was coming down so close between Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton. But we still knew it within hours of the end of the caucus night, because we were using the old standard system of phoning in your results and then dropping off your packet at your county party headquarters. And then that’s all sent to Des Moines so that the record is there. And I think this — I just don’t understand why, if the app wasn’t working, why we didn’t have enough people operating those phone systems.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at a piece in The Intercept. “A person with knowledge of the company’s culture” — talking about Shadow, the app creator — “who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, shared communications showing that top officials at the company regularly expressed hostility to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s supporters. McGowan is married to Michael Halle” — now, McGowan is the head of ACRONYM, which owns Shadow, and McGowan, Tara McGowan, is married to Michael Halle, or Halle, H-A-L-L-E — “a senior strategist with the Buttigieg campaign. There is no evidence any preference of candidates had any effect on the coding issue that is stalling the Iowa results.” But as we wrap up, Chris, if you can talk about the significance of all of this? And, you know, this has certainly opened the discussion again whether Iowa should be first. You talked about Black Hawk County and Waterloo being the most diverse area of Iowa, but the fact is, Iowa and New Hampshire, two of the whitest states in the country, are determining so much of, well, who could be president in 2021.

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: Yeah. Well, I would — you know, I think there’s a lot of information developing about the app that is still unclear. One thing that is clear to me is that the decision wasn’t made by the entire State Central Committee of the Democratic Party, and those are the folks that the party elects to represent us and decide the direction of the state party. I guess it was a decision of an operations subcommittee. And even folks on the State Central Committee that were questioning the use of this app, whether it was secure and whether we had the proper backups in place, I’m being told by those State Central Committee members that those voices were quelled.

I do certainly think — I mean, there are pluses and minuses of the Iowa caucus. You know, a plus of being in a small state like Iowa is that the community organizing still matters in this, versus just being a big media market game. But if I could wave my magic wand, I would probably just have us do a primary all on the same day as Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. And then you’ve got a really great cross-section of America. You have rural states, you have more urban areas, you have much more diversity that reflects the melting pot that is America, all in states there where community organizing and mobilization would still matter. And so, that would be what I would tell the DNC: Let’s move to a primary that’s held in those four states all on the same day, when this is up next.

AMY GOODMAN: I think also people would not be aware in the country that Bernie Sanders, I mean, now in a virtual tie with Buttigieg — they’re 0.1% apart on the delegate equivalents, as you talk about it in Iowa, but thousands of popular votes ahead, right? At this point, 2,500?

CHRIS SCHWARTZ: Absolutely. So, it is very clear that Bernie Sanders had the most support of Iowans on caucus night. And so, I think that’s what people should be looking at around the country, is that this movement came out here in Iowa. In my own precinct, it was very, very diverse support of young black and brown and queer and straight people coming together to support Sanders. And that’s what our coalition looks like all across this country. And I believe there’s a movement that is ready to elect Sanders president, that is going to have really great momentum going off of these early victories in Iowa. And I predict we’re going to do very well in New Hampshire on Tuesday.

AMY GOODMAN: Chris Schwartz, I want to thank you for being with us, chair of the Black Hawk County Board of Supervisors, the state co-chair for Bernie 2020, as well as state director of Americans for Democratic Action, speaking to us from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, what has happened to hundreds of Salvadorans who were deported from the United States? A new report is out. We’re going to be talking about that tomorrow. But today, we’re going to talk about the National Archives. You heard about the changing of the photographs of the 2017 march, Women’s March. Well, now there’s a new story. What else is being erased? For example, ICE records. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: “American Me” by Masta Ace and Marco Polo. Yesterday would have been Trayvon Martin’s 25th birthday.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

To summarize some key points here:

A bunch of Sanders delegates were given to Centrist Nobody Obama Likes Deval Patrick. Yeah, that's not going to spawn any conspiracy theories at all. At least it got corrected. The app they used sounds dodgy as fuck too, was reportedly developed by people openly hostile to Sanders, and apparently was the subject of internal complaints that were ignored in advance of the primary.

