Caucus Chaos in Iowa for Democrats
Bottom Line: It’s hard to imagine a set of circumstances Democrats could have created for themselves that would be worse than the current reality in Iowa. After 2016’s rigging allegations by the Bernie Sanders campaign, complete with Super Delegates that all but assured Hillary Clinton a win before any caucus or primary votes had been cast and evidence that even debate questions were being fed to Hillary in advance by Donna Brazil and CNN... Well, here we are. Blame a new app. Blame Caucus captains. Blame whatever you want. But here we are the morning after the Iowa Caucus with no official results. I’ve never seen anything like it. This comes after another first, the spiking of the final, and most closely watched Des Moines Register poll due to irregularities. What are the odds? Could it be that the Des Moines Register endorsed Elisabeth Warren and she wasn’t faring so well? Could last night’s problems be related to Joe Biden reportedly having negligible support at caucus sites statewide?
As I brought you yesterday, each of the polling leaders for Democrats going into Iowa have gone on to win in recent cycles, by a higher margin than the polling indicated. The average Democrat over the past three cycles sported a 3% lead going into Iowa and emerged with a 5% win. Bernie went in with a 4% lead. History suggests he was set to win and by a bigger margin than Kerry, Obama and Clinton on average. The turnout for Bernie based on pictures from caucus cites seems like he had a strong performance along with Pete Buttigieg. Will the results reflect it? At one caucus site it was reported that Bernie won by 20 points yet the five delegates were set to be split at 1 each for the top five candidates. What would you make of that one? Bernie supporters were livid as they left. So, here’s the thing.
There’s ample evidence the DNC worked against Bernie Sanders and with Hillary Clinton in 2016. Just as there’s ample evidence the DNC worked with corrupt government officials in the Justice Department, Intelligence agencies and State Department to illegally surveil team Trump in the General Election and to create the fraudulent Trump-Russia collusion narrative. These are clearly people who will go to great lengths to attempt to exact an outcome. What happened in Iowa is either a coincidence with two firsts occurring simultaneously, or this the latest act of deception by the party. To be continued...