Candidates stepped into the void. Pete Buttigieg went first by claiming victory — misleadingly, in the view of Bernie Sanders, whose campaign responded by releasing unofficial figures showing his strength. Amy Klobuchar also joined in by citing unverified results she said demonstrated a robust performance.
Mostly Monday Reads: Of Caucuses and Kings
Posted: January 15, 2024 Filed under: just because | Tags: 2, 2024, 3, 4, 6, and Inclusion, Black American Women Folk Artists, Courting White Iowa Crazies, diversity, Equity, Faith Ringgold, Iowa Caucuses, Jr., Malcah Zeldis, Martin Luther King, We Shall Overcome 6 CommentsHappy Martin Luther King Day, Sky Dancers!
Time to celebrate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion! It’s also time to remember our history so we can work together to form a more perfect union for every one of our citizens and citizens-to-be. The paintings today are the work of two African American Women Artists. Faith Ringgold, 93 years old, paints with various materials. She’s an intersectionalist artist who is most known for her narrative quilts. Malcah Zeldis, 92 years old, is known for art that reflects biblical, historical, and autobiographical themes. Zeldis has painted themes that present Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King and his life and legacy. Both of these artists should be celebrated for their contributions to art and the lives it represents. Thanks to JJ, who sent me down this rabbit hole! Please spend some time with the links to their stories and art.
Today is also the Iowa Republican Caucuses. I find it odd they chose this day but probably felt that a holiday might increase turn-out. However, Mother Nature had a different idea. NBC reports this. “Highlights: Trump and Haley nabbed big endorsements in freezing Iowa. “The candidates braved record-low temperatures as they made their final pitches.” The Polar Vortex making its way here and will give us temps all day tomorrow in the 20s. Hence, I will be spending the afternoon wrapping pipes. Everyone farther north has the brutal cold.
I agree with this from Lakota Man on his threads feed. I’m not sharing his photos. I want it all to be about the images of these fabulous artists!
Ron DeSantis has banned Black authored books and African-American history from Florida schools. And Nikki Haley still won’t attribute the Civil War to slavery. So, any kind of MLK related statement they make today will be totally and completely full of shit and more Republican hypocrisy.
Trump is counting on the crazy vote. This is from Mike Wendling for the BBC. “Iowa caucus: Trump counts on evangelicals to carry him to victory.”
The video is bombastic, even by Mr Trump’s standards. Just consider the title: God Made Trump.
“God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,'” a voiceover intones over a minimalist piano track. “So God gave us Trump.”
The former president, according to the narrator, is carrying out the will of God. He’s “a shepherd to mankind” who will “fight the Marxists” with “arms strong enough to wrestle the deep state”.
The video is based on So God Made a Farmer, a 1978 speech by American radio host Paul Harvey which extols the virtues of simple rural American life.
Independently produced by a group calling itself “Trump’s Online War Machine”, the clip started to pick up steam a week ago when Mr Trump shared it with millions of followers on his Truth Social account. It immediately enraged some religious leaders here in Iowa.
“He’s not the saviour,” said Michael Demastus, pastor of the Fort Des Moines Church of Christ in the state capital. “Our allegiance as evangelicals is to Jesus, not to the Republican Party or to Donald Trump.”
But despite Mr Demastus’ insistence that many voters agree with him – and that a surprise is in store on Monday – opinion polls show a different story, with Mr Trump poised for a runaway victory over his Republican rivals.
Evangelical support is crucial here in Iowa, with born-again Christians expected to make up around two-thirds of all Republican caucusgoers.
They are a diverse voting bloc – made up of various denominations and including more traditional churchgoers along with others who may not even regularly go to a church, yet still define themselves as evangelical.
American People Series #4: The Civil Rights Triangle, 1963 ©Faith Ringgold
I first met these folks in 1980 when the Nebraska Chair of the Democratic Party sent me to try to stop the Republican Party’s foray into theocracy. I went to the County convention to save the platform from folks trying to remove support from the ERA and decimate Reproductive Health. Pat Robertson’s political campaign had ignited them. They had to be bussed in because they simultaneously showed up like some kind of cult army. They all carried the list of who and how they should vote on colored cards. The women were versions of each other. Hand-made pioneer=looking dresses of little floral prints, long dull hair, bowed heads and herded like sheep by men. I watched them later in 1992, screaming and yelling about ‘multicultural influences’ in the school curriculum. They never gave up, and here we are. They are angry, violent, and hateful. They are everything I always was taught that biblical Jesus was not.
