It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, February 06, 2020
ROMNEY VOTED FOR THE IMPEACHMENT OF THE DONALD J TRUMP POTUS FOR HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS HE WAS THE ONLY REPUBLICAN TO DO SO. HE SAID HE TOOK AN OATH IN THE PRESENCE OF HIS GOD AND THE CHAMBER. MITT ROMNEY IS A HIGH RANKING OFFICER IN THE LDS CHURCH,THE MORMONS, AS HE SAID HE IS VERY RELIGIOUS, THE LDS TOOK THEIR UNDERWEAR AND SOME RITUALS FROM THE FREEMASONS, SO TAKING AN OATH IS A COMMON AND VERY SERIOUS TRADITION SHARED BY MORMONISM AND MASONRY AND AS ROMNEY POINTED OUT.HE DID WHAT HE TOOK HIS OATH TO DO, AS A MORMON ELDER AS WELL AS A SENATOR TOO BAD THE BRETHREN OF THE SQUARE AND COMPASS IN HIS PARTY DID NOT LIVE UP TO THEIR OATHS.
AOC lashes out at 'nauseating' spectacle of Rush Limbaugh receiving Presidential Medal of Freedom at State of the Union
Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has hit out at the "nauseating" spectacle of first lady Melania Trump awarding ailing conservative icon Rush Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the State of the Union.
In an Instagram video, AOC describes the recipient as a "virulent racist" and that the gesture "cheapened the value" of "an extraordinarily sacred award" previously given to Rosa Parks
Republicans Hate Surveillance on Trump but Sound Like They’ll Renew the PATRIOT Act
If Republicans have any appetite for reining in domestic surveillance that they describe as a massive violation of the civil liberties of Donald Trump’s associates, it wasn’t on display when FBI Director Christopher Wray made his first appearance on Capitol Hill since the damning Justice Department inspector general’s report into the Trump-Russia investigation.
That’s a real issue in light of next month’s expiration of several intrusive surveillance measures contained in the 2001 PATRIOT Act’s Section 215. One of those measures, the business records provision, permits broad FBI collection of records from service providers about an investigative target without that target ever knowing about it.
But few Republicans at Wednesday’s hearing who pronounced themselves offended by FBI surveillance abuses in the Trump-Russia probe, known as Crossfire Hurricane, told Wray that they will cost him Section 215. It was reminiscent of how Trump and House intelligence committee Republicans spent 2017 railing against surveillance on Trump’s allies before reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s single most expansive provision in January 2018.
Wray, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, was in for rough treatment from the panel’s Republican members. Hanging over his head was Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s findings that the FBI misrepresented information to the secret surveillance court relevant to continuing its surveillance on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. - ADVERTISEMENT -
But Wray had a script and he stuck to it. He refused to characterize any aspect of Horowitz’s investigation when legislators of both parties attempted soliciting a soundbite that could help or hurt Trump. Instead, he reiterated variations on a theme: Horowitz’s report “described conduct that is unacceptable and unrepresentative of the FBI as an institution.”
Several of the panel’s Republicans, having read Horowitz describe FBI officials misrepresenting their basis for continuing surveillance before a court that almost always hears exclusively from the government, found that frustrating. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) decried the FBI’s “systemic issues.” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) referenced the FISA Court’s Judge Rosemary Collyer, who said the Horowitz report “calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.” More bluntly, California’s Tom McClintock told Wray, “I don’t trust your agency anymore.”
But that lack of trust ends where the PATRIOT Act begins. The committee’s ranking Republican, Rep. Doug Collins (GA), said “we must reauthorize” the expiring PATRIOT provisions, even as Collins was a rare Republican who contextualized the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as a congressional response to the intelligence agencies’ unconstitutional surveillance of peaceful protesters and others. Wray took Collins’ opening to agree that the PATRIOT provisions were “not related” to the Carter Page case.
That’s true. But it overlooks Judge Collyer’s broader point about how the Page case indicts the FBI’s trustworthiness in its other, voluminous surveillance applications to her court. And FISA court-authorized surveillance isn’t the outer limit of the FBI’s surveillance powers. In October, it was revealed that the court found the FBI’s warrantless searches for Americans’ data captured in National Security Agency dragnets were so massively overbroad as to threaten constitutional freedoms.
Collins, to his credit, persisted in asking Wray if there needed to be a “macro-level” examination of FISA. But Wray brushed that off. The director said he was “leery of any kind of change that would have any unintended consequences.”
That was about it for most Republicans on the committee. They wanted instead for Wray to commit to firing FBI officials, often denounced by Trump, involved in the Trump-Russia investigation, most of whom have already departed the bureau. “I hope you’ve considered there might be criminal culpability,” Biggs told Wray. “A lot of people in my district have totally lost confidence” in the FBI, said Arizona’s Debbie Lesko, who further suggested that that “maybe you [could] make it public” when agents involved in the Russia investigation get disciplined.