That said, I don't think this clusterfuck was fraud- or if it was, it was very half-assed fraud, likely not supported at the top levels of the DNC. That won't stop the third partiers or the Trumpers or the Kremlin from saying it was fraud, because its in their interest to push that narrative, but looking at it objectively, it looks more like just a giant cluster-fuck up. Not just because its all over the media, but because the DNC chair Perez is now at odds with the Iowa Democrats and demanding a full re-canvasing of the vote (the Iowa party has said they will hold one only if requested to be a campaign), and above all because if it was an attempt by "the establishment" to screw Bernie over, it failed pathetically. As noted above, Bernie's got a clear lead in the popular vote and is basically tied with Buttigieg in delegates, and likely to gain more ground once the satellite caucuses (which tend to lean Bernie over Buttigieg) report in. So if this was an attempt to rig it against Bernie, I'm fucking relieved, because if this is the best the "establishment" can do, Bernie's going to fucking coast over the finish line.

[The Romulan Republic]

A quick run-down on post-Iowa polling thus far:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/el ... polls-say/

Our 2020 primary model looks at the race sequentially: When a primary or caucus is complete, the model will try to anticipate whose support will rise or fall based on the result. Even before the mess in Iowa, though, where both Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders have claimed victory, we advised readers to interpret these projections provisionally — the model estimates how a contest will affect each candidate’s chances but will update those estimates once new polls come out.

So how are the model’s post-Iowa estimates looking now that we’ve gotten a few new polls since Iowa? Pretty good, actually. Let’s run through the latest surveys and what they mean.

Most of the new polls we’ve gotten have come in New Hampshire, which votes on Tuesday. There, Buttigieg has gotten a bit of a bounce; the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor’s chances of winning the Granite State are up to 1 in 5, from about 1 in 8 before Iowa. A new Monmouth University survey of New Hampshire conducted Feb. 3-5 found Sanders leading with 24 percent and Buttigieg in second with 20 percent. Two tracking polls in New Hampshire from Emerson College and Boston Globe/Suffolk University out Wednesday also found Buttigieg in second to Sanders.

Those polls also seemed to confirm the bad news for Biden, as his fourth-place showing in Iowa has really hurt his standing in our forecast. The two tracking polls in New Hampshire both put him at 12 percent, well behind Sanders and Buttigieg.1 Meanwhile, a series of national polls from Morning Consult measuring preferences each day between Feb. 3 and Feb. 5, showed Biden’s standing in falling from 29 percent to 24 percent. This was largely in line with what the model anticipated2 but still hardly qualifies as great news for him.

How representative New Hampshire will be for the race overall is still an open question — it just happens to be where we have the freshest data. Perhaps the Morning Consult polls suggest that Biden’s post-Iowa support will be more durable nationally, and in more diverse states, than in a mostly white state like New Hampshire. Or maybe more national polling will show a more drastic decline.

Buttigieg has the reverse problem (or opportunity): The New Hampshire polls show him gaining ground after his Iowa performance, but his chances of winning a majority of pledged delegates overall haven’t improved much. Morning Consult’s polling showed him gaining ground, from 7 percent to 12 percent. But 12 percent isn’t good for much. A YouGov poll released Wednesday had him at just 9 percent — not much changed from previous YouGov surveys. Buttigieg will need to expand his coalition, including to non-white voters, to stand much of a chance in contests beyond Iowa and New Hampshire.

***

So let’s get back to the model. Our forecast now gives Sanders about a 1 in 2 chance of winning a majority of pledged delegates. The second likeliest outcome (1 in 4 chance) is that no candidate wins a majority. After that, the next-strongest candidate is former Vice President Joe Biden, who has roughly a 1 in 5 shot (20 percent). No other candidate is currently above 5 percent, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana (5 percent and 3 percent, respectively).


But much of the movement in the model over the past 24 hours — including further gains for Sanders — has actually come from inputting the shifting results from Iowa, which have been trickling in from the state Democratic Party. For instance, when we restarted the model on Wednesday with partial Iowa results, Sanders’s chances of winning a delegate majority rose from 31 percent to 39 percent. Biden’s chances fell from 43 percent to 19 percent. And Warren’s and Buttigieg’s chances went up, from 5 percent to 9 percent and 4 percent to 6 percent, respectively.

