Iowa Caucus 2020 - MegaThread

[Orbitus]

Don't take it out on me just because your old man Sleepy Joe is tanking hard kek. Only an ignorant fool would bank on a corrupt and senile old rat like him.

I don't want Joe Biden, but the fact that you call him what Trump calls him, says a lot about you. Especially considering you think he is corrupt with no evidence, and Trump is more of a case of dementia than Biden is.

[Skroe]

Aaaa congrats dude!

Let's hope this is a clarion of good things to come this year.

It is. Julian Gene is names for three powerful women. Julia, my sister in lawS grandmother and holocaust survivor, my maternal grandmother Gloria, a divorcee in the 1950s and her sister my great aunt jean who raised my brother and I while our parents worked. Super unexpected. I’ve been sobbing about it all day.

My sister in law is a super liberal feminist university professor (economics) and wanted to name her baby after strong women. I love her to death for that and more. She asked we get the New York Times so they can save the front page for Feb 4th for the baby’s 18th birthday. And thankfully there wasn’t a word about Trump on it! It had the Iowa shit show and something about the Coronavirus ending the world, but no Trump!

Trump too shall pass. Because goodness And hope will prevail over his and his cults profound evil.

[draynay]

Nine hours later we have another 9% reporting, just 29 hours left to maybe finish.

[Elegiac]

Nine hours later we have another 9% reporting, just 29 hours left to maybe finish.

Just remember that Skroe's sister gave actual birth more quickly than Iowa calculated its caucus results.

Lol.

[Aenigma84]

The biggest single issue preventing Democrats from getting rid of Trump.

The average moron will side with Trump simply for the pleasure of seeing a public figure use insults and generally not give a shit about how people view him.

I've been rolling my eyes at Pelosi ripping up the speech for example. Babby's first provocation. She should hold a speech and publicly call Trump a fucking moron, those exact words, and Trump's approval would immediately go down 5%.

judging from this caucus are you sure the average idiot is with trump ? doesnt look like it to me ^^

[Belize]

"They're rigging the process for Biden!!!1!!"

>Buttigieg is in the lead

[Skroe]

As a software engineer, the gross level of incompetence cannot be a mistake. Kids with no professional degrees in High School have created better and more stable applications. They did no stress testing, no user testing, no application iterations, and all for an app that could be done with a secure Google Docs Spreadsheet no app required. How this doesn't at least open an investigation is absurd if Iowa really cared democratic process.

This has been going on for about a decade. Both parties are orbited by grifter political data / software firms that promise big things and deliver nothing. They take big consultancy checks though.

Mitt Romney was damn sure he had the 2012 election in the bag because of a data consultancy that fed their customer what they wanted to hear.

[Edge-]

As a software developer that is my perspective too...

It gets even more weird:



Haha, oh wow. Isn't that a weird coincidink? How odd.

That the most dense presincts with the most votes to count would come last?

Yeah, it's almost like that's painfully predictable and reasonable.

Seriously, these borderline conspiracy theories are getting ludicrous. Want to know why other progressives are moving away? Because of this shit happening nonstop.

And it can be a mistake. Remember the ACA website? Remember how it didn't work for over a month? Political parties go with whoever is cheap, which means they have garbage, untested software.

We already know this wasn't some "grand conspiracy" for a variety of reasons -

Devs were pushing updates to the software as recently as 2 days before it was live
No training for the app for precinct captains
Minimal testing on various devices, leading to many people not being able to run it on their phones
No testing at-scale to ensure it could handle the load
Minimal transparency to allow for outside security audits, done in a misguided attempt to make it "more secure"

I could go on, but this is just rank incompetence. Not a grand conspiracy.

[shimerra]

As a software developer that is my perspective too...

It gets even more weird:



Haha, oh wow. Isn't that a weird coincidink? How odd.

It really isn't if you're not a complete idiot because urban locations normally take longer to report because there's a fuck ton more people/counting than bumfuck nowhere with only 50 people in the caucus. And when we're counting physical ballots because they luckily had a back up that makes sense. Sanders also typically does best in the urban centers but because of caucus rules, which again you demonstrated you have a profound ignorance of, if you make good headway in rural areas you can still do good with the delegate count.

As someone who's worked in multiple corporate environments and family in government fuck you two and your opinion as software engineers. My company's webchat has had multiple issues including one where it logs agents outs sometimes multiple times back to back and it took us the better part of 6 months to get the shit heads to admit the problem was on their end not ours. And it's gonna take another few months to fix. And that's just one bad anecdote. And again you Trumpers, I mean Bernie supporters sorry ya'll act the same it's hard to tell any more, there was a physical record of the vote for this exact reason..............

Don't get me wrong I'm not disagreeing with the assessment that the company was incompetent as all get out but merely and DNC leadership shouldn't be smacked about for their mishandling but that your useless declarations of being software engineers are useless. And that you only care if Bernie isn't #1.

hah you not thinking things through? That's so weird............/s I mean honest to god think for two seconds before mouthing off.

