Political Discussion

[wokeupnew]

so Iowa does not really have that many delegates, and they have historically been more important for the race boost they give those who do well there- affirmation, media attention, the ability to say, "see, I can win!"

with this fumble, I feel like it further knocks against the importance of the Iowa kickoff. the attention is on the debacle and not the Iowa boost- which I don't think is the worst thing. the makeup of the voter populace in Iowa increasingly does not match the face of the modern Democratic party- and while I know this is changing AND their voice is still very important, I think it skews perceptions more. same for NH, for that matter.

it's VERY interesting that Bernie won the vast majority of districts that had a majority/strong minority, non-white makeup. 2016 Clinton is 2020 Bernie. And a lot of votes for Polk (DSM) county are still not counted where Bernie is expected to do well. He should win in NH because of proximity to VT, Buttigieg may have a little bit of a boost from some voters there, but it'll be interesting to see what happens in SC, NV and Super Tuesday where states start to get much more diverse. Buttigieg is doing terribly with non-white voters.

 

[bfly]

it's VERY interesting that Bernie won the vast majority of districts that had a majority/strong minority, non-white makeup. 2016 Clinton is 2020 Bernie. And a lot of votes for Polk (DSM) county are still not counted where Bernie is expected to do well. He should win in NH because of proximity to VT, Buttigieg may have a little bit of a boost from some voters there, but it'll be interesting to see what happens in SC, NV and Super Tuesday where states start to get much more diverse. Buttigieg is doing terribly with non-white voters.

Bernie did incredibly well in NH in 2016, and I would be shocked if it didn't play out the same now. Biden considers SC his "firewall," and I don't see Buttigieg taking the moderate reins from him there but I guess only time will tell. listened to a podcast earlier this week that talked with some Yang voters in the caucus, and many of them had caucused for Trump in 2016 and found Yang's financial message resonated with them most now.

I'm mailing in my absentee ballot for TX this week. I'm tired.

 

[RenegadeMonster]

The end of the impeachment trial likely will not be today. Well, it will be and isn't.

Trump's expected acquittal is expected today. And republican senators say they hope that the Democrats will "accept the results".

Meanwhile, on the Democrats side, a subpoena for John Bolton is likely to be issues soon as they continue their investigation and new evidence comes out. There may be more articles of impeachment sent to the senate.

 

[bfly]

but I mean,

in all actuality,

what the fuck

 

[Jan]

The

That's interesting but I still don't trust that. How do you verify for yourself that a given machine is running the exact code it claims to be? How do you know the votes stored on that machine/server make it to the actual count? I realize elections will always be on some level trust-dependent but it's hard not to trust a piece of paper that you yourself have written on.

I´m with you on that. We have a very old-school paper Ballot and pen Voting System in Germany., So there are actual Ballot boxes that can be recount in case there is something strange. But since i just read this article last week i wanted to give a quick Picture About what People are working on technically. But even that artile said Nothing of those new technical measures is ready for the 2020 election. In the given Voting Systems employed there is a great Risk of someone atacking the electiosn. It does´t even have to be Grand plan of fraud, if you want to hurt trust in american democrazy a few malicious agents that are able to hack certain precincts and make then report Nonsensical results would be enough

 

[DownIsTheNewUp]

I was in Iowa orchestrating a precinct and canvassing for Bernie. I have spent the past 24+ hours defending the integrity if the process on social media, but shit is about to hit the fan.

This morning the elected official who ran the caucuses in Blackhawk County released his data onto Twitter out of frustration while lamenting that the data had been handed over almost immediately on the night of the election.

Then when the batch updated to 85% percent reported, there was a HUGE discrepancy in the data. Bernie was missing roughly 500 votes. The DNC issued a statement there was going to be an update to that batch...

Meanwhile, the satellite caucuses that went huge for Bernie have yet to report according to numerous precinct captains. Including the one my brother served as secretary for-- that went 8 delegates to 0 for Bernie.

 

[Teeeee]

Who let VMP start a satellite office in Iowa???? Dammit.

But seriously. I don't even understand how this is so effing screwed up!

