The Trump White House is out with a first official response to the Senate’s refusal to remove Donald Trump from office. It is mostly the usual claims of "witch hunt" and "full validation" and "exoneration" and a burping out of Trump's supposed "victories" and accomplishments. It refers to Sen. Mitt Romney only as "one failed Republican presidential candidate."
But this section is the most noteworthy:
Rep. Adam Schiff lied to Congress and the American people with a totally made up statement about the president's phone call. Will there be no retribution?
Is that a threat? How could it not be considered one?
While attributed to the still-possibly fictional "press secretary" Stephanie Grisham, these are clearly Trump's own words. He wrote this. And it does not appear (Susan Collins' imagination notwithstanding) that this White House has taken anything from the exposure of Trump's extortion, other than a new zealousness for "retribution" against Dear Leader's critics.
White House @PressSec Stephanie Grisham says of Rep. Adam Schiff after Trump's acquittal: "Will there be no retribution?" pic.twitter.com/ewW50O7EYn
Trump is a symptom and the disease needs to be removed: the GOP.
President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally inside of the Knapp Center arena at Drake University on January 30, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa. | Tom Brenner/Getty Images
So much for the end stage of Donald Trump’s presidency.
July 2017 seems like a million years ago now, but in some ways it feels like little has changed. Take this article I wrote that month. The headline is “The latest revelation won’t end Trump’s presidency. Only Paul Ryan can.” The first section is subtitled “Robert Mueller can’t fell Donald Trump.”
The only part of that which feels dated — and the main mistake I see in my analysis, in retrospect — is the name “Paul Ryan.” It was never up to Paul Ryan, after all. His successor, Nancy Pelosi, did impeach Trump for holding aid to Ukraine hostage in hopes of damaging a political rival.
But what has become clear in the two and a half years since is that the House’s role was only preamble. Yes, Trump will go down in history books as the third president to be impeached. But he will not go down in history as the first president to be removed. The Senate’s vote to acquit him on charges of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power guarantees that.
This is a deeply unsatisfying punchline to the past few years of American politics. At least since Donald Trump first announced his presidential campaign in June 2015, journalists and activists have been asking: Is this the scandal that finally does him in?
As it turns out, the answer in each case was no. That’s not because none of these things shouldhave been enough to end his campaign or force him out of office. Each of them should have been enough!
But the sad truth is that whether or not Trump was “brought down” had at best an indirect relationship to the truth and the gravity of the charges against him. The hope that he would be gone rested entirely on a hope that at least 20 Republican senators would do the right thing. And anybody who has paid attention to Mitch McConnell’s Republican Party the past decade would have told you that was never going to happen. In the end, only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney, did the right thing.
In 2018, the New Yorker’s Adam Davidson called the FBI’s raid on former Trump attorney Michael Cohen “the end stage of the Trump presidency” — a prediction that obviously will not come to pass. But what’s more interesting than the prediction was the emotion behind it, a yearning for something, anything, to end the death loop that American democracy appears to be trapped in. In the liberal imagination, that blow-up took the form of Trump’s removal from office, an event that sets us back toward a path of normalcy and sane politics.
This yearning is understandable, but it is misplaced. For one thing, ending the Trump presidency will not fix, or even substantially ameliorate, most of the problems plaguing the American political system. They were mounting for years before he took office — indeed, they made him possible — and will continue to plague us for years after he leaves.
And more importantly, as this week clarifies, there will be no dramatic end for Trump. There never was going to be one. If he leaves office, it’s not going to be because the other shoe drops. There’s no revelation that can do that when [gesticulates wildly to everything that has happened and been revealed since 2015] was not enough.
If he leaves office, it will be because he loses the 2020 election. That was always the case. We were always going to have to do this the hard way.
Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
People attend a rally in support of President Trump near Trump Tower on March 23, 2019, in New York City.
He shows how America’s thermostatic electorate, constantly responding to one party’s electoral success with a dramatic swing to the other side, can undermine democratic responsiveness by catapulting a party with a deeply unpopular agenda into office. And he shows how dangerous the presidency’s extraordinary war powers can be in the wrong hands.
As the late literary critic Frank Kermode argued in his book The Sense of an Ending, humans crave narrative structure. “We are surrounded by [chaos], and equipped for coexistence with it only by our fictive powers,” he wrote. We can’t see the world as a sequence of events, one right after another, with no end or resolution in sight. “To see everything as out of mere succession,” he observed, “is to behave like a man drugged or insane.”
We can’t see what’s happening to American politics as just a succession of events that, in themselves, mean nothing. They have to be leading up to a climactic Götterdämmerung in which our slate is wiped clean. This is the yearning behind bold predictions of the Trump administration’s collapse — that made Mueller, then the impeachment process, such a vessel for liberal hopes.
There is no easy fix to our problems. We have to muddle through.
So where does this leave us? Everything feels horrible, Trump is still in office, and he’s not going anywhere.
The glib answer is that if you don’t want Trump to be president, you should make sure he loses the 2020 election. He’s the favorite at this point given the strength of the economy and the advantage of incumbency, but incumbents sometimes lose and Democrats have a number of strong candidates.
But a Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren presidency isn’t going to wipe clean the system’s problems. The maladies remain. To borrow a quote that 2020 hopeful Pete Buttigieg likely knows well, “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
And absent a revolutionary shock to create a radically new political order, the best we can do is just muddle along.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Trump delivers remarks before signing an executive order protecting freedom of speech on college campuses at the White House on March 21, 2019.
That is probably the one unromantic takeaway that the Trump experience has left me with. We fantasize about an early, dramatic end to the Trump years in part because that signals a return to normalcy and a rejection of all the dysfunctions he symbolizes. But Trump was never going to be frog-marched out of the White House. And even if he was, it wouldn’t have solved our problems.
I understand the yearning not to muddle through, for a big, climactic finish to both the Trump presidency and the American national nightmare. But if muddling through is to lead anywhere, we ought to be prepared for it, and prepared to make the most of it, rather than thinking a deus ex machina like impeachment will blow the whole thing up in a stroke.
The Trump years will likely end with a whimper rather than a bang — just as the conclusion of Watergate did not lead to a cleansed and more ethical politics (though there was a flurry of reforms that improved things for a spell), and just as the financial crisis did not usher in a new era of ethical banking (same).
But we don’t have to wait for the Trump presidency to end, or force it to end, to start thinking about what a more systematic approach to fixing American politics would look like. It will not make for a very good, eventful movie, and it will be a long and at times unfulfilling slog. But it’ll be the only way we can make it through.
It is darkness in the daytime, and the only light is cast by the bonfire of despotism into which the Republican Party is pitching our Constitution.
Donald Trump has transgressed two of the oldest and gravest injunctions known to humankind—thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not bear false witness—and Republican senators have admitted that he is guilty.
But for all their professed fealty to tradition, to law and order, to knowing right from wrong, they simply do not care. They have decided that it’s not against the law to commit a crime, so long as the wicked leader of their death cult is the criminal.
A reckoning is now due. The Republicans in the Senate have shown us that they will not deliver justice, so we must deliver justice ourselves.
While Republicans have confessed they will do everything in their power to rig these next elections, we must do everything in our power to ensure that they are free, that they are fair, and that Republicans lose—as badly as possible.
Let us show just how serious we are. We can contribute today to help unseat the most vulnerable Republican senators come November. The more we give, the greater the fear we will instill in them, and the more likely we are to prevail.
We are disgusted, we are dismayed, we are filled with sorrow. But we are also very, very angry, and we must channel that anger. Republicans want to put our democracy to the torch, but together we can douse those flames and build anew.
The Apple Watch outsold the entire Swiss watch industry by a wide margin in 2019, according to new data shared today by Strategy Analytics.
Apple shipped an estimated 30.7 million units worldwide in 2019, up 36 percent from the estimated 22.5 million units shipped in 2018.
Comparatively, the Swiss watch industry (which includes all Swiss watch brands) is estimated to have shipped a total of 21.1 million units worldwide in 2019, dropping 13 percent from the 24.2 million watches shipped in 2018.
According to Strategy Analytics, the Apple Watch is "wildly popular" in North America, Western Europe, and Asia due to its user-friendly tech, sticky apps, and attractive design. Analog watches, meanwhile, remain popular with older consumers, but young buyers prefer smartwatches and computerized wristwear.
Traditional Swiss watch makers, like Swatch and Tissot, are losing the smartwatch wars. Apple Watch is delivering a better product through deeper retail channels and appealing to younger consumers who increasingly want digital wristwear. The window for Swiss watch brands to make an impact in smartwatches is closing. Time may be running out for Swatch, Tissot, TAG Heuer, and others.
Apple beat Swiss watch shipments with its own Apple Watch shipments during the holiday quarter of 2017, but 2019 marks the first full year where Apple has shipped a larger number of Apple Watches.
Apple does not break out Apple Watch sales numbers so estimates on shipments are based on guesswork, but the large margin between estimated Apple Watch shipments and estimated Swiss watch shipments suggests that the conclusion the Apple Watch outsold Swiss watches in 2019 is accurate.
President Trump arrives at campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 14, 2020. | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
He was acquitted of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
The Senate just voted to acquit President Donald Trump of charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — ending a more than four-month impeachment process that began after revelations that Trump had withheld aid from Ukraine and pressured its leader to investigate Hunter Biden.
The acquittal is the third time in US history the Senate has acquitted a president who has previously been impeached, after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Clinton in 1999.
While several Republican senators acknowledged the president’s wrongdoing, nearly all of them eventually voted to acquit Trump of both articles. Sen. Mitt Romney, ultimately, was the only senator to break with his party and vote to convict on the abuse of power charge.