This is from Politico. “Trump consolidates evangelical vote in Iowa. Kari Lake swooped into Bob Vander Plaats’ church on Sunday, a show of force — if not an outright troll — ahead of the caucuses.” Trump suits them to a tee.
Just as the Sunday morning service started here at Soteria church, a top Donald Trump surrogate and Arizona firebrand, Kari Lake, walked in.
To any political observer, it appeared to be an obvious troll. In a metro area rich with churches, Soteria has hosted several Republican presidential candidates in the past year. But the Baptist church, with its 1,300-member congregation, also has a well known parishioner: the Iowa social conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats, who endorsed Ron DeSantis and angered Trump and his allies in doing so.
Lake said she woke up on Sunday and just wanted to go to church.
But it was also a flex. For all the attempts by DeSantis and his evangelical allies to court the conservative Christian vote, Trump not only remains dominant with the group, but is relying on it to fuel his massive lead in Iowa ahead of the caucuses on Monday. A critical faction of the GOP that once blocked his ascendance here in 2016, evangelicals are now a primary reason he is so far ahead.
“Of course I’m caucusing for President Trump,” said Judy Billings, a loyal member of the congregation, clutching her Bible as she entered the foyer. “I just love the guy. I think he’s a total hero, and he has my full support … I think he’s the only one that can win and lead our country.”
Some Republicans are saying the quiet part out loud now that Donald has made being openly racist cool again.
Malcah Zeldis, Martin Luther King, 1995
Elizabeth Spiers has a great Op-Ed up in the New York Times. “What Nikki Haley — and I — Learned at a Segregation Academy.”
After her failure to identify slavery as the cause of the Civil War generated a wave of criticism last month, Nikki Haley assured her potential constituents that she had Black friends, and that she understood the war’s origins. Growing up in South Carolina, she said, “literally in second and third grade, you learn about slavery.” Conveniently producing Black friends is, alas, not surprising, but claiming she learned that the Civil War was a battle over slavery in second and third grade is.
Governor Haley attended a segregation academy, a type of private school established in the years after the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education by white parents who did not want their children attending school with Black children.
By 1975, the number of private schools in South Carolina grew more than tenfold, enrolling as many as 90 percent of the white children in some majority Black counties. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that discrimination on the basis of race wasn’t legal at private schools, either, but even today, many segregation academies remain overwhelmingly white.
Ms. Haley graduated in 1989 from Orangeburg Preparatory School. Orangeburg was the product of a merger between Wade Hampton and Willington Academy, also segregation academies, the former of which was named after one of the largest slaveholding families in South Carolina. At one point, graduates of Hampton received Confederate flag lapel pins, which were meant to symbolize resistance against integration. The year Ms. Haley graduated, her high school yearbook featured at most a handful of Black students.
I believe they refer to this as passing. No wonder Haley identifies as white on the census and other forms. While Haley haunts Iowa, our Vice President speaks at an NAACP conference in South Carolina. She also did this virtual speech.
Another black woman defending the rule of law in our country has taken the podium today.
Slave Rape #3: Fight to Save Your Life, 1972 © 2021 Faith Ringgold
Meanwhile, back in Iowa, John McCormack of The Dispatch reports this. “Courting the Kook Vote in Iowa, Vivek Draws the Ire of Trump. Ramaswamy is fourth in the polls, but top-of-mind for the former president.” I admit I’m giggling over these sparring bullies.
Vivek Ramaswamy was just going through his implausible plan for firing 75 percent of the federal workforce—“the first four agencies we’re going to shut down outright are the FBI, the ATF, the CDC, and the U.S. Department of Education”—when he was interrupted by a man in the crowd.
“What about the CIA, sir?” asked an Iowan named Nathen Trausch. “That’s where all the pedophiles are.”
“Well, CIA is a major problem, but they shouldn’t even exist outside of the military,” Ramaswamy replied. He tried to turn the conversation back to his plan to slash the federal government before Trausch interrupted him again.
“Department of Defense has 5,000 pedophiles in it that in 2019 got arrested by Trump,” Trausch said.
“Well, you know, they deserve to actually be held accountable,” Ramaswamy replied. He later promised Trausch that he would arrest even more child sex-traffickers than Trump did.
