Democrats voted for “None Of The Above” in Iowa.
[Update a few minutes later]
Iowa’s Democrat disaster:
This morning, Democrats look exactly like what their critics accuse them of being — a bunch of grandiose dreamers whose ambitions greatly exceed their competence. They can’t handle the basics of running elections in a constitutional Republic, but they fantasize of having far-reaching powers over the daily lives of every American.
…If you aren’t all that invested in who won and resent the fact that this state always gets to go first . . . Monday night was hilarious. The party that constantly reminds us how they are the party of science, the party of education and educators, the party that is forward-looking and embraces the power of technology . . . cannot do math when it counts. The party that wants the federal government to take over the health-care system cannot add up numbers from 1,600 precincts. This was Healthcare.gov all over again. Staffers for presidential campaigns raged over the fact that when they called up the state party for answers, party officials hung up on them. One precinct secretary was on hold, trying to report results; called in to CNN, finally got through, and then the party hung up on him live on the air.
Come on, guys. Even the Chinese government is giving some answers about the coronavirus outbreak. Saddam Hussein’s old spokesman “Baghdad Bob” may have lied all the time, but at least he was willing to appear in front of the cameras.
Between this, the State of the Union, and the upcoming acquittal in the Senate, Trump is having a great week.
[Update a while later]
An interesting idea I read just now was that the Democrats may have screwed this up on purpose to be able to discredit Iowa and their first-in-the-nation caucus.
Well, it’s probably good for Biden and bad for Bernie and Buttigieg, so conspiracy theories are easy enough if you want to disregard Hanlon’s razor…
In NH we will fight to maintain the first in the nation primary because otherwise we’d be ignored completely. To our credit it’s codified in law: RSA-653:9, even the Dems in this state realize the importance of this so its highly unlikely political chicanery will overtake the process.
http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/LXIII/653/653-9.htm
653:9 Presidential Primary Election. – The presidential primary election shall be held on the second Tuesday in March or on a date selected by the secretary of state which is 7 days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election, whichever is earlier, of each year when a president of the United States is to be elected or the year previous. Said primary shall be held in connection with the regular March town meeting or election or, if held on any other day, at a special election called by the secretary of state for that purpose. The purpose of this section is to protect the tradition of the New Hampshire first-in-the-nation presidential primary.
Source. 1979, 436:1. 1995, 289:1. 1999, 161:2. 2007, 212:4. 2010, 121:1, eff. Aug. 8, 2010.
We are also considered a swing state, but because our Electoral College number is so small it’d have to be a very tight race in the general for that to matter.
I’ve had this argument before with well meaning but naive friends who think that there ought to be one big national primary on a date certain. THAT would most certainly set the campaigning as a strictly bi-coastal affair of major cities, totally ignoring flyover country. Agreed NH is not as diverse culturally as the rest of the nation (neither is Iowa) but politically it is. Regrettably becoming more blue each year as the lefties flee the high cost of living in nearby high tax Massachusetts to more affordable NH, only to keep voting in the same policies that made Mass. unaffordable in the first place.
To wit, for those who’d like reform the primary system, there is one possibility that I would consider. And that is a series of super-primaries. Small Electoral College states go first. But not to exceed more that four or five states at once in order to allow campaigns to spend a good amount of time in each. I am a big fan of retail politicking at the local level. The largest states that drive the most delegates obviously, because of their influence, go last. At least this would play out nationally and might be more “fair”. But NH law would have to be changed first. Good luck with that.
Actually, it wouldn’t. If the Democratic (and Republican) Party set forth a rule stating “No delegates chosen before February 1 of a presidential election year will be seated at that year’s convention” and a bunch of other states chose to have presidential primaries on February 1, there wouldn’t be a thing New Hampshire could do about it. (Iowa neither.)
Sue? Political parties have no legal/constitutional standing in the American political process, and if a political party wanted to choose its nominees in a poker game, it could.
Prevent the resulting nominees from appearing on the New Hampshire ballot? Go right ahead; you’ve just deprived the people of New Hampshire of any voice at all in the result. (If NH were a bigger state, there would undoubtedly be lawsuits to force them to list major-party candidates, but if NH were a bigger state it wouldn’t be so invested in its First-In-The-Nation Primary.)
By the way, no, I don’t think this will actually ever happen.
If both the major parties did that and in response, California, Texas, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida decided to hold their primary on Feb 1st, (and why wouldn’t they?) it’s game over for everyone else. Some primary…. I agree for that reason, it’s highly unlikely.
Computerized voting is like checking out at the grocery store.
Always choose paper over plastic.
Speaking of computer security, the link to the PJMedia site took me to some phishing page.
Huh. Not for me. You mean the first link of the post?
Yes.
Were you on desktop or mobile? PJM itself is clean (as far as I can tell) but periodically their ad networks allow malicious ads to slip in.
Agree with this and noticed similar things on a few other conservative sites. I usually have to close the browser, try again, it is fine.
Two worthless candidates revealed themselves last night. Buttigieg rushed out and declared himself the winner. Nobody really knows who the winner is, so all he did was piss off the five out of six Democrats who didn’t support him and don’t think he won. What they’ll see is a self-aggrandizing jerk taking advantage of the chaos to try and grab the trophy and make a break for the exit.
Biden said that the Iowa DNC have to run the results past his his legal team before they’re released. Under no penumbra of Democracy does a candidate get to “approve”, look at, or manipulate election results. Any candidate who would even try to do that should be blocked from holding office, and if the Iowa DNC didn’t respond to his request with a string of four letter words, then they’re complicit in the rot.
Amy Klobuchar was the first to go to the press to make a statement, then Biden and Warren as I witnessed it on TV. Then I went to bed.
All declared pre-winners have issued statements to the press as far as I know. I love the concept of a pre-winner. Advancing the state of the art in Political Science one press release at a time….
We’re all pre-winners, but there’s not so many post-winners.
A post winner is not an example of progressive thinking…. 🙂
The thing one must always remember is that the Democratic Party has been a fundamentally criminal enterprise since its founding. Mucking about with elections is pretty much its core competency.
What we’re seeing here with the Iowa non-results is what one gets when a dozen or so campaigns all pull Democrats-as-usual vote fraud simultaneously for the benefit of their respective candidates. It is the political equivalent of a multi-person duel conducted, as my late father used to say, “with cleavers in a dark cellar.”
It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if we never get any “official” results for the 2020 Iowa Caucuses. And, even if we do, no one – except the putative “winner” – is going to express public belief in the veracity of the alleged numbers anyway.
It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if we never get any “official” results for the 2020 Iowa Caucuses.
You’re saying Iowa will send no delegates to the Democratic convention? Seriously?
Oh, there will be some back-room deal on what “official” vote totals are and delegates will be apportioned accordingly. It just won’t have any consequential relationship to what votes were actually cast and for whom.
If I’m right about this, by the way, there’s a fairly straightforward prediction one can make based on my hypothesis – namely, that there will be other Iowas during the coming primary/caucus season. The other caucus states are the most likely such, but I don’t rule out the possibility of epic vote-rigging even in primary states. South Carolina would seem to be a particularly ripe possibility.
It’s hilarious.
People who believe in stealing other people’s stuff and redistributing it are upset that other people stole their votes and redistributed them.
No-one should have more than their fair share of votes. The rest should obviously be redistributed to others, from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. Why should Bernie have more votes just because people like him more? The rest of the candidates worked just as hard as he did.
Seriously, I can’t think of a single argument they can make against vote-redistribution which can’t also be used against wealth-redistribution.
It’s not vote redistribution when it was pre-won. It was distributed fairly amongst those who declared victory.