As a result, the vote on the two articles was slightly different. Senators voted 52-48 to acquit the president on abuse of power, and 53-47 to acquit him of obstruction of Congress.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at the Capitol during the Senate impeachment trial on February 5, 2020.
The outcome was not a surprise. It would have taken 67 votes to convict the president, meaning 20 Republicans would have had to cross over and join the Democrats’ 47-member caucus. Given Republicans’ unwillingness to break with the president, that was always an unlikely outcome. After 51 Republicans voted against calling witnesses, the vote was all but a foregone conclusion.
The vote caps off a tumultuous few months in the House and the Senate that has been filled with bitter fights over subpoenas, witness testimony and process. During the last few weeks, House impeachment managers presented an overwhelming slate of evidence to demonstrate Trump’s willingness to abuse his power in order to get reelected. By the conclusion of the trial, many Senate Republicans were no longer denying the president’s wrongdoing so much as arguing that it didn’t merit removal.
Manager Adam Schiff, in his closing arguments, warned Republicans that their votes would inextricably tie them to the president.
“If you find that the House has proved its case, and still vote to acquit, your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel and for all of history,” he said.
Senate Republicans, on the whole, didn’t seem to mind.
Senate Republicans were never going to convict
Even as more and more evidence has emerged during the Senate trial, there’s one thing that’s stayed constant: Republicans’ loyalty to Trump.
During a tense vote on considering more witnesses and evidence last week, just two Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins and Mitt Romney — defied the president to vote alongside Democrats. And while several moderates including Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander, and Rob Portman have said they think Trump’s handling of aid to Ukraine was improper, all but Romney balked at going any further.
Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images
Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Mitt Romney (R-UT) walk to the State of the Union on February 4, 2020.
As the final impeachment vote clearly illustrates, the conference continues to remain fiercely united behind the president. This loyalty is driven heavily by the support that Trump continues to receive from the Republican base. According to a recent Gallup poll, 89 percent of Republicans approved of the job he was doing as president.
Last year, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), a swing-state senator up for reelection in 2020, experienced firsthand what happens when a Republican goes against Trump: After writing a Washington Post op-ed opposing the national emergency Trump had declared to obtain funds for his border wall, Tillis was threatened with a primary challenge and quickly reversed course.
Others that have spoken out about Trump in the past, like Alabama Rep. Martha Roby and former South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford, have paid the price at the ballot box.
These votes could be fodder during the election
At this point, it’s not certain what the next steps will be for Congress: Sen. Lindsey Graham has suggested that there should be more investigations into Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Burisma, though the conspiracy theory about the former vice president’s work on Ukraine and corruption has already been debunked. And the House could continue its own investigations, though what that looks like is not yet clear: Schiff declined to say whether the House would subpoena former National Security Adviser John Bolton when asked this weekend.
What is perhaps more predictable is that senators’ Trump impeachment vote — and their vote on witnesses — will become fodder during the 2020 election cycle.
For Republican senators in possible swing states, including Cory Gardner, Joni Ernst, Kelly Loeffler, Collins, and Tillis, especially, these votes are expected to be raised by their competitors. The same is true for vulnerable Democrats, like Sen. Doug Jones, who faces an intense fight to keep his seat in Alabama this fall.
It’s tough to predict exactly how these votes will play out with voters, though recent polls offer a glimpse. According to a FiveThirtyEight aggregation of these surveys, 84 percent of Democrats support removal, along with 43 percent of independents and 9 percent of Republicans. In states like Maine, for example, the positions of these independent voters will be particularly critical for the Senate race.
In nine months, what voters make of the president — and the Senate’s decisions — will be evident.
Somehow, Sen. Mitt Romney—that Mitt Romney—has become the conscience of the Republican Party. But despite the announcement that Donald Trump really does now have an achievement all his own—the only person ever to have bipartisan support for his conviction in an impeachment trial—other Republicans have continued to keep up the most shallow pretense imaginable.
Not that Trump is innocent. They know he’s not. Not that this isn’t serious. They know it is.
They’re pretending that Trump is sorry. And they know he never will be.
Susan Collins took the first swing at Trump’s learning experience when she told CBS News that Trump had learned a "pretty big lesson" from the whole process of hearings and trial, and that she was sure he would be "much more cautious" about soliciting political slander from foreign governments in the future. "The president's call was wrong,” said Collins. “He should not have mentioned Joe Biden in it, despite his overall concern about corruption in Ukraine. The president of the United States should not be asking a foreign country to investigate a political rival. That is just improper. It was far from a perfect call."
Once he heard of this, Trump was immediately so contrite that he … immediately dismissed the idea that he had learned the first thing from his impeachment “lesson.” Instead, Trump showed that he had not moved a single inch from the place he started at the beginning of the whole scandal, calling his extortion “a perfect call.”
But, of course, Collins wasn’t alone. Lamar Alexander was first onboard the train of Republican senators acknowledging that the House managers had proven their case, and that Trump had in fact tried to force an allied nation into interfering in the 2020 election by withholding military assistance. Only Lamar! wasn’t about to do anything about it. Instead, he’ll go back to Tennessee, where people apparently say, “Yep, that looks like murder” and then go on about their business.
Lisa Murkowski was also on board the Yes He Did Express. She defended her refusal to call witnesses by saying that no witnesses were needed. Trump’s behavior was “shameful and wrong.” But not so shameful that Murkowski would do anything, such as allowing the public to hear the full case.
Those three, along with Romney, may have been the Republicans at the center of the will-they/won’t-they/of course they won’t when it came to witnesses, but they’re not the the only ones willing to admit that Trump did a little criming. There’s also Rob Portman. “I believe that some of the president’s actions in this case—including asking a foreign country to investigate a potential political opponent and the delay of aid to Ukraine—were wrong and inappropriate, “ said Portman. Some of Trump’s actions in this case happened to be every action that the House managers placed in their articles of impeachment. Still, that doesn’t mean that Portman is going to do anything but collect his ticket to the afterparty.
Ben Sasse was one of the most Trump-supportive Republicans when it came to tossing softballs to Trump’s defense team. That didn’t stop him from declaring that “delaying the aid was inappropriate and wrong and shouldn't have happened." Neither should his vote to sustain Trump. But it will.
And then there’s Republican Majority Whip John Thune. Following the lead of America’s most unpopular senator, Thune declared that Trump was just inexperienced and naive. He’ll be sure to mend his ways and be more careful going forward. Quick: Someone ask Trump about that one.
The truth behind the Republican position is the one that was made clear when Murkowski and Alexander teamed up with Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham on Team Lickspittle: They do not give a damn. And from the excuses they’re providing, they also don’t give a damn who knows it.
It doesn’t take looking for something obscure to reveal Rush Limbaugh as an asinine blowhard who discovered that it’s possible to build a career on endless hate. Limbaugh’s most famous quotes are sufficient to show exactly who he is. Dipping even a toe into that tub of ugliness he has filled over decades on right-wing radio makes it clear that even breaking Limbaugh’s decades of verbal sewage down into categories is difficult. Should they be divided by year? He certainly does not become less objectionable over time. If anything, the praise Limbaugh has received for daring to be an asshole has sent him on an unending quest for the most offensive statements he can create. By topic? There is no topic where he’s been less than hideous.
Cancer is a scourge. It should not happen to anyone. But having cancer does not remove one speck of damage that Limbaugh has done to the nation. And it’s a lot. That last night Trump handed over to Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an honor usually reserved for America’s best … shows that he is America’s worst.
“Feminism,” said Limbaugh in his most-quoted line, “was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society.” It was on his radio show that the slur “feminazi” was coined, as Limbaugh bellowed daily against the crime of women seeking to claim value not given to them by men. “Militant feminism” was another of those terms that slipped into a million conversations, deployed against any woman who dared to speak in public. Among the many sins Limbaugh laid at this altar, he declared that abortion was how militant feminists “impose their will on the rest of society, particularly on men.” The idea of consent has been a favorite target of Limbaugh’s attacks, or more properly, in his defense of rape. “If the left ever senses and smells that there's no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police,” said Limbaugh. “But consent is the magic key to the left.”
If the idea that women might deny men sex is worth Limbaugh pounding his studio table, so is the idea that women have any role to play in the world besides generating babies. It’s not just his unending lies about abortion; birth control of any kind is offensive to Limbaugh. He famously referred to college student Sandra Fluke as a "slut" and a "prostitute" for arguing that contraceptives should be more widely available. But even that might pale beside the amount of time Limbaugh has spent warring against condoms—as a means of both preventing pregnancy and guarding against disease. In the process, he’s repeatedly made claims concerning failure rates and “holes” that have sowed confusion and generated a genuine threat to health that has almost certainly left behind a body count. Oh, and along the line Limbaugh claimed that the average penis was now somehow smaller because of feminazis.
When people weren’t Limbaugh’s target, he had a whole planet to pick on. He told his listeners that both Styrofoam and plastic were biodegradable, but that paper is not. When he was not declaring the climate crisis a hoax—or a conspiracy—and attacking scientists, Limbaugh was constantly making up his own statistics, such as pushing the now widely cited idea that there is “more forest in North America now than when Columbus landed.” There’s not.
And, of course, there was racism. There was constant racism. Limbaugh told a black listener who phoned in to take “that bone out of your nose and call me back.” If that racist statement is too subtle, Limbaugh also had some comments about the NAACP to make things super clear. “The NAACP should have riot rehearsal,” said Limbaugh. “They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.” Turning to President Obama, Limbaugh laughed about the nickname “Curious George," taken from the monkey in children’s books. As African American unemployment was going down under President Obama, Limbaugh constantly insisted that it was going up, that black Americans were “depressed” because Obama was a “hoax,” and also that black women in America were very upset over Tiger Woods’ “choice of females.” Woods was far from the only black athlete who frequently wound up in Limbaugh’s crosshairs. He used his brief stint as an NFL commentator to sneer at quarterback Donovan McNabb as someone who had no real talent and who was only leading a team because "the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well."
