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2:00PM Water Cooler 2/3/2020

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

Here is a second counter for the Iowa Caucus, which is obviously just around the corner:

* * *

2020

Alert reader dk (not to be confused with DK) is in the process of developing the following interactive chart.

Today, I decided to do only state polls, what with Super Tuesday coming up. These are all %-for-the-day, and not average. In order by time, first, IA:

IA numbers:

I think Sanders needs to outperform these numbers, and if his theory of change is correct, and correctly implemented, he should. Whether anybody will be knocked out is anyone’s guess, and the lack of correllation between the initial vote count and the final delegate count may allow multiple claims of victory to be made.

Now NH:

NH numbers:

NH is starting to look like a mortal lock for Sanders, as indeed it should.

SC:

SC numbers:

Sanders creeping up on Biden; Steyer successfully bought his votes (an ugly sign of things to come).

CA (Super Tuesday):

CA numbers

I’m still stunned at Sanders’ CA numbers (and Bloomberg doesn’t seem to be penetrating, oddly).

TX (Super Tuesday):

TX numbers:

I’d say TX, not SC, is Biden’s firewall, but look at those Bloomberg numbers! Yikes.

CAVEAT I think we have to track the polls because so much of the horse-race coverage is generated by them; and at least with these charts we’re insulating ourselves against getting excited about any one poll. That said, we should remember that the polling in 2016, as it turned out, was more about narrative than about sampling, and that this year is, if anything, even more so. In fact, one is entitled to ask, with the latest I boomlet (bubble? (bezzle?)) which came first: The narrative, or the poll? One hears of push polling, to be sure, but not of collective push polling by herding pollsters. We should also worry about state polls with very small sample sizes and big gaps in coverage. And that’s before we get to the issues with cellphones (as well as whether voters in very small, very early states game their answers). So we are indeed following a horse-race, but the horses don’t stay in their lanes, some of the horses are not in it to win but to interfere with the others, the track is very muddy, and the mud has splattered our binoculars, such that it’s very hard to see what’s going on from the stands. Also, the track owners are crooked and the stewards are on the take. Everything’s fine.

* * *

Biden (D)(1): “Biden: Impeachment hasn’t ‘shaken my faith’ in working with Republicans” [NBC]. • Oh.

Biden (D)(2): “Major union flips support from Sanders to Biden” [Politico]. “The issue of Biden’s electability was the driving force behind the decision and a key concern of the union’s membership, which was randomly surveyed by phone in an ‘extensive poll’ conducted by a professional pollster ATU hired, [John Costa, international president of the 200,000-member Amalgamated Transit Union] said.” • Oh.

UPDATE Biden (D)(3): Simone Sanders, Biden press secretary:

Looks like the 2016 Sanders campaign dodged a bullet with Simone Sanders as their press secretary in 2016.

Bloomberg (D)(1): “Michael Bloomberg on Marijuana: Legalizing ‘Another Addictive Narcotic’ Is Perhaps ‘Stupidest Thing Anybody Has Ever Done'” [Bloomberg]. “The position from the billionaire politician would seem to be out of step with Democratic leaders in his state and liberal voters nationwide.”

Kerry (D)(1): “John Kerry Denies Report He Is Considering Run Against Bernie Sanders” [New York Magazine]. “Over the phone, the former Massachusetts senator and current Biden surrogate reportedly warned of ‘the possibility of Bernie Sanders taking down the Democratic Party — down whole,’ a result only he could deter. Or not: In the same conversation, Kerry apparently said, ‘Maybe I’m f*cking deluding myself here,’ and listed out some reasons not to run, like abdicating his lucrative chair on the board of Bank of America.” • Good to know what Kerry’s price is, though. (Later, Kerry denied that he would run, although he didn’t deny these words.)

Sanders (D)(1): “Can Bernie Sanders Alter the Course of the Democratic Party?” [Ryan Grim, The Intercept]. • Grab a cup of coffee, this is a long and detailed description of the Sanders canvassing operation, both personnel and techniques. This is the implementation of Sanders theory of change, which is about to undergo its first real test in Iowa. Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy…

UPDATE Sanders (D)(2): “Bernie’s big gamble: Sanders hopes new voters surprise at Iowa caucuses: ANALYSIS” [ABC]. “Since launching his first presidential campaign in 2015 and continuing through this second bid all last year, his team has focused extensive time and resources to get new potential voters into the political process. It’s a different kind of conversation about turnout for Sanders. His philosophy is that boosting turnout in a significant and meaningful way comes not only by exciting existing Democrats, but organizing and rallying nonvoters into Democrats.”

Lambert here: I’m extremely reluctant to make any prediction about Iowa outcomes at all, because the imponderables are so enormous. If the polling is accurate, Sanders is ahead on votes (but may, or may not, come out ahead in delegates because of the caucus’s complicated delegate allocation process). That is, if you trust the polls (and sadly, the last poll before the caucus, the Des Moines Register flagship, self-aborted). One may argue that the polls undercount young people with cell phones, and the non-voters Sanders hopes to attract. One might argue in response that young people tend not to show up (true) and that non-voters are, well, non-voters. It is true that Sanders has larger crowds than anyone and an enormous volunteer organization (certainly as compared to Warren’s large and expensive, but more traditional organization). But neither factor necessarily translates into votes (especially if Sanders’ more precarious base has to work that night, needs day-care but can’t find it, can’t get a ride, etc.). We are, again, about to see how the Sanders campaign — which is completely unique in concept and organization, a new thing on the face of the earth* — performs in its first test. Oh, and I forgot one important factor: Democrat establishment/media skullduggery; they too know what is at sake. NOTE * In the Ryan Grim article above, Sanders national organizing director Claire Sandberg remarks: “The only other campaign that is doing relational organizing on a scale close to what we are doing actually is the Trump campaign.” Yikes.

Sanders (D)(3): “Bernie Sanders Leads Trump, All 2020 Candidates in Donations From Active-Duty Troops” [Rolling Stone]. “Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines have donated a total of $185,625 to Sen. Sanders’ 2020 campaign. By comparison, they have given $113,012 to Trump, $80,250 to Pete Buttigieg, $64,604 to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and a relatively paltry $33,045 to former Vice President Joe Biden, according to Doug Weber, a senior researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics.” • So, if you want warmongers ranked, here’s your ranking.

UPDATE Sanders (D)(4):

The Sanders curve going vertical (!).

Warren (D)(1): “In Iowa, a vote for Warren is a vote for Biden” [Nathan Robinson, Guardian]. Complicated Iowa math based on the 15% viability threshold, and what happens when the supporters below that threshold re-allocate their votes in after the first round. For example: “Even if Warren gets 14% in the first round, if, say, enough Tom Steyer and Amy Klobuchar supporters come over to join her, she can remain viable for the second round, meaning that her voters would not go to Sanders and enough Klobuchar people might go to Biden to help him win even if together Warren and Sanders have a far higher percentage of voters. If, say, Warren got 15%, and Buttigieg’s 14% and Klobuchar’s 10% all went to Biden, Biden would win in a landslide. Supporting Warren therefore drastically increases the chances that Biden will be the ultimate nominee. This is what happens when progressives ‘split the vote’.”

Warren (D)(2): “‘Final strokes’: Warren tries to close Iowa gap by slamming Sanders as ‘narrow’ candidate” :[Washington Examiner]. “‘I’ve been building a campaign from the beginning that’s not a campaign that’s narrow,’ Warren, 70, said Saturday. ‘Not a campaign that says, ‘It’s us and nobody else. It’s a campaign that says, ‘Come on in,’ because we are in this fight together. This fight is our fight.'” • Odd parallel to “not me, us” this neatly encapsulates the attitude of the 10%-ers that disproportionately make up Warren’s support: They genuinely beleive that they’re representative and have the right to rule. 2016 rejected that notion; we shall see what happens this year.

* * *

UPDATE “The Road to Milwaukee: How the Democratic Primary Will Unfold” [Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball]. • Excellent overview of the entire Democrat primary election calendar, with commentary. Grab another cup of coffee.

Pollsters

“Not so fast: The Polls and the Iowa Caucuses” [American Association for Public Opinion Research]. “The nation’s largest organization of survey researchers, the American Association for Public Opinion Research, urges pundits and journalists not to rush to judgment on the performance of polls in the aftermath of the Iowa Democratic Caucuses.” • Hmm.

Realignment and Legitimacy

UPDATE The DNC (1). Listen to the audio:

(Nice work maintaining a record by the Gravel teens.)

UPDATE The DNC (2): “The Democrats’ new online troll fighters make 2020 debut in Iowa” [CNN]. “”It’s like algorithmic wars here, it’s kind of crazy,” a Democratic National Committee staffer who works on the Democrats’ new counter disinformation team said on Saturday as preparations were underway in Des Moines. The staffer asked not to be identified due to the nature of their work and possibly being subjected to online harassment themselves. ‘Both Republicans and foreign actors, like Russia, have an incentive to divide the American electorate and may try to use the Iowa Caucus to further that goal,’ the DNC wrote in a ‘counter disinformation update’ sent to campaigns on Thursday. Among the new weapons in the Democrats’ online arsenal is a monitoring tool called ‘Trendolizer.’ When stories from websites known to peddle misinformation mention candidates and begin getting shares on social media, Trendolizer detects it and an alert is sent to the relevant campaigns.” • I’m sure the DNC would never use this tool to put its thumb on the scale for one candidate over another.