A partial exception came from Armstrong, who noted that “FISA reauthorization” was coming up, as did Jim Jordan (R-OH), but Jordan quickly veered away from endorsing PATRIOT Act expirations. A more substantial exception came from Virginia Republican Ben Cline, who pointed to the March PATRIOT expirations and said, “It is paramount that we ensure American civil liberties and due process are in no way inhibited.”
Wray told Cline that returning to the higher, pre-PATRIOT Act standards, which demanded that the FBI possess specific, articulable facts that domestic surveillance targets were agents of a foreign power, “would be a sad day for America.”
Civil libertarians expressed their own frustration that legislators focused their ire on the small cohort of Americans tied to Trump whose liberties were jeopardized while ignoring the untold millions of Americans who for a generation have lived with their privacy at risk from their own security apparatus.
“Ranking Member Collins asked FBI Director Wray whether people’s civil liberties are now protected under FISA. As any civil liberties advocate will tell you, the answer is an emphatic ‘no,’” said Sean Vitka, counsel for digital-rights group Demand Progress. “The DOJ’s Inspector General report did reveal disturbing issues that need to be resolved, but Congress, and in particular the House Judiciary Committee, is wrong to remember Carter Page but forget the millions of innocent people who have been wrongfully spied on under this and previous administrations.”
Vitka backs a bipartisan bill proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) that puts ---3restrictions on information the FBI can collect and use under Section 215 and expands safeguards on related surveillance authorities. “In fact, the House Judiciary Committee should make it clear to surveillance hawks that nothing weaker than the Safeguarding Americans' Private Records Act will advance to the floor under its watch,” he said.
Jake Laperruque, of the Project on Government Oversight, said “concerns about the Carter Page FISA warrants” aided momentum for surveillance reform like the Wyden bill.
“If the members talking about Crossfire Hurricane now want their complaints to be taken seriously,” Laperruque said, “this is the type of reform legislation they’ll need to support.”
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What to know about Shadow Inc., the vendor behind Iowa Democrats' caucus app
As the results of Monday’s first 2020 presidential election contest in Iowa ground to a halt, all eyes turned toward a mysterious digital app developer with an equally opaque name: Shadow Inc.
Shadow Inc. was a small for-profit tech startup contracted by the Iowa Democratic Party to build an app to record and report its caucus results. But it quickly rose to the national political spotlight Tuesday morning when the much anticipated results of the caucuses were delayed after the party found what it described as "inconsistencies" in the reporting of the results partly due to a "coding issue" in the app's reporting system.
Much of what went wrong Monday night and what caused it still remains unclear.
PHOTO: A volunteer holds a Presidential Preference Card
before the start of a Democratic caucus at Hoover High
School, Feb. 3, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa.
(Charlie Neibergall/AP)
In a series of tweets on Tuesday, Shadow Inc. insisted that the issues with the app "did not affect the underlying caucus results data" and that the company "worked as quickly as possibly overnight to resolve this issue."
"We sincerely regret the delay in the reporting of the results of last night's Iowa caucuses and the uncertainty it has caused to the candidates, their campaigns, and the Democratic caucus-goers," Shadow tweeted. "As the Democratic Party has confirmed, the underlying data and collection process via Shadow's mobile caucus app was sound and accurate but our process to transmit that caucus results data generated via the app to the [Iowa Democratic Party] was not."
A spokesperson at the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency wrote in a statement that "at this time, we have no reporting of any malicious cyber activity."
"We encourage our election partners to build resilience into their planning and execution procedures, to prepare for issues that may come up during election processes," the spokesperson wrote. "The Iowa Democratic Party is the best source for information on Caucuses and we encourage everyone to review their updates and reporting."
DNC Chair Tom Perez in a statement Tuesday evening -- a full 24 hours since the Iowa chaos -- calling for transparency and accountability of what went off the rails Monday night and declaring that the app will not be used anywhere else during the 2020 primaries.
"What happened last night should never happen again," Perez wrote in the statement. "We have staff working around the clock to assist the Iowa Democratic Party to ensure that all votes are counted. It is clear that the app in question did not function adequately. It will not be used in Nevada or anywhere else during the primary election process. The technology vendor must provide absolute transparent accounting of what went wrong."
Shadow Inc. was launched early last year by liberal-leaning nonprofit ACRONYM, which specializes in providing digital services for Democratic campaigns and committees, as part of its efforts to build what it called a "smarter" technological infrastructure for Democratic campaigns and committees.