Of course, Republicans don’t just love Limbaugh for his racism, sexism, anti-environmentalism, and just plain ignorance. They’re also there for his insightful political points—such as calling Amy Carter "the most unattractive presidential daughter in the history of the country," Chelsea Clinton—12-year-old Chelsea Clinton—the “White House dog.” In these days where it’s a criminal offense to mention the name of Donald Trump’s children, Republicans are still chuckling at these chestnuts.
Naturally, Limbaugh was also a big fan of that other Republican favorite: torture. He dismissed war crimes at Abu Ghraib, saying, “It's sort of like hazing, a fraternity prank. Sort of like that kind of fun.” When that statement generated some pushback, Limbaugh was having nothing of it. He had this cogent defense of those involved: “I'm talking about people having a good time. These people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?” Apparently beating, shocking, and setting dogs on helpless people is a great emotional release. On the other hand, Limbaugh was really against the facility at Guantanamo Bay … for its shortage of torture. “We need to call it, 'Gitmo, the Muslim resort,'” said Limbaugh. “Any resort that treated people like this would have ads all over the New York Times trying to get people to come down and visit for some R&R, for some rest and relaxation.”
It’s impossible to find a topic on which Limbaugh hasn’t been odious. On which he hasn’t been intentionally hurtful. On which he hasn’t been cruel, spiteful, and deceitful. It’s difficult to find a single admirable quality in the man, either on the air or off.
But for America’s right … he’s right. Limbaugh is the man who showed them you could make a living from nastiness, build a movement on pure hate. No wonder Trump loves him.
Students at the University of Louisville are outraged after school administrators permitted an unenrolled student to distribute disgusting anti-gay literature to students enrolled in an ‘Introduction to LGBTQ Studies’ class.
The Courier Journal reports: “Kaila Story, an associate professor of women and gender studies and Pan-African studies, said the student came to her Introduction to LGBTQ Studies class last week, passed out pamphlets and then ‘lurked outside the class.’ The pamphlet, published by the Christian group Living Waters Publications, begins by describing a woman who is locked in a car on a train track and is rescued at the last minute from being hit by an oncoming train she didn’t see.”
Said the pamphlet: “Perhaps you believe you are gay, or maybe you are sympathetic toward homosexuality and you think that what people do sexually is their own business. Whatever the case, I want to convince you that you are sitting in a car on a railroad track with a train coming, and you don’t know it.”
When the incident was reported to the office of student affairs, administrators told the anti-gay student he could return to the class within 48 hours. A university spokesman said the student was not breaking any laws and followed university rules.
SHADES, the LGBTQ students of color group at University of Louisville, condemned the school, writing: “Shades absolutely condemns the University of Louisville, the Student Affairs Office, and Neeli Bendapudi and her staff for the completely incompetent and ineffective response to the targeted act of harassment and hate that Dr. Kaila Story’s Intro to LGBTQ Studies has been left to deal with. Anti-LGBTQ propaganda has been left in the classroom for LGBTQ students and allies to see, and the perpetrator of this injustice has been seen lurking outside of the classroom, making both the professor and students fear for their safety. While faculty and staff have stood up and fought for actions to be taken, their words were met with effectively nothing. Their concerns were ignored and treated as being ‘too emotional.'”
“Now, students and faculty & staff will be working to bring this abhorrent situation to the resolution it SHOULD HAVE COME TO,” the group added. “We will not be silent and we will not allow this act of hate & harassment to go unchecked by the University of Louisville who is supposed to cherish LGBTQ students and our community. While UofL may tout themselves to be a champion of diversity and inclusion, they are showing through their actions that they could care less about us. All they care about is covering their own backs at the expense and safety of LGBTQ individuals. UofL through their actions have shown themselves to be on the wrong side of history, and we—the LGBTQ+ students, faculty, and staff & those aligned with us—will not stand for it. The University of Louisville, the Student Affairs Office, and Neeli Bendapudi and her staff must take immediate action to truly ensure the safety and wellbeing of the LGBTQ+ individuals that have carved out safe spaces in this campus that the University takes credit for, but clearly will not fight for. Thank you.”
Margaret, have you been watching any news lately or did you give up and go back to just talking to your parrots? If you did, I don’t blame you. The media is about to make me lose my religion. There’s so much shit being broadcast, I’m more lost than a fart in a fan factory. Somehow the Iowa Caucuses, which to be honest are about as interesting as watching paint dry, are headline news because we didn’t get our vote count in ten minutes. But an impeached President disrespects the National Anthem, can’t find Missouri on a map and then goes on TV and sniffs and snorts and lies to the American people and it’s declared a victory because he’s just rallying his confederacy of dunces. Lord Jesus have mercy. Where do I begin?
How about I start with Iowa. The news didn’t get their triple-washed results spoon fed to them and all hell broke loose. It took 24 hours to begin to get results. Oh the horror of it all. Honestly I ask you: How could it NOT take a day or two? Did you watch the damn thing? A hundred and fifty thousand Iowans came running out of the corn fields and into gymnasiums and cafeterias with something called a Presidential Preference Card. Once inside they proceeded to have an old-fashioned pig pickin’. People gathered here and then gathered there only to learn that this candidate wasn’t viable and then that candidate was, and suddenly those preference cards were being traded like Green Stamps. For you Bernie supporters out there, Green Stamps have nothing to do with immigrants or the environment. A better reference for your age group might be Pokémon cards. And for you Klobuchar supporters – think Beanie Babies. Before you know it, one woman was so confused, she traded away her preference card for Buttigieg not realizing that God has issues with Chasten. I kid you not.
If you ask me, the fact that we started getting results the next day is remarkable.
Look, I’m poking fun at our friends from Iowa, but the truth of the matter is this. It’s a caucus. It’s complicated by design. If it were easy, everyone would participate, and we certainly can’t have that. And if you think Iowa can’t caucus, imagine what would happen if Florida tried it? Or better yet, Georgia. Folks – voter suppression is something Americans excel at. Iowa has about 800,000 registered Democrats and over 600,000 didn’t caucus for shit. With a 19% turnout, you would think we could get those results quickly. Am I right?
Wrong.
This isn’t a disaster. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s a caucus. Shit happens. In 2012 the Republicans were caucusing for Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, John Huntsman and a couple other candidates who might have been named Gabbard and Yang for all I know. Mitt Romney was declared the winner… until he wasn’t. Almost 16 days later Rick Santorum was declared the winner but only after the Iowa GOP announced it was really just too close to call anyone a winner. Four years later in 2016 we think Ted Cruz won, but Ben Carson accused Cruz supporters of cheating and Donald Trump claimed it was rigged against him. Yeah. That happened. So… getting results 24 hours later – not really a news story. But you would have never known that considering how many journalists set their hair on fire yesterday as we waited for the Iowa Democrats to weigh in. Funny how that was the news when, on the other side, an impeached President was running virtually unopposed.
But it’s not like we are lacking for news ever with this asshat in the White House. How many hours and hours, days, weeks, months even did the media spend on NFL football players supposedly disrespecting the flag by quietly kneeling during the National Anthem. Remember that? Remember how Trump wanted them all fired? Remember how the GOP said they should just shut up and play or even better they could just leave the country if they hated it so much – remember that? Of course, you do. It was headline news for… well considering we still hear about it – forever. And yet, when an impeached President Trump waves his hands, points at people and even tries to take a seat druing the Anthem while others stand at attention with their hands over their hearts… well we don’t hear much about that because evidently the Iowa Caucuses were rigged. Thanks media. Once again you have proven about as useful as a one-legged man at a butt kickin’ contest.
And then just as the Iowa Caucus results are released, we cut away to the impeached President’s State of the Union Address otherwise know as Trump’s Tall Tales. Among other bullshit, Trump delivered NRA propaganda as red meat. Fred Guttenberg was in the audience. He lost his daughter, Jamie, during the Parkland shootings. Fred spoke truth to power last night while Trump lied to America. Fred was removed from the room. Trump continued to lie.
Fact: Trump is fighting in the courts to get rid of insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions.
Fact: The economy grew faster under Obama.
Fact: Midwest manufacturing activity has hit a 4-year low under Trump.
Fact: More jobs were created during Obama’s final three years than during Trumps first three.
But what will the story be? Nancy Pelosi ripped up the speech.
Give me a break mainsteam media. She just tore up the speech. If I had been there, I would have torn him a new asshole. It’s not that you’re fake news. It’s that you’re no news. Get off your asses and do your jobs. I mean it. Really.
Radio personality Rush Limbaugh was awarded the Medal of Freedom by First Lady Melania Trump during the State of the Union address on February 4, 2020. | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
During the State of the Union, Donald Trump bestowed the highest civilian honor on Rush Limbaugh.
Presidents have bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to some of America’s greatest writers, artists, entertainers, journalists, and humanitarians — from Toni Morrison to Ansel Adams to Edward R. Murrow to Betty Ford.
On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump gave it to one of America’s most prominent racists.
During his State of the Union address, Trump looked to Rush Limbaugh, seated in the audience with Melania Trump, and thanked him for his contributions to American life.
“And Rush, in recognition of all you have done for our nation, the millions of people today that you speak to and that you inspire, and all of the incredible work you have done for charity, I am proud to announce tonight he will be receiving our country’s highest — you will be receiving our country’s highest civilian honor, the presidential medal of freedom.”
Republicans cheered.
John F. Kennedy established the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 to honor Americans who have made “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”
Limbaugh, recently diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer, has devoted his decades-long radio career to building an audience of millions of listeners with his brand of right-wing, xenophobic — and patently racist — populism that Trump borrowed on his rise to power.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Rush Limbaugh made millions off his brand of right-wing populism.