“What Is a ‘Credibility Trap'” [Jesse’s Café Américain]. From 2013, still germane: “A credibility trap is when the lies and the corruption become so widespread and embedded in a system that they become self-sustaining to the point of moral bankruptcy…. It always ends, often from external forces, and too often badly. But while the money is still flowing the band plays on.” • Recommended by a reader, but I cannot find where.

“Sirens of the Rust Belt, Sirens of the Cornfield” [The Introverted Comrade]. “I love the way we speak. I love Midwestern women. They’re my favorite group of people. So many times since I moved to the south, I’ve met some charming, plainspoken lady with a hilarious, dry wit and wondered, ‘How’s she so cool?’ Then I find out she’s from Cleveland, or rural Indiana, or somewhere around Chicago, and I think, ‘Ohhhh, THAT’S why I like you so much.’ Then I notice they make some of the same nasal vowel sounds that I do.” • I grew up in the Midwest; perhaps that explains my unaccountable liking for Amy Klobuchar.

“The Downfall of the Republican Party” [The Atlantic]. “This is simply the latest act in an unfolding political drama, one in which the party of Lincoln and Reagan has now become, in every meaningful sense, the party of Trump.” • “The party of Lincoln and Reagan,” ZOMG.

Stats Watch

Tech: “Microsoft Forgets to Renew Certificate, Teams Goes Offline” [Petri (dk)]. “Microsoft acknowledged that Teams was offline because they let a certificate expire.” • That’s why we pay them the big bucks!

Media: “WWE Executive Exits Spook Analysts and Erase $1 Billion in Value” [Bloomberg]. “World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. plunged as much as 28% on Friday, erasing more than $1 billion in market value, after Chief Executive Officer Vince McMahon ousted two of the company’s top executives. The news prompted multiple downgrades on Wall Street as several analysts said they have lost confidence in the company’s financial projections.” • How could WWE possibly compete with the elections?

Honey for the Bears: “Local Economies’ 2019 Slump Looks Likely to Continue, According to Yelp’s Economic Average” [Yelp]. “Most local economies nationwide slumped in 2019, according to Yelp data, dragged down by weakness in restaurants and retail. As the local economy goes, so goes the national economy. The productivity of most plumbers, pastry chefs, and personal-injury lawyers isn’t reflected in stock indexes and business headlines, but collectively they make up a vital part of the work force and the fabric of local commerce. We’ve been tracking local economic activity through the Yelp Economic Average (YEA) for the past year. In each of the four quarters that we’ve reported on the health of the local economy, national GDP has headed in the same direction as YEA. If GDP growth continues to move the same way YEA does, we can expect fourth-quarter GDP growth to be below the third quarter’s level of a 2.1% increase….. Using Yelp’s unique data set, we designed YEA to measure something unlike existing economic indicators: the part of the national economy where business is done locally, near where you live, work, or travel.”• I have no idea whether this index is any good or not (though it certainly conforms to anecdotal data from the NC commentariat). Readers?

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 47 Neutral (previous close: 44 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 47 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jan 31 at 12:18pm.

Rapture Index: Closes down one on Oil Supply/Price. “Slowing global growth has put downward pressure on oil prices” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 184. Remember that bringing on the rapture is a good thing. I would expect the Rapture Index to jump if evangelicals thought impeachment was likely to hurt Trump. So it looks to me like this index is delivering has delivered a verdict on the likelihood of Trump being successfully impeached. So far, this index remains unaffected by #2019-nCoV. Yes, there is a “Plagues” category.

The Biosphere

“China Oil Demand Has Plunged 20% Because of the Virus Lockdown” [Bloomberg]. • Mother Nature trying to help us out, here.

“A 1988 Climate Warning Was Mostly Right” [Bloomberg]. “On a 98-degree June day in Washington in 1988, physicist James Hansen told a U.S. Senate committee that “global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.” Hansen, at the time director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, elaborated that “with 99% confidence we can state that the warming during this time period is a real warming trend”… Those assertions made headlines around the world, and can be said to have started the public and political discussion over global warming (the scientific discussion was already well under way) that continues to this day.” • Hansen v. reality:

More: “In 1988, Hansen and his co-authors termed Scenario B “perhaps the most plausible of the three cases,” so it does seem like the fairest one to judge them by. Scenario B turns out to have quite accurately predicted the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide through 2019. Its temperature forecast nonetheless came out a little high because it overestimated the atmospheric concentrations of methane — which have proved extremely hard to predict — and of chlorofluorocarbons, which began to level off and then decline more quickly than pretty much anyone expected after the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.”

I’ve got my doubts about this. Via alert reader MA:

“The Plants That Make Refugee Camps Feel More Like Home” [The New Yorker]. • A lovely photo-essay.

Health Care

“A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence” [Nature]. • From 2015. Good call!

Sports Desk

The Super Bowl:

Guide to the perplexed:

(The trope of infinitely nested quote-tweets is unique to Twitter, as far as I know; “No, that’s the ____” is a snowclone.)

Oopsie:

“In prison, the Super Bowl is the best holiday” [Houston Chronicle]. “after I landed in the clink in 2010 for a drug charge, I quickly learned that the Super Bowl was the highlight of the inmate calendar. For one, there were the simple gastric pleasures — pizza and soda. In the upstate New York county where I got arrested, the jail had a time-honored tradition of ordering these on Super Bowl Sunday. The feast wasn’t a freebie; inmates paid for it. But after months of the horrible cuisine, we would have considered offering an organ (a minor one, of course) for real-world pizza…. For a fleeting moment, our pasts didn’t matter. We could drink soda and eat pizza and act like we were just a bunch of women getting together for a girls’ night out — even if we were all wearing orange.”

Can’t we end the effing flyovers?

Department of Feline Felicity

“Cats Flopped and Then Things Got Interesting” [New York Magazine]. “Released in mid-December, the $100 million movie adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s epochal stage musical — featuring a grab bag of pop-culture figures: Taylor Swift, James Corden, Jennifer Hudson, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, all as singing, prancing “Jellicle” cats — seemed to expend its nine lives both commercially and critically. The film grossed a mere $6.5 million in North America over its opening weekend after critics effectively showered it with kitty litter… But a funny thing happened on the way to the cinematic scratching post. Word-of-mouth buzz began to build that Cats’ numerous and not-inconsiderable quirks were, in fact, more fun than the sum of its filmmaker- and studio-intended entertainment value. In turn, a relatively small but determined resistance force began to build…” • Who knows. but with Hollywood accounting being what it is, Cats’ loss may not be what it was. It might turn, over time, into a nice little earner!

News of the Wired

“‘A truly tangible piece of code’: Patrick Fry unearths a graphic gem in punch cards” [It’s Nice That]. “Looking at these artefacts in today’s design context, [London designer Patrick Fry] points out how many practising creatives today could learn from the ‘arcane beauty in the combination of grids,’ or even tiny details like the ‘absence or presence of holes and the off ways that they are customised for brands,’ he tells us. ‘I think some of this beauty comes from the fact that these cards are designed for machines primarily and not humans; it is true engineering driven design, but they had to be read by humans in some ways (such as early OCR dot matrix printing) so there was a tension between the two functions.”

“If You Can Say It, You Can Feel It Some scientists believe we have infinite emotions, so long as we can name them.” [New York Magazine]. “It’s not that emotions aren’t real. They’re very real. It’s just that they’re also made up by your brain… [Lisa Feldman Barrett, a neuroscientist and psychologist at Northeastern University] argues that if emotions were simply biological, then you’d expect an emotion to look similar in every person’s brain. And yet, across multiple studies, researchers have scanned the brains of people who all claim to be experiencing the same emotion, such as fear, and the fMRI readouts from those studies don’t have much in common.” • Fascinating article; why is it, though, that English speakers outsource developing words for new emotions to the Germans (schadenfreude) or the Japanese (ukiyo)? Or am I not giving enough credit to the Anglosphere?

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (Socal Rhino):

Socal Rhino writes: “A succulent from among those we replanted in our Orange County back yard to further reduce our water consumption. These guys in particular seem to love a south western exposure.” I almost mistyped Socal Rhino’s handle as “Social Rhino,” because what isn’t social these days? Pretty good handle, too.

* * *
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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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277 comments

      1. divadab

        No but be careful when dressing marmot (= groundhog) not to cut the abdominal wall as the contents will spoil the meat.

        In my area of northern new england, ground hog populations are much lower than 40 years ago and hares have totally disappeared. Any other people noticed this in their areas?

        1. Lunker Walleye

          The population is reduced here in our yard because my husband live-trapped about 15 over the past 3 years. When Mom started coming up on the deck with the babies we bought the trap.

          1. anonymous

            Do you have any tips for catching them? My yard is full of holes and tunnels. We were only successful in catching one, who was eating from our pots of strawberries; we took him to a nature preserve across the river to release him.

          2. divadab

            Yup and interbred with dogs and probably residual wolf population. They are big – bigger than SW US coyotes, and have more varied color schemes.

            I think you have identified part of it.

