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US politics - sometimes political jokes get elected


Rippounet

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DNC needs to:

1. End Iowa's "first in nation" status in future contests due to demonstrated dire incompetence of local officials.

2. Ban caucuses and switch all contests to primaries.

At least there would be some upside to this fiasco if either of the two happened.

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What a joke. One of the biggest national political organisations on the planet (perhaps only dwarfed by the Chinese communist party, and whatever Putin calls his political goon squad) and it can't organise shit for one of the most important functions it needs to carry out at least once every 8 years, and usually more frequently than that.

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Caucuses suck.  But who are we to tell a private organization what methods it must use to select, not its representatives, but the people it will allow to attend its convention for the selection of who it will offer for election in the November general election?

if the Iowa Democratic Party decides to use jumping jack contests to select delegates isn’t that their call? 
 

Heck the South Carolina Republican party decided to cancel its primary rather than see threats to Trump’s 2020 candidacy.

 

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44 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Caucuses suck.  But who are we to tell a private organization what methods it must use to select, not its representatives, but the people it will allow to attend its convention for the selection of who it will offer for election in the November general election?

Scot, the notion that political parties are essentially the same as local bridge clubs is quaint but highly debatable.

National political parties are organisations in whose doings voters may take a legitimate interest. We can certainly argue about how far that should extend, but let's not pretend that this isn't anyone's business at all. 

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2 minutes ago, mormont said:

Scot, the notion that political parties are essentially the same as local bridge clubs is quaint but highly debatable.

National political parties are organisations in whose doings voters may take a legitimate interest. We can certainly argue about how far that should extend, but let's not pretend that this isn't anyone's business at all. 

It is our business.  But because they are private organizations they can choose candidates for office by whatever means they see fit.  Ultimately, voters will or will not support those organizations.

I dislike primaries and caucuses to begin with not the least because private entities are using the public dime to pick their candidates and limiting who may and may not participate in their publicly funded elections.  I further don’t like the impression it leaves in people’s minds that to be a real candidate in the November general election you have to have participated in the earlier races.  
 

The only election where candidates for office may be voted upon is the general.  Anyone should be on the ballot.  The two party’s stranglehold on ballot access should be eliminated.

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It's hard to overstate how much of an institutional failure this is.  It's also hard to overstate what this means for all the hundreds, really thousands, of elections that will take place in the next nine months.  But I'd still chill on what this means for the general election in terms of Trump v. Dem party nominee.  The American electorate is incredibly schizophrenic and has the same short-term memory disease as Guy Pearce in Memento.  And functionally, both Michigan and Florida had all their delegates taken away in 2008, and everyone survived ok.  If that wouldn't just exacerbate the candidate infighting, I'd say that'd be a good solution for this mess as well.  But, yeah, who knows.

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So after this debacle, people still think it's weird that supporters of anti-establishment candidates like Bernie and Tulsi always suspect foul play on the part of the DNC?

You've got Bloomberg competing in a debate because he clearly paid his way in, the former Democratic presidential candidate ignoring calls for party unity by perpetually attacking two of the primary candidates and getting no blowback for it from MSNBC (because it's made up of her media proxies), and now this farce.

The question shouldnt be why so-called "bernie bros" keep accusing DNC of rigging the system, but rather why absolutely anyone would believe the DNC is on the level.

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20 minutes ago, Darryk said:

So after this debacle, people still think it's weird that supporters of anti-establishment candidates like Bernie and Tulsi always suspect foul play on the part of the DNC?

You've got Bloomberg competing in a debate because he clearly paid his way in, the former Democratic presidential candidate ignoring calls for party unity by perpetually attacking two of the primary candidates and getting no blowback for it from MSNBC (because it's made up of her media proxies), and now this farce.

The question shouldnt be why so-called "bernie bros" keep accusing DNC of rigging the system, but rather why absolutely anyone would believe the DNC is on the level.

It is insane that people keep blaming the DNC for anything that happened last night. The DNC has literally nothing to do with the on-the-ground organizing of a primary or caucus, this is entirely the Iowa Democratic Party's fault. Yet it will keep happening.