Limbaugh fills hours of airtime each week with hateful commentary directed at African Americans, Asian Americans, women, people with disabilities and pretty much anyone who is not white, straight and male.
One person he does like: Donald Trump. Limbaugh has supported Trump since he won the 2016 nomination and has largely stood by him. He’s had him on his show for soft-ball interviews more than once.
Limbaugh’s racist rants continued beyond the 2008 election and started long before.
In 1990, Newsday reported that Limbaugh snapped at a black caller who confronted him, saying, “Take the bone out of your nose and call me back.” (Limbaugh denies he said this.)
In 2007, Limbaugh joked he was “singing a song in my head here during the break: ‘Barack, the Magic Negro, doo doo do doo.’”
In 2004, he suggested that professional basketball players were criminals: “You just gotta be who you are, and I think it’s time to get rid of this whole National Basketball Association. Call it the TBA, the Thug Basketball Association, and stop calling them teams. Call ’em gangs,” he said.
Three years later, Limbaugh described professional football players the same way. “Look, let me put it to you this way. The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”
In 2011, he mocked a speech by the president of China, saying on air, “Hu Jintao was just going, ‘Ching cha. Ching chang cho chow. Cha chow. Ching cho. Chi ba ba ba. Kwo kwa kwa kee.” Limbaugh continued this at length, then said, “Nobody was translating, but that’s the closest I can get.”
In 2016, Limbaugh claimed that Obama’s race “amplified malcontent operations like Black Lives Matter. It gave rise to a thugocracy, and nobody had the guts to speak out against it for fear of what would happen to them.”
Trump himself has made his own racist remarks and relied on race baiting throughout his career. From his entry into the presidential race — calling Mexicans “rapists” — to his many, many comments since about various groups, his presidency has been defined by racial animus. “I think they’re trouble. I think they’re looking for trouble,” Trump said of Black Lives Matters activists in a Fox News interview with Bill O’Reilly, echoing Limbaugh’s view.
It’s worth noting that beyond race, both men hold deeply held sexist views, too. Limbaugh once attacked a law student and health care advocate, Sandra Fluke, who was fighting to require health insurance providers to cover birth control. He called her a slut:
What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic], who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.
Trump has confronted women in public life similarly, as he did in describing Megyn Kelly as having “blood coming out of her wherever” or dismissing Christine Blasey Ford because “it doesn’t matter. We won.”
Both men recently made sexist, ableist attacks on teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, who has autism.
“So she’s out tweeting and politicizing, and she is free to lie and say whatever she wants to say about climate change and who’s responsible for it,” Limbaugh said. “And nobody is permitted to question her, you see, because she has — what did they call it? She is in the autism spectrum, so you can’t disagree, you can’t question, because she’s not well.”
Both men have become powerful through building up a base by putting down others. Now one is honoring the other. And there’s nothing meritorious about it.
Carrying photographs of Americans with preexisting medical conditions, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi lead a group of Democratic members of Congress to a press conference in Washington, DC, on July 9, 2019. | Win McNamee/Getty Images
Trump wants people who depend on Obamacare to relax. They do so at great peril.
If you have an expensive health condition, and you don’t know much about President Trump’s record on health care, then his Tuesday night State of the Union address was reassuring.
The bad news for people with preexisting conditions is that this “ironclad pledge” is a lie. Trump and his administration have fought hard — in all three branches of government — to strip people with preexisting health conditions of the protections they enjoy under the Affordable Care Act. Indeed, if Trump has his way, those protections will cease to exist.
Obamacare provides that insurers in the individual health insurance market must cover people with preexisting conditions, and it forbids those insurers from charging higher premiums to people with such conditions — a practice known as “community rating.”
The executive branch cannot, acting on its own, eliminate community rating altogether. But the Trump administration has fought hard to undermine it. In 2018, for example, it handed down a rule expanding the use of short term insurance plans to that do not cover many services, and that may exclude people with preexisting conditions.
The mere existence of these plans can drive up premiums for people with expensive preexisting conditions, because these skimpy plans will lure healthy consumers away from more generous plans. That risks creating a segregated market. Healthy consumers will buy cheap, watered-down plans, while people with expensive medical conditions will be concentrated into much more expensive plans.
In Congress, meanwhile, Trump supported legislation seeking to repeal Obamacare or drastically water down its protections. One bill backed by Trump, the American Health Care Act, would have allowed many insurers to charge higher premiums — potentially prohibitively high premiums — to patients with preexisting conditions.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is currently asking the courts to repeal Obamacare almost in its entirety. If the courts ultimately embrace the administration’s position, that will mean that all of Obamacare’s protections for people with preexisting conditions will be struck down.
Trump, it’s worth noting, has a history of claiming that he will protect Americans’ access to health care, then pushing policies that would strip health coverage from millions of Americans. He claimed in 2015, for example, to be the “first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid,” but his 2020 budget proposal would cut Medicaid spending by $1.5 trillion over the next decade.
Whenever any president travels, it’s going to cost the American taxpayers money. That’s a given. But when Donald Trump travels it not only costs the taxpayer a little bit more money than usual, a ton of that money always seems to find its way into Donald Trump’s businesses.
Over Super Bowl weekend, Trump traveled back to his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, to celebrate with the kinds of people that celebrate things with Donald Trump. And according to Huffpost, Trump’s trip to the Sunshine State cost taxpayers $3.4 million.
Trump got a few things accomplished while on his 28th trip as president to Mar-a-Lago: he campaigned, he did whatever the hell this is during the singing of the “Star Spangled Banner,” and he spent approximately two-and-a-half hours watching the Super Bowl with Mar-a-Lago club members.
It’s not simply that the trip cost taxpayers money. It’s that it cost more money than it needed to, on top of also being a personal business trip of sorts for his never-ending campaign. Robert Weissman, president of the nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen, told HuffPost, “He could have saved money by chartering a plane and flying club members to watch the game at the White House.”
Moving from the present world to one where renewable power dominates our energy economy is going to require some additional technologies. These may include storage, enhanced grid management, and demand-response power management, but they could also include something entirely new. Recently, a paper took a look at a technology I hadn't realized even existed.
The paper evaluates the potential of what its authors are terming "nighttime photovoltaic power," and the simplest way of thinking about it is "running solar panels in reverse": generating electricity by radiating energy away into space. The efficiency is nothing like that of standard photovoltaics and can't even get there except in unusual circumstances. But as the name implies, it can keep generating power long after the Sun goes down.
Photovoltaics at night
The easiest way to understand this tech is to think of a photovoltaic device in equilibrium with its environment. Here, incoming photons will occasionally liberate an electron, leaving behind a positively charged hole. These can then combine, radiating a photon back out of the device. When operating as a photovoltaic device, there's a large excess of photons coming in, producing a corresponding excess of electrons and holes that can then be harvested as electricity.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins announced on Tuesday that she would vote to acquit President Donald Trump on two articles of impeachment, despite her reservations about the president’s “wrong” behavior.
Instead of voting to remove the president from office, Collins told reporters after a floor speech that criticism from her and other GOP senators amounted to a sufficient condemnation. Collins, Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) have all said that Trump's solicitations of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden were inappropriate but not impeachable.
“If the House had started with a censure resolution instead of leaping to impeachment and short-cutting the process and skipping over judicial adjudication it’s something that I would have looked at,” Collins said. “That both Republican senators such as myself and Democratic senators have criticized his conduct strikes me as a reprimand.”
The Maine moderate has been one of the few swing votes in the trial.
Last week, she joined Democrats in their failed push to hear from more witnesses, namely former national security adviser John Bolton. But earlier in January she voted with Senate Republican leaders on the framework for the trial. That victory for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) paved the way for an successful effort to turn the entire Senate GOP against witnesses, save for Collins and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah).
After the witness motion was rebuffed, Collins said she concluded she had to vote to acquit Trump. Romney is now the only the Republican considering whether to convict the president of the two impeachment articles.
"I do not believe the House has met its burden of showing that the president's conduct, however, flawed, warrants the extreme step of immediate removal from office,” Collins said of the abuse of power charge.
Collins is up for re-election this fall in a state that’s increasingly tilted toward Democrats and was in a no-win position. Though her decision to acquit will infuriate the state’s liberals, voting against Trump would have provoked a sizable backlash from the state’s conservatives.
The issue may end up as the primary wedge issue in her re-election race. Her likely opponent in the general election, Maine statehouse Speaker Sara Gideon, waited until after Collins’ announcement to say she would have voted to remove Trump from office.
“I believe an abuse of power occurred and I would vote to remove the president,” Gideon said. Collins’ “decision to acquit despite the case against the president and without hearing more of the facts again reveals her commitment to standing with Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.”
Collins said that the House chose "speed over finality" in pursuing its evidence and said it was fairly easy to reject the obstruction of Congress impeachment article. But abuse of power was more complicated for her because of the July 25 transcript of Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky in which he asked for a probe into Biden.
She concluded that Trump had a “mixed” motivation in that call, both going after a 2020 challenger but also wanting greater burden sharing among European allies when it came to supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia.
“I was concerned about his mention of the Bidens and I felt that for him to ask a foreign country to investigate a political rival was wrong. So from there it became an issue of deciding whether the misconduct that did occur reached the very high bar that the founders established,” she said. “In the end, I felt that it did not.”
Collins also voted to acquit former President Bill Clinton in 1999 on two articles of impeachment.
Sudo, a utility found in dozens of Unix-like operating systems, has received a patch for a potentially serious bug that allows unprivileged users to easily obtain unfettered root privileges on vulnerable systems.