      2. cocomaan

        I’ve shot and eaten them. It’s not bad, not great, either. Depends on the age of the whistle pig. I ate a youngster and I ate an old man. The old man was tough as hell.

        You could always grind it and season the bejeezus out of it to make tacos.

  2. ahimsa

    Note: if the NH primary finished exactly as in the poll quoted above, then Sanders could practically sweep the board being the only viable candidate.

    With this in mind, I could imagine there being a lot of pressure brought to bear (unsuccessfully) after Iowa in order to try and consolidate the centrist vote against Sanders.

    1. John k

      Yes, if you’re around 15% there will be come caucuses where you are way below and get nothing, while Bernie is so high now he can only go up as others drop. And likely he gets a lot of not polled young supporters.

      And yes, pressure to consolidate centrists. But NH follows quick, and super tue just a month… likely Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Steyer and Bloomberg stay in at lest thru that.

    2. ahimsa

      Also the link to Nathan Robinson’s article in the Guardian is intriguing.

      As I mentioned here in comments to Lambert and dk before, the 15% viability thresholds are possibly the key in the early states due to the larger field.

      Robinson shows in a simple example that tonight’s final result could swing wildly between Biden or Sanders. Hence the rumours that the Sanders campaign is ready to push a first round result showing a plurality if the fall at the second hurdle.

  3. zagonostra

    >While Americans pine for ‘Medicare for all,’ Canadians look for US-style private insurance

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/while-americans-pine-for-medicare-for-all-canadians-look-for-us-style-private-insurance

    That’s the headline that accost people when they view the news.

    How many people scroll down and see that the article was brought to you by:

    Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and the Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All, (Encounter 2020). Follow her on Twitter @sallypipes

    2. td

      As a Canadian, I’ve noticed a fair amount of bizarre propaganda emanating from the US insurance industry about our healthcare. Yes, people would like shorter wait times. I think it’s a stretch to imply that all Americans have health insurance where they experience no wait times.

      When my wife had a suspicious spot show up on a mammogram, she was in surgery ten days later and in chemo right after. Ten years later, no recurrence. So when there is an actual emergency, the response times are pretty good and a ride in an ambulance is free.

      It would also be nice to have universal coverage for dental care and all drugs, but that will take time and money to evolve. Most common drugs are nearly free in this province for children and over-65’s, so I guess that’s better than nothing.

      In any case, when the argument starts over MFA, the insurance companies should be advised that having people with slight New Jersey accents claiming to be from Quebec blunts the power of a TV ad. That and worse from the time of the Obamacare struggle.

      1. divadab

        It will be a fight – when Tommy Douglas managed to get universal single-payer implemented in Saskatchewan, the doctors went on strike for weeks. Tommy Douglas was a boxing champ and fearless, wily, and persistent. He and his friends in the CCF (Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, a mostly farmer-based party) got the job done and God bless him for doing it.

      2. Amfortas the hippie

        took me six and a half years to get a hip, right here in Texas.
        that’s what i tell the parrots who jibber about long waits in Canada and other “guvmint controlled healthcare”.
        …and i’ve been to an ER in Toronto, dernit…30 years ago.
        nothing like the one we have here.

    3. marieann

      A Canadian here….in my 70’s as are all my buddies…we are the age group that are using up all the healthcare, according to other news sites. As one of these frequent users, the subject of private health insurance never comes up when we get together…unless it’s to discuss our friends in the US and how sorry we are for their situation.

      And this article quotes the Fraser Institute….I know their opinion before they give it and I dismiss it as the ravings of the right wing.

      As tD said we would love shorter wait times…..but we put up with it because we know we can get Health Care in a timely fashion when we need it. I am quite content to have wait times etc. to make sure everyone has access to healthcare
      I would even pay a lot more for healthcare if it meant everyone had access to free medications…..but that will come eventually

  4. Carey

    I’ve hear a phrase a few times recently that might have some solidarity-building staying power: “Coalition of the Canceled”. Is was WRT the Sanders-Rogan thing the last time
    I heard it, and before that, WRT comedians.. interesting.

  5. ambrit

    I wonder what the Rapture Index makes of the plagues of locusts in East Africa? Plagues of locusts is pure biblical goodness.
    Next, “Ghislaine Maxwell gives birth to the Anti-Christ in Afula!”

    2. Greg

      Watched a doco the other week that mentioned locusts are generated by drought followed with flood. The extreme die back of foliage followed by blooming with only the lower orders alive to feed on it.
      Anyway i think we can expect more locusts in our new climate change fuelled yoyo weather.

  7. John k

    So pollsters worry their polling is off… but we shouldn’t judge them on their results… if not results then what, exactly, should we judge them on? Their fond hopes the underclass never go to the polls to vote their interests?

    1. a different chris

      So if I’m a lowly prole and come back from, say Grainger twice (and maybe just once) with the wrong thing my boss fires me.

      But as a nationwide pollster, no you can’t judge me on outcomes! I mean really, I didn’t go to college just to have to deal with that.

  8. Lee

    I’m still stunned at Sanders’ CA numbers (and Bloomberg doesn’t seem to be penetrating, oddly).

    Thank heavens for that appropriately inserted comma. Otherwise I might be plagued by intrusive, unwanted mental images.

    If Bloomberg is taking votes away from Biden that’s a good thing, right? Unless of course they unite forces down the road. Now that would be an odd coupling.

    And kudos to California. Did I mention that’s where I live?

    1. Henry Moon Pie

      “odd coupling”

      After thinking about Bloomberg a bit, the Democratic party courtiers might want to rethink jumping on the Bloomberg bandwagon. After all, working for a billionaire businessman used to firing people on the spot for failing to complete an assignment might not be that much fun for pollsters and strategists used to working for the Washington Generals.

    2. JohnnyGL

      “Otherwise I might be plagued by intrusive, unwanted mental images.”

      Nothing that can’t be quickly dealt with via a nice, tidy, non-disclosure agreement (NDA)!!!

  9. a different chris

    >like abdicating his lucrative chair on the board of Bank of America.” • Good to know what Kerry’s price is, though

    Well it’s not only lucrative but probably at least one step or so above POTUS in real power, dontcha think?

    1. drumlin woodchuckles

      Trump is excercising a lot of power to degrade and attrit a lot of the usefulness right out of some useful government bureaus and agencies and departments.

    1. a different chris

      Oh good, the Clinton conceit! Tell them to go for it.

      After they do remind them how that worked out for Hillary.

  12. John k

    Sanders (and Steyer) aren’t creeping up in SC, he’s galloping up… up 24%!
    And early wins will totally change the electability bs, heavily influencing all later results.
    My giddy hope is Bernie has it in hand by super tue.

  13. divadab

    Re: Bloomberg hating on Pot – he’s so out of touch he thinks pot is a “dangerous addictive narcotic”. What an ignoramus- Disconnected from social reality and also actual reality – cannabis is a) non-addictive; and b) non-toxic; and c) soon to be re-legalized everywhere.

    1. SlayTheSmaugs

      I’m thoroughly pro-pot legalization, and agree it is not addictive in the way cigarettes, heroin, and alcohol are, but it is still possible to abuse it, and have a hard to break habit of abusing it. It’s also plenty toxic if it’s grown with pesticides and still has the residue, and just generally it’s gross to think of the stuff bong water filters being in lungs, and even super clean weed consumed in edibles surely has biologic impacts that are short term or long term negative, like caffeine, perfumes in personal products, and so many other things are.

      Again, I’m thoroughly pro-legalization–though I don’t mind regulation, just like I support alcohol and cigarette and gambling and vice regulation generally. And I agree that Bloomberg’s wrong. I just don’t think it’s true or persuasive to dismiss any idea that pot can be addictive or toxic.

      1. divadab

        Well in the broader sense of “addictive”, sure, anything can be addictive – gambling, yoo-hoo’s, self-flagellation, whatever. So yes, pot can be abused. But it has no toxic dose (other than a 200 lb bale dropped on your head from 20 feet up!) – it is, by definition, non-toxic. But from a social damage perspective, it would make more sense to regulate sugary belly-wash crap like Sunny D than pot, IMHO. Pot doesn’t make you diabetic, but corporate sugar food sure does. And I think Mr. Bloomberg tried this out already? How did that work out?

        1. SlayTheSmaugs

          gambling is addictive, there’s lots of research on that. And there’s plenty of people who have a dependence on pot, would have a really hard time giving it up. Not saying they should. But there are people who have had their pot use impact their relationships, job and school performance. And sure, I believe there’s no acute toxic dose–that’s one of things I note when I’m trying to persuade people–pot users don’t OD on pot. But I wouldn’t be prepared to say it’s not biologically harmful–i.e. toxic–especially if used chronically (pun intended) and heavily, especially with illegal, not home grown pot that prevents knowing re pesticides, especially when smoking. Again, I’m pro-pot legalization. Just think nuanced discussion is more accurate and persuasive.

          1. Oregoncharles

            there are a lot of people who’d have a hard time getting by without insulin, too; are they “addicted?”

            Yeah, I know, there are differences. For one, insulin will kill you a lot quicker than pot. My point is that it helps some people get through the day, with far less harm than most psychiatric drugs. That’s a bad thing?

            1. polecat

              We all live in a biochemical world.

