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In Iowa, Candidates Claim Participation Credit
If no one wins, everyone wins. Wait, what?
In lieu of actual timely caucus results in Iowa, many top Democrat presidential candidates claimed credit for their performance without knowing what it actually was. Mayor Pete: “By all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious.” Amy Klobuchar “We are punching above our weight.” Bernie Sanders: “when those results are announced, I have a good feeling we’re going to be doing very, very well here in Iowa.”
Major Garrett on CBS News Live pointed out the incredible failure of the Iowa Democrat Party to count votes and communicate the tally to the public: “This is political malpractice.” Flummoxed, Garrett envisioned a Republican attack ad where Republicans would say: Democrats can’t even count votes in Iowa, why would you trust them with your healthcare?
Garrett’s most searing criticism cut to arguably the largest cultural difference between Trump and the Democrats, the idea of the participation trophy. Garrett repeatedly accused the Democrat candidates of claiming participation trophies before leaving Iowa behind. Garrett asked what the Iowa Caucuses gave us. And the answer? Nothing. Just like a participation trophy, a symbolic victory is not a real victory no matter how presented.
Maybe the New York Times double endorsement was prescient. Democrats, apoplectic about Trump, appear leaderless, inept, and Utopian. So far, a former Republican gives them one of their best chances at recapturing the presidency. If Democrat candidates’ arguments to replace Trump sound most strongly in notions of superior competence, then the Iowa Democrat Party’s bungling of the caucuses undermines their candidates’ credibility. This is a true Will Rogers moment for Democrats.
If no one wins, but every Democrat thinks they won, then Trump can more easily defeat a divided Democrat party.
Published in General
Supposedly the Associated Press has released the rank that each of the candidates received:
(Highest rank in vote totals to lowest)
Bernie
Warren
Pete
Amy
Biden
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It is a weird thing to try and figure out. I am hearing that vote totals do not mean that much, as what really counts is how many delegates each candidate is assigned. And that the winner is to have a certain number of his delegates siphoned off to other candidates.
The twitter universe is aflame with people saying how mean Sanders and his campaign people, especially David Sirota, are. And for some reason, Hillary keeps being mentioned.
Count me as credulous about Hillary. I think this episode augers ill for traditional Democrats. Bloomberg benefits from no clear front runner given his Super Tuesday strategy.
There’s going to be a popcorn shortage this year.
That’s a pretty stunning level of incompetence on the part of the Democrats.
Why is this surprising? They’ve been doing this to Republican votes for years.
They have not yet begun to stun.
Sounds like the count did not go the way they wanted and they are twisting it accordingly.
Think all the delegates will go to Hillary?
The fact that we can engage in this speculation highlights the gravity of the situation.
Amy Klobuchar punching above her weight?
Can’t wait for Ms. Literal Journalist to ask, “Who are you ‘punching’, and as a follow-up, what is your weight?”
Reminds of the Obamacare website rollout . . .
Wooden noses don’t apply to metaphors? Lol.
The reply would be that she is punching the journalist for asking about her weight.
In other words, Bernie won the vote totals but the Democrat Party refuses to give him delegates and no one wants to see Iowa Berrrrnnnn!
So they are going to pretend nothing went right and there is no awarding of delegates. I don’t think I can wholly blame them for refusing to award Bernie with delegates, but they made this party the way it is. If they have problems with how their voters vote, they can all take a big look in the mirror and see how all their undelivered rhetoric courting socialist attitudes has created a population of True Believers who think there is no other way. But there is! Cronyism, Elitism, and keeping the masses under control!
Oh… yeah… Bernie Bros would be wheeling out the latest version of the Guillotine to rabid cheers.
FJ/JG,
I assume that you are referring to the Democrat Exclusion Principle. Both Integrity and the Democratic Party can’t reside at a polling place at the same time. A well known fundamental political principle.
Regards,
Jim
Big winner of the Iowa caucus? Florida. No more jokes about Floriduh and idiots not knowing how to fill out or count a ballot in Dade or Broward. Now it will be Duh Moines,
The only concern is how desperate the Dems are becoming. Like a cornered tiger. They already live by “ends justify means,” so I’m thinking this doesn’t just bode ill for Democrats, but for the country as a whole.