The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-18634, is the result of a stack-based buffer-overflow bug found in versions 1.7.1 through 1.8.25p1. It can be triggered only when either an administrator or a downstream OS, such as Linux Mint and Elementary OS, has enabled an option known as pwfeedback. With pwfeedback turned on, the vulnerability can be exploited even by users who aren't listed in sudoers, a file that contains rules that users must follow when using the sudo command.
Sudo is a powerful utility that’s included in most if not all Unix- and Linux-based OSes. It lets administrators allow specific individuals or groups to run commands or applications with higher-than-usual system privileges. Both Apple’s macOS and Debian distributions of Linux received updates last week. People using other OSes should check their configurations and version numbers to ensure they’re not vulnerable.
The price of Tesla stock soared by 21 percent on Tuesday, rising above $940 for the first time.
Tesla's value has more than doubled since the start of the year—and quadrupled since last September.
What's driving the dramatic rise in Tesla's share price is not clear. Last week, Tesla reported solid but unspectacular profits of $105 million for the fourth quarter of 2019. A number of Wall Street analysts have upgraded their share price targets for Tesla in recent weeks, but Tesla's value is now far above most analysts' estimates.
Unless the apology comes with a Chapter 7 filing, it's not much of an apology.
The app maker at the heart of reporting issues in the Iowa caucuses has issued an apology and vowed to "apply lessons learned in the future."
"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 Democratic caucus-goers," Democratic tech firm Shadow wrote on Twitter today, admitting for the first time the app was the company's creation.
"As the Iowa 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," according to the company, adding the "issue did not affect the underlying caucus results data."
The D.C.-based outfit received more than $63,000 from the Iowa Democratic Party in November and December, a Democratic technology consultant confirmed to POLITICO.
Earlier on Tuesday, a party spokesperson said a "coding issue" was to blame for the technical woes.
Shadow had remained silent as Democratic officials scrambled to sort out the mess caused by the app that was developed with the goal of reporting caucus results quicker and certify the results. "We will apply the lessons learned in the future, and have already corrected the underlying technology issue," the firm promised.
GOP Montana Rep. Rodney Garcia is refusing calls from his own party to resign over remarks that the U.S. Constitution says socialists can be shot.
The Billings Gazette reports: “Garcia rejected the call to resign Monday, saying that the ‘only way I would give my resignation is if God asked me to.’ The pressure to resign came after Garcia raised a question Friday during a Republican party organizing meeting in Helena. Garcia said he was concerned about socialists “entering our government” and socialists “everywhere” in Billings, before saying the Constitution says either to shoot socialists or to put them in jail.”
After being asked to clarify his remarks, Garcia added, “So actually in the Constitution of the United States (if) they are found guilty of being a socialist member you either go to prison or are shot.”
Donald Trump is preparing his revenge against everyone who has crossed him. Just as he got on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and committed an impeachable offense the day after Robert Mueller testified before Congress, Trump will take the success of the Senate Republican impeachment cover-up as license to commit new abuses of power and acts of personal retribution.
This is completely clear to anyone who’s observed Trump even casually, but Republican sources are also lining up to (anonymously) dish to reporters. “It’s payback time,” one “prominent Republican” told Vanity Fair, while, according to another source, “He has an enemies list that is growing by the day.”
Enemy No. 1 is former national security adviser John Bolton, who it seems is “going to go through some things.” In addition to the White House threatening Bolton’s publisher over the contents of his forthcoming book, Trump wants Bolton himself criminally investigated, a source told Gabriel Sherman. But even if a criminal investigation doesn’t materialize, “Trump has been calling people and telling them to go after Bolton.”
It’s not just Bolton, though. Republican Sen. Mitt Romney dared to vote for witnesses in the impeachment trial, so he’s in trouble. Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler led the impeachment inquiry and the team of House managers at the trial, so they’re on the enemies list.
It’s exactly what you’d expect from Trump. He expects to be free from any consequences for his actions, and anyone who threatens what he sees as his royal prerogative is going to be the target of his unhinged narcissistic rage. Expect the next several months to be even uglier than what we’ve already seen—but nothing compared to what will happen if he manages to cheat his way to a win in November.
Lenora and Norman Iverson fill out their presidential preference cards during a Democratic party caucus in Des Moines, Iowa, on February 3, 2020. | Charlie Neibergall/AP
The Iowa caucuses are a terrible, anti-democratic disaster even when they do count the votes.
Early Tuesday morning, the state Democratic Party blamed a coding error in an app that was supposed to compile caucus results for this delay. Tens of thousands of voters spent hours in crowded rooms, and we still have only the vaguest idea what they decided.
The one good thing that can come from the disaster of Monday’s botched Iowa vote count is it may convince the national Democratic Party to end the caucuses once and for all.
The case for the Iowa caucuses is now weaker than it’s ever been — and it’s never been strong. Iowa is an unrepresentative state, and its caucuses impose an unconscionable burden on voters who wish to participate. Votes are counted in an absurd way, and the result can diverge significantly from the actual will of the people.
Here’s a fun fact about the Iowa caucuses — the overwhelming majority of caucus-goers must be at their caucus site at exactly 7 pm, or else they are disenfranchised.
In Mingo, Iowa, the senior center’s doors close at 7pm, by law. The crowd groans as the precinct chair turns away someone who came to caucus two minutes late. pic.twitter.com/yPaObZNeU1
Have to work a late shift? Disenfranchised. Your babysitter shows up late? Disenfranchised. Can’t afford a babysitter? Disenfranchised. Can’t find a parking spot near a crowded caucus site? Disenfranchised.
“Say I’m a guy who’s got to work for a living, and I’ve got kids,” then-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said of the Iowa caucuses in 2000. “On a Saturday, is it easy for me to go cast a ballot and spend 15 minutes doing it, or do I have to sit in a caucus for eight hours?”
The problem for people who work, people who have children, or people who simply don’t have time to spend an entire evening standing around a high school gym, as Dean put it, is that “I can’t stand there and listen to everyone else’s opinion for eight hours about how to fix the world.”
Dean’s comments, in fairness, are a bit hyperbolic. An Iowa caucus-goer is more likely to spend two hours at a caucus site, rather than eight.
But the thrust of Dean’s comments are exactly right. Iowa makes it needlessly difficult to vote, and that needless difficulty disenfranchises parents, low-income people, people without control over their job schedules, and pretty much anyone who isn’t determined enough to sacrifice hours to an arcane and anti-democratic process.
Gene J. Puskar/AP
Precinct 68 Iowa caucus voters seated in the Biden section hold up their first votes as they are counted at Drake University in Des Moines on February 3, 2020.
And then there’s the absurd method the caucus uses to count votes. That method is so complex that it defies any effort to summarize it, and it requires voters who hope to get their heads around it to understand concepts like “viability,” “state delegate equivalents,” and the difference between a county, district, state, and national convention.
Iowans who support a candidate who is unpopular in their neighborhood — even if that candidate is very popular in the state as a whole — must shift their vote to another candidate or be disenfranchised. The Democratic caucuses also effectively gave extra votes to people from rural areas, while punishing caucus-goers who live near colleges and universities. And there are no secret ballots at the Iowa Democratic caucuses. Much of the operation runs on peer pressure.
Iowa is extraordinarily protective of its caucuses, and of its special status as the first state to weigh in on every presidential race. Candidates who question its status typically don’t fare well: Dean was savaged by rival candidates and by the Iowa press when his 2000 attacks on the Iowa caucuses became public during his 2004 presidential campaign.
Caucuses, as opposed to primaries where voters cast an ordinary ballot in an ordinary election process, are a terrible way to choose candidates. And Iowa’s caucuses are among the worst.
You can’t put a Band-Aid over a gaping chest wound
State Democrats have taken some incremental steps to make the Iowa caucuses more democratic than they’ve been in the past. Beginning in 2016, for example, the party allowed groups of voters to apply to form “satellite caucuses” where voters who were unable to make it to a traditional caucus site could still have their vote counted.
The party also flirted with hosting “virtual caucuses” in 2020, which would allow Iowans to participate online. But these plans were scrapped due to security concerns.
Charlie Neibergall/AP
Residents gather at an Iowa Democratic caucus in Des Moines on February 3, 2020.
Satellite caucuses, in other words, only appear to have helped a small percentage of eligible Iowa Democratic voters. They may help voters who know they will be unable to attend a traditional caucus and can plan ahead to host a satellite caucus. But they do little for voters who have a last-minute work emergency, or who can’t find a babysitter, or who just get stuck in traffic on their way to the caucus.
The way Iowa counts votes is ridiculous
The Iowa caucuses are what would happen if Rube Goldberg were asked to design an electoral system — and to do it in a way that ensures that voters in some parts of the state wield vastly more power than others.
My colleague Andrew Prokop lays out the basics about how Iowa’s system works. In short, Iowa counts the votes in three different ways:
1) The pre-realignment vote total: This is the initial tally of how many people prefer each candidate at each of the more than 1,600 individual caucus sites (added together for a statewide total). Basically, it’s who got the most votes the first time around.
2) The final vote total: After the first tally, any supporters of a candidate who got less than a certain threshold of the vote (15 percent in most precincts) can shift their support to another candidate. Candidates who are below the viability threshold are eliminated as “nonviable,” and a new and final tally is taken. So this is who got the most votes after a reshuffling.
3) State delegate equivalents: The final vote total at each caucus site will then be used to assign each viable candidate a certain number of county delegates. Then those county delegate numbers will be weighted to estimate their “state delegate equivalents” (how many delegates each candidate will get at the Iowa state convention).
A few arbitrary features of this system are worth pointing out. The first is that it can cause wildly different outcomes for candidates with small differences in total votes.
Suppose that a particular caucus site has 400 caucus-goers and a total of five county delegates to dole out. That means that a candidate must hit 60 supporters to be “viable” and thus remain in the running for one or more delegates.