Today is not a good day for Dems.

 

[DownIsTheNewUp]

 

[DownIsTheNewUp]

500.

Yeah. It was a typo that I edited perhaps right before you saw it. But for the record, 500 votes is a metric shit ton. As a point of comparison- the precinct I was at has 283 total voters.

 

[DownIsTheNewUp]

So when the vote went from 71% to 85% Bernie was suddenly behind by 1000ish in the popular vote. The the DNC gets called out by the caucus chair and says there was a mistake... it goes to 86% and Bernie is back up by 1000ish....

 

[RenegadeMonster]

"As we have said all along, he is not guilty. The Senate voted to reject the baseless articles of impeachment, and only the President’s political opponents – all Democrats, and one failed Republican presidential candidate – voted for the manufactured impeachment articles," she said in a statement.

This statement by the white house is beyond words. Wow.

 

[DownIsTheNewUp]

NYT has a great explainer on the vast anti-Sanders conspiracy unfolding in Iowa:

Iowa Caucus Results Riddled With Errors and Inconsistencies (Published 2020)

The mistakes do not appear intentional, but they raise questions about whether there will ever be a completely precise accounting.

www.nytimes.com

The upshot is that completely aside from the technical difficulties, caucuses are useless, arcane, and needlessly complicated procedures with numerous opportunities for error. And this year they’re even more complex because of the new rules. Those rules, intended to provide transparency but in reality causing even more distrust in the process because they’re even more difficult to follow accurately, are in place at the insistence of...

drumroll please

...Hillary Clinton!













Nah, just kidding, it was Bernie Sanders.

Bernie wanted more transparency- things like the popular vote recorded. He did not push for a malfunctioning app to be used instead of the phone call system that has been utilized for years. Oh. And who was that app created by?

Drumroll please...

Former staff of Hilary Clinton

 

[Twentytwo]

Don't make this harder than it should be, just have a damn primary.

 

[DownIsTheNewUp]

If the app is down and the votes are being tabulated manually, can it be blamed for the mistakes being identified by NYT?

The app is a problem for sure. The state party obviously thought (rightly or wrongly) that it was worthwhile to seek out a tool to automate some of the more demanding aspects of the new rules. Its development, testing, training, implementation, and reliability are all worth examining. But it's also a convenient scapegoat for the process failures of a dumb-to-the-point-of-being-undemocratic system for selecting a candidate.

As NYT points out, under the old method, discrepancies were hard to identify but relatively easy to fix. Here, they're easier to identify, but it still takes time to fix them, because it requires a lot of assessment around exactly where the errors lay. I don't begrudge Bernie's campaign at all for seeking transparency in the process. I do think it's disappointing to see the howling on Twitter about dirty tricks and an unjust system when the very demands for transparency are part of what is causing the problem. Own it; trust the process. A simple statement would go a long way: "We've known since 2016 that changing the way the Iowa caucuses operate would be challenging, and it's certainly frustrating that this delay has occurred. But we have faith that the safeguards and transparencies built into the system will ultimately provide us with more accurate data that we can all have confidence in." Selling the people that if you're not winning, it must be because the system is somehow disenfranchising you, may end up being a path to victory, but it does nothing to strengthen the institution of democracy.

Did I overreact yesterday? Probably. I had also spent the prior 48 hours defending the integrity of the final count and being complementary of me experiences with Pete supporters in Iowa (among other things) on social media.

But it's also been clear from the moment that this fiasco started that they were holding off the precincts that they knew Bernie did really well in until the very end-- all while Pete spent two days claiming victory and Bernie / Warren acted like class acts. And now, just as the sattelite caucuses that Bernie mopped up were set to be released and hand victory to Bernie, Tom Perez is coming out and calling for a halt to the process / recount. NOT after the Blackhawk county fiasco, you'll note.