Then another vote update in the wee hours of Thursday morning moved Sanders into a near-tie with Buttigieg for the Iowa lead in state delegate equivalents (Sanders already led the first and final preference vote counts). In turn, our model gave Sanders more of an Iowa bounce (and Buttigieg less of one), raising Sanders from a roughly 2 in 5 chance to about a 1 in 2 shot of winning a majority of pledged delegates.

Truth be told, we still don’t have that much post-Iowa polling, so the forecast could definitely shift in the coming days if fresh surveys show more gains or losses for these leading candidates. For now, though, the Iowa results have made Sanders the front-runner to win the Democratic nomination, and the new polls we have generally agree. Though maybe the true headline coming out of Iowa is simply how wide-open and uncertain the race is: No single candidate has better than a 50 percent shot to win a pledged-delegate majority, and there’s a 1 in 4 chance that we get through all the primaries and caucuses without anyone getting there.

Geoffrey Skelley is an elections analyst at FiveThirtyEight.

So, mostly what you'd expect. Buttigieg got a small bounce, Biden took a bit of a dip, both nationally and in New Hampshire. The most striking part is probably that Sanders is now at a 1 in 2 (ie 50%) chance of getting a majority of pledged delegates, far ahead of any other candidate- and that the second most likely outcome (1 in 4) is no one gets a majority (contested convention).

So, the takeaway here is that either Sanders wins, or we are probably in for a very long and divisive primary that will likely enormously benefit Donald Trump. I can't think of a better reason to back Bernie Sanders.

[His Divine Shadow]

Re: the conspiracy talk. This is probably the correct take.

https://twitter.com/spinningjoe/status/ ... 2102096691

"cock up or conspiracy" is a bad question because it's looking for agency when what's interesting is structure - if all the cock ups only happen to favour entrenched power, that's functionally indistinguishable from conspiracy

Not a conspiracy, just the way the cards are stacked in favor of power, it's structural.

[The Romulan Republic]

Re: the conspiracy talk. This is probably the correct take.

https://twitter.com/spinningjoe/status/ ... 2102096691

"cock up or conspiracy" is a bad question because it's looking for agency when what's interesting is structure - if all the cock ups only happen to favour entrenched power, that's functionally indistinguishable from conspiracy

Not a conspiracy, just the way the cards are stacked in favor of power, it's structural.

Another excellent argument for Bernie is that going by this analysis, Iowa proves his ability to actually win against a stacked deck- which is going to be very important come November, when the deck will be heavily stacked via corporate funding, gerrymandering, voter supression, foreign interference, the Electoral College, and quite possibly even outright fraud and/or violent supression in the Republicans' favor.

Edit: Latest from CNN:

100% reported in, Bernie still winning the popular vote, Buttigieg ahead by .1% in the delegate count (effective tie). However, due to the discrepencies and skepticism about the result, news outlets are still refusing to call it despite 100 being in.

[houser2112]

Another excellent argument for Bernie is that going by this analysis, Iowa proves his ability to actually win against a stacked deck- which is going to be very important come November, when the deck will be heavily stacked via corporate funding, gerrymandering, voter supression, foreign interference, the Electoral College, and quite possibly even outright fraud and/or violent supression in the Republicans' favor.

Gerrymandering? How do you figure? Unless you consider the way state lines are drawn to be "gerrymandering", that doesn't really apply in a presidential race, only House races.

[The Romulan Republic]

Another excellent argument for Bernie is that going by this analysis, Iowa proves his ability to actually win against a stacked deck- which is going to be very important come November, when the deck will be heavily stacked via corporate funding, gerrymandering, voter supression, foreign interference, the Electoral College, and quite possibly even outright fraud and/or violent supression in the Republicans' favor.

Gerrymandering? How do you figure? Unless you consider the way state lines are drawn to be "gerrymandering", that doesn't really apply in a presidential race, only House races.

Of course, but part of the job of the Presidential candidate is to turn out voters to help down-ballot races.

[The Romulan Republic]

An interesting take: for all that he's seen as a far Left ideologue by both fans and adversaries, Sanders is actually a very savvy political player:

https://vox.com/policy-and-politics/202 ... tic-debate

Sen. Bernie Sanders is a highly skilled politician, and at Friday night’s debate he showed it.