Now suppose that Amy Klobuchar wins exactly 60 votes at this caucus site, while Joe Biden wins only 59 votes. In this scenario, Klobuchar is likely to walk away with at least one county delegate (or 20 percent of the available delegates), while Biden will walk away with nothing — even though they were separated by only one vote.
Iowa’s system can also lead to weird rounding errors, where candidates with wildly divergent vote counts earn the same number of county delegates at a particular precinct.
So the formula to apportion delegates is the total numbers after 2nd alignment x (the total number of delegates) / (the total of people at the caucus).
The system also favors candidates with diffuse support throughout the state, and disadvantages candidates with concentrated support. Suppose, for example, that Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders both won 35 percent of the total vote — but that Buttigieg won exactly 35 percent in every precinct while Sanders chalked up big victories in some caucuses while falling below the viability threshold in many others.
In this scenario, Buttigieg would walk away as the runaway winner, while Sanders would win significantly fewer state delegate equivalents — even though they both had the same number of supporters. Perhaps this aspect of the caucuses is a feature, if you think that the party should only nominate candidates who appear evenly to a broad swath of white Iowans. But it is very much at odds with the idea that every person’s vote should count equally.
Yet another problem is that state delegates are not allocated in a fair and equitable manner. As Prokop explains, each county is assigned a preset number of state delegates based on “how many votes its attendees cast for the Democratic nominees in the most recent gubernatorial and presidential race, averaged.” The purpose of this formula is to ensure that highly Republican counties with large populations but few Democratic voters do not have a disproportionate impact on the race.
But this formula also disadvantages some parts of the state, such as college campuses. As MSNBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald wrote of this problem in 2016, “more than a quarter — 27 percent — of Sanders supporters come from just three counties of Iowa’s 99, according to the Register poll, each home to one of the state’s largest universities. But those three counties award only 12 percent of the total 1401 delegates at stake statewide.”
A more recent analysis of the 2020 caucus found that “it only takes 43 participants in tiny Fremont County to win a delegate from a caucus, but in Johnson and Story counties, which both host state universities, it takes more than 200. In Polk, home to Des Moines and the state’s largest county, the number is about 150.”
When the votes are finally counted in Iowa, in other words, there’s a high likelihood that the number of “state delegates equivalents” awarded to each candidate will bear only a loose resemblance to how Iowans actually voted.
The “winner” on caucus night may still lose
It’s also worth noting how indirect this entire process is. As the Nation’s John Nichols explains, voters in Iowa didn’t actually choose a presidential candidate. They didn’t even choose delegates to the Democratic National Convention who will eventually help choose a presidential candidate. Instead ... well, I’ll let Nichols summarize it:
The process of choosing the state’s 41 pledged delegates to this summer’s Democratic National Convention only begins this evening. The delegates chosen tonight will be precinct delegates to county conventions in March, where delegates are then chosen for congressional district conventions in April, where delegates are chosen for the state convention in June. That’s where the actual delegates to the convention in Milwaukee will be selected.
This lengthy process can be gamed by a campaign that has little popular support but that is good at infighting.
That year, Iowa voters chose former Sen. Rick Santorum as the winner of the Iowa caucuses, while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney came in a close second. Yet the third-place finisher, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), wound up taking home 23 of the state’s 28 delegates to that year’s Republican National Convention.
The reason, as the Christian Science Monitor’s Peter Grier explained, is that “the people who stuck around and get themselves picked to go to th[e] state convention were overwhelmingly Paul supporters.”
Iowa’s process, in other words, can reward craftiness and bureaucratic endurance far more than it rewards popular support.
Jeremy Hogan/Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Pete Buttigieg campaigns with his husband on February 3, 2020.
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.
And in this system, every voter’s ballot will count exactly the same amount.
An Iowa voter who may have been living under a rock for a year and appeared to have just signed her caucus card over to Pete Buttigieg, was astonished when she found out that he is gay, something she couldn’t stomach. The moment was captured on video and posted to social media by filmmaker Annabel Park.
“Are you saying that he has a same-sex partner?” the woman asked. “Are you kidding? Then I don’t want anybody like that in the White House. So can I have my card back? I never knew that.”
“He better read the Bible,” added the woman when precinct captain Nikki van den Heever explained to her that Mayor Pete does read the Bible and says God doesn’t have a political party. “Why does it say in the Bible that a man should marry a woman then?”
“How come this has never been brought out before?” the irate woman continued. “I never heard it…. It all just went right down the toilet is where it all went.”
Boohoo, you mean smaller states with fewer people won't have disproportionate impact anymore? Cry me a fucking river. How difficult is "actual votes matter" as a starting place instead of "arbitrary land boundaries from 200 years ago must reign supreme"?
People listen as Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg greets supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire the morning after the flawed Iowa caucus on on February 04, 2020 in Manchester, New Hampshire. | Spencer Platt via Getty Images
It’s time to end Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status.
Iowa has played a huge role in our nomination process since 1972. Winning Iowa means instant credibility for a candidate, and that means more favorable media coverage and therefore more momentum for a campaign.
The argument against Iowa, before last night, was pretty straightforward: The Democratic Party is a collection of diverse groups — young people, liberal whites, conservative-leaning African Americans and Latinos, nonreligious Americans, city dwellers, and so on. By contrast, Iowa’s population is roughly 90 percent white, uncommonly old, and heavily rural.
In other words, it doesn’t really look like America and isn’t representative of the Democratic base. And yet a 2007 study found that a voter in Iowa or New Hampshire (where the first primary is held) has about 20 times more influence than someone who votes in a later primary. That doesn’t seem fair by any standard.
Last week, I spoke to Caroline Tolbert, a political scientist at the University of Iowa, about her idea to reform the broader primary process. Tolbert, who co-authored the 2010 book Why Iowa? How Caucuses and Sequential Elections Improve the Presidential Nominating Process, proposes a window in which every state that wants ithas the chance to hold a caucus or a primary, and then we follow that up with a national primary. In this system, the early voting window would function like a national straw poll, signaling which candidates are viable but also allowing input from voters everywhere, not just in Iowa or New Hampshire.
The main goal is to ensure that no one state always goes first. Instead, a window is designated and each state can hold its caucus or primary whenever it decides, or there could be a rotation of states that go first each cycle. But, unlike the current model, no single state could dominate the process by going first every time.
A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
Sean Illing
Is there a defense of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status? Should they keep it?
Caroline Tolbert
I can’t really defend it. But I will say that unless we’re going to have a national primary, some states have to go first. Our book makes a pretty strong argument that any small state could start, however. And in fact, we actually think there should be a relatively short window for these nominating events across the country.
We should look at these early voting states like straw polls that are effectively testing the candidates to see how viable they are. Can they speak to voters? Do they connect with people on the ground? Do they seem authentic? The early rounds of voting can answer these questions and then we follow that up with the national primary where everyone can vote all on one day.
Sean Illing
The main objection you hear from people about Iowa is that it’s not representative. The Democratic Party is a young and diverse coalition rooted largely in urban centers. Iowa is extremely white, extremely rural, and disproportionately old.
Is that fair?
Caroline Tolbert
It’s fair, but I’d add that Iowa is one of the fastest-growing states for the growth of the Latino population and it’s actually more liberal than some of those demographics might suggest. This is partly why Bernie Sanders has been shooting up the polls in Iowa lately. So Iowa, demographically, isn’t really reflective of the broader Democratic base, but ideologically it’s not all that different.
It will be interesting to see how the state evolves moving forward. Iowa has always been what we’d call a swing state, going back and forth from election to election. It supported Obama in 2008 and 2012 and then Trump in 2016. In that way, it’s a decent snapshot of the country as a whole.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Joe Biden steps off his campaign bus before an event at the Central Iowa Fairgrounds on January 26, 2020.
Sean Illing
Can you say a little more about your reform proposal and why you think it takes the best of all the different systems we have now?
Caroline Tolbert
The idea is to take what’s most valuable about caucuses focused heavily on retail politics (candidates campaigning face to face with citizens), and merging it with a more fair process for all voters (national primary). Again, our caucus window is intended to be straw polls that would inform voters nationwide about which candidates were viable and could win the nomination.
There’s an advantage to presidential nominations beginning in smaller population states (because one doesn’t have to have billions of dollars to run national TV ads), and our proposal is that any state can hold a caucus in the designated window set up by the party.
Many states moved away from caucuses in 2020 because the Democratic Party changed the rules, making it harder for states to hold caucuses. Given the realities of the new DNC rules, one could imagine modifying this reform proposal so that states could hold nonbinding caucuses or primaries during an early voting window. This would be followed by a national primary where voters from all states cast a binding ballot on the same day (the idea of Super Tuesday expanded).
Under the current system, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada provide information to voters nationwide about which candidates have a chance to win. But it doesn’t have to be just these four states.
Sean Illing
And what’s wrong with just shifting to a national primary?
Caroline Tolbert
The problem with a national primary is that in order to be successful, you need Mike Bloomberg- or Tom Steyer-type money, because you’d have to run a massive national campaign, and that requires a huge amount of financial resources. So a system like that would naturally favor the richest candidates and that seems like a bad idea.
Sean Illing
Wouldn’t it be easier and more fair to let larger, more representatives state like California or Texas go first and allow them to set the tone for the primary battle?
Caroline Tolbert
But if you do that, then everything is basically over and the smaller states that follow would be effectively disenfranchised. And, again, that’s the same problem with just running a national primary. You’re going to get a certain type of candidate, mostly rich people who can afford to sustain the kind of campaign you’d need to win in a big state.
I really do think a big benefit of starting with small states is that any candidate can afford to campaign there. You can go to Iowa and drive a bus around the state and engage in old-school retail politics — attending town halls and rallies, for instance. And you have a decent chance of interacting with real people. This kind of engagement is important and worth preserving, because the alternative is just blanket national TV campaigns and ad blitzes.