              Choose wisely when picking your poisons*

              *especially the politicians !

            2. SlayTheSmaugs

              I’m pro-recreational pot. I want to legalize recreational pot.

              My comments here reflect the fact that I have participated in public hearings on state legalization of recreational pot, back when my state was considering a statewide legalization laws, and spoke to others then too, both one on one and en masse by publishing a letter to the editor. My comments also reflect watching other people give testimony at these hearings too; watching the listening law makers, hearing the audience applause.

              To win, we must persuade enough of the people who are not absolutely dead set against, but are not yet actual supporters, to become supporters. They are generally concerned about pot’s harmfulness and they can cite statistics/make non-trivial claims. So they dismiss people who insist pot’s harmless.

              In my experience, the most persuasive message–the one that builds the greatest common ground, and so can be the foundation of change–is harm minimization. That the citizens of a country with thoughtfully legalized recreational pot suffer less harm than citizens of a country with criminalized pot.

              People can understand and accept how much less harmful pot is than other drugs/alcohol, and that criminalization sucks so much more. These people have often not given that much thought to the harms inflicted by criminalization. They also tend to have an inflated sense of pot’s dangerousness, but analogizing to alcohol is usually potent, and to opioids. So it’s about admitting pot is not harm-free, while accurately contextualizing it on a harm spectrum, and then raising consciousness about the harms of criminalization.

              Criminalization of pot has no upside; it is not a meaningful deterrent. Criminalization results in unjustifiable incarceration and criminal justice system life-wrecking–differentially suffered by people of color. Criminalization endangers consumers by creating an inability to ensure pot purity/pesticide residue, an inability to know what ‘proof’ the pot is or type of effect the pot will have. Criminalization means consumers can be supporting drug lords or violent gangs; criminalization means a lost tax opportunity.

              So even conceding that pot is not harmless, it’s pretty easy to make the harm reduction argument persuasively. But not conceding that gets in the way of the argument b/c people won’t listen.

              fwiw

              In short, it’s possible to be totally transparent/accurate about pot’s relative harmfulness, both to other vices and to the harms inflicted by criminalization, and make a strong case that society’s better of legalizing.

      1. chuckster

        Oh and please tell me how Michael Bloomberg carries WI, MI, and PA. These three states have some of the highest percentages of gun ownership in America

        1. Bugs Bunny

          I’d like to see how he plans to get even one black person to vote for him, except by mistake.

      2. Carey

        Bloomberg is just a bad fit for CA (high-powered NY squillionaire come to save you!); even worse than Harris (pffft..) was. Don’t think good ads™ will do it, but we’ll see.

        Sanders 2020

    3. Pat

      Just a reminder, Bloomberg is the former elected official most associated with and supportive of “Stop and Frisk”. Regressive drug laws, including marijuana, were the foundation. Without that, it was merely harassment of minorities, with it that harassment includes the threat of prison and destruction. his administration made that a promise.

      Why would he give up a weapon?

  14. a different chris

    >So, if you want warmongers ranked, here’s your ranking.

    ??? I think that makes it a reverse ranking, because at the breakfast of war we taxpayers supply the eggs but the soldiers are the main course.

    Don’t know why they think Sanders is impervious to calls to send troops to East Kabumtuck for “reasons” but hopefully they are right.

  15. Lambert Strether Post author

    Straws in the wind (1):

    Straws in the wind (2):

    I don’t know what the outcome in Ottumwa was, but the presence to the Ethiopians looks a lot like what I would expect from “relational organizing.”

    Readers, please add news from the Iowa Caucus as you find it; I wish I could do a live blog, but I just cannot.

      2. chuckster

        But the Democrats keep telling me black folks won’t vote for Bernie. Must be those Bernie Bro Ethiopians.

    4. aletheia33

      somehow i think i will always remember that photo with the three white chairs and the blue sign.
      and then finding out these union members have come from ethiopia into the cold american midwest, where sanders made sure they would not be discounted and ignored.
      if that is where my contributions are going, worth it no matter how all the rest of it goes.

  17. Caleb

    A pleasant dream:

    The Whole Foods hypocritical elite screaming in the tumbrel as they are led to the
    family financial Bernietine on inauguration day.

    1. divadab

      You can make Whole Foods work for you and not be anything like an elite. $3 pints and slices while the wife shops – whats not to like?

      “Hail Bezos” not necessary but it makes the cashier either smirk or give you the “whatever”…..

  18. Michael

    Mike Cernovich (I know) claims to have gotten ahold of the Des Moines Register poll results. The rumor mill claims they’re legitimate, but add grains of salt to the recipe as needed.

    Sanders: 22%
    Warren: 18%
    Buttigieg: 16%
    Biden: 13%

    Mixed-to-positive news for Sanders there, with Biden below 15% and Warren above.

      1. flora

        Thanks. I think any “leaked, rumored” numbers on caucus day should be ignored. Too easy to play games with said rumors.

        1. chuckster

          The Biden people have been freaking nervous the last few days. I am willing to bet Joe has viability issues throughout the night. Joe Biden = biggest loser.

  19. Lee

    Fascinating article; why is it, though, that English speakers outsource developing words for new emotions to the Germans (schadenfreude) or the Japanese (ukiyo)? Or am I not giving enough credit to the Anglosphere?

    We English speakers are linguistic imperialists. If we gave back all the words we’ve appropriated we’d be reduced to grunts. As it is, the linguistic melange that is English does have a certain je ne sais quoi.

    1. Swamp Yankee

      cf. Portuguese saudade, an inexpressibly profound feeling of nostalgic sadness (but also with the sense of taking pleasure in this sorrow); reportedly from the historical experiences of Portuguese sailors on their long sea-voyages. The basis of Fado music.

      2. Amfortas the hippie

        Fado is the saddest music in the world.
        i only listen to that in the garden in the mornings.

      3. Lee

        Thanks for that word. I usually get that feeling quite strongly during the fall—a deep longing for something I can’t put a name to.

  20. a different chris

    This interaction is wild. It is very clear that the Biden campaign has no response as to why Joe Biden continues to lie about being involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

    This interaction is wild. It is very clear that the Biden campaign has no clue as to why Joe Biden continues to lie about being involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

    Fixed it for them. Biden is totally off the rails. He is incapable of registering feedback, not at all coachable (who is at his age?) so I don’t know why anybody thinks the “campaign” ttself really has anything to do with this.

    The point of the campaign is to distract from Joe Biden the Reality and continue to pump Joe Biden the myth.

      1. Carey

        That was a damn good ad.

        Biden: “I have the most progressive record of anybody running.” Glad that footage got used..

      2. The Rev Kev

        That shows you the way to take out Biden. Just show ads that show him talking in the past and what he voted for. Jimmy Dore was saying the same and it is not hard to do as there is so much materiel to work with.

  21. skippy

    As noted before: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/concerns-face-masks-may-be-ineffective-at-stopping-coronavirus-spread

    Would highlight the bush fire or smoke aspect e.g. designed for mitigating* exhaling and not inhaling and feelings about wearing one could negate hand washing et al.

    At the end of the day the lock down by China is probably the only option, stopping rapid infection, take the economic hit now and come back rather that a out of control long term experience – both socially and economically.

    1. VietnamVet

      In the USA wearing masks never took off even with regular winter flu outbreaks. If the Wuhan Coronavirus gets into Maryland, I will start wearing a mask and washable gloves when doing my resupply runs. Mainly to prevent my involuntarily touching of my nose and mouth and to promote to others to wear masks so they don’t sneeze or cough on me. Washing thoroughly when I get home.

  22. laughingsong

    “In prison, the Super Bowl is the best holiday …. For a fleeting moment, our pasts didn’t matter. We could drink soda and eat pizza . . . ”

    Reminds me of Shawshank:

    ” . . .The convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of ’49 wound up sitting in a row at ten o’clock in the morning, drinking icy-cold, Bohemia-style beer. . . We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men. Hell, we could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the lords of all creation.”

    Simple things. Only missed once they’re gone.

  23. Bill Carson

    Re: Warren: “This is what happens when progressives ‘split the vote’.”

    That’s not a bug; it’s a feature of Warren’s campaign.

  24. SlayTheSmaugs

    Re the Hansen predictions from 1988.

    I try to escape our grim reality by reading sci fi when I can. I just finished Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven. That proved to be counter productive because the book is nominally set in a post-climate change world in which humanity-spewed CO2 melted the ice caps and other things. The book was published in 1971. “As for her seemingly prescient depictions of climate change, Le Guin said in a 2014 interview with the Boston Globe, “It haunts me when people tell me how incredibly farsighted I was to be talking about climate change and climate destabilization and the degradation of the natural world back in the ’60s. I wasn’t! I was just listening to the scientists.”

    I realize understanding the mechanism and making quantitative predictions are different, and the above in no way diminishes the points about Hansen. Just, it makes so clear how tremendously profound the disinformation campaign has been; it’s not been 20 years of disinformation, or 30, or even 40. The basic science was understood clearly enough that lay people 50 years ago got it. And still we need a political revolution to do anything substantial about it.

  25. a different chris

    Hey anybody want to comment – or are we too shell shocked – on Trump’s bizarre Super Bowl ad?