At the time of Shadow's launch, ACRONYM's CEO Tara McGowan, who was previously a digital producer for Barack Obama's 2012 campaign, wrote on Twitter that Shadow’s capabilities included syncing data between a volunteer management platform and an SMS tool -- saving campaign organizers from manual data entry and reducing the risk for mistakes.
Shadow would allow campaigns to "use the most effective new tools in smarter ways," McGowan tweeted at the time.
PHOTO: A precinct secretary and other officials look over
documents at a caucus in Des Moines, Iowa, Feb. 3, 2020.
(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Shadow's CEO is Gerard Niemira, who was ACRONYM's chief operating officer prior to joining Shadow. He was also previously a Hillary Clinton campaign aide during the 2016 presidential election, according to his Linkedin profile.
And now as questions on Shadow Inc. arise with the failures in the Iowa caucuses, ACRONYM is seeking to distance itself from the app.
In a statement late Monday night posted on Twitter, ACRONYM spokesperson Kyle Tharp wrote that ACRONYM is a "nonprofit organization and not a technology company and that it has not provided any technology to the Iowa Democratic Party." Tharp said Shadow is just one of multiple for-profit companies the group has invested in.
"We are reading confirmed reports of Shadow's work with the Iowa Democratic Party on Twitter, and we, like everyone else, are eagerly awaiting more information from the Iowa Democratic Party with respect to what happened," Tharp added.
ACRONYM has also taken down from its website a blog post penned by Niemira at the time of Shadow's launching, which describes Shadow Inc. as a "technology company that will exist under the ACRONYM umbrella." Niemira further details, "As part of Shadow’s technology suite, ACRONYM will continue to license Groundbase technologies to campaigns and organizations across the progressive movement." It's unclear when exactly the page was taken down.
The Democratic Party had previously declined to release information about its vendors for the early caucuses and the only trace of Shadow's involvement in the Hawkeye State until now has been the party committee's payments to the company totaling $63,183 in November and December for "website development," according to a campaign finance disclosure report.
The House Administration Committee's ranking member Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., wrote in a statement on Tuesday that the Iowa Democratic Party didn't receive any technical assistance available from the Department of Homeland Security to inspect the app before its use.
"Yesterday, we saw a breakdown of the Iowa Democratic Party's technology that could have been easily preventable," Davis wrote. "Not only are there no regulations around this new election technology, but they did not take advantage of the resources of the Department of Homeland Security to check the security and functionality of this new app."
Election security experts told ABC News that while a paper trail should eventually be able to produce accurate results, Monday night's debacle adds to existing concerns over the country’s election system.
"I do think it's a warning to those running our primaries and general election that they must be prepared for system-wide failure," Lawrence Nordern, director of the Election Reform Program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice told ABC News.
“It undermines people's trust because people expect that election officials are going to be able to produce winners and do so in a transparent way," professor Richard Hansen, an election law scholar at the University of California, Irvine told ABC News. "They have lost both the transparency and the finality at this point. And it's very worrisome."
PHOTO: Local residents check-in after arriving at an Iowa
Democratic caucus at Hoover High School, Feb. 3, 2020,
Last year, the Democratic National Committee rejected Iowa and Nevada's plans to hold "virtual" caucuses citing security concerns, causing the two state parties to scramble together revised plans just months ahead of the early primaries. Security and technological concerns have continued to plague the state parties, but the Democratic Party said it had thoroughly vetted its technology.
The Nevada Democratic Party, which is slated to hold its Democratic caucuses later this month on Feb. 22, had also paid Shadow Inc. $58,000 for "technology services" in August last year, an FEC record shows.
The state’s Democratic Party announced on Tuesday morning that it "will not be employing the same app or vendor used in the Iowa caucus." It's unclear if the decision to not use the same vendor was made before Monday's results.
FEC records show that a number of other campaigns and state committees have also paid the firm, including $42,500 fromthe campaign of former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg in July for "software rights and subscriptions," FEC records show. The Buttigieg campaign told ABC News the payment was for the vendor's texting services.
The presidential campaigns of former Vice President Joe Biden and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as state Democratic Party committees in Wisconsin and Texas, hired Shadow for its "fundraising consulting," "text messages" and "software" services earlier last year.
Texas Democratic Party spokesperson Abhi Rahman told ABC News that the party committee only used Shadow for its texting contracts, not for app development or website services.
Because ACRONYM's nonprofit status doesn't require donor disclosure, much of its source of funding is unknown to the public.
But FEC records show that ACRONYM's super PAC, PACRONYM, designed to help Democrats in 2020, is bankrolled by a host of liberal megadonors.
Last year, under the leadership of McGowan, who was also previously the director of strategy with Priorities USA, one of the largest Democratic-aligned outside groups, PACRONYM raised more than $7 million, receiving a series of eight-figure checks from wealthy supporters including financier Seth Klarman and Donald Sussman, as well as $500,000 from Steven Spielberg.