It was par for the course for Ramaswamy, who in recent weeks has made an aggressive play for the kook vote. At the December 6 GOP presidential primary debate—the last he qualified for—Ramaswamy emphasized that he was the only candidate on stage who would say that “January 6 now does look like it was an inside job.” He spent the last week campaigning with Candace Owens, a media personality who has made headlines in recent months for her anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric, and former Iowa congressman Steve King, who was stripped of his committee assignments and defeated in a GOP primary following his comments questioning whether white supremacy should be considered “offensive.”
What does Ramaswamy have to show for it? The final Des Moines Register poll conducted by the highly respected J. Ann Selzer found Ramaswamy ticking up a few points since December, from 5 percent to 8 percent, while Donald Trump ticked down a few points, from 51 percent to 48 percent.
Malcha Zeldis (NY/Israel 1933-) Peaceable Kingdom
Vivek, however, evidently can’t pass as white. This is from The Independent. “Voter tells Vivek Ramaswamy’s wife that some Iowans don’t support him because ‘they think he’s Muslim’. The presidential hopeful’s religion and skin colour are still factors that prospective voters are considering, locals told Apoorva Ramaswamy.” I also wonder about the current hatred of immigrants among Republicans impacting the few bits of diversity we find in its presidential candidates.
Some voters in Iowa are still hesitant to throw their support behind Vivek Ramaswamy because they “think he is Muslim”, according to supporters of the presidential hopeful.
Mr Ramaswamy’s religion and skin colour are still factors that prospective voters are considering, locals told his wife Apoorva Ramaswamy at a recent campaign event.
According to polling by FiveThirtyEight, Mr Ramaswamy lags far behind his three Republican rivals on both a national and state level – commanding just 6.6 per cent of the vote in the latter survey – ahead of the Iowa caucuses on Monday.
At a campaign meet-and-greet on Thursday, Ms Ramaswamy asked supporter Theresa Fowler “what do people say” about why they were not supporting her husband.
“Well, the only one I have and I couldn’t even remember who said it to me, but they mentioned his dark skin and they think he’s Muslim,” Ms Fowler said.
“I kind of set them straight on that. I don’t know if they believe me or think I was covering for him, I don’t know.”
Ms Ramaswamy replied: “Not much we can do about that one.”
No, there’s not much you can do about that one. It’s why we need to up the Voting Rights Act, which is something Republicans abhor. Why be a part of that? Why put your children through that? Why teach your children to be like that?
Have a wonderful day! Those Caucuses have coverage tonight, but I’ll be doing something else. I can’t imagine listening to the press interview any Iowa Republicans these days. It makes my stomach churn just thinking about it. Anyway, I’m off to load up on some hot steel oats and take on those pipes and faucets.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Terrible Tuesday Reads: Iowa’s Chaotic Meltdown, Clusterf#ck, Sh#tshow
Posted: February 4, 2020 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: 2020, Bernie Sanders, David Enrich, DeMoines Register poll, Deutche Bank, DNC, Donald Trump, Iowa Caucuses 34 Comments
Rainy Day, Columbus Avenue, Boston, by Frederick Child Hassam
Good Morning!!
Can we please stop letting Iowa go first now?
Eric Levitz at New York Magazine: R.I.P. the ‘First-In-the-Nation’ Iowa Caucuses (1972-2020).
The “first-in-the-nation” Iowa caucuses died Monday night after a protracted battle with advanced-stage omnishambles.
DeMoines Skyline by Buffalo Bonker
Or so we can hope. Iowa’s eccentric, endearing — and wildly anti-democratic — nominating contest has always been an indefensible institution. There is no reason why the most politically-engaged and/or time-rich citizens of America’s 31st most populous state should have the power to veto presidential candidates before anyone else in the country has a say. And yet, few of Iowa’s bitterest critics ever dreamed it would subject the country to something like this.
As of this writing, we are one hour into Tuesday morning and only a small fraction of Iowa precincts have reported their results. Officials currently say that they hope to have the numbers by “some time Tuesday.” The ostensible reasons for this are twofold. 1) This year, for the first time ever, the Iowa Democratic Party was required to report three distinct sets of results — the vote tally on “first alignment,” the vote tally on “final alignment” (when backers of candidates who lack 15% support redistribute their votes to higher-polling candidates), and the final delegate tally. In the past, the party was only on the hook for that last metric, which is much easier to tabulate. 2) To ease the burden of logging all this information from more than 1,600 precincts, the party developed an app for reporting results — which many precinct chairs could not figure out how to use. Thus, they began calling in the results on a telephone hotline. Much waiting on hold ensued.