    I actually think it was brilliant in that bizarre way. All the misogyny and racism mistakenly credited to The Donald (dear idiots: Donald is all about Donald. Your race or sex means nothing to him. You mean nothing to him. Why can’t you get this?) and there in the most expensive time slot of the year is a re-elect Trump commercial featuring a black woman. One who was in jail, no less.

    Conventional Dem warfare just doesn’t work with Trump. He’s completely immune.

    1. Bill Carson

      Yeah, I felt like I needed to take a shower after that came on. And then at the break before the fourth quarter there was a very similar commercial—and I pronounced that it was going to be another ad for DT, but it turned out to be an ad for the NFL. Neither group deserves the credit they are taking, IMO.

      1. RubyDog

        This is what is going to make him a formidable opponent. The ability to totally co-opt your opposition’s supposed strength against you, turning what they consider your vulnerability into your own strength. Truth is irrelevant, perception is all that matters. Trump is hugely media experienced and savvy, and I fear this is just a foreshadowing of what’s to come. Don’t forget, he supposedly had no chance to win in 2016. He won because he had a much more effective campaign strategy than Hillary, and he’ll use every cynical lesson learned then against whomever is his Democratic opponent.

        1. Wukchumni

          In a sport where 3/4’s of the players are black, which means it has an outsized black fan base, kind of a brilliant commercial that practically screams, the President cares for black people, see!

        2. lyman alpha blob

          +1

          It was a well calculated ad. People can mock it all they want, but where were the Dems on the most watched TV program in the whole country? (the Republican Bloomberg doesn’t count)

        3. Dan

          Truth is irrelevant, perception is all that matters.

          That’s only true when your opponent’s “truth” isn’t much to write home about. People want truth. Desperately. There just aren’t too many honest politicians. It’s easy to make a person look bad when that person is a phony to begin with.

          Trump’s much better at the game than the other players. But Bernie is a different kind of player. The game itself is going to change, in fact it has been changing for quite some time now.

          The Bernie campaign team is pretty media savvy too, in case you hadn’t noticed. I look forward to the fight. So does Jeff Weaver:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQmgNhjDtgc

    2. marym

      Trump boasts that his landmark law is freeing these inmates. His Justice Department wants them to stay in prison.

      The president has repeatedly pointed to the First Step Act as one of his administration’s chief bipartisan achievements and one for which he is personally responsible…

      …federal prosecutors are arguing in hundreds of cases that inmates who have applied for this type of relief are ineligible, according to a review of court records and interviews with defense attorneys. In at least half a dozen cases, prosecutors are seeking to reincarcerate offenders who have been released under the First Step Act.

      The Trump Justice Department’s war on progressive prosecutors, explained

      The goal of the Justice Department here is, it seems, to undermine criminal justice reform. Barr, who helped write a report titled “The Case for More Incarceration” when he was attorney general under President George H.W. Bush, has long been critical of efforts to pull back punitive criminal justice policies, from aggressive policing to longer prison sentences.

    3. Amfortas the hippie

      i noticed that the howls and yellings in the other room were suddenly of a different character…a groan, mixed with a retch mixed with a condemnation….and loud….louder than the insults flung at the refs, or the quarterback….
      hoping for a wardrobe malfunction or something, to make the trip worth it, i articulated my mortal remains in that general direction, and it was that trump ad…. they were calling my mom and stepdad….speakerphone: groans, retching and great fountains of hostile cursing and foul grumblings.
      (step dad was well acquainted with mr evan williams by this time)
      only other thing i bothered with was shakira’s a$$.
      don’t even know who won.(or who was playing, for that matter)

      1. Bill Carson

        Of course not, but he wants the white people to believe that black folks’ hatred of his is unjustified.

        2. a different chris

          Pay the man!

          Chuckie Shumer’s “Suburban Republicans” just got enough of their tiny consciences soothed to make them sure to vote for Trump in the fall. He can check that off his list.

          They were going to anyway, but this was a brilliant way to make sure they stay penned.

    5. polecat

      I’m so fn glad that I’m not a fan of ersatz gladiator* worship. A • Big • Waste of precious life juice !

      *Now if, on the other hand, it were politicians competing in the true spirit of the, er, games .. complete with lions, tigers, and bears .. chariots baring wheels with twirling blades .. the ‘participants’ decked out in sandals, armour, tridents, spears, and short swords … helmets even .. then Yeah ! I’d pay Big Coin to witness That !

      Even without the Bread.

  26. Left in Wisconsin

    1. On military flyovers: I live in an extremely woke neighborhood right next to one of the largest football stadiums in the country – filled by 70-80K fans on 8ish Saturdays in the fall every year. The PTB (the U runs this part of town, the Athletic Dept runs the school) have decided we need 1-2 flyovers a year because. In the neighborhood, these (extremely loud and annoying) flyovers have become divisive, with more than a handful of passionate defenders. I don’t see them going away.
    2. On the Midwestern accent: I grew up out east and I have to say I find the accent (in all its splendid variety) still kind of grating, but completely agree that it conveys and complements that combination of straightforwardness and politeness that distinguishes so many midwestern women.
    3. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow, I expect to see a huge campaign to “unify” around Bloomberg.

      1. JohnnyGL

        https://morningconsult.com/2020-democratic-primary/

        I’m actually getting worried about Bloomberg. He’s gotten to 14% in a hurry. He’s obviously squeezing out Mayor Pete, Klobouchar, Warren, and even a little bit from Biden.

        It’s entirely possible that those were the easy targets in the race and Bloomberg will hit a sort of ceiling soon were he can’t get close to 20%. He’s drawing from voters whose support was always very fickle and volatile, vs. Biden and Bernie voters who are much more committed.

    2. Bill Carson

      I live relatively close to a stadium that has flyovers for every football game. They practice the day before. And then there’s the air show over the stadium at graduation. We’ve gotten used to it here.

      1. Wukchumni

        Since 9/11 what have we heard about in terms of what our vaunted fighter jets have done in pitched dubious battle somewhere far away?

        Nothing much really…

        They’ve found their calling in stadium flyovers, stand tall America!

        1. Amfortas the hippie

          i’m on the edge of the West Texas Training …area, or something.
          Ft Bliss, Goodfellow and a few air stations out west and north.
          we get all manner of aircraft buzzing the hills.
          nobody else seems to notice, but it drives me nuts.
          even saw a drone fly over, circa 2002.
          sounded like a lawnmower.

          1. Wukchumni

            The F-35’s never fly that low here, maybe 5,000 feet up or so, but to really see your military tax $ being spent, you have to go to Saline Valley hot springs in Death Valley NP.

            In a 3 day skein, we’ll have 2 dozen flyovers with the ultimate being a F-18 @ 100 feet over our heads going 500 mph, whooooosh.

            1. Amfortas the hippie

              lowest we’ve had was a kiowa(smallish chopper) just above the trees.
              ive also seen utterly silent helicopters—wouldn’t have known they were there if i hadn’t been outside checking on noisy geese.(nobody believes me, but i know what i saw)
              bush2’s administration(sic) was the busiest time in my airspace.

              1. inode_buddha

                I’m about 4 blocks away from what used to be the 914th airlift and refueling wing , I can tell you who is doing what just by the vibration in the seat of my pants. I don’t even need to see them, I can tell you who is going where.

  27. martell

    Research discussed in the article on emotions is consonant with the views of one of the previous century’s better known philosophers, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Mastery of emotion terms includes mastery of third person uses, such as “Lambert is delighted.” Third person uses are descriptive, and criteria for correct description are both behavioral and situational. We judge, for instance, that someone feels delight when they smile or when they say “I’m delighted” (under pleasant circumstances, such as a birthday party, as opposed to a committee meeting).

    As for first person uses, these are not ordinarily parts of descriptions of oneself but instead function expressively. They are linguistic manifestations of the speaker’s emotion. Saying “I feel a bit of Schadenfreude” is (usually) just manifesting Schadenfreude. In some cases, such as fear, the linguistic behavior manifesting the emotion is a substitute for non-linguistic behavior (such as taking up a defensive posture). In other cases, the expressive linguistic behavior lacks any completely non-linguistic equivalent. Case in point, you could not express Schadenfreude without the ability to say so, in English paraphrase if not in the German original. And if you could not in principle express it, you could not satisfy criteria for third person uses, which, in turn, means that it would make no sense to say that you could feel Schadenfreude at all.

    In any case, if old LW is right, then some emotions would be universal and others would be particular to certain linguistic communities. Also, since the terms are either used expressively (in the first person) or on the basis of behavioral/situational criteria (in the third), it’s not all that surprising that usage fails to correspond to any very particular brain states or processes. Many such states or processes could in principle make possible the behavior in question. Oh, and what about the question of infinite emotions? I’m pretty sure LW would say that just as there are any number of games we could create, so there are any number of emotion terms we could introduce. Indeed, their introduction would amount to the creation of new games with words or extension of such games already played.

    1. Carey

      Tried pretty hard to decode a bit of ol’ LW, but with not much luck at all.
      Ray Monk’s biography of him was worth the trouble, though.

  28. chuckster

    Who could have known:

    From Bloomberg:

    Iowa Precinct Chairs Struggle With App

    Precinct chairs across Iowa said that some of them are struggling to use the new phone application for reporting Monday night’s caucus results, potentially delaying the counting of the first votes in the 2020 Democratic race.

