Posted on 02/07/2020 5:00:32 AM PST by Kaslin
Are we watching a great political party commit suicide?
For more than a year, Democratic candidates, up to 26 of them at one point, have been crisscrossing Iowa's 99 counties, seeking votes in Iowa's precinct caucuses.
They were duly held on Monday night. But the Iowa Democratic Party did not release any results until Tuesday, and they were only partial results -- a software glitch, we're told. But what does that say about the party's competence and judgment? Why not just use pencil and paper and adding machines with tape?
That would be too easy. Iowa's Democratic caucuses, established in 1972 to boost dovish candidates, had a complex system of regrouping supporters of candidates with less than 15% and reporting not votes but state convention delegate equivalents.
Bernie Sanders supporters protested four years ago when the Iowa party announced Hillary Clinton had beaten him by a tiny number of delegate equivalents, even though more caucusgoers may have actually backed him. This year, the party agreed to provide three versions of the results including the number of attendees for each candidate. So far, it's produced nothing.
The entrance poll of first choices of those entering the caucuses showed Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg leading with 23%, followed by Joe Biden with 17%, Elizabeth Warren with 16% and Amy Klobuchar with 13%.
Those numbers should be considered approximate and subject to error, but nonetheless, the Buttigieg camp claimed victory; the Sanders campaign released partial results showing him ahead; and the Biden campaign noted that there were plenty of contests to come.
Such results must look dreadful to national Democratic Party professionals. They doubt that a 78-year-old socialist who had a heart attack last October would be a strong nominee. They doubt that a 38-year-old former small-city mayor with zero appeal to black voters can stop him.
Sanders is poised to win big in New Hampshire Feb. 11, and he could easily beat a flagging Biden in Nevada on Feb. 22. Nor does South Carolina on Feb. 29 look like a sure win for Biden, who in a Jan. 26-29 Post and Courier poll led Sanders by only a five-point margin. At this point, Biden is getting only 30% of black votes, supposedly his particular constituency.
With no official result until Thursday and arguably suspicious results over the last few days, Warren and Klobuchar did not exit the race. This ensures a crowded field in which Sanders, like Donald Trump in the early 2016 Republican primaries, could win with pluralities in one state after another. After all, he did get 43% of primary votes against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
One possibility, looking forward to the Super Tuesday and other big state primaries in March, is a race between Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg, who wisely skipped Iowa and New Hampshire and has been spending hundreds of millions on big state TV. Is either candidate ideally positioned to beat President Trump?
Maybe no Democrat is. Trump's RealClearPolitics job approval reached an all-time high of 46% last week, and a new Gallup poll has it at 49%. Moreover, that poll shows more voters with positive feelings toward the Republican Party than the Democratic Party, a contrast with many past results.
These possibly strategic upticks surely owe something to the way the Democrats bobbled impeachment. The one-sided House proceedings moved more people in the United States to oppose impeachment. The monthlong delay in sending the articles over to the Senate showed indecision and ineffectiveness. And the final vote Wednesday proved it was all a pointless waste of time.
In contrast, people in the U.S. see conditions in the nation improving in the Trump years. Gallup's Social Series poll shows people's satisfaction with the economy at 68%, up 22% from January 2017; satisfaction with security from terrorism up 18% from 2017; with military preparedness up 15%; and with the state of race relations up 14%.
There's plenty of material here for an updated version of former President Ronald Reagan's 1984 "Morning in America" ad, which, over gauzy, feel-good video, highlighted one improved statistic after another, with only a brief shot of the president himself.
What do the Democrats have to offer in return? Criticism of the killing of Iran's terrorist chief. Tales of economic woe at a time of record-low unemployment and what Trump can reasonably call a "blue-collar boom."
Six months ago, Democrats were savoring the humiliating defeat of Trump. Today, thanks in part to blunders from Iowa to impeachment, they fear that he, like his three predecessors, may be catching favorable winds and sailing out of the political doldrums toward reelection.
Real accomplishments for the country bolster tangible results. Pandering to the public with carefully manipulated wordsmithing which produces the need for subsequent carefully manipulated wordsmithing to sustain those hollow promises, eventually collapses because the underlying truths are amorphous.
Could you imagine how great American would be today if Trump had followed Reagan, and not George HW Bush?
THEN AND NOW-——THE IOWA CAUCUS DEBACLE UP-CLOSE:
LAST FALL, Iowa’s Republican and Democratic Parties and their app and web development vendors partnered with (cough) Harvard’s “Defending Digital Democracy Project” to develop strategies and systems to protect results and deal with misinformation.
The Harvard group included party “campaign experts” Robby Mook and Matt Rhodes, and experts in (A) cybersecurity, (B) national security, (C) technology and (D) election administration.
Fortuitously, the group simulated different ways “things could go wrong” on caucus night. (cue maniacal laugh machine here).
Mook is 2016 campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, and Rhodes is Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign manager.
Out of sheer public-spiritededness, these two helped develop a video to alert campaigns to warning signs of hacking and misinformation.
THAT WAS THEN-— THIS IS NOW-—WHAT THE IOWA DEMOCRAT PARTY IS SAYING IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE DEBACLE
“The app the Iowa Democratic Party commissioned to tabulate and report results from the caucuses on Monday was not properly tested, people briefed on the app by the state party told newspapers. It was quickly put together in just the past two months , said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly.”
Plus the state party decided to use the app only after another proposal for reporting votes — which entailed caucus participants phoning in their votes — was abandoned, on the advice of DNC officials, according to David Jefferson, a board member of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election integrity organization.
No, there's nothing great about the demoncrap party. But it's refreshing to have a POTUS who exposes people for who they truly are.
What the Michael Barone writes is correct, as far as it goes.
The more important question is why are the Democrats in chaos, and President Trump ascendant?
The structural answer is the primary power of the Democrats/Progressives has been control of the Media for the past 50 years. The power has flowed from control of the information flow, not from the politics. The politicians had far less power than the ideologically unified Media.
The Mediacracy controlled the narrative; decided what political and judicial candidates were “acceptable”, what was new and what was not; and what was a scandal, and what was not.
The control faltered as talk radio prospered, the Internet became an information powerhouse, and various social media systems offered alternative channels of communication.
Donald Trump is the first President to harness those systems to take on the Mediacracy head on and triumph.
Yes. The media seemed outraged that a “reality TV star” like Trump might aspire to be president. Maybe they had an inkling as to what might happen. This president understands communication. Reagan was the Great Communicator of the 20th century, but Donald Trump has mastered communication in the 21st century. And he’s destroying the Mediocracy.
I wonder how many bottles of Maalox Barone had to consume in order to write that?
Barone is a conservative gentleman. How he keeps his cool amongst the whacko colleagues is beyond me.
Michael Barone obviously wrote this before hearing Nancy Pelosi yesterday explain that Obama deserves credit for the booming economy.
We are watching Theosophical Gnostic esoteric guru Helen Blavatsky and her butt buddy George Gurdjieff’s little plan for world domination by her magical Nazi wizard “Secret Chiefs” go down the crapper.
War in Heaven. Destroy the Work.
I got this quote off wiki from Malcolm X which I found interesting. Not that we agree much with him but this from him at a time when the control of info was indeed like you said.
““The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses. The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. It will make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.””
—Malcolm X
Great political party???? Does the writer mean the party of the KKK, segregation, and slavery?
Well said, even if he got a lot backwards himself.
What’s great about them?
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