News: February 2020 Archives
The New York Times nails the subtext of my earlier post about the Iowa Democrat Caucuses: without secret ballots, have the caucuses been a fraud this whole time?
An hour after the caucuses began, the Iowa Democratic Party chairman, Troy Price, huddled in another room with other officials, none of them with a clear strategy to manage the unfolding chaos or answers to share with increasingly exasperated presidential campaigns. A conference call with the campaigns ended with Mr. Price hanging up on them, amid accusations that caucus results in Iowa may have been incorrectly reported for decades.As disastrous as the 2020 Iowa caucuses have appeared to the public, the failure runs deeper and wider than has previously been known, according to dozens of interviews with those involved. It was a total system breakdown that casts doubt on how a critical contest on the American political calendar has been managed for years. ...
"You always had to calculate these numbers, all we're asking is that you report them for the first time," Jeff Weaver, Mr. Sanders's closest adviser, said he told Mr. Price on the call. "If you haven't been calculating these numbers all along, it's been a fraud for 100 years."
Mr. Price ended the call.
It's time to end the caucuses. They aren't democratic, and it seems likely that they've been fraudulent since their inception. The new reporting rules simply revealed the errors that have been there all along.
The Republicans are going to get a lot of mileage out of Pelosi ripping up Trump's state-of-the-union speech. Here's a video of her ripping interspersed with clips of the outstanding American's that Trump recognized during his speech.
One of America's last surviving Tuskegee Airmen.
— Senate Republicans (@SenateGOP) February 5, 2020
Scholarships for quality education.
Young leaders.
Comfort for mourning Americans.
A soldier's reunion with his family.
"I tore it up. I was trying to find one page with truth on it. I couldn't." - Speaker Pelosi pic.twitter.com/gRummbjsBq
(HT: Powerline Blog)
Yes, the Iowa Caucuses were a disaster for the Democrats last night. But even aside from the execution problems they experienced this year, it's important to point out the biggest flaw of the caucus process itself: the lack of a secret ballot. Caucuses are explicitly designed to put social pressure on people's vote.
The Kremers plan to start caucusing for Pete Buttigieg. They say they like that he's intelligent and stands for what they believe. But what they like the most is that he can be a "healer.""The world needs healing," Bonnie said.
They don't agree on their second choices: Jack said he prefers Amy Klobuchar. And when Bonnie said her second choice was Elizabeth Warren, Jack replied: "Don't forget you need a ride home."
The couple laughed and said they drove two hours from Fort Myers Beach.
Sure, it's a funny joke between a husband and wife, but there's absolutely no doubt that social pressure drives caucus behavior. It's undemocratic and should be eliminated.
