Source: The Internet.
No results have been posted for the first election in the 2020 presidential campaign for the Democratic Party in Iowa. CBS News. The Democratic Party was trying to use a new app to tabulate the results of the caucus but the application failed, causing massive amounts of chaos and competing claims of victory. The backup system that allowed officials to call in also faced massive wait times with one official even being hung up on live on CNN. Several candidates have already moved on to the next race in New Hampshire. On the GOP side of things, President Donald Trump easily beat his two GOP challengers securing 97% of the vote in a record turnout for an incumbent President with no viable challenger.
Here’s the video of the best moment in 2020 politics so far: pic.twitter.com/HIBOvbeD56— DUMPSTERFIRE2020 🔥 (@BridgetPhetasy) February 4, 2020
My Comment:
I was hoping to write a short post about the winners and losers of the Iowa Caucuses but it's clear there was only one winner. President Trump did very well on his own merit with the vast majority of the vote and very good turnout for an essentially meaningless election. His supporters certainly sent a message last night.
But this whole thing makes President Trump and the GOP look good in compression, even to their critics. That's not totally fair as it's obviously easier when there aren't any real challengers, but still, this was a total disaster for Democrats. To not have election results the next day after the polls closed is just a total joke.
And this awful performance is going to cause even further division in the already fractured party. People are already crafting conspiracy theories about this being an effort to break the momentum for Bernie Sanders, which may even have some support in the end. Though there are no results to speak off, the Sanders campaign showed numbers that they had collected themselves that showed Sanders in 1st place.
Pete Buttgieg also claimed victory but did not provide any evidence to back it up. Though I don't trust the numbers from the Sanders camp, at least he had numbers. Buttgieg appeared to be claiming victory just for the sake of doing it so he could get more donors. No matter what happens next and who the eventual victor is he did collect some money after this disaster. He also infuriated the Sanders camp to the point that as of this writing #MayorCheat is trending on Twitter.
I think the Sanders camp is not going to accept this. They already had their candidate screwed out of the nomination once. Though it's arguable they couldn't have won in 2016 anyways, the fact remains that the DNC did not play fair. Though it hasn't been proven that this is the case now, I think that nobody that supports him will believe this happened by accident. The Democratic Party may be heading to a major split if they don't move to placate the Sanders wing of the party.
In the end though, I don't think it matters too much as the Democrats just look totally incompetent here. The obvious argument is that if the Democratic Party can't even get a simple caucus right why should they be allowed to run the country? It's a fairly strong argument and the Democrats better hope that the other early states go much more smoothly than this one. Right now the GOP is laughing at them, the Democrats are demoralized and embarrassed and independents have to wonder what they hell the Democrats are doing.
Finally, I think this might be the death of the caucus system in Iowa. Though it worked fine for the Republicans, it was such a failure tonight that I can't imagine that the Democrats will want to keep it. It started the entire 2020 campaign off on the wrong foot and was a huge international embarrassment for them. I am guessing that it will for sure be gone by 2024.
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