Interesting times.
That’s the bright side. The debacle hurts Democrats in general.
The downside is that it hurts confidence in elections generally, after a generation of Democrats have already been taught never to concede a presidential election.
News bulletin from the Wall Street Journal: Dow Rises Sharply as Investors Bet on Economic Resilience
Coincidence?
It’s an interesting question, isn’t it? First, some poll that usually comes out before the cauci (is that really the plural?) is mysteriously flubbed and so the results can’t be released. Now the caucuses (try it both ways) themselves have been flubbed, and those results can’t be released…
Lose-lose: Either the Democrats are really incompetent, screwing up processes that aren’t exactly new (take a poll? Count votes? C’mon, people…) or the results are so appalling to the muckety-mucks that it’s worth it to them to seem this incompetent in order to hamstring his (I, too, assume Bernie) ascent.
Even if most Democrats haven’t been paying attention to the Veritas tapes, or making the connections between Antifa and the Bernie-Bros, presumably the DNC strategists have? And are alarmed: I’d love to think they’d be alarmed by all that ghastly Gulag-talk, but it seems more likely they know that once Americans begin paying attention, Bernie is going to be soundly defeated and it would be embarrassing and damaging to their party. More embarrassing and damaging than making this big a mess…so…
Yes, I know. “Embrace the power of and.”
RESOLVED: From this day forward, no member of the Democrativ Party in Iowa shall be allowed to opine on the Electoral College.
???
I wasn’t aware of this. Please enlighten the uninformed among us.
Veritas Project released video of Bernie campaign workers talking about raining fire and gulags if the election were stolen from him again.
I don’t know why we are guessing it could be Bernie. The most recent published Iowa poll had Bernie leading by a solid 5-6 points and Biden the last place with 9 points or something equally pathetic.
And the RealClearPolitics site had the first round of results up at 9pm last night with Bernie wiping everyone off the map. It was the 2nd and 3rd rounds that weren’t published.
And if the Dems are going to lose (they will), why not put up a safely losable candidate? Unless they really are desperate and brain dead enough to think Biden can still beat Trump.
Can you imagine if they do declare Biden the winner with only nine points?
If you thought a brokered GOP convention handing the nomination to ¡Jeb! Would have resulted in the R base collapsing, just imagine what such blatant and transparent manhandling of Bernie would result in.
So yeah – Bernie absolutely did win last night. But they can’t say that or all hell breaks loose when the put up Biden. Thing is, the cat’s out the bag. The Leftists might be idiots, but they aren’t that stupid.
Actually they are that stupid. I mean, I still get people from that camp telling me the most important thing we can all do as Americans is remove the statue of Injun killer Gen Fremont over in Ukiah. (The statue is already gone.)
The people who idolize Bernie Sanders refuse to admit he is a t-o-o-l.
In 2016, the DNC demanded his campaign contributions. So he handed them over. They gave them to his opponent, Hillary. (The DNC is trying the same tactic with AOC, and she refuses. I hate what she stands for, but good for her. And why didn’t Bernie display some backbone?)
The DNC rigged both the 2016 Primary and the convention against him. He folded like a little girl kitten.
Voting activists requested he join their lawsuits so there would be a legal record of the Primary being stolen from him. He didn’t wanna be considered a sore loser, so he refused. Judges then told 12 separate activist groups in various regions of the nation they had no standing to go forward without Bernie.
In the one court case that went forward, San Diego courts in Jan 2017, it was ruled the DNC stole the Primary away from Bernie and handed it to Hillary, via flipping of electronic vote count. Bernie never responded to these findings.
Yet the progs still had faith in him, like lil kids do for Santa Claus.
Why? You tell me.
Thank you. I had been aware of the violence talk, but not the gulag talk.
We might even see some lefty defectors.
Only if they want to live.
But going to where?
Depends if they have a coin toss for them or not.
People like David Mamet who realize just how stupid and corrupt the Left is.