This morning I was on Facebook and a
liberal posted, “Libertarianism is just astrology for men.”
This
was of course, AFTER the Iowa caucus.
As of 5 pm Pacific time Tuesday, the results of the Monday Democratic caucus are still only about two-thirds in, and while there is no reason to suspect foul play or interference, the state party blamed a coding problem with the new app that caucus leaders were supposed to use to report their results. This meant that people had to rely on phone reports, which jammed up the phone lines because they were only meant as a backup. The end result, as one wag put it, was that it’s still taking at least 24 hours to get the results from a populace that is less than that of a mayoral race in New York.
Jeez Louise, even The Daily Beast, which does nothing but rag on Megan McCain, is admitting she was right “not to trust the Iowa caucuses.”
The results were so ragged Monday night that various candidates were able to claim at least moral victory, with Pete Buttigieg declaring victory outright. And this caused a lot of lefties (who hate him anyway) to declare that Buttigieg is a presumptuous little twerp, but I think he’s just learned the first lesson of real presidenting: Take credit early in advance of the facts, just because you can.
Of course, the real winner in Iowa was Mike Bloomberg, who deliberately avoided this political-media circle jerk to concentrate on Super Tuesday.
And of course the liberal media, which expect the whole process to be to their benefit, are so mad that they’re declaring in advance that this is going to be the last Iowa caucus ever. Somehow I don’t think so. They underestimate the fundamental conservatism (general, not political) in American culture. Nobody’s going to give up an institution just because it’s old, stupid, and incompetently managed. (In other news, the Senate is going to acquit Donald Trump on impeachment articles this week.)
Now, I was reminded by another liberal on Facebook that back in 2012, Rick Santorum won the Republican Iowa caucus 17 days after the event. Which merely proves that the entire caucus process is santorum.
The irony being that a large amount of the snag is supposedly an attempt to modernize and make the process more transparent. In addition to delegates, the state Democrats had planned to announce votes by precinct as well as total votes earned. But that just added more detail to a process that already has too much of it. Not only that, the process involved an untested app that people were not adequately trained on, called “Shadow.” Shadow was created by a Democratic non-profit called ACRONYM (I can’t confirm if the initials stand for anything) which was described by one anonymous insider as “far and away the most disorganized place I’ve ever been a part of“.
It’s actually the lefties who are pointing out how un-progressive and un-democratic the caucus process is in practice. They’ve pointed out, not just in this election, that the Iowa caucus takes place on a weekday, mostly during business hours, usually in rural community centers. A lot of people have to work or can’t get transportation, and this is a process that basically works best for people who have money, have time and don’t have to work that day – i.e. Old, upper-middle-class white people. It doesn’t work as well for urban dwellers who are “people of color” who don’t live in the main caucus areas.
As a registered Libertarian, I have no problem telling people to vote Democratic straight-ticket in November if that’s what it takes to flush the Party of Trump, but are any Democrats willing to admit that half the reason Trump won is because THIS is what he was running against?
See, this is why it matters to me. I’m in Nevada. It’s also a caucus state. And while the February 22 date is a Saturday and there is an early-voting period (because in Nevada, we think that a right to vote means it should be easy to vote and not harder than a self-appendectomy), the whole process has become questionable. Now, in another example of common sense, the Nevada Democratic Party just announced that they have abandoned plans to use the “Shadow” app. But still: I did switch from Libertarian/independent to Democrat in 2016 specifically to vote AGAINST Hillary Clinton in the caucus, and that didn’t work out, though that’s mostly due to Inner Party chicanery rather than problems with the caucus itself. But that reveals the real issue. If you have a choice between primary and caucus and you still choose caucus, that’s a priority of the state party. If we have a process that continues in a dysfunctional manner when this is not even the second election when we have told people how clownshoes it is, then maybe the duopoly and the state governments they control are dysfunctional.
I mean, there’s a lot of reasons to bag on the Libertarian Party, but one good thing about being so small is that they don’t bother with the giant national soap opera of a long (and expensive) primary season. They just have the national convention and vote for their presidential candidate right then and there. No, it’s not reflective of a state-by-state consensus, much less a democratic process, but can we honestly say that this shitshow is?