    The application is one of the ways local officials who oversee individual caucuses are able to send results from each of the nearly 1,700 sites to the Iowa Democratic Party, which compiles and checks the results.

    The app was created to improve the efficiency of reporting of results, but chairs unable to use the app on Monday will send their results to the party via a call-in number. The party hotline has always been available to precinct chairs. State party officials said they have no concerns that the results will be counted inaccurately.

    The final tally could be delayed by a few hours because the chairs will have to call the hotline and read the results instead of submitting them electronically.

    Four Democratic county chairs told Bloomberg News that some precinct chairs told them that they were unable to download or log in to the phone app. The Iowa Democratic Party said it is aware of the problems, but stressed it would not affect the reporting of the results. — Tyler Pager

    Story continues

    2. SlayTheSmaugs

      I am all for them phoning in the results instead of using an app. The results will be more transparently accurate.

      Go tech issues!

    3. Oh

      The DNC probably lavished a huge amount to one of their crony corps to make the app. Just like the ACA web site for OR and many other states.

    5. ChiGal in Carolina

      as of now the party is not reporting out numbers because they are doing “quality control”

      hmm

      2. pretzelattack

        if the quality is unacceptable they can just abort the primary like the des moines register poll, eh. the rigging will continue till results improve.

    6. Code Name D

      We have one report of a “coin flip” at a caucus where Bernie had a clear majority. Reported by Jordan-Live (Status Cue)

      1. anon in so cal

        Bernie Sanders had 111 votes, Pete had 61 but they each get same number of delegates due to the coin toss…

        1. Fiery Hunt

          Just heard a NBC reporter explain that at one place they were supposed to assign 11 delegates and the “formula” they were using only assigned 5 to two viable candidates. Bernie had 20% more votes than Warren but they were giving Sanders 3 and Warren 2.

          Total clusterfuck.

          1. sleepy

            I was a precinct captain for Sanders.

            In my precinct Sanders got 28% of the vote and 2 delegates. Biden and Buttigieg got c. 17% and 2 delegates each. Warren got 15% and 1 delegate.

            Yang got 1 vote and supported Sanders in the final tally.

            It’s an incredibly dumb system and as much as I’m a Bernie fan I must say that the training I got was really poor. The dem party chair himself forgot to ask for the names and phone numbers of the delegates elected, so I had to call down to Des Moines and fix that.

            I was disappointed in my ward and precinct. Four years ago, Sanders won an outright majority. This time only 28%, though still a substantial lead.

  29. petal

    Walked out of the post office this afternoon, and there was Deval Patrick’s bus. What a vanity exercise. I did take a photo.

    1. Carey

      I’d been wondering what was happening with our friend Deval Patrick, so thanks.
      Will he figure in somehow, in Milwaukee?

      1. petal

        Sure, very welcome! I was kind of surprised as I had forgotten he was having anything to do with the NH primary. Maybe he’ll be Bloomberg’s VP?

  31. marym

    Today: Judicial Watch issued a press release claiming 8 Iowa counties have more registered voters than residents. Iowa’s Republican pro-Voter ID SoS responds that this is false.

    Summary from SoS: https://twitter.com/IowaSOS/status/1224423689640386563
    Screen shots of individual responses from SoS: https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1224432686405574658
    WaPo explanation of how counting is done: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/03/judicial-watchs-voter-fraud-fear-mongering-finds-new-opponent-pro-voter-id-iowa-official/

  32. Amfortas the hippie

    the cnn thing on the Tenderizer or whatever sure smells a lot like censorship:
    “In recent weeks the DNC told campaigns that “hashtags casting 2020 presidential candidates in a negative light” had reached Twitter’s coveted trending section.”

    play nice, children.
    sheesh.
    “joe biden would make a terrible president”
    “klobuchar is a mean boss”
    “warren flails”
    what about “bernie’s so old…”,lol.
    glad i abandoned commander data’s world.

    1. Carey

      >the cnn thing on the Tenderizer or whatever sure smells a lot like censorship:

      Oh, yeah.

      “Counter-Disinformation Unit/Team” : We’re the LoserCrats [esp regarding Sanders]: you can trust™ us..

      pass

  33. Carey

    Thanks to whoever linked Thomas Geoghegan’s ‘Educated Fools’ piece again.
    I’d bookmarked it before but not read it, and think it’s worth reading, despite
    his Knowledge Economy™ beliefs. I think that author knows more than he
    lets on, and really does try to bring people together in the way the Democrat
    Party claims to do.

    Pretty sure it’s going to be a Food-Water-Shelter-Love
    economy, at best, that’s coming, though.

  34. GERMO

    Re “Major union flips support from Sanders to Biden” [Politico] —
    Very disappointing! This is a new president in ATU; the prez who led the 2016 Sanders-endorsing version of the international passed away last year. Signals unexamined cautiousness at the leadership level I suppose. Maybe the embryo of this endorsement (arising from whatever membership-survey methods) comes from weeks or more ago; to me it sounds like they must not have read some of the more reasonable — and recent — analysis and news regarding Sanders’ chances. Or just don’t want to get it.

    1. Dan

      Hopefully most of the rank and file will still vote for Bernie. I don’t think the optics of this are very good though.

      “Socialist Sanders Can’t Even Get Endorsement From Major Union”

      1. flora

        “Nobody likes Sanders. Nobody wants to work with him.”

        Oh wait, that line has already been tried. / heh.

      4. jrs

        Many unions are basically conservative, it doesn’t mean unions aren’t useful for workers and getting them benefits, they are of course but they often tend conservative otherwise – more in it for their own rice bowls than broad working class solidarity. And such unions far outnumber radical unions, which do of course exist but are less common, and so: no you can’t win them all.

      5. The Rev Kev

        Back in 2016 there were a few big unions where the leadership went with Hillary but that the rank and file did not go with this idea. And then there were those teacher strikes a year or two ago where the teachers went full on while the union leadership was trying to sell themselves out as fast as they could. So optics be buggered.

  35. Daryl

    > IA numbers

    encouraging.

    Get ready for the onslaught of “Iowa doesn’t actually matter” if Bernie wins. Of course we should be looking to the all-important and very-winnable South Carolina.

    1. Carey

      Well, he’ll do ok in Iowa (heh), and likely crush it in NH; at worst, my guess is an SC draw with the serial plagiarist / dissembler. At worst.

  36. The Rev Kev

    We should all wish Lambert the best of luck as the Iowa Caucus goes into full gear. Keeping track of the regular stuff is nightmare enough but trying to keep track of all the shenanigans is worse. Gunna be a busy week for him and for all we know Iowa will cough up a Hillary-Buttigieg team for the Democratic run at the Presidency. Shenanigans I say, shenanigans.

  37. Appleseed

    re: “The Plants That Make Refugee Camps Feel More Like Home.” An inspiring – and tragic – trend. Any gardener understands this drive. A treasured birthday present from my wife a few years back was the book Defiant Gardens – a survey of gardens planted under extreme circumstances (WWI trenches, Japanese internment camps, etc.)

  39. Alex-23

    Three new cases of Corona Virus at San Francisco General as of two hours ago.
    Too bad the Democrats didn’t nominate Bernie, who would have won last time.

    Now we face this potential pandemic with our wonderful profit driven crapified health care extortion system. Dead people don’t pay.

  40. tegnost

    new counter disinformation team

    Um…what?
    Well I hope they have a $125,000 budget, that seems to be the magic number

    1. tegnost

      When stories from websites known to peddle misinformation mention candidates and begin getting shares on social media, Trendolizer detects it and an alert is sent to the relevant campaigns

      Kind of like when you carry 99 phones to make a virtual traffic jam, perhaps

  41. Scott k

    This new caucus system was a pain. I walked out when Bernie didn’t qualify for a delegate. Some many low information voters, who believe beating trump is the only thing which matters.

    1. Lunker Walleye

      Which precint, Scott? I left pct. 61 caucus because Bernie didn’t have viability. Biden became viable in the 2nd round. Amy, Warren and Pete all viable on first round. Not surprising about this area. I’ve been to several caucuses and the left-leaning candidate(s) typically fail the first round.

    1. aletheia33

      yes. nyt live results page is saying results are coming in later than usual.
      maybe it’s that shiny new app not working out so well.
      i love you iowans who have given up and resorted to calling in a list on paper.

    2. NotTimothyGeithner

      Robbie Mook is involved, a man should never be allowed near any kind of responsibility ever.

  43. BoulderMike

    Since votes are counted at the precinct level, but “filtered” up to the party for “quality control”, doesn’t it seem as though this system is designed to allow the party to manipulate the results to produce the results they desire? Why not just perform “quality control” at the precinct level? I was watching on CSPAN and it seemed as though the counts were done correctly and fairly at the precinct. They validated the counts for each candidate, added them up, and confirmed them against the gross attendance counts. The 2 Des Moines area caucus sites covered on CSPAN didn’t seem to be confirming with the few results being reported as of now. Mayor Pete seems to be the strongest candidate based on what the party is reporting. What? Are there really people out there going – ” gee, I really hope Mayor Pete is my President”? Sad, and scary to me.