The Iowa Democratic Party has began releasing its caucus results late Tuesday afternoon. With 62% of precincts reporting, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg had 27% of the vote and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders had 25%, according to the Iowa Democratic Party. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren had 18%, former Vice President Joe Biden had 16% and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar had 13% of the vote.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., wrote in a statement Tuesday afternoon that "the continuing chaos in Iowa is illustrative of our overall failure to take sufficient steps to protect the integrity of our election systems."
"We need to look holistically at protecting the security, integrity, and resiliency of election systems – from registration systems, to e-poll books, voting machines, tabulation machines, and election night reporting systems," Warner wrote.
ABC News' Matthew Vann, Fergall Gallagher, Lucien Bruggeman and Ali Dukakis contributed to this report.
Silicon Valley sells snake oil 'solutions'. The Democratic party fell for them
As I write this sentence I have no idea which candidates prevailed in the Democratic caucuses held in Iowa on Monday. That’s fine with me.
We don’t know the results because the Iowa Democratic party fell into the same mania that has twisted the American economy, culture and political world for almost 40 years: the thoughtless pursuit of immediate gratification through the expensive installation of complex, fragile technological systems.
The failure of the app has embarrassed the Iowa party and convinced the Nevada Democratic party, which will host similar caucuses on 22 February, to abandon its plans to use the same service.
This might seem at first glance to be a serious blow to the image of the national Democratic party and its candidates’ efforts to defeat Donald Trump. But I’d argue that it could be the best thing that could have happened.
The Democrats needed a bracing embarrassment early, so they could learn from it. Had things worked smoothly in Iowa, the systematic flaws and errors of thought that have dominated Democratic strategy for years might have revealed themselves months later when it really mattered.
So what’s good for the Democrats in this series of events? The Iowa glitch shows party leaders that their challenges cannot be addressed by fancy sales pitches from Silicon Valley snake oil salespeople.
No one needs to know just 48 hours after a long, complex, decentralized deliberative event what the results are
Hopefully this experience will also teach us a lesson about patience. No one needs to know just 48 hours after a long, complex, decentralized deliberative event what the results are. There are only 41 pledged delegates to the Democratic national convention up for grabs in Iowa. That’s about 1% of the 3,979 pledged national delegates. So the “winner” of Iowa barely has a lead over her or his competitors.
We should all walk away from Iowa 2020 more patient and circumspect. Speed kills democracy. Slow democracy is healthy democracy.
The Democratic party is operating under the mistaken assumption that Trump’s 2016 campaign had some sophisticated technological advantage over Hillary Clinton’s campaign. That could not be more wrong. In 2016 Clinton had elaborate voter databases and dedicated platforms for organizers and volunteers to deploy in the field to identify and motivate voters.
The very sophistication was the downfall. Organizers complained that the data was slow and outdated. The app interface was clunky. Money could not buy enthusiasm or discipline.
Instead of building elaborate predictive models and licensing specialized software like Clinton and the Democrats, the Trump digital campaign handed the reins to Brad Parscale, a neophyte to national campaigns whose experience was limited to helping some local races and building some websites.
To find new supporters, urge them to donate and motivate them to show up at rallies and knock on doors, Parscale and the Trump team used a dazzlingly obvious technological platform: Facebook.
Trump’s digital team had a limited budget and limited technological expertise, but experience with Facebook ads. So they just did what worked. Yes, Facebook helped Trump by embedding staff with the campaign to make sure it could use its services effectively. But there was nothing sophisticated or expensive about the Trump 2016 digital campaign. For 2020, Trump campaign manager Parscale is apparently planning a more intense version of the same, with more money.
If the Democrats take one lesson from Iowa, it should be that simple, dependable technology is better than flimsy, new technology. That technology includes paper, an ancient technology that still works best for recording and counting votes.
Here is a bigger lesson: it’s not about the app. Just as we fool ourselves by thinking that an app will fix things, we fool ourselves by blaming an app. All technologies are embedded in webs of human relations. We say the app failed because the systems failed – humans failed. Humans built a system too complex to handle simple tasks. We often fool ourselves into thinking that speed and convenience are paramount values. So we maximized speed over reliability, data over truth, attention over depth.
Maybe the Iowa glitch, one caused because caucuses are poorly designed rituals and retrofitting custom software to them only widens their flaws, will show us a better way forward. There is no reason to deploy gizmos and magic spells when simple, steady, slow work can win – as always. Democracy is not for the impatient. Democracy is too important to be trusted to the “innovators”.