The Democratic Party is polarized right now between Bernie fans who insist that democratic socialism is the way forward and an establishment that’s terrified Sanders will bring electoral doom. The truth, however, is a bit more boring. Far-left politics isn’t really a winning hand, but Sanders himself is an effective player who consistently outperforms the partisan fundamentals in his races.

Those talents were on display Friday evening at the New Hampshire debate, where he stayed relentlessly on message, emphasized the popular aspects of his agenda, and avoided major pitfalls. As long as he can avoid the trap of believing too much of his own hype, he has the ability to craft a winning message for November.

Bernie avoided pitfalls on health care
Sanders’ most obvious vulnerability by far is that over the course of his two campaigns he’s centered a Medicare-for-all agenda that, while popular as an abstract slogan, tends to become politically dicey when people kick the tires and examine the details.

This has come up time and again at previous debates, but typically with Elizabeth Warren as the subject of scrutiny. Friday night it was Bernie’s time in the barrel as Joe Biden argued that Medicare for All “will cost more than the entire federal budget we spend now” so “the idea middle-class taxes aren’t going to go up is just crazy.”

It’s a tough charge and a fair one, but Sanders simply ducks it.

We are spending twice as much per capita on health care as do the people of any other country. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the health care industry last year made $100 billion in profit. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we are wasting $500 billion a year trying to administer thousands and thousands of different plans.

What Medicare for all will do is save the average American substantial sums of money. Substantial. It would be much less expensive than your plan. And we will expand Medicare to include dental care, eyeglasses, hearing aids, and home health care, as well.

What makes this answer work is that while it’s evasive on the taxes point, it also stands up to fact-checking scrutiny.

If you look at American health care spending in international terms, you’ll think you’re going insane. It’s not just that the Canadian and British governments finance health care that’s free at point of service for all citizens, they do it while spending less than our government does even if you completely ignore America’s enormous private sector health spending.


Warren, who had a brand as the woman with a thousand plans, was expected to draw up a specific plan to make her health care vision work. What’s more, her whole campaign is vulnerable to attacks from the left from Sanders fans so she always had to worry about looking less-than-fully committed. Sanders is free of a wonk reputation or a need to worry about his left flank, so he doesn’t try to offer a specific health care financing vision — which, if he did it, would inevitably end up featuring some unpleasant tradeoffs.

Instead, he just makes the basic compelling point captured by that chart — America’s health care system is bizarrely terrible, providing less coverage at greater cost than what we see in comparable countries. This is not an adequate basis for actually enacting Medicare-for-all, but it’s a good political answer that explains his big picture view of health care without falling into nasty political traps.

Bernie emphasizes unifying economic themes
Another display of Sanders’s political skills came as a followup to a skillful charge from former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who argued that voters will “respond to those who are reaching out in a politics of addition and inclusion and belonging, not one that beats people over the head and says they shouldn’t even be on their side if we don’t agree 100 percent of the time.”

That’s a good point about the political virtues moderation and broad-mindedness. But like a lot of establishment Democrats, Buttigieg seems to be confusing Sanders’ Twitter following — which really does go in for a lot of off-putting sectarian fanaticism – for Bernie himself who is a much more deft politician.

Sanders rebutted by simply saying “Needless to say, I have never said that.” He believes in looking for converts, not excommunicating heretics.

And then he delivered his own version of how you bring people together — with an economic policy message:

The way you bring people together — Republicans, independents, Democrats, progressives, conservatives — you raise the minimum wage to $15 bucks an hour. The way you bring people together is to make it clear that we’re not going to give tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations. They’re going to start paying their fair share of taxes. That’s what the American people want.

And I’ll tell you something else. The way you bring people together is by ending the international disgrace of this country being the only major nation on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people as a human right.

And you bring people together by telling the pharmaceutical industry they’re not going to charge us 10 times more for the same prescription drugs as the people in Canada that borders on New Hampshire. That’s how you bring people together and you defeat Donald Trump.

Now note something here. Sanders doesn’t say that you bring people together by throwing a woman’s right to choose under the bus, or by abandoning the concerns of racial minorities or LGBT Americans. Indeed, later in the debate Sanders will stake out a hard-line pro-choice stance and his voting record as a senator has always been rock solid on civil rights and gay rights issues.