Guess who pushed for the changes in the vote counting and reporting?
Politico: ‘It’s a total meltdown’: Confusion seizes Iowa as officials struggle to report results.
No results had been reported by midnight Eastern, and two campaigns told POLITICO that after a conference call with the Iowa Democratic Party, they didn’t expect any returns until Tuesday morning at the earliest.
Edward Hopper cityscape
The biggest “winner” might have been Joe Biden. According to the Iowa entrance poll, he was hovering close to the viability threshold of 15 percent statewide. But the questions surrounding the vote-counting served to obscure a potentially poor performance. The former vice president, facing potentially ugly headlines going into New Hampshire and beyond, couldn’t get out of Iowa fast enough.
“We’re going to walk out of here with our share of delegates,” Biden declared to a packed room on the Drake University campus. “It’s on to New Hampshire!”
Conversely, it might have delivered a blow to Sanders and Buttigieg, who appeared on track to do well in the state. Whether the victor turns out to be Sanders or Buttigieg or someone else, that candidate was denied the chance to give an election night victory speech to a nationwide audience — a springboard heading into New Hampshire.
Read more at Politico.
The New York Times:
The app that the Iowa Democratic Party commissioned to tabulate and report results from the caucuses on Monday was not properly tested at a statewide scale, said people who were briefed on the app by the state party.
It was quickly put together in just the past two months, said the people, some of whom asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Life in the Suburbs, by Leonard Koscianski
And the party decided to use the app only after another proposal for reporting votes — which entailed having caucus participants call in their votes over the phone — was abandoned, on the advice of Democratic National Committee officials, according to David Jefferson, a board member of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election integrity organization.
And let’s not forget what happened with the final Iowa poll. Ben Smith at Buzzfeed News: This Iowa Poll Was Never Published. It’s Still Influencing What You Read.
The Des Moines Register spiked its poll Saturday night, but by the next day it seemed most reporters here had seen the numbers — or something purporting to be the numbers.
Here’s what happened: As the Des Moines Register readied a cover story and CNN prepped for an hourlong special about the time-honored poll, Pete Buttigieg’s campaign complained that his name hadn’t been offered to some poll recipients. The pollster, Ann Selzer, quickly discovered the glitch in a Florida call center that triggered the error. It seemed likely to be just a minor error — but everyone involved cares about their reputation for trustworthiness, and they quickly decided to pull the poll rather than publish with doubts.
But the news organizations had already been preparing to publish the numbers, and a version of them began to circulate almost instantly. I won’t print those numbers: I haven’t been able to confirm that the numbers I’ve seen are the already-questionable official ones.
And yet, most veterans of coverage here trust Selzer’s surveys. So many acknowledged to me last night that they’d quietly taken the unreleased and possibly wrong numbers into account.
“Nobody was talking about Elizabeth Warren and now everybody thinks she has a shot because of those numbers,” said Rebecca Katz, a progressive political consultant who supports Warren. (It’s not the only reason, I should note: Other polls this week also showed Warren in a strong position, as did the last published Selzer poll in January.)
Read more at the link.
Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight: Iowa Might Have Screwed Up The Whole Nomination Process.
In trying to build a forecast model of the Democratic primaries, we literally had to think about the entire process from start (Iowa) to finish (the Virgin Islands on June 6). Actually, we had to do more than that. Since the nomination process is sequential — states vote one at a time rather than all at once — we had to determine, empirically, how much the results of one state can affect the rest.
By Ron Francis
The answer in the case of Iowa is that it matters a lot. Despite its demographic non-representativeness, and the quirks of the caucuses process, the amount of media coverage the state gets makes it far more valuable a prize than you’d assume from the fact that it only accounts for 41 of the Democrats’ 3,979 pledged delegates.
More specifically, we estimate — based on testing how much the results in various states have historically changed the candidates’ position in national polls — that Iowa was the second most-important date on the calendar this year, trailing only Super Tuesday. It was worth the equivalent of almost 800 delegates, about 20 times its actual number.
Everything was a little weird in Iowa this year, however. And there were already some signs that the Iowa bounce — which essentially results from all the favorable media coverage that winning candidates get — might be smaller than normal….