Siva Vaidhyanathan is Guardian columnist, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, and the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy
CLUSTERFUCK UPDATES Iowa caucus: News pundit caught calling Democrat event 'effing disaster' on hot mic
Supporters of democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wait for results to come in at his caucus night watch party on February 03, 2020 in Des Moines, Iowa: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
An MSNBC pundit was caught on air expressing that the Iowa caucus had turned into an “effing disaster” Monday night.
The moment was captured in a clip widely spread around social media on Tuesday. In the video, a male voice can be heard over the voice of another MSNBC presenter as they give an update on the caucus.
NO SEVEN SECOND DELAY
“Oh my god, what an effing disaster,” the voice said.
Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell and Brian Williams were anchoring for the network at the time of the broadcast, as well as numerous pundits who appeared during the night.
While the slip up on live TV wasn’t a hallmark of professionalism, the sentiment of the disembodied voice wasn't unwarranted.
Issues with a voting app used by the state Democratic party are reportedly to blame for the delay in results coming out of Iowa.
During Monday night’s chaos, precinct captains took to Twitter, reporting that they’d been on hold with the state Democratic party for hours waiting to report their results. Many of them posted the results on the social media site, including explanations of how the delegate splits work.
Several of the candidates gave something resembling victory speeches as it became clear there would be no official results that evening.
Of all the speeches, Mr Buttigieg’s - which was the last to be delivered - was the most brazenly evocative of a victory speech.
“We don’t know all the results, but we know by the time it’s all said and done, Iowa you have shocked the nation," Mr Buttigieg said. “By all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious.”
Mr Buttigieg walked back the comments on MSNBC the next day, suggesting instead that the evening was a “victory for the campaign” rather than an outright campaign victory.
Buttigieg, Sanders nearly tied as Iowa caucus results narrow
WASHINGTON (AP) — Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders are nearly tied in the Iowa Democratic caucuses, with nearly all results counted in a contest marred by technical issues and reporting delays.
The race remained too early to call early Thursday with 97% of precincts reporting. Party officials were scrambling to verify the remaining results three days after Iowans gathered at caucus sites across the state to begin choosing which Democrat will take on President Donald Trump in November.
A new batch of results released just after midnight narrowed the margin between Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Sanders, the progressive senator from Vermont. Buttigieg has a lead of three state delegate equivalents out of 2,098 counted.
The deadlocked contest gives both Buttigieg and Sanders a burst of momentum as they seek to pull away from the crowded field. The nearly complete results show them leading Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, with former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Amy Klobuchar trailing behind.
But the results in Iowa were muddied by the stunning breakdown of the caucus reporting process in a state that traditionally kicks off presidential nominating contests. Iowa officials initially attributed a delay in reporting results to technical problems with an app that precinct chairs were supposed to use to record votes, then to backlogs as those volunteers tried to call the party to submit their totals.
Even as the total number of results ticked up throughout the day Wednesday, obstacles remained. Some tally sheets were making their way to party headquarters in Des Moines through the mail, which contributed to the delay.
Much of the political world has already shifted its attention to next-up New Hampshire, which holds the first primary election in the Democrats' 2020 nomination fight on Tuesday. Both Buttigieg and Sanders are leading contenders there, as well.
The two men are separated by 40 years in age and conflicting ideology.
Sanders, a 78-year-old self-described democratic socialist, has been a progressive powerhouse for decades. Buttigieg, a 38-year-old former municipal official, represents the more moderate wing of the Democratic Party. Buttigieg is also the first openly gay candidate to earn presidential primary delegates.
Their strength in Iowa put them in the crosshairs of rivals as the race shifted to New Hampshire. Biden, who fell far short of expectations in Iowa, cast both Buttigieg and Sanders as risky choices for Democrats, given the former mayor’s relative inexperience and the senator’s descriptions of himself as a socialist.
Sanders is making his second run for the White House. He surprised many Democrats in 2016 with his strong challenge to Hillary Clinton, but entered the 2020 contest as a front-runner. He’s topped the field in fundraising, despite eschewing high-dollar donors.
Sanders and his supporters raised issues with the primary process after the 2016 election, prompting the Democratic National Committee to make changes that affected the Iowa reporting regulations.
As a result, Iowa released three sets of data from the caucuses: the tally of voter preferences at the start of the caucus; their preferences after supporters of candidates who reached less than 15% made a second choice; and the results of state delegate equivalents.
The final alignment results are used to determine state delegate equivalents, which is the metric the AP has long used to call the winner of the caucus. Democrats pick their nominee based on delegate totals.
With 97% of precincts reporting, Sanders is leading in the first alignment results and has a narrower edge in the final alignment.
Sanders and Buttigieg are nearly tied in Iowa with 97 percent reported
With the New Hampshire primary just five days away, we still don't have a winner in Iowa.