But he does draw an implicit contrast here. The way you bring people together (i.e., be popular and win elections) is by talking about themes that activate class conflict rather than disagreements about race or gender roles.

This is in keeping with research. Economic policy unites rank-and-file Democrats and divides rank-and-file Republicans, whereas cultural issues do the reverse. But Democratic Party politicians often fall into the trap of emphasizing their own elite-level consensus on cultural issues, while fighting about the details of economic policy.

Sanders is aware that as a matter of electoral self-presentation, it makes the most sense to emphasize broadly resonant economic policy themes that address Americans of all races and who might disagree vociferously about the desirability of immigration or who does what while the national anthem is playing.

Sanders knows how to pivot
Last but by no means least, Sanders eloquently gave Democrats the answer they wanted to hear when moderators asked him about Hillary Clinton’s continued habit of needling him in television interview.

“I think quite honestly as we face one of the great political crisis facing America,” he said, “our job is to look forward and not back. I hope that Secretary Clinton and all of us can come together and move in that direction.”

It was simple, it was classy, it is probably not an expression of his full true feelings on the matter, but that's exactly what made it important — under pressure and with the stakes high, he kept his cool and did not get dragged into a counterproductive argument. Instead, he pivoted to account of himself as a bipartisan dealmaker:

And in fact, there were periods that I was in the House of Representatives a number of years, where I passed more amendments on the floor of the house in a bipartisan way than any other member of the house. And that is when you — when you bring people together aren’t an issue. There are many conservative Republicans for example who are concerned about civil liberties. At least they used to be concerned about civil liberties. There is Republicans as you know concerned about the high cost of prescription drugs. There are ways we can work with Republicans on issues where we have a common basis. Let’s do that.

The point here is not necessarily that this line about his bipartisan amendments is general election gold. He’s referring, as he sometimes does, to the fact that over ten years ago he was dubbed “the amendment king” for the fact that in a study that covered the years 1995-2007 he passed more amendments than anyone else in the House. Does anyone really care about Bernie’s work on low-profile amendments in the late-1990s? Probably not.

But nervous Democrats should take two things away from this. One is that Sanders does in fact know how the American legislative process works. He has participated in it extensively for decades, knows how you can get things done and also knows how painfully difficult it is to get things done. It’s true that this is at odds with some of his “political revolution” talk, but the point is he’s been around. This is a veteran and reasonably successful member of congress, not some random guy who joined Democratic Socialists of America 18 months ago.

The other, and in some ways more important, thing is simply that he knows how to do the whole normal politics “pivot to the center” thing. Happy talk about bipartisanship isn’t just for Joe Biden. Bernie Sanders can do it too! He has Republican friends. He knows there are good Republicans out there. He’s worked with them in the past and looks forward to doing so again.

It’s 100 percent true that if Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar started talking like this, they’d get roasted by Sanders’s Twitter fandom. The hypocrisy is very real. But the fact that Bernie’s fans let Sanders get away with this kind of thing is a strength of his. He is smart and trusted, so he has the running room to reach out the center, and — when appropriate — he does it.

There are no guarantees in politics, and it’s unquestionably true that Sanders would bring some obvious vulnerabilities to the table. But his track record over the years suggests real skill at navigating these problems, and if you watch his first performance as a real frontrunner in the race you can see those skills in action.

[The Romulan Republic]

Jesus fucking Christ.

https://cbc.ca/news/world/amid-irregula ... -1.5455516

The Associated Press said Thursday that it is unable to declare a winner of Iowa's Democratic caucuses.

Following the Iowa Democratic Party's release of new results late Thursday night, former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg leads Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by two state delegate equivalents out of 2,152 counted. That is a margin of 0.09 percentage points.

However, there is evidence the party has not accurately tabulated some of its results, including those released late Thursday that the party reported as complete.

Further, even as the Iowa Democratic Party's effort to complete its tabulation of the caucus results continued Thursday, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez asked the Iowa Democratic Party to conduct a recanvass. That is not a recount, but rather a check of the vote count to ensure the results were added correctly.