But we weren’t prepared for what actually happened, which is that — as I’m writing this at 3:15 a.m. on Tuesday — the Iowa Democratic Party literally hasn’t released any results from its caucuses. I’m not going to predict what those numbers will eventually be, although early indications are that Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and perhaps Elizabeth Warren had good results. The point is that the lead story around the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses is now — and will forever be — the colossal shitshow around the failure to release results in a timely fashion.
In other news, The New York Times Magazine has published an article adapted from David Enrich’s forthcoming book about Trump and Deutche Bank: The Money Behind Trump’s Money. The inside story of the president and Deutsche Bank, his lender of last resort. It’s very long and involved, but here’s a brief excerpt:
George Grosz, Street Scene
Last April, congressional Democrats subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for its records on Trump, his family members and his businesses. The Trump family sued to block the bank from complying; after two federal courts ruled against the Trumps, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case, with oral arguments expected in the spring. State prosecutors, meanwhile, are investigating the bank’s ties with Trump, too. The F.B.I. has been conducting its own wide-ranging investigation of Deutsche Bank, and people connected to the bank told me they have been interviewed by special agents about aspects of the Trump relationship.
If they ever become public, the bank’s Trump records could serve as a Rosetta Stone to decode the president’s finances. Executives told me that the bank has, or at one point had, portions of Trump’s personal federal income tax returns going back to around 2011. (Deutsche Bank lawyers told a federal court last year that the bank does not have those returns; it is unclear what happened to them. The Trump Organization did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) The bank has documents detailing the finances and operations of his businesses. And it has records about internal deliberations over whether and how to do business with Trump — a paper trail that most likely reflects some bank employees’ concerns about potentially suspicious transactions that they detected in the family’s accounts.
One reason all these files could be so illuminating is that the bank’s relationship with Trump extended well beyond making simple loans. Deutsche Bank managed tens of millions of dollars of Trump’s personal assets. The bank also furnished him with other services that have not previously been reported: providing sophisticated financial instruments that shielded him from risks and outside scrutiny, and making introductions to wealthy Russians who were interested in investing in Western real estate. If Trump cheated on his taxes, Deutsche Bank would probably know. If his net worth is measured in millions, not billions, Deutsche Bank would probably know. If he secretly got money from the Kremlin, Deutsche Bank would probably know.
Also, Trump will give his fake state of the union address tonight, and I won’t be watching. What are you thinking and reading today?
Manic Monday Reads: Iowa Caucus Day, Senate Gasbaggery and When will he take the sharpie to Missouri?
Posted: February 3, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, morning reads | Tags: Athenian Curse Tablets, impeachment gasbaggery, Iowa Caucuses, Kansas City 32 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I think I could have a new hobby from what’s evidently a very old practice! Ever heard of curse tablets? Well, it’s an Athenian thing and maybe we should bring it back! I keep a list of graves I intend to dance upon nips and clits up. (.e.g. Phyllis Schafly, Jerry Falwell and his spawn, Billy Graham and his spawn, you know the usual evil suspects). But, an Athenian curse tablet seems much more righteous and long lasting!
Thirty lead tablets engraved with curses have been discovered at the bottom of a 2,500 year old well in ancient Athens. Discovered in the area of Kerameikos, ancient Athens’ main burial ground, the small tablets invoked the gods of the underworld in order to cause harm to others.
These curses were ritual texts, usually scratched on small lead objects. “The person that ordered a curse is never mentioned by name, only the recipient,” observes Dr. Jutta Stroszeck, director of the Kerameikos excavation on behalf of the German Archaeological Institute in Athens.
Before the discovery of the 30 specimens in the well, dozens of curses from the classical period (480-323 B.C.E.) had been found mainly in tombs of dead people who had died in an untimely manner and were therefore thought suitable to carry the spell to the underworld. One had also been found in another well. But there was good reason for the transition of ill-will from graves to wells in ancient Athens.
The well where the curses were found was excavated in 2016 by a team under Stroszeck’s direction while investigating the water supply to a bathhouse about 60 meters beyond the Dipylon – the city-gate on the ro to the Academy. It was a public bathhouse, not a private one, that operated from Classical to Hellenistic times, the fifth to the first centuries B.C.E., and is thought to be the spa referred to by the comic playwright Aristophanes (Knights, 1307-1401). It was also mentioned in a speech by the 4th century B.C.E. Greek rhetorician Isaeus (against Kalydon, fragment 24).