    2. Daryl

      I’m rather confused about what kind of “quality control” can be conducted on the result of a caucus. They send you the results, you either trust them or you don’t.

      I mean, other than rigging the results. Which seems like something you can do at that point.

    4. sleepy

      Yep, though Sanders won it, at least by vote totals, lots of Pete supporters at my caucus. I have no idea why.

    5. Carey

      >Are there really people out there going – ” gee, I really hope Mayor Pete is my President”?

      cough

  44. Kurt Sperry

    “Quality Control”? The DNC is so hapless it can’t even rig its own process to subvert democracy in a timely matter.

    1. flora

      This is unbelievably bad. Caucus results have never taken this long to come in. Tech problems???? Can’t use a new app written by no-one-knows-who??? Precinct captains trying to call in results and being put on hold for a long long time??? Is it quality control? Is quality control the new ‘hanging chad’ – to quote The Hill reporters.

      1. flora

        The caucus secretary in one precinct has been on hold for over an hour trying to get thru to the vote count central location. Even if this is just a massive screw-up instead of fiddling – the DNC is in trouble.
        The Hill is doing great commentary.

        3. flora

          Paraphrasing a silly, joking (but apt) quote from one of The Hill’s commentatiors: “The DNC and the New Dems love the fusion of technology and stupidity.”

          1. aletheia33

            also stuff straight from the ground on the subreddit sandersforpresident.
            including photos of groupings in caucus precincts.
            reports of groupings of muslims, ethiopians, and latinx: going virtually all-in for sanders.

      2. Carey

        “Quality Control” = Narrative™ management

        They’re trolling us so hard

        All will be clear by [or well before] Milwaukee

          1. Carey

            My main hope2020- and I think it’s a reasonable one- is that the electoral theft becomes way too big for anyone to ignore. The self-interested ones will do so anyway, but by then it won’t matter.

            Timberrrrrrrrr….

          2. ambrit

            Yes. We should have taken that fiasco as a wake up call. The DNC is unreformable. Trump winning in November would be the death knell for the legacy Democrat Party. It won’t be allowed to get that far. When Hillary jumps into the race, we will be guaranteed a real coup. After that, if the Republican Party does not fight very hard for Trump, the facade will be torn down.

      3. sleepy

        Precinct captains trying to call in results and being put on hold for a long long time???

        Yeah, I’m a precinct captain and the phone number to call in with problems is nothing but an hours long wait. My problem is the dem party caucus chair didn’t ask us to turn in names of those who had volunteered to be delegates as he was supposed to do. So, trying to call in those names was impossible.

        I finally got through on another number to a Sanders organizer who took my info down about the delegates. Totally screwed up. I hate to say it, but my training as a Sanders precinct captain was abysmal.

  45. bob

    NYT main title- Confusion as democratic results are delayed in Iowa

    Next title-

    Officials cite ‘quaility control’ efforts (their quotes)

    They need an app for that!

    2. lyman alpha blob

      And right on cue some hack on CNN just suggested the delay may be due to some hacking.

      Charlatans and mountebanks all around, and incompetent ones at that.

      2. lyman alpha blob

        Maddow on MSDNC theorizes that everyone was depending on the app and when it didn’t work, they didn’t have the infrastructure to deal with the called-in results.

        Some hack agrees that it’s a very reasonable explanation.

        Can’t handle phone calls?!?!? Did we go back in time a couple centuries?!?

        Better grifters please.

  46. Aumua

    I don’t think there is any way they can change the result if say, Sanders is the clear winner. What they can do is mess with the timing to try and diminish the impact of their “unfavorable” result as much as possible. They probably have some study that says if they make people sleep on it before finding out, it has less of a mental impact or something about news cycles and such.

    1. Aumua

      ANother idea I have seen floated is that the delay will deny Sanders a victory speech on the eve of his win, which seems very plausible as a motive.

      1. Aumua

        They can’t really stop the momentum, so it’s just going to drag them kicking and screaming the whole way.

  47. inode_buddha

    in 2016 I was certain that Sanders knew every dirty trick they pulled on him, after the fact. What amazed me is that he didn’t make them very very public. I strongly believe he should make their dirty laundry public this time. DNC pulls any stunts, he calls them out publicly over it, day in and day out.

    1. Carey

      I agree, IB. This time he’s got to show, early on, that he’s got a pair.
      The People are with him.. otherwise, Kavanaugh (CP piece)
      will have had it precisely right.

    2. Dan

      I think they’re documenting everything. They’ve been good so far at squashing any potential negative memes before they develop. They need to be just as proactive with these shenanigans as well.

    1. lyman alpha blob

      CNN beat you to it a few minutes ago. Nobody’s blamed Iran yet so still time to get in on that.

  49. cripes

    The Guardian USA has preliminary results, but the Des Moines Register does not?

    Bernie Sanders
    1,811 27.84%
    Elizabeth Warren
    1,636 25.15%
    Pete Buttigieg
    1,553 23.88%
    Amy Klobuchar
    773 11.88%
    Joe Biden
    722 11.10%
    Uncommitted
    9 0.14%

    ——-

    But, but, all night MSNBC and FOX had live coverage of caucus after caucus with Sanders supporters well below %15 threshold, and losers like biden with big crowds…

    Takeaway for me is that sanders/warren contingent holds 53%, and Sanders leads.
    If Warren and her supporters join progressive voters the “moderates” can’t merge their spoilers to block them.
    Not electable huh?

    3. ambrit

      If this holds up, it will be Clinton running on the Democrat ticket in November.
      California will be the deciding state.

    4. John k

      So Bernie won, great, 4% over poll avg. nice boost for coming primaries.
      Biden fifth, great, polls overstated his actual by 7%.
      Warren 7,6% above last polls, Pete and Amy also did better than polls or I expected.
      Everybody else zeroed out, good, maybe some drop out.
      I guess being caucus results Amy and Biden get to keep their delegates even though under 15%? Sad.

    1. flora

      Hizzoner is the 9th richest man in. the. world. What would reporters call him if he was Russian? An oligarch!

      2. vlade

        definition of oligarch = member of small group holding most of the power in the state, with that power being execised mostly for their own good.

        Bloomberg fits, but wealth alone doesn’t make you oligarch (i.e. if you’d win the largest lottery ticket ever, become a billionaire, it would not make you an oligarch, and Cummings in the UK is not massively rich but wields more power than some of the rich in the UK).

        Trump is an oligarch too, as are Clintons.

    1. lyman alpha blob

      I saw your post a little bit ago. My guess is skynet absconded with it and it’ll be back later.

      1. cripes

        lyman:

        So I’m not crazy.
        Nice to know.

        My comment was that the Sanders / Warren contingent holds 53%, a comfortable block if it holds in other contests to win even a brokered convention for progressives.
        Liz?

  54. Carey

    Dems to the People: “We’ll do what we Fu*king well want.”

    People to Dems: “Cool. Check this out…”

    Our Dems are out of shape, and have no game; don’t even remember/know what that is..

  55. lyman alpha blob

    And now some hack on Fox is saying how can a party that can’t even manage to get caucus results out make Medicare for All or a Green New Deal work.

    Well played Democrat party!

        1. Carey

          >the dnc doesn’t want any of this to work.

          There you go. Much better the appearance of a clusterf*ck than of a massive #loss, for Our Corporatist Dems.

          #clarity2020

      2. Carey

        No- that’s bunk. If it were so, all those MIC bills that pass with bipartisan™ support
        would die on the vine.

        The Corporate Dem Party is *very competent* at meeting their objectives, TYVM.
        Mrs Pelosi would not be worth $120,000,000 otherwise.

  56. cripes

    Bernie talking.
    His crowd looks multiple’s compared to other candidates, and vocal.
    Pushing policy and M4A instead of word salad.
    It’s gonna get harder to hide his supporters, especially California i suspect.

  58. anon in so cal

    Iowa Caucus App:

    “Nevada Dem federal account paid Shadow $58k in August, Iowa Dems state account paid Shadow $63,183 in two payments over Nov & Dec, suggesting app wasn’t developed until just months ago? Both caucus states. Shadow is a spin-off from PACRONYM, a new Dem dark money/superPAC hybrid.”

    Three different sources say a firm called “Shadow” developed the Iowa Dem caucus app. They haven’t responded to comment, neither has Iowa Dem Party. The firm was paid by both Nevada & Iowa Democratic Party, disclosures show. Also by Mayor Pete’s campaign.”

    https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1224561674679488513?s=20

    1. Carey

      Maybe it’d be better now if the the Intelligence Community™ (what a loathesomely deceptive term) just dropped the pretense… “Shadow?” They *want* us to connect the dots.

      Zappa was right, Emma Goldman too.

    2. flora

      ! Lee Fang does very good reporting at The Intercept. This is … don’t have words…. A dark money/SuperPac outfit funding company Shadow’s creation of secret, untested, unverified code for the DNC to use in state caucuses ? Insisting the caucuses use this blackbox software? Doesn’t pass the smell test, not with this DNC. Crowdstrike and the DNC mail server comes to mind, etc.

      1. Dan

        Isn’t Buttigieg funding this thing a conflict of interest or something?

        Mayor Pete is one big conspiracy theory.

  59. Samuel Conner

    This is certainly going to stir up memories of 2016 shenanigans to hold down Sanders’ delegate count.