Perez sought the recanvass following days of uncertainty about the results reported by the Iowa Democratic Party, which includes technology problems with the mobile phone app used by the party to collect results from caucus sites, an overwhelming number of calls to the party's backup phone system and a subsequent delay of several days of reporting the results.


Tom Perez, chair of the Democratic National Committee, is calling for a 'recanvass' of the results of Monday's Iowa caucus. (John Bazemore/The Associated Press)
The Iowa Democratic Party suggested it may not comply with Perez's request, issuing a statement that said it would conduct a recanvass if one was requested by one of the candidates.

"The Associated Press calls a race when there is a clear indication of a winner. Because of a tight margin between former Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders and the irregularities in this year's caucus process, it is not possible to determine a winner at this point," said Sally Buzbee, AP's senior vice president and executive editor.

The AP will continue to monitor the race, as well as the results of any potential recanvass or recount.

ANALYSIS'Big victory' for Buttigieg, 'big trouble' for Biden based on latest Iowa results
ANALYSISDelayed Iowa caucus results could rob winner of 'bump' ahead of New Hampshire
The caucus crisis was an embarrassing twist after months of promoting Iowa as a chance for Democrats to find some clarity in a jumbled 2020 field. Instead, after a buildup that featured seven rounds of debates, nearly $1 billion US spent nationwide and a year of political jockeying, caucus day ended with no winner and no official results.

Campaigning in New Hampshire, Sanders called the Iowa Democratic Party's management of the caucuses a "screw-up" that has been "extremely unfair" to the candidates and their supporters.

"We've got enough of Iowa," he said later Thursday at a CNN town hall. "I think we should move onto New Hampshire."

Lengthy delay in Republican contest in 2012
Iowa marked the first contest in a primary season that will span all 50 states and several U.S. territories, ending at the party's national convention in July.

The confusion is not unprecedented. While the 2016 contests in Iowa were decided in quick fashion, in 2012 it took 18 days before it officially emerged that Rick Santorum had came out ahead of Mitt Romney in the Republican race.

As first reported by The New York Times, numerous precincts this week reported results that contained errors or were inconsistent with party rules. For example, the AP confirmed that dozens of precincts reported more final alignment votes than first alignment votes, which is not possible under party rules. In other precincts, viable candidates lost votes from the first alignment tally to the final, which is also inconsistent with party rules.

As It Happens
Iowa Democrat describes a night of caucus chaos and confusion
6:06


The app at the centre of the Iowa caucuses kerfuffle "wasn't so much rolled out, as just kind of dumped on the doorstep," says Zach Simonson, the Democratic Party chair in Wapello County, Iowa. 6:06
Some precincts made apparent errors in awarding state delegate equivalents to candidates. A handful of precincts awarded more state delegate equivalents than they had available. A few others didn't award all of theirs.

The trouble began with an app that the Iowa Democratic Party used to tabulate the results of the contest. The app was rolled out shortly before caucusing began and did not go through rigorous testing.


Precinct captain Carl Voss of Des Moines displays the Iowa Democratic Party caucus reporting app on his phone Tuesday outside of the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters in Des Moines. (Nati Harnik/The Associated Press)
The problems were compounded when phone lines for reporting the outcomes became jammed, with many callers placed on hold for hours in order to report outcomes. Party officials said the backlog was exacerbated by calls from people around the country who accessed the number and appeared intent on disrupting the process.

Buttigieg and Sanders will emerge from Iowa's caucuses with the most delegates to the party's national convention, regardless of which one eventually wins the contest. They have each won at least 11 national delegates, with a handful of delegates still to be awarded, according to the AP delegate count. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has won at least five delegates, while former vice-president Joe Biden has won at least two and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar has at least one.

7 candidates ready for debate
Iowa will award 41 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer. There are 11 delegates still to be awarded as the state party sorts out the final results of the caucuses.

Candidates must win a majority of pledged delegates to the party's national convention to win the Democratic nomination for president on the first ballot. This year, that's 1,191 pledged delegates.