After technical issues with a new app and long phone delays held up any Iowa caucus numbers until almost a full day later, as of Thursday morning, 97 percent of precincts have reported their results.
But the race is still too close to call, as former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg holds 26.2 percent of the delegates, while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has 26.1 percent.
Meanwhile, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is at 18.2 percent, while former Vice President Joe Biden is in fourth place with 15.8 percent. Biden has admitted he "expected to do better" in Iowa, while his aides weren't so diplomatic, with one telling Politico his performance was nothing short of a "disaster."
Speaking of disasters, the Iowa Democratic Party on Wednesday released a new batch of results that they soon had to clarify needed a "minor correction." The incorrect results suddenly showed a surge in support for former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D), even though the Des Moines Register notes he wasn't even "actively competing for support" in Iowa. The Iowa Democrats soon issued correct results showing Patrick with no delegate equivalents.
CNN reports the Iowa Democratic Party is expecting to release the full results by Thursday morning.
“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.
Biden's poor showing in Iowa shakes support That leaves some establishment Democrats, including some Biden supporters, questioning his contention that he’ll reclaim frontrunner status in the race
What’s happening
For decades, Iowa’s position as first to vote in presidential primaries has empowered the state with an outsize ability to influence the race for the most important office in the nation. Iowa caucuses night is typically a time full of excitement and heartbreak as early victories and losses establish momentum for candidates' White House runs.
This year, however, the dominant emotion for Democratic presidential candidates was frustration. A new smartphone app that the 1,679 precincts in the state were supposed to use to tally their results failed, setting off a night filled with chaos and confusion. As of Wednesday morning, the full results had still not been released. With 71 percent of precincts reporting, Pete Buttigieg held a narrow lead, with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren close behind.
The mess is the most recent example of controversy that has become a pattern in the aftermath of the Iowa caucuses. In 2016, reports of irregularities in the voting process led to uncertainty over the results in a race that Hillary Clinton narrowly won against Bernie Sanders. In 2012, Mitt Romney was the initially named the winner of the Republican primary, only for Rick Santorum to be awarded the victory 16 days later. Why there’s debate
Monday night’s missteps have brought long-simmering discontent with the Iowa caucuses to a boil. Complaints typically focus on two specific issues: the disproportionate influence the state has by going first and shortcomings of the complex caucus voting system. These two factors combine to inject undue importance on a discriminatory and unreliable process, critics argue.
Iowa’s population is 90 percent white. Giving a state that is much less diverse than the nation as a whole the opportunity to vote first disadvantages minority candidates and decreases the value of voters of color, some argue.
Voting in the caucuses is done in person and through a complicated system that includes multiple rounds of votes, cajoling between supporters of opposing candidates and, on occasion, coin flips. This process creates unnecessary confusion and disenfranchises those who can’t attend the vote on a specific night, particularly people with disabilities, critics say. What’s next
A decision on whether Iowa will lose its first-in-the-nation status or switch to a more typical primary voting system likely won’t come for some time. President Trump responded to Monday’s events by promising to maintain the status quo. “As long as I am President, Iowa will stay where it is,” he tweeted.
Perspectives
No amount of rule adjustments can fix the caucuses“The clearest picture that will form is that for all their benefits to the state: the Iowa caucuses are, at their core, unworkable.” — Editorial, the Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa)
Officials had years to prepare — and still failed
“Iowa’s Democratic Party had four whole years to prepare for last night’s caucuses. It knew there would be a multicandidate scramble to challenge President Trump. It nonetheless proved it was not up to the challenge of making the contest go smoothly.” — Editorial, Washington Examiner
The caucuses have been chaotic since their inception 150 years ago
“The Iowa caucuses have been a hot mess for more than a century. Adopted from the moment Iowa entered the union in 1846, the caucuses instantly became riddled with drama by inept and corrupt party leaders.” — Michael S. Rosenwald, Washington Post
The app mess accelerated the inevitable
“There can be no doubting it now, not after so many years spent in the crosshairs, not after active presidential candidates began challenging its privileged position atop the nominating calendar, and certainly not after Monday night’s debacle that left seven candidates and millions of viewers waiting for results that never came: Iowa’s reign is over.” — Tim Alberta, Politico
Iowa should switch to a primary
“It should go without saying that there is a better way to hold an election — the method used by the overwhelming majority of states. The state can simply pick a day to hold a primary, give voters a full day to cast ballots, and even allow voters who can’t make it on election day to vote early or absentee.” — Ian Millhiser, Vox
Caucuses are exclusionary and anti-democratic
“The caucuses — especially in this cursed year — demand hours of commitment. This limits the number, and kind, of people who can attend, despite Iowa Democrats allowing satellite caucuses this year. Many people who work at night still cannot attend. People who care for children or other relatives cannot attend. People who have other commitments cannot attend.” — Jeffrey Toobin, CNN
What happened Monday evening bolsters the argument that the state should not have the first primary. Matt Taylor National Editor Updated Feb. 04, 2020 ALSO WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER USE AN APP WITHOUT TESTING ITS CRASH ABILITIES AND LEARNING CURVE FAILURES
The Democratic Party's effort to choose an election challenger to President Trump got off to a chaotic start in Iowa, with officials blaming "inconsistencies" for an indefinite delay in the state's caucus results.