    I hope that it stimulates Sanders’ supporters to further exertions.

    Anger can be a powerful motivator.

    I’m thinking that I want to visit Bernie’s Act Blue donor page before I turn in; I will sleep sounder if I strike a blow against the Party establishment before the morning gets too much older.

    And I need to look into the AOC leadership PAC. I have rather more confidence in its candidate choices than I do the DCCC’s.

  60. anonymous

    Caucus report:
    We had a bad night, which I expected in my conservative district. Buttigieg was the clear winner, followed by Klobuchar and Biden; each got a delegate. Sanders met the viability threshold, but there were only 3 delegates, and Sanders had the lowest count. Yang and Warren weren’t anywhere close to viable. The person who spoke for Buttigieg said that she had been a Republican, and this was the first time she was going to vote for a Democrat because of Trump; she said she liked Pete’s military experience and that he was smart. Bernie picked up a few Warren voters on the realignment, but the Yang people seemed surprisingly hostile to Bernie. I had been expecting Klobuchar to do well, but was surprised that Pete had so much support. I do wonder how many Republicans went to the Democratic caucuses, since there was no contest on the Republican side.

    I’ve got CNN on now, and the talking heads are quite frustrated about the delay in reporting. With so many candidates and with more than 1700 precincts, if the satellites are included, I am not at all surprised that it will take quite a while to check all those counts and confirm the delegate math. For the first time, we have the paper cards.

    Our caucus chair and secretary were school teachers and did a fantastic job. We all watched and counted together as the presidential preference cards were handed out, and the chair explained the rules to the room well enough that no group that lost felt cheated. We counted and recounted our cards at each step.

    The good news about the reporting delay is that maybe we’ll be pressured to change to a primary, even if we lose our place as first state to vote.

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Our caucus chair and secretary were school teachers and did a fantastic job.

      Thanks for the detailed report. I don’t think the problems are at that level, any more than the problems in Florida 2000 were.

  61. cripes

    Mayor Pete delivers his speech with 5 young black women strategically placed directly behind him. Stand over here ladies, no here, yes that’s better…

    Word salad without content except to remind us how lucky we are he is running and look how young I am!

  62. Carey

    Looking at this Iowa 2020 debacle is reminding me *so much* of the California 2016 Dem
    primary- long delays, “it’s just all so confusing!” tropes, technical™ snafus, a corporatist
    (Butti, in this case) claiming “victory”..

    Mission accomplished for the Few: a couple of Corporatists kept viable- with a little help
    here ‘n’ there.

    yeah yeah

  65. Carey

    >The Iowa Democratic Party has reportedly told presidential candidates not to expect results until tomorrow at the earliest.
    “They literally have no verified results,” a senior campaign adviser told CNN. “We won’t know anything until some time Tuesday — at least.”

    “It’s just all so confusing!” Yep, having a non-corporatist in front tends to do that.

    #dismalDollarDrenchedDems

  66. Dan

    Jeff Weaver just made a statement and said they’re releasing their own internal numbers. The Sanders campaign is taking the lead on this. They continue to be proactive.

  69. Cuibono

    The use of the name Shadow is really too much. It reminds me of the “suicide” of Epstein. Like the CIA is toying with all of us.

    1. Carey

      >The use of the name Shadow is really too much.

      Yep- they (CIA, Schmuck Chumer, et al) want us to know what they’re doing.
      No “IMO”, in this case. Good to see they’re rattled, though.

      Non-Corporatists have more fun, and better sex! Spread (ahem) the Word!

  70. Dan

    Polk County Democratic officials said they tried to deliver results in person but were turned away

    Polk County Democratic officials said they tried to deliver their results to the state party in person, after encountering problems with the new app they were supposed to use — but were turned away.

    Sean Bagniewski, chairman of the Polk County Democrats, said they initially decided the county’s 177 precinct chairs would call in results to the state party after encountering “issues” with a new reporting app.

    However, the state party hotline wasn’t working properly either, according to Bagniewski. Polk County Democratic officials then asked all of its precinct chairs to take pictures of their final reporting sheets.

    Judy Downs, executive director of the Polk County Democrats, then compiled pictures of all the reporting sheets on her phone and drove over to the headquarters of the Iowa Democratic Party to try to submit them in person.

    “They didn’t take it,” Downs said.

    Downs said she was dismayed the delays had overshadowed the work of her county volunteers. Polk County, which includes Des Moines and is the largest county in Iowa, has 177 precincts, and all had concluded caucusing before 9 p.m. Monday, Downs said — something that was “unheard of.”

    “I’m disappointed that our volunteers aren’t necessarily getting the national spotlight that they should be right now because they ran some smooth caucuses throughout the county,” Downs said. “I’m really proud of everyone.”

    When asked if the state party was handling the situation poorly, Bagniewski demurred.

    “No comment,” he said

    https://tinyurl.com/s36e2pw

    1. pretzelattack

      well of course they couldn’t take the results, those results hadn’t been quality controlled yet.

  71. Some Guy in Beijing

    Everything about this stinks to holy hell. I currently live in an authoritarian “people’s republic” that pretends it is Marxist, and I find the DNC and its primary process somehow less palatable.

  72. pretzelattack

    it feels like this year we’re starting off with florida 2000, just to get us acclimated to what the election process is going to be like.

    1. Carey

      Thank you, and that does indeed seem to be the message. The good news- maybe the only good news, for now- is that everyone will know exactly what Team Dem are up
      to, by Milwaukee.

      It’s going to be a long battle, and it won’t be fought via screens.

  73. cripes

    Wow. In your face, out in the open, no fear of exposure.
    I knew he was a MIC creep, but figured it was bigly pushing the “first” gay, “soldier” IDPol virture signalling routine.
    Which he is.

    Its worse than that.

    There’s a raft of spoilers boring in from every angle. Buttigieg, Bloomberg, the spineless Warren, the sheer number of hopeless candidates clouding the process. DNC machinations. The gaggle of MSM pundits jeering anyone who dares to ask questions.

    Corruption so blatant and relentless that the white noise trail covers their tracks with an electorate too uninformed, distracted, desperate, tired and quesy about being labelled conspiracy theorists. And every outrage succeed by worse outrages before the last one is erased from memory.

    I understand why Bernie is careful never to give his enemies ammunition but wish there was a fight back option.

    MSNBC idiots now spinning Bernies win as a loss because he had more votes in 2016 against a single opponent, Hillary. I wanna puke.

  74. Bailer Blackford

    Bedlam on the Great Plains! “Iowa state party officials struggle to explain results delay in call with campaigns” Wapo Headline hints party officials aren’t saying everything they know. Elsewhere it was reported that the party officials hung up on the campaigns when asked when the reports would be released. Wapo also noted in its lead paragraph the coincidence of the crucial final Des Moines Register poll also being marred by technical problems. To counter Buttigieg’s claim of victory, the Sanders campaign released its own internal reporting numbers of nearly 40% of the precincts. They described the numbers, which show a Sanders win, as a cross-section of urban & rural precincts. (They used the term “cross-section”, not “representative”):

    Final Round Vote%/ Prelim. State Del Equivalent/ Prelim SD Equivalent %

    Sanders 29.86% 298.50 28.63%
    Buttigieg 24.59% 268.22 25.71%
    Warren 21.24% 192.13 18.42%
    Biden 12.37% 157.32 15.08%
    Klobuchar 11.00% 114.06 10.93%
    Andrew Yang 0.90% 9.79 0.94%
    Tom Steyer 0.24% 3.00 0.30%
    Tulsi Gabbard 0.01% 0.00 0.00%

    In votes cast, fourth-place Biden nine points behind the third-place Warren, but only three points behind her in delegate percentage. Politico breathing fire in its news report: ” A technical meltdown in Iowa Monday night set off bedlam in the critical first contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, triggering competing claims of victory and stoking doubts about the legitimacy of the eventual outcome.” And wisely noting who this glitch helps:

    “The biggest “winner” might have been Joe Biden. According to the Iowa entrance poll, he was hovering close to the viability threshold of 15 percent statewide. But the questions surrounding the vote-counting served to cloud a potentially poor performance.” As well as dampens the thunder of the (crowded-together) top two:

    “It might have delivered a blow to Sanders and Buttigieg, who appeared on track to do well in the state. Whether the victor turns out to be Sanders or Buttigieg or someone else, that candidate was denied the chance to give an election night victory speech to a nationwide audience — a springboard heading into New Hampshire.”

  75. Aumua

    Guaranteed when the MSM has to mention Sanders’ victory here they will also be sure to mention the ‘technical problems’ that plagued this caucus and probably spin the results as ‘contested’ as well. Just like Bolivia or Venezuela…

    1. Carey

      So Butti’s this week’s placeholder, it seems..

      I think that Boyd (military strategist) fellow could help the People, right now..
      The notion that Butti is, on any planet, within 3% of Sanders is.. interesting.

      #desperateDems

    2. Carey

      In the short term, what you mention is bad. Any other term, it’s good (I hear you, though!).

      Here’s the real race, and Sanders is so far winning in a landslide: Legitimacy2020

  76. Basil Pesto

    a good day for Lambert to wheel out the ol’ standby Simpsons/DNC ‘We Can’t Govern’ meme

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