CBC EXPLAINSHow the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee will be chosen
Michael Bloomberg has spent well over $200M on presidential campaign so far
But the breakdown seems sure to blunt the impact of Iowa's election, which typically rewards winners with a surge of momentum heading into subsequent primary contests. It is likely a welcome development for Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City who has opted to concentrate on states being contested in March, when a significant number of the delegates will be decided.

The other Democrats have quickly turned their focus to New Hampshire, which holds the next voting contest on Tuesday.

Seven candidates will participate in a debate tonight in Manchester, N.H.:

Joe Biden.
Pete Buttigieg.
Amy Klobuchar.
Bernie Sanders.
Tom Steyer.
Elizabeth Warren.
Andrew Yang.

[The Romulan Republic]

There was technically a Republican caucus in Iowa too, although given the party's utter domination by its Fuhrer, it had little impact and received little attention.

After getting only one percent in Iowa, Joe Walsh has suspended his primary challenge to Trump and said he is leaving the Republican party, describing it as a cult and saying that Trump is the greatest threat to the country. He has said he will back any of the Democratic candidates to stop Trump's reelection:

https://cnn.com/2020/02/07/politics/joe ... index.html

CNN)Former US Rep. Joe Walsh is ending his uphill challenge against Donald Trump for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination, after suffering a crushing loss in the Iowa GOP caucuses in which he received only 1% of the vote.

"I am ending my candidacy for president of the United States," Walsh told CNN's John Berman on "New Day." "I got into this because I thought it was really important that there was a Republican -- a Republican -- out there every day calling out this president for how unfit he is."
Walsh, a conservative, said he will do whatever he can to stop Trump, including help any of the Democratic candidates get elected.
Trump "literally is the greatest threat to this country right now. Any Democrat would be better than Trump in the White House," he said.
He accused the Republican Party of being a "cult" and said Trump can't be beat in the GOP primary "so there's no reason for me, or any candidate, really to be in there."
Walsh finished third in the Iowa Republican caucuses, which Trump overwhelmingly won on Monday as his impeachment trial was nearing its end.
Democratic candidates face critical test in New Hampshire after Iowa fiasco
Democratic candidates face critical test in New Hampshire after Iowa fiasco
A one-term congressman, Walsh launched his 2020 bid in August with slim to no chance of defeating Trump, who has high approval ratings among Republicans.
He was also up against the fundraising arm of Trump's reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee, which have raised millions. And several GOP state party leaders canceled their presidential primaries and caucuses, effectively cutting out Walsh's opportunities to challenge Trump.
His candidacy, however, attracted conservative lawyer George Conway, the husband to the President's counselor Kellyanne Conway. Conway donated to Walsh's campaign and had informally advised his campaign.
Walsh has a history of controversial comments as a conservative radio host and in Congress, but after announcing his candidacy said he regretted his false claims against former President Barack Obama.
Walsh, who voted for Trump in the 2016 election, also apologized for what he said was his role in helping elect an "unfit con man" to the White House.
He previously told ABC News he would not vote for Trump if he locks up the Republican nomination, which Trump will all but certainly do.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld remains the only Republican candidate facing off against Trump for the nomination.
This story is breaking and will be updated.

[The Romulan Republic]

On a lighter note, Bernie Sanders just got a new endorsement... Harley Quinn:

https://washingtonpost.com/arts-enterta ... irds-prey/

[The Romulan Republic]

Buttigieg, Sanders, and Warren campaigns have all filed asking for recanvasing of certain precincts with irregularities in Iowa:

https://cnn.com/2020/02/08/politics/iow ... index.html

(CNN)The presidential campaigns for Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have submitted their respective evidence of inconsistencies from the Iowa caucuses count to the Iowa Democratic Party ahead of a noon Central time deadline, the Iowa Democratic Party communications director told CNN.

The Iowa Democratic Party announced later Saturday that it was reviewing reports of irregularities from 95 precincts -- 5% of the total 1,765 precincts in the state.

The party said in a statement that they had already initiated the process and that the possible corrections will be made public by noon Central (1 p.m. ET) Monday - before the party officially allocates how many delegates the campaigns will get from Iowa.
"The top priority of the IDP continues to be ensuring the accuracy of reported data as the process moves towards completion," the party said in the statement.