It's the DNC, between 2016 and now this, that is throwing a hand grenade into a belief in democracy in this country. This tweet sums it up:

"I've never seen a more blatant example of concentrated money rigging an election than Iowa Dems releasing a random percentage of the vote after self-dealing grifters tied to Clinton and Pete fucked up an election, followed by the NYT, WaPost, CNN, and MSNBC announcing 'partial results.'" --and now, right before releasing the final satellite caucus results that would have put Bernie over the top, even with all the shady BS that was being pulled, Tom Perez announces that they're going to stop and start over and need a few more days to release the final results. I'm actually fucking laughing. What a bunch of sinister and contemptible bare-faced goons these clowns are."

- Matt Stoller

 

[DownIsTheNewUp]

Also, there is this:



What's happening: Iowa's Party has allocated SDEs to satellites (relatively) straightforwardly: proportionally based on raw turnout DNC is interpreting the rules in a way that'd somewhat (not entirely) flatten that distribution, making it less directly linked to raw turnout. In other words they are intentionally undermining the fact that Bernie spent a huge portion of his organizing on maxing turnout at sattelite caucuses that were on a sliding scale based on turnout.

For example, my brother and I spent 10 hours in 20 degree weather trying to ensure that 200 kids would turn out at a particular location because the # of delegates for that location was worth 4-9 delegates on a sliding scale. Bernie wound up earning 8 out of 8 delegates because we came up 4 people short (of 200) with a turnout of 196.

And now the DNC is trying to lower the worth of those 8 delegates. But that's the more subtle type of gamesmanship that I expected from the DNC in their fight against Bernie and would have shrugged my shoulders at. As opposed to the rest of this nonsense.

 

[RenegadeMonster]

US preacher Franklin Graham dropped by every UK tour venue

A planned UK tour by US evangelist Franklin Graham is in question after every venue booked by the preacher canceled planned appearances, following an outcry over his homophobic and Islamophobic comments.

www.cnn.com

So, Franklin Grahm, a US evangelist preacher who was going to have a 7 city tour of the UK has now had all 7 venues he had originally booked cancel on him.

They have cut ties with him because of public outcry in the UK over Grahm's past homophobic sermons and the fact that he has called Islam "evil".

Kind of bad when the religious conservatives of the US don't align with the rest of the world.

 

[RenegadeMonster]

The DNC is calling for a recanvass in Iowa? Is this the same thing as a recount?

 

[Dtknuckles]

Sorry, I didn't mean for any my comments to be an indictment of you personally.

I started to write a longer post, but it didn't go anywhere. We're all tired. Any one of these candidates is enough of a decent human being that I wouldn't be ashamed of them occupying the office of president for a few years. That's where I'm at: tired and ashamed, and sort of sick of the venomous clawing at each other that all of this inspires.

IDK I’ll vote for if my arm is twisted, but Biden has a history of this Burisma stuff going back to credit card companies before the 2008 crash. His sons have had it easy. Those Bankruptcy law he pushed for did a lot of damage.

 

[Sonicpharmacist]

Sorry, I didn't mean for any my comments to be an indictment of you personally.

I started to write a longer post, but it didn't go anywhere. We're all tired. Any one of these candidates is enough of a decent human being that I wouldn't be ashamed of them occupying the office of president for a few years. That's where I'm at: tired and ashamed, and sort of sick of the venomous clawing at each other that all of this inspires.

A million times this. I’m tired of all the infighting. I haven’t completely decided on a candidate, though I do have a couple I like better than others. They ALL have good qualities, and they ALL have not-so-good qualities. That being said, I will vote for any single one of them come November. If Warren wins the nomination, I will support her. Same said for Sanders, Buttigieg, Biden, Bloomberg, and even Tulsi. Any one of them. BUT if Biden (or anyone else) wins? Then I will be vociferous in my anger at their policies.

 

[Nee Lewman]

Wtf, he won and he’s still attacking people involved including people in his administration.

From the Washington Post:

Trump jokingly suggested chants of “12 more years” or “16 more years.”

he also jokingly stated that he could shoot someone in the street and get away with it, only to pretty much do the political equivalent of just that. It’s not a joke and we have to stop taking for granted that what would seem like a joke from rational people are not such from him.

I’m embarassed that he’s our “leader”