AP Explains: In Iowa, complex caucus now even more intricate
ALL OUT FAILURE TO HAVE A BACK UP SYSTEM (PHONE IN) AKA PLAN B, RELIANT ON NEW APP. TO SMART FOR THEIR OWN GOOD. PHONE IN WHICH HAS BEEN USED FOR YEARS, WAS UNDERMANNED AND QUICKLY JAMMED UP.
IOWA CAUCUSES ARE AS VESTIGIAL AS THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE THEY ARE BOTH OF THE HORSE AND BUGGY ERA.
Without Iowa Results, Everybody’s On Stage And A Winner On Caucus Night 🇺🇸
Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Joe Biden all spoke on live TV in glowing terms — without any results.
ByRosie Gray,Molly Hensley-Clancy,Henry J. Gomez,Nidhi Prakash
The Iowa Democratic Party is delaying releasing the results of Monday night’s Iowa caucus because of reporting inconsistencies, infuriating campaigns eager to move on with the election.
"We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” IDP communications director Mandy McClure said in a statement. “In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report.”
McClure emphasized that this was not the result of a “hack or intrusion” and that the “underlying data and paper trail is sound.”
The IDP told campaigns in a call just after midnight Tuesday that they would release the results on Tuesday, according to two people on the call.
IDP chair Troy Price delivered a brief statement to reporters after 1 a.m., via conference call, echoing what he just told campaigns: The party experienced reporting issues, are verifying results against a "paper trail" and "back-up system," and the process is "taking longer than expected."
In an earlier short conference at around 10:30 p.m. in Des Moines on Monday, with representatives from each campaign, the IDP said they currently had just 35% of precinct numbers reported and that due to “user error” with their reporting app, they found some slight “inconsistencies,” according to participants on the call. Some numbers, the party said, “didn’t add up.”
The party told campaigns they were comparing the app results with cell phone pictures of the caucus paper worksheets, where caucus results are recorded manually by hand.
The IDP did not take any questions.
At one point, a participant could be heard shouting on the call: “This is an unbelievable explanation.” Another person chimed in, “I think he speaks for all of us.”
One campaign aide described the call as being “hung up” on.
Early Tuesday morning, after the second call, an aide with one of the campaigns told BuzzFeed News they were still unhappy. The IDP, the aide said, "provided no specificity" about when results would be released Tuesday, or how they would verify official results.
"It's not just the app that didn't work," the aide said. "There are numerous reports that precinct chairs did not gather preference cards from every caucus goer, precinct chairs that left because they couldn't report results. It's a real question on how results could be verified at all."
On Twitter and even on radio and television, local officials have reported hour-long hold times with the Iowa state party while trying to report results.
The Biden campaign’s general counsel, Dana Remus, sent a sternly worded letter to the state party’s top leaders Monday night, expressing frustration with “considerable flaws” in the reporting process.
“The app that was intended to relay Caucus results to the Party failed; the Party’s back-up telephonic reporting system likewise has failed,” Remus wrote. “Now, we understand that caucus chairs are attempting to — and, in many cases, failing to — report results telephonically to the party. These acute failures are occurring statewide.”
Remus also asked that official results not be released until campaigns had a chance to hear more about “quality control” measures and respond to such information. It was not immediately clear if the letter was sent before the conference call.
"The integrity of the process is critical, and there were flaws in the reporting systems tonight that should raise serious concerns for voters," Kate Bedingfield, Biden's deputy campaign manager, tweeted later.
J.D. Scholten, a Democratic congressional candidate in northern Iowa, was also perplexed by the glitches.
"I’m not sure what to make of it," Scholten told BuzzFeed News. "I tried reporting, but I was on hold forever, so I decided to hit up my favorite local bar." MORE ON THIS
There Are No Official Iowa Caucus Results Yet Because The State Democratic Party Is Doing “Quality Control”Otillia Steadman · 10 hours ago WARREN CAMPAIGN: 'INCOMPLETE NUMBERS CONTRIBUTE TO CHAOS' With results delayed, Sanders claims lead as Iowa caucus turns into fiasco After Democratic party suffers technical problems with results of first primary, Bernie campaign publishes its own unofficial tally, with Buttigieg 2nd, Biden 3rd and Warren 4th
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, with wife Jane Sanders (R), addresses supporters during his caucus night watch party on February 03, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa (Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP)
DES MOINES, Iowa (AFP) — Iowa’s vote kick-starting the 2020 US presidential contest degenerated into a fiasco marred by major delays on Monday, with Bernie Sanders claiming a slim lead in the Democratic caucus citing partial unofficial results.