A Buttigieg aide told CNN on Saturday that the campaign had submitted their claims to the state party. The Massachusetts senator also handed over information before the deadline, according to Mandy McClure, the Iowa Democratic Party spokeswoman. And Sanders' campaign announced Thursday that they had submitted data to the Iowa Democratic Party. The campaign also released a host of irregularities publicly.

"We also feel confident that the discrepancies we're providing tonight, in addition to those widely identified in the national media, mean that the SDE count will never be known with any kind of certainty," Sanders adviser Jeff Weaver said Thursday night.

With 100% precincts reporting, Buttigieg holds a slim lead over Sanders in the caucuses. The former South Bend, Indiana, mayor leads the Vermont senator by one-tenth of one percentage point in the all-important state delegate equivalent count. Warren, former Vice President Joe Biden and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar trail the top two candidates.

The Iowa Democratic Party announced Friday that it was extending the time campaigns have to call for a recanvass or recount of the Iowa caucuses, further drawing out the chaos that has consumed the state's caucus process. Faulty apps, issues with rules and jammed phone lines plunged the Iowa caucus process into turmoil Monday and has delayed the process of naming a winner up to a week.

The deadline to request a recanvass had been noon CT (1 p.m. ET) on Friday, but the party said it was moving the deadline to the same time on Monday, giving campaigns three additional days to review the results and decide whether they want to challenge them.
Campaigns were given until Saturday at noon CT (1 p.m. ET) to "submit documentary evidence of inconsistencies between the data reported and the records of result for correction."

CNN has reached out to other campaigns about their possible claims.

It is unlikely, however, that any campaigns will call for a recanvass.

Sanders told CNN on Friday that they would not be calling for one.

"We're not going to ask for recanvass of the whole state. That we're certainly not going to do," Sanders said. "But I think there were some precincts, where there were some pretty apparent irregularities and The New York Times noticed it, NBC noticed it, other media noticed it. I think we will ask the Iowa Democratic Party to take a look at those precincts."

Buttigieg, during a CNN town hall this week, said he would "leave it to the party" to decide on what is necessary.

"What I'll say is nothing can take away what happened on Monday," Buttigieg said. "Just an extraordinary moment for the movement that we have built and now we're looking ahead to New Hampshire and beyond."

CNN's Ryan Nobles, Greg Krieg, Annie Grayer, Dianne Gallagher and Pamela Kirkland contributed to this story.

Buttigieg sounds like he's expecting his lead to disappear once the checking is done, and wants to get ahead of it.

As an aside, reportedly those "jammed phone lines" were at least partially due to crank calls from Trumper trolls.

[Gandalf]

In watching coverage of this on MSNBC, does a mention of socialism always set Chris Matthews off like that?

It seems like he thinks Sanders will turn into Fidel Castro, which is nuts.

[The Romulan Republic]

In watching coverage of this on MSNBC, does a mention of socialism always set Chris Matthews off like that?

It seems like he thinks Sanders will turn into Fidel Castro, which is nuts.

He's part of the older, Cold War generation, who grew up in a country where by and large, socialism was equated with communist dictatorship. There's a reason Bernie's leading with under 35s in the primary and has about three percent among seniors IIRC.

Of course, the big question is, will too many of those seniors, even ones who would otherwise vote Democrat, stay home or vote Trump if Bernie is the nominee? That's why a lot of Democrats are afraid of nominating him (of course, you could say the same about, say Buttigieg and the black vote- every candidate has weaknesses).

[The Romulan Republic]

Final CNN tracking poll from NH has Bernie seven points ahead of Buttigieg:

https://cnn.com/2020/02/10/politics/new ... index.html

Fingers crossed. Buttigieg would always have been a vulnerable nominee given his issues with the black vote, but after the Iowa cluster fuck, and the widespread suspicion of fraud involving his campaign (even if false), he'd likely be a catastrophic one. A Democrat who can't turn out progressives or the black vote? And they say Bernie's unelectable.

Of course, the alternative is that a Buttigieg win would not be enough to give him victory in the primary, but would just blunt Bernie's momentum before Buttigieg himself faded, leading to a long, drawn-out primary and likely contested convention. And given how ugly things are getting already, I don't think we can afford that.