 

Anyway, to me the bigger story isn't the debacle with the results reporting; those numbers will eventually get out and they seem to be the result of trusting an incompetent app developer combined with mass confusion over the new reporting requirements implemented since 2016. Requirements, which it should be noted, where added due to the demands of Sanders supporters. No, the bigger story is that turnout is estimated to be about 175,000 people, which is right in line with 2016, and way lower than it was in 2008 (~240,000 people). All the campaigns, and this isn't just a knock against Sanders, spent so much time and resources in the state trying to expand electorate, and they completely failed.

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Regardless of whether it's actually on the level, having your app made by a company literally called "Shadow Inc", which is run by the wife of one of the campaign staff for a candidate, and having the same candidate also making payments to Shadow Inc looks shady as fuck. And the appearance of corruption is a major issue even when there isn't actual corruption behind it.

Tech bros really need to stop naming their companies for the lulz.

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Reporting requirements like first and second alignment tallies? Isn't that what they tabulate anyways to get to the 'final answer'?

The problem was with the garbage app not correcting accepting entries, not the requirements.

The lower numbers are disappointing to be sure, but also good since 240k+ voters would have swamped them even more than last night.

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3 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Regardless of whether it's actually on the level, having your app made by a company literally called "Shadow Inc", which is run by the wife of one of the campaign staff for a candidate, and having the same candidate also making payments to Shadow Inc looks shady as fuck. And the appearance of corruption is a major issue even when there isn't actual corruption behind it.

Tech bros really need to stop naming their companies for the lulz.

Said candidate also declaring victory last night. Yeah, it's pretty messed up, I agree. 

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15 minutes ago, Fez said:

 

It is insane that people keep blaming the DNC for anything that happened last night. The DNC has literally nothing to do with the on-the-ground organizing of a primary or caucus, this is entirely the Iowa Democratic Party's fault. Yet it will keep happening.

 

Anyway, to me the bigger story isn't the debacle with the results reporting; those numbers will eventually get out and they seem to be the result of trusting an incompetent app developer combined with mass confusion over the new reporting requirements implemented since 2016. Requirements, which it should be noted, where added due to the demands of Sanders supporters. No, the bigger story is that turnout is estimated to be about 175,000 people, which is right in line with 2016, and way lower than it was in 2008 (~240,000 people). All the campaigns, and this isn't just a knock against Sanders, spent so much time and resources in the state trying to expand electorate, and they completely failed.

Agree that this isn't a very good sign.  

Re: the DNC- It's the hold they announced for quality control that looks bad for anyone who has been concerned about the process.  They had four years to figure work this stuff out.  On top of that, when you have people working various caucus locations posting on Twitter the first alignment data and then the final delegates awarded, and then you have people who are already suspicious start seeing numbers like Sanders 120 Buttigieg 47 and they both get two delegates, and the people reading this don't understand how the process works, it's a perfect shitstorm of paranoia, disappointment, and disillusionment for people who are already paranoid, disappointed and disillusioned.

Doesn't matter if the DNC had anything to do with the fuckups last night.  It looks terrible 

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17 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Regardless of whether it's actually on the level, having your app made by a company literally called "Shadow Inc", which is run by the wife of one of the campaign staff for a candidate, and having the same candidate also making payments to Shadow Inc looks shady as fuck. And the appearance of corruption is a major issue even when there isn't actual corruption behind it.

Tech bros really need to stop naming their companies for the lulz.

Buttigeig's staffer's wife?

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13 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Reporting requirements like first and second alignment tallies? Isn't that what they tabulate anyways to get to the 'final answer'?

It's a bit more complicated than that. For the first time there's more of a paper trail where caucus goers filled out preference cards. Which sounds great, but its another thing to keep track of. And that can be difficult for the volunteers who run the sites to do when there were also new rules changes that needed to be enforced, like supporters of viable candidates after the first round couldn't switch to other candidates, at the same time. Also there was a new level of math that needed to be done (I believe this was at the state party level though), to figure out the estimated state delegate equivalents each candidate won.

The whole thing is great example of why everyone should just use primaries.

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