Sean Illing
Iowa and New Hampshire have fought hard to keep their first-in-the-nation status. Do you see any chance that they lose it anytime soon?
Caroline Tolbert
The system may already be in transition, and the parties — at the state and national level — may not be able to control it. Right now we have Tom Steyer investing heavily in the four early states and also in a broad national ad campaign. I think he’s spending 10 times more than his competitors on TV ads. And then we’ve got Mike Bloomberg basically doing nothing but running a full national campaign on TV and radio, with no real attempt to campaign in the early voting states. If any of those strategies work, it could change things.
The 2020 cycle is going to be fascinating for all of these reasons. We might see a new pathway to victory forged, which could force the parties to adjust. And even if Iowa remains first, if someone wins without paying much attention to it, its role would be diminished and candidates wouldn’t prioritize it anymore.
If Iowa isn't a good proxy, then what the fuck is it doing anywhere near the beginning of the process?
Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer prepare to caucus in Des Moines, Iowa, on February 3, 2020. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Don’t panic about potentially low voter turnout in Iowa just yet.
We don’t know much about the official Iowa caucus results just yet. But one thing we do know is that, based on early results, turnout this year is reportedly on pace to match 2016 Democratic turnout.
If true, that might be a bad sign for Democrats. In 2016, there was less enthusiasm around the Democratic race — in large part because Hillary Clinton was widely seen as the likely nominee — and about 170,000 people turned out in the Iowa caucuses. That was down from 2008, when excitement around figures like Barack Obama and Clinton led to a record attendance of 240,000.
As Sean Collins reported for Vox, turnout was expected to reach similar numbers as 2008 this year, given the excitement Democratic voters have expressed about the 2020 contest:
State and national polls of Democrats, likely voters, and likely caucus-goers have shown an incredible degree of excitement around the 2020 primary for months — a January Quinnipiac University national poll, for instance, found 85 percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters saying they are either “extremely” or “very” motivated to vote in the primary’s contests.
But if turnout is down, that could be a bad sign for Democrats’ prospects in November: To beat President Donald Trump, they need Democrats to show up to the polls.
It also may be a worrying sign for certain campaigns. Pollsters and experts noted that Sen. Bernie Sanders in particular would benefit from high turnout, something the lawmaker acknowledged ahead of the caucuses. “We will know early on in the night if we are going to win,” Sanders said. “If voter turnout is high, we are going to win. … If it is low, quite frankly, we will not.”
And Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray noted that slight differences in the size of the caucuses compared to previous years — as well as the relative sizes of various demographic groups — could have an outsize impact on the results.
“A turnout swing of as few of 10,000 voters could determine who ‘wins’ the caucus if it is driven by a specific demographic group,” Murray said.
We of course don’t know much yet about the demographic makeup of the caucuses. Although some entrance polls have been released, it’s far too early, without full results, to speculate about what they might tell us.
Iowa turnout might tell us a little about the general election — but it isn’t a good proxy
There are a lot of caveats with the early turnout numbers. For one, current estimates are based on just 25 percent of precincts. That 25 percent may not be representative of Iowa’s caucuses as a whole, and the final turnout numbers for the whole state could be higher.
Even if turnout is lower in Iowa this year than it was in 2008, though, it’s possible that the result isn’t representative of the nation in general.
The Iowa caucuses, after all, are a bizarre system that requires people to show up at precinct sites, stay there for hours and hours, publicly argue and campaign for candidates, and eventually group up to select a nominee.
It’s a demanding system — one that’s particularly hard on people with disabilities, people who work night shifts, people who don’t have consistent transportation, and just about anyone else who can’t caucus for hours on a Monday night — and turnout has always been low overall. So while turnout numbers can be instructive, it’s important to remember they may not be a good gauge of Democratic enthusiasm across the country.
And as FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver pointed out on Twitter, primary election turnout doesn’t usually correlate with general election turnout. So even if lower turnout in Iowa is representative of the Democratic primary as a whole, it might not be representative of the general election.
At the same time, Iowa’s results allow candidates to build narratives around their campaigns. Winning isn’t about the delegates as much as it is about proving one’s electability — and showing the party just how much your campaign can excite the Democratic base.
With that in mind, Silver added, “In terms of the primary itself, though, it’s not great for anyone’s electability case. No one seems likely to have gotten more than ~25% of ~170,000 people.” That could be a bad sign for Democratic Party unity and enthusiasm at the end of the primary process.
Still, it’s just too early to draw any hard conclusions from the turnout data. The data might not be representative of Iowa or the country. It might not reflect on the general election or Democrats’ chances against Trump. And we don’t even have a complete data set just yet. All we know right now is that the early figures suggest turnout is down in the Iowa caucuses compared to 2008.
It's a really bad look, and one that sours me on him for a long time.
DES MOINES, Iowa—The thing about a victory speech, generally, is that it requires a victory. But when this year’s Iowa caucus didn’t quickly produce one, Pete Buttigieg claimed the win as his anyway.
The other candidates who spoke last night mumbled about the mess, proclaimed “on to New Hampshire!,” and said all the other things you’re supposed to say when results are up in the air. Buttigieg strutted onstage, smiling confidently as his well-prepped supporters chanted “BOOT-EDGE-EDGE” behind him, and in his very first sentence declared that “an improbable hope became an undeniable reality.
“We don’t know all the results,” Buttigieg added in a riff that was, like the rest of the speech, designed to evoke former President Barack Obama. “But we know, by the time it’s all said and done, Iowa, you have shocked the nation, because by all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious.”
Maybe it’s his calculated manner, or the way he waves at a crowd like an animatronic member of the British royal family, or his midwestern aw-shucks niceness. But more than a year into his presidential campaign, despite all the attention paid to his candidacy, people still miss how aggressive Buttigieg is.
That’s what the victory-without-a-victory speech he gave last night was about.
Compare Buttigieg’s message with that of Joe Biden, who gave a shorter, less scripted speech. “We feel good about where we are,” the former vice president said. “We’re going to do this, I promise you. I promise you we’re going to get this done. God willing, we’ll do it together. On to New Hampshire!”
The preliminary results that had come in by then were from caucus sites clustered around cities, where voters’ education levels and ideological inclinations would seem to make them prime Buttigieg pickups. Even those results were sparse;Buttigieg’s campaign was also working off data that its own network was gathering from around the state. Buttigieg apparently saw enough to feel like he could go hard. “Iowa chose a new path,” he announced. American democracy had taken another credibility hit through the cockamamie collapse of the caucus. Just like when George W. Bush announced, in the middle of the 2000 Florida recount, that Colin Powell would be his secretary of state, Buttigieg tried to convey that he had the situation under control.
As with nearly everything Buttigieg does, this was deliberate. His campaign was aware of how much he’d annoy the other candidates by undercutting them, but staffers were willing to take the backlash for the sake of breaking through to voters who just wanted a sense of who won.
“Peak white male privilege,” tweeted Meena Harris, the niece of Senator Kamala Harris, another Democratic presidential candidate until she suspended her campaign in December, “is declaring victory with 0% of precincts reporting.” This morning, the former Massachusetts governor and trailing presidential candidate Deval Patrick lumped Buttigieg in with Biden, whose campaign jumped out front in seeding suspicion about the results: “One candidate is calling the results into question because he apparently didn’t do well. Another is declaring victory without any votes being confirmed. The way to beat Donald Trump isn’t to act like Donald Trump.”
Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota tried an aggressive move of her own, giving the first speech of the night. Acknowledging that the process was going slower than expected, she argued that “we are punching above our weight.” A few minutes after Klobuchar finished, Biden suddenly appeared onstage at his party. By the time he finished his brief remarks, his campaign had sent out a protest letter to the Iowa Democratic Party complaining about the counting delays. Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts talked about being in the campaign for the “long haul”—something many politicians say when a primary or caucus night doesn’t turn out the way they’d hoped. Buttigieg, by contrast, said he was “one step closer to becoming the next president of the United States.”
The Buttigieg and Sanders campaigns were the only ones to release any results last night, compiled by precinct captains at sites around the state. Sanders’s numbers showed him in first place and Buttigieg in second, though the figures were clearly incomplete. Buttigieg’s data also seemed hazy and full of fudges. This morning, Warren’s campaign announced it would start releasing similar data, but with photographic evidence gathered by its workers from sites state-wide.
An irony of Buttigieg’s victory speech is that in the days leading up to the caucus, his campaign staffers warned reporters not to fall for the Sanders campaign trying to claim victory out of early results. But by the time Buttigieg left Iowa, in the middle of the night, his campaign was the one out on a limb, hoping that by the time the state Democratic Party sorts out what’s going on, he’ll have come in first, or at least second.
“If you can be a confident voice in chaos, people will believe you,” Hilary Rosen, a leading Democratic communications consultant who was in Des Moines for caucus night but not working for any campaign, told me after Buttigieg’s speech. “And then you just hope it lasts.”
The mess meant Buttigieg didn’t get to bask in the history of being the first LGBT candidate ever to win delegates in a presidential election. But he wanted to make sure he’d get another chance. Shortly before dawn, he landed in New Hampshire and got back on the trail.
Yep, get rid of this anachronistic shitshow. These idiots do not deserve to decide anything.
People wait for results at a caucus night campaign rally for Joe Biden in Des Moines, Iowa, on February 3, 2020. | John Locher/AP
The Iowa caucuses are making the case against themselves.
Whatever the final outcome of the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses, one thing is clear: The whole thing was a disaster. Journalists, analysts, and other election watchers were expecting to get some results Monday night — and as of Tuesday morning, we still have nothing, in large part due to technical issues.