So, as the Senate debates impeachment today … well, wait that might not be a good description. It’s more like as the Republicans spout noxious talking points while the Democratic Party folks beg for something akin to constitutional justice. So, as to whatever that thing is today that’s on TV with so much gasbaggery … consider finding the nearest well! We could start a thing!
I do have a well under my house so maybe I should consider digging the fill out for my new hobby. Those old holier than God dudes might be dancing with the devil now but their horrid sons are still plaguing the world. And of course, we know who needs to go to a devil waiting with millions of hints about what to do with him! He certainly showed Kansas last night that they were just fly over country! Or did he show the Show Me State of Missouri?
Here’s the headline via the Kansas City Star: “Trump congratulates Chiefs for representing ‘the Great State of Kansas.” My mom used to actually write for this paper believe it or not! Most of that side of my family is still all around the place although most now live on the Kansas side of State Line Road. Which reminds me to tell you that State Line is of the interesting roads ever! It used to be a stretch of road where of confederate Missouri folk frequently yelled obscene things at the folks from the Free State of Kansas and it’s aslo got Joe’s Kansas City BBQ! I’m as unlikely to go to or watch a football game as I am to enter a church any time in the near future but I do admit that this got a huge chuckle from me. Such a stable genius!
President Donald Trump congratulated the Missouri-based Kansas City Chiefs for representing the state of Kansas after they won the Super Bowl Sunday night.
In a tweet that apparently disappeared — but was captured in screengrabs — Trump wrote: “Congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs on a great game, and a fantastic comeback, under immense pressure. You represented the Great State of Kansas and, in fact, the entire USA, so very well. Our Country is PROUD OF YOU!”
We all know geography is no part of his very stable genius but to be President of a country should mean you know something about its biggest cities! At least you think that would be a skill set you’d develop after three years or so. Let’s hope Kansas and Missouri remember this coming election!
And, just to get you juiced up for those curse tablets! Here’s the guy that really really needs a billion or so sent so everything i hell is waiting for him! I should hope the world doesn’t act like his church because that would look a lot like hell! Just think what will happen to all those kids of they think all those over 40 mothers and grandmothers can dance!!!!
So, I should probably mention another state around there that I spent an awful lot of time in given my Dad owned a business there for over 30 years! That would be the Iowa caucuses
While Iowa’s always held a caucus, their popularity is only about 50 years old. So what has changed over the years?
There are two men that historians refer to for as to why the Iowa Caucuses are so popular. That’s George McGovern and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Both of them used first in the nation status as a way to show their strength as a candidate.
It all started in the 1970s.
“In 1976, when Jimmy Carter was here, these were very small events,” David Yepsen, of Iowa PBS, said.
A living room, church basements: those were the kinds of places where Iowans met candidates 50 years ago, offering a sense of charm in politics.
“I think the candidates like to try and recreate it, but the thing has gotten so big that they can’t,” Yepsen said.
Yepsen is a long-time journalist who started his career in the 70s, just as the caucuses were gaining fame. The democratic party was in the midst of reforms, so Iowa wound up going first. It wasn’t for any specific reason. That’s just how it happened.
Through the years, the Iowa caucuses predict a party’s nominee correctly about half of the time.
Usually though, the one who wins the presidency does well in the Hawkeye state.
“The only time that a candidate has not finished in the top three and has gone onto win the presidency was 1992,” Leo Landis, curator of the State Historical Society of Iowa, said. “That was when Senator Harkin was running and Bill Clinton comes in 4th.”
Here’s some Iowa Caucus Day Reads!
Ronald Brownstein / The Atlantic: “2020 Democrats Are Bringing Butter Knives to a Gunfight”
Heading into tonight’s Iowa caucus, the clock may be ticking faster on the Democratic presidential candidates than they believe.
All of the leading contenders have campaigned energetically and extensively across the state during the past few days, but none have moved to sharply contrast themselves with their rivals.
None of the candidates have offered a sustained challenge to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has surged to the lead in most Iowa polls and delivered an impressive show of strength on Saturday night with a raucous rally here that attracted some 3,000 people. Nor has former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, or Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota delivered much of an argument against former Vice President Joe Biden, though he leads them in the competition for moderate voters. “I think this is a pillow fight compared to previous caucuses,” says Jeff Link, a longtime Democratic strategist in Iowa.