[DarkTZeratul]

This guy did a great analysis of why the issues with the app are entirely down to systemic problems with tech funding by campaigns and projects like these going to the lowest bidder with no long-term sustainability, and not some sort of ridiculous conspiracy theory to throw the election for [insert candidate of your choice who isn't Bernie Sanders]:
https://threader.app/thread/1224820389387223041

[mvaliz]

My dude. I’ve said I’m never going back to the Republican Party. Even when “balance is restored”,
Which will take decades. It deserves to die for what it has done.

The politics of wanting certain policy things are just unimportant to me anymore and I can’t imagine any kind d of shift, even once trump is gone, that would make them important again. Seriously, I’d be a shitweasel if the tenth degree to just go back to pushing and supporting candidates who are for a deregulatory agenda in certain areas of the economy. Not when our democracy and institutions need fundamental reform. My focus is on voting and presidential powers and the courts, not healthcare. Healthcare is in frustrating for me because I dread that Democrats, the only people who can save this country’s democracy and the only patriotic party we got left, will opportunistically capitalize on Trumps centralization of power in his wake, or not attempt the massive needed reforms just because the healthcare siren beckons them.

The politics we used to argue about are interesting. But also not something I care about. I left the Republican Party formally in June 2018. I’m never going back. My only political purpose is to make sure that baby Julian grows up in a functional liberal democracy. If it is high or low regulated or has M4A is beyond the scope of my concern. That just isn’t important anymore. Not when the foundation is rotting.

Oh no no no, I didn't mean you'd go back "to the party" - just that you'd go back to supporting the Regan-Bush era policies! Sorry if I didn't make that clear enough. I remember you saying how you wanted to go back to "arguing with liberals". Yeah, i remember you dropping out back when Roy Moore was a thing (and shockingly still a thing! >_<). I take it the plans have changed since then and I missed it?

I'm assuming this Julian you speak of is the new nephew in your life? If so, 1) Congrats, and 2) I'm kinda picturing a moment right now where you're staring at your nephew for the first time and it's the scene from "The Grinch who stole Christmas" where I see your heart growing 10x from what it used to be. ;P

- - - Updated - - -

So the clear winners so far are Pete and Bernie, and Biden is the clear loser.

I think that one is by FAR the larger takeaway here than the previous two, IMO.

Every poll so far was suggesting Biden was #2 - and that in Iowa it was neck-n-neck between him and Bernie. Then he ended up in FOURTH place!?! Third is debatable, but FOURTH!?

I think polling data gathering is clearly VERY outdated atm (in addition to the Caucus handling, as well)

[Hobb]

Will admit I'm surprised Biden is coming in 4th place, was expecting 2nd.

But it's only 1 state down and 49 more to go, with a varying number of delegates each so still anyone's game.

But at the end of this it really doesn't matter to if my first pick gets the nomination or not, I'll still vote for whoever wins the nomination.

[Fugus]

When Biden and Klobucha aren't viable, all their votes went to Pete. Warren was viable pretty much everywhere, so there was nowhere really to gain votes for Bernie, except maybe some Yang voters.

Also, Pete may be ahead on delegates mainly because there were precincts where Bernie WASN'T viable, but Pete was, in a greater proportion of vice versa. You can have more total votes, but if you're sneaking in at 14% and losing viability, basically all those votes are for nothing (in round 1).

Ah, gotcha.

Makes me fall back to my previous thing I have seen for a while now that either Sanders or Warren needs to bow out. And while I would prefer a president Sanders I would still accept a Warren so which one really doesn't matter. Just one of them needs to go and endorse the other because for a MASSIVE number of people, they are peoples top 2 choices and we don 't have ranked choice so they poach a lot.

That would rocket the other to the top and show where their voters are.

[nonameelf]

I think that one is by FAR the larger takeaway here than the previous two, IMO.

Every poll so far was suggesting Biden was #2 - and that in Iowa it was neck-n-neck between him and Bernie. Then he ended up in FOURTH place!?! Third is debatable, but FOURTH!?

I think polling data gathering is clearly VERY outdated atm (in addition to the Caucus handling, as well)

I think turnout was younger than normal which makes polls wrong most of the time.

[Telogrus]

This is a bad joke. It’s still at only 71%

[draynay]

Everybody look alive, it took another 11 hours but we gained 4% up to 75% now.

[Dug]

I'm just happy Biden got the ol right there fred. Screw that "electability" argument. Literally can't name a single policy proposal from him unlike the rest of the candidates it's all down to his "electability", yeah right.

[jonnysensible]

I'm just happy Biden got the ol right there fred. Screw that "electability" argument. Literally can't name a single policy proposal from him unlike the rest of the candidates it's all down to his "electability", yeah right.

'if you dont like me vote for someone else' turned out to be a bad strategy

[Shadowferal]

Biden needs to get fired up
Half the time he doesn't seem to be all that enthused about running, let alone wanting to win.

[Blur4stuff]

Since it was brought up about not being able to name Biden's policy proposals, listening to some interviews with Biden supporters from Iowa reminded me a lot of Trump's supporters.

It seems clear at this point that a huge bulk of those people telling pollsters they prefer Biden were doing so simply because they knew who he was and figured he had the best shot at Trump. They didn't think about anything beyond that.

Biden may end up 3rd or even 4th in NH and Nevada. If some voters can't get behind Sanders then at this point they're going to have to decide to either back Pete or Mike. They're gonna have to choose and not wobble back and forth because that's just handing Sanders the win.