Now some politicians and pundits are latching onto the mess to argue why Iowa shouldn’t keep its status as the first state in the nation to select a presidential nominee, particularly if it’s going to keep doing this all through a caucus system.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) summed up the case: “I think the Democratic caucus in Iowa is a quirky, quaint tradition which should come to an end. As we try to make voting easier for people across America, the Iowa caucus is the most painful situation we currently face for voting.”
Former presidential candidate Julián Castro, who has long been critical of the Iowa caucuses, blasted the process: “It’s a mess. What we saw out there and heard about are, consistently, errors in the way that this process was done, whether in the initial phase or the realignment. Inconsistencies in how it was done across precinct sites, caucus sites. It is a total mess.”
And MSNBC analyst Steve Kornacki summarized the situation: “Iowa’s outsize role has faced attacks for decades, along with periodic failed attempts by other states to take the first-in-the-nation slot. But criticism has been louder than ever this past year, and now those critics may have the ammunition they need to kill it.”
Kornacki’s tweet actually led to a response from President Donald Trump, who seized on the confusion to attack the Democratic Party and to suggest that he — as the leader of the Republican Party — can somehow influence how Democrats select their presidential nominees.
“It is not the fault of Iowa, it is the Do Nothing Democrats fault,” Trump tweeted. “As long as I am President, Iowa will stay where it is. Important tradition!”
Even before Monday night’s mess, the Iowa caucuses were heavily criticized. They require people to show up at a gym, stay there for hours and hours, publicly argue and campaign for candidates, and eventually group up in a lightly regulated system to select a nominee.
It’s a system that inherently disfavors people with disabilities, people who work night shifts, people who don’t have a lot of free time, people who don’t have consistent transportation, and just about anyone who for whatever reason can’t make it out to a school gym for hours on a Monday night. Unsurprisingly, turnout at the caucus is consistently much lower than it is in other types of elections.
Yet Iowa has managed to remain the first state to vote in the Democratic and Republican presidential primary elections since the 1970s. There’s no good argument for Iowa’s caucuses going first — other than respecting tradition — but it’s how things have worked for decades, in part because efforts to change the status quo (like Louisiana’s 1996 attempt) have failed spectacularly due to political and legal pressure.
But now, issues of fairness aside, the whole process isn’t even effectively doing the one thing it was supposed to do: give us election results. So some people, from lawmakers to pundits, are calling for change.
As Eric Levitz put it for New York magazine, “There is no reason why the most politically-engaged and/or time-rich citizens of America’s 31st most populous state should have the power to veto presidential candidates before anyone else in the country has a say. And yet, few of Iowa’s bitterest critics ever dreamed it would subject the country to something like this.”
President Donald Trump on Tuesday blasted Democrats for "incompetence," applauded himself for having the "largest re-election vote in history," and insisted that Iowa would retain its first-in-the-nation nominating contest — despite having no authority over Democrats' primary scheduling.
"When will the Democrats start blaming RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, instead of their own incompetence for the voting disaster that just happened in the Great State of Iowa?" the president posted on Twitter, a reference to Russia's known efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, a finding the president has nonetheless vigorously questioned.
While Trump defended Iowa and blamed the Democrats for Monday night's meltdown, saying the party "really messed up," Trump commended his own performance in the state.
"I had the largest re-election vote in the history of the great state, by far, beating President Obama's previous record by a lot. Also, 97% Plus of the vote. Thank you Iowa!" Trump posted on Twitter.
Trump piled on to his criticism of Iowa's Democratic caucuses, labeling the contest an "unmitigated disaster" as officials there work to pry results from a process choked with confusion and technical snafus.
"The Democrat Caucus is an unmitigated disaster. Nothing works, just like they ran the Country," Trump said in the tweet. "Remember the 5 Billion Dollar Obamacare Website, that should have cost 2% of that. The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is 'Trump'."
After months of campaigning in the Iowa, Democratic presidential campaigns decamped for New Hampshire on Tuesday unsure of who won Monday night's caucuses. The confusion was caused at least in part by the technical breakdown of an app the Iowa Democratic Party instructed precinct captains to use to report results and calculate a candidate's viability.
Official results are not expected from Monday's Democratic caucuses until later Tuesday, although no definitive timetable for their release has been given. But the lack of results did little to dissuade Democratic candidates, including former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Bernie Sanders, from celebratory rallies Monday night.
As Democrats scrambled to make sense of their Iowa caucuses, the president's allies, including Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, were quick to go on the attack. Parscale called the Democratic contest a “meltdown” on Twitter.
“They can’t even run a caucus and they want to run the government,” he tweeted with a flush-faced emoji. “No thank you.”
In a statement released by the campaign, Parscale suggested that voters would have reason to question the results of Monday night's caucuses, hammering home a point he made hours earlier at a press conference with other Trump surrogates.
“It would be natural for people to doubt the fairness of the process,” he said. “And these are the people who want to run our entire health care system? Tonight President Trump posted a record performance in the well-run GOP Iowa caucuses with a record turnout for an incumbent.”
No, no it couldn't. Get these yokels off the national stage forever.
Updated at 8:30 a.m. ET on February 4, 2020.
Could it have gone much worse?
The much-anticipated start to the 2020 presidential-election season was plagued by delays, as the Iowa Democratic Party struggled to incorporate a new reporting system aimed at increasing transparency in the complicated first-in-the-nation voting tradition. The morning after the caucus began, the party had yet to release a single official result.
“We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” the party spokesperson Mandy McClure said in a statement released at about 11:40 p.m. eastern time. She insisted that the party’s election data were secure and that the app it used to report results had not been hacked. “This is simply a reporting issue,” McClure said, adding that “it will simply take time to further report the results.”
The delay frustrated campaigns and cable networks alike, disrupting an event whose singular importance to the nomination process relies on the momentum generated by media coverage as much as the actual delegates that Iowa will send to the Democratic National Convention this summer. With no victories to claim or defeats to concede, the candidates had no choice but to decamp to the next contest, and a state into which the Democratic field poured tens of millions of dollars and a year’s worth of campaigning was on the verge of seeing its outsize impact on the nomination fight suddenly muted.
Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who was running in fifth place in the polls, seized the opportunity to fly out of the data fog and on to New Hampshire: Why take the chance of waiting for a count that could show her defeat? She was the first of several candidates to speak after it became clear the results were a long way off.
“We know there’s delays, but we know one thing: We are punching above our weight,” she told a cheering crowd at her Iowa headquarters. “I cannot wait. Somehow, some way I am going to get on a plane to New Hampshire. We are bringing our ticket to New Hampshire.”
Within the hour, former Vice President Joe Biden and Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren had followed suit with their own not-quite-victory speeches. Sanders and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, each released partial data their campaigns had collected across the state in a late bid to show they performed well.
As my colleague Elaine Godfrey reported yesterday, some Iowa Democrats were worried that new rules for counting and reporting results from individual caucus sites would lead to confusion and chaos. The caucus itself appeared to run smoothly enough; the trouble stemmed instead from problems with the new application that precinct chairs were asked to use for reporting the numbers. The app was intended to help caucus organizers tally results, apportion delegates, and send in final counts to the Iowa Democratic Party. Earlier in the day, Bloomberg reported that several caucus leaders across the state were unable to use the new app, and would have to send in their results via a party hotline.
But the backup phone system appeared to be overwhelmed as well. “The hotline has not been responsive,” Shawn Sebastian, a precinct secretary, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer at about 11 p.m., explaining that he had been on hold for more than an hour. While Sebastian was live on the air, he was taken off hold. But by the time he tried to report his results, the operator had hung up.
What began as a simple tallying delay had become something of a disaster for Iowa Democrats, who were already facing criticism that their antiquated, in-person system for choosing candidates was a poor match for a national party prioritizing diversity and greater access to the polls. Brad Parscale, President Donald Trump’s campaign manager, suggested that the results would be “rigged” in a barely veiled attempt to sow doubt among Democrats who believed that the party intervened to swing the nomination to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
By the end of the night, however, Biden’s campaign was also furious. “The integrity of the process is critical, and there were flaws in the reporting systems tonight that should raise serious concerns for voters,” tweeted Biden’s spokesperson Kate Bedingfield. The campaign’s lawyers had already sent an angry letter to the state party, saying its systems had “failed.”
This is not the first time the Iowa caucus has gone awry. In 2012, Republicans never truly knew whether Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney had gained more support. And, four years later, confusion about the close gap between Clinton and Sanders led Iowa Democrats to reform their process with the hope of providing a more precise picture of which candidate had won the most votes and which candidate would receive the most delegates.
As Monday turned into Tuesday, that picture had yet to emerge, and Iowa Democrats will have to regroup yet again to figure out what went wrong. Whether they get another chance to get it right four years from now is another question entirely.
President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally inside of the Knapp Center arena at Drake University on January 30, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa. | Tom Brenner/Getty Images
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President Trump arrives at campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 14, 2020. | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
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Radio personality Rush Limbaugh was awarded the Medal of Freedom by First Lady Melania Trump during the State of the Union address on February 4, 2020. | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
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Carrying photographs of Americans with preexisting medical conditions, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi lead a group of Democratic members of Congress to a press conference in Washington, DC, on July 9, 2019. | Win McNamee/Getty Images
Lenora and Norman Iverson fill out their presidential preference cards during a Democratic party caucus in Des Moines, Iowa, on February 3, 2020. | Charlie Neibergall/AP
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People listen as Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg greets supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire the morning after the flawed Iowa caucus on on February 04, 2020 in Manchester, New Hampshire. | Spencer Platt via Getty Images
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Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer prepare to caucus in Des Moines, Iowa, on February 3, 2020. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
People wait for results at a caucus night campaign rally for Joe Biden in Des Moines, Iowa, on February 3, 2020. | John Locher/AP