This restraint partly reflects a widespread belief in Democratic circles that in a multi-candidate field, a conflict between any two candidates hurts both of them and opens a pathway for another contender to win. That’s famously what happened in the 2004 Iowa caucus, when the scorched-earth hostilities between former Representative Richard Gephardt of Missouri and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean allowed John Kerry to make a late surge, winning the state and, ultimately, the nomination.
NBC News: “The stakes for Biden tonight in Iowa are enormous”
No one has more at stake tonight than Joe Biden.
A first-place finish in the Iowa caucuses here could put him the driver’s seat to win the Democratic nomination; a fourth-place finish could end his political career.
No other Top 4 Democrat has that wide range of possibilities.
Pete Buttigieg admitted on “Meet the Press” yesterday that he needs a strong showing to vault him to the later states, but finishing fourth wouldn’t end his political career (he’s just 38 years old).
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren could very well win tonight, but that wouldn’t put them in the driver’s seat for the nomination — at least not yet.
As Democratic candidates began a last-minute blitz across Iowa on Friday evening, nearly a dozen men gathered in a cavernous YMCA meeting room in downtown Des Moines to have a conversation that felt a universe removed from the 2020 race.
They were part of one of the largest groups shut out of Monday’s caucus: people with felony convictions. Iowans are barred from voting for life once they commit a felony, and people can’t vote even if they committed a crime decades ago. The state’s policy, one of the strictest in the country, means more than 42,000 Iowans out of prison won’t have a say in choosing a presidential candidate. Almost 10% of the black voting-age population can’t vote because of a felony conviction.
For decades, the Iowa caucuses have marked the beginning of the presidential primary, and often set the tone for the election year. But the event has come under increasing scrutiny for giving some voters – namely white and wealthy Iowans – outsized power in choosing the president in a state that’s already more than 90% white. Meanwhile, the physical and legal barriers built into the structure of the caucuses leave out large swaths of the population, whether they are disabled, work long hours, or were once convicted of a crime.
So, why does Iowa still go first? And given that many newly enfranchised Iowans that work the local stock yards and do construction work along with plenty of other Iowa type things have their heritage South of our border … what does Iowa think about this?
And there is the whiff of Troll in the Iowa air …
Anyway, this week will be wild. Stock up on whatever gives you comfort!
And, what’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Iowa Caucus Morning After Live Blog/Open Thread
Posted: February 2, 2016 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Iowa Caucuses, live blog, open thread 86 Comments
Good Morning!!
This morning I learned on NPR that Hillary Clinton has been declared the winner of the Iowa Caucus, but I can barely find anything on Google news about it. This is what we will face over the next few months if she continues to win primaries in more diverse states than Iowa and New Hampshire. The media will work hard to diminish or ignore any positive news for Hillary.
Bernie bros at Sanders headquarters were all class/s as they booed and yelled “you’re a liar!” during Hillary’s speech last night. Neither Clinton nor Sanders claimed victory in their speeches, but Rachel Maddow of MSNBC (in her new role as unofficial (official?) spokesperson for the Sanders campaign) claimed that Hillary had done so.
https://twitter.com/gdebenedetti/status/694380368217128960
The media and Bernie bros seem to have completely forgotten that Iowa is far from representative of the rest of the country.
Michael Cohen of The Boston Globe with a twitter rant:
Still, I have to admit that I’m disappointed that Hillary didn’t win decisively. So it’s on to New Hampshire with a debate and a town hall forum before the primary next Tuesday.
Politico: Clinton ekes out win in Iowa against Sanders.
Hillary Clinton narrowly defeated Bernie Sanders in the Iowa caucuses, according to results announced by the state Democratic Party early Tuesday morning — a dramatic finish to a race so close that the Associated Press declined to call it even after all precincts except one had reported results.
Clinton was awarded 699.57 state delegate equivalents, versus 695.49 for Sanders, Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Andy McGuire said in a statement. The results were the closest in state Democratic caucus history, and 171,109 Democratic voters turned out to caucus.
With 99.9 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton had 49.9 percent of delegates and Sanders had 49.5 percent, according to the Associated Press. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley received less than 1 percent then suspended his campaign. A single precinct had yet to report as of 5 a.m. Eastern time; that precinct, in Des Moines, is worth 2.28 state delegate equivalents.