Figures released by the leftist senator’s campaign showed Pete Buttigieg in second spot, a strong showing for the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who was a national unknown just one year ago.
“Iowa, you have shocked the nation,” the 38-year-old gay military reservist told loudly cheering supporters in what sounded very much like a victory speech. “Because tonight, an improbable hope became an undeniable reality.”
With chaos on the ground as Democratic party officials reportedly told campaigns not to expect results before sometime Tuesday, Sanders, running as a democratic socialist, took to the microphones to proclaim he had “a good feeling we’re going to be doing very, very well here in Iowa.”
“Tonight in this enormously consequential 2020 election, the first state in the country has voted, and today marks the beginning of the end for Donald Trump,” said the 78-year-old.
Iowa is a closely watched test in the months-long process to determine who will face the Republican president in November.
Sanders later took the bold step of releasing internal, unpublished results from nearly 40 percent of precincts, showing him with 28.62 percent of the state delegate equivalent, the all-important figure used to determine who wins the Iowa caucuses. Democratic presidential candidate former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg arrives at a watch party at Drake University on February 03, 2020 in Des Moines, Iowa (Win McNamee/Getty Images/AFP)
Buttigieg earned 25.71 percent, followed by progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren with 18.42 percent, the data indicated.
Former vice president Joe Biden, the national frontrunner, was in fourth spot, at 15.08 percent, a disappointing showing for the candidate who has consistently claimed he is the person best positioned to take on and defeat Trump.
The Warren campaign pushed back at Sanders’ move, with her chief strategist Joe Rospars tweeting: “Any campaign saying they won or putting out incomplete numbers is contributing to the chaos and misinformation.”
But as the waiting dragged on, with zero results reported, other candidates also made claims to have beaten expectations.
“I’m feeling good,” Biden said before Sanders released the internals. “So it’s on to New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, well beyond. We’re in this for the long haul.” Democratic presidential candidate former vice president Joe Biden takes the stage to address supporters with his wife Dr. Jill Biden during his caucus night watch party on February 03, 2020 in Des Moines, Iowa (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/AFP)
New Hampshire votes second, on February 11, and tradition dictates that the top performers in Iowa board jets and race to The Granite State to capitalize on the momentum.
With the results in limbo, Senator Amy Klobuchar, from the neighboring Midwestern state of Minnesota, insisted “we are punching above our weight.”
Sanders’s data shows Klobuchar in fifth, at 10.93 percent.
The Iowa embarrassment is particularly bad timing, as US officials are under pressure to demonstrate the integrity of the voting system following 2016, when Russia stood accused of interfering in the presidential election in an effort to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.
In a statement read on US networks, Mandy McClure, communications director at the Iowa Democratic Party, said further checks were ordered after “inconsistencies” were found in the reporting of three sets of results.
“This is simply a reporting issue,” she said, denying there was “a hack or an intrusion.”
Biden’s campaign counsel Dana Remus wrote a stern letter to Iowa Democratic Party chair Troy Price complaining of the “considerable flaws” of the night’s caucus.
“We believe that the campaigns deserve full explanations and relevant information regarding the methods of quality control you are employing, and an opportunity to respond, before any official results are released.”
Republicans meanwhile rushed to suggest either incompetence or foul play by the Democratic leadership. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren takes the stage to address her supporters during a caucus night rally at the Forte Banquet and Conference Center February 03, 2020 in Des Moines, Iowa (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFP)
“Democrat party meltdown,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a stinging tweet.
“They can’t even run a caucus and they want to run the government. No thank you.”
Trump — who has been weighed down by an impeachment process expected to end with his acquittal on Wednesday — is almost certain to mention the chaos on Tuesday night when he addresses Congress and the nation during his annual State of the Union speech.
Unlike secret ballot voting, Iowa caucus-goers publicly declare their choice by standing together with other supporters of a candidate. Candidates who reach 15 percent support earn delegates for the nomination race while supporters of candidates who fall short can shift to others.
It appeared the delays may have been exacerbated by new rules that the Democratic Party instituted after the 2016 election that now require caucuses to report three sets of numerical data throughout the process, rather than one set previously.
Held across nearly 1,700 sites, the Iowa vote offers a critical early look at the viability of the 11 Democrats still in the race — even though just 41 delegates are up for grabs, a fraction of the 1,991 needed to secure the nomination in July. SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-app-that-disrupted-iowa-caucuses.html
