I agree. There was never any reason to expedite the results, except to stuff the greedy maw of the news media.
Honestly, Iowa has a small enough population that they could just do everything by paper, as they do in many countries. Just because computers exist doesn’t mean that counting manually is obsolete.
That’s the thing, right?
While the Dem establishment does its share of election tampering, it’s Republicans who’ve developed election-stealing into an art. This whole debacle is going to make it all that more difficult to see that imbalance.
It’ll also feed into the idea many have that there’s no point in voting, since it’s all just a rigged shell game. What a fucking mess.
Annnd it looks as if they knew there was an issue with the app all along…
So, if there was a Plan B, it was ineffectual.
And here it comes:
Practice run for the general. Gotta get the screams of outrage just right.
I think that’s where we get the helpful phrase “avoid even the appearance of impropriety” if you don’t want to start a shitstorm, don’t do stuff that is AT BEST corrupt-adjacent.
If this were the only thing I knew about the comparative candidates, this would make a Buttigieg voter* . Anyone successful in life despite regular exposure to middle-schoolers is locked and loaded to deal with Trump. (and that’s some ageism we can all agree on.)
*(with all other facts considered?..uh, no)
Ugh, double shitstorm, now that the Trump campaign has latched onto this as a blow against Democrats in general, this forces the left to choose between defending the corrupt DNC vs condemning the corrupt DNC. Just like we’ve all had to twist ourselves into pretzels to defend/not defend Biden in his obvious corruption at the bottom of the impeachment trial. Plus the “there was no evidence” defense only works for obviously guilty Republicans, and never for plausibly innocent Democrats.
Rod it sucks being the party for whom shit matters.
Tin Foil Hat: If the Russians were to mount an offensive that would be the place.
Yeah, if we’re so hell-bent on sticking to this traditional mostly-for-show procedure from the 1800s, why modernize/sully it with an app?
Or start the primaries with, I don’t know, Maryland? (ETA: Or, maybe not)
Start in Maine “Where America starts its day” and then sweep west with the sun. Or go in order of the founding of each state, or alphabetical, or I don’t know, all at once!?! anything would be better than the donkey basketball we’re playing right now.
Upthread I mentioned a proposal called the “California Plan” (because the California party endorsed it), basically going from smallest state to largest in groups. The advantages are (a) the race remains up for grabs until the end, which means that if the campaign process reveals something especially problematic about a candidate you’re not stuck with him or her, and (b) it weakens the media’s ability to effectively dictate the short list before the primary season even begins.
Going from Iowa - NH - SC to Super Tuesday including both California and Texas in no way comes close to that criteria.
The current approach is obviously broken. Keeping Iowa first and a caucus is baseless nostalgia is the service of disengagement of the base and failure.
It’s dead, Jim.
Which of course is not the California Plan. Big states like California and Texas wouldn’t come before round 6 or 7, but they would still have electoral clout appropriate for their size.
As for caucuses, I’m tired of defending them here, and will only point out that historically, outsider candidates with an enthusiast base overperform in caucuses, which is why you don’t hear Sanders (or Obama) disparaging them. (Just look at Bernie’s 2016 caucus record, compared to his primary record.) Beyond that, I’m done with that discussion.
The only silver lining of this app debacle is that it’s drawn attention to the larger problems of Iowa-first and the broken and discriminatory caucus system. By the next Presidential election (if there’s a meaningful one) maybe we’ll have moved on from this pointless nostalgia.
That’s an unfalsifiable assertion. These are one offs. You can’t say that they wouldn’t have won in a primary Iowa or that they wouldn’t have won if another more representative state went first.
it seems to me that in the 70s it was the new hampshire primary that had everyone’s attention while the iowa caucuses were regarded as “that weird thing the iowans did”. over the course of the 80s the iowa public relations folks asserted more and more importance for the caucuses leading to the current hype situation.
From Stacey Abrams on the caucuses more generally…