Here are some more links to peruse this morning.
WaPo: Groundhog Day 2016: Punxsutawney Phil sees no shadow, predicts early spring.
LA Times Analysis: A dramatically reshaped presidential race drives into New Hampshire.
ABC News: Ted Cruz Credits Attack on Donald Trump’s ‘New York Values’ in Iowa Win.
Nate Cohn at NYT: Why a ‘Virtual Tie’ in Iowa is Better for Clinton than Sanders.
WaPo: Candidates arrive in New Hampshire, pitching a different set of voters.
Please post your links in the comment thread.
Iowa Caucus Monday Reads
Posted: February 1, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections | Tags: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Iowa Caucuses, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz 51 CommentsLet the Games Begin!!!
Today are the Iowa Caucuses that will likely make or break a lot of the more iffy candidates hanging on to the slim hope that somebody takes them seriously. Iowa first is a long tradition with some interesting twists. Some of the things that I learned so far in the 2016 silly season include the idea of a “kiddie table” debate and that pundits take Uber and that all those Iowa Uber drivers seem to be the source of anecdotal evidence on voting patterns.
This Iowa Caucus is not the Iowa Caucus of my parents. My father was the Ford Dealer in Council Bluffs, Iowa for over 25 years. They voted in the same elementary school where I practiced “duck and cover” during the Cuban Missile Crisis and saw my second grade teacher Miss Irma Long cry as she announced we’d be sent home because our President, Mr. Kennedy, had been shot in Texas. Most of the candidates of the ilk we have today would’ve been a really odd sight on the stump back then.
I can only imagine what my parents and their friends would say if this crazy looking man from Northern Louisiana showed up looking as he does–which is like someone who’s been lost on an island for years ranting crazily from too much sun–to rally for a candidate. But, the same group of Baptists that harassed one of my father’s clerks for doing laundry on Sunday because they saw the steam coming out of the dryer vent is probably uber excited about Ted Cruz and the duckstasy of religious fever. They want to holy roll all gay marriage supporters off the planet, I guess.
While stumping in Iowa for Ted Cruz on Sunday, “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson declared that gay marriage is a sign of growing “depravity” and “perversion” in America.
Robertson, notorious for his racist and anti-gay remarks, said of marriage equality: “It is evil, it’s wicked, it’s sinful and they want us to swallow it.”
“We have to run this bunch out of Washington D.C.,” Robertson said. “We have to rid the earth of them. Get them out of there.”
Cruz followed Robertson on stage, calling the reality TV star “a joyful, cheerful, unapologetic voice of truth.”
Cruz is in hot water for a number of things. First, there are many they are still not convinced he meets the “natural born” qualification stated in the Constitution and Donald Trump mentions it every chance he can. Additionally, Cruz has used a push piece that has come under criticism by the Iowa Attorney General. The Strump is making a lot out of Cruz’s possibly illegal mailer.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump condemned mailers sent by Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) presidential campaign over the weekend, which implied Iowa voters had violated election law.
The mailer, which uses social pressure to urge potential voters to the polls, “grades” Iowa voters on their voting history — a practice not done by the state.
“I think it’s one of the most disgraceful things I have seen in politics,” Trump told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Sunday’s “Hardball.” “When you say violation, and then they’re giving you F’s for your voting records and they’re saying immediately come and vote. I think it’s one of the most horrible things that I have seen in politics.”
You can follow the link to TPM to see an example of the mailer. Meanwhile, every time Trump uses music, another musician tells him to cut it out. This time it’s Adele.
The Republican presidential candidate, whose slogan is “Make America great again”, has recently been playing Adele’s hit Rolling In The Deep as his “warm-up” music.
“Adele has not given permission for her music to be used for any political campaigning,” her spokesman confirmed.
It is not the first time Trump has been criticised for appropriating pop songs.
Lawyers for Aerosmith star Steven Tyler sent Trump’s campaign a cease-and-desist letter last year, after the politician played the band’s hit single Dream On at numerous rallies around the US.
The letter said Trump’s use of the song gave “a false impression” he endorsed Mr Trump’s presidential bid.
Trump responded on Twitter, saying he had the legal right to use the song, but had found “a better one to take its place”.
“Steven Tyler got more publicity on his song request than he’s gotten in 10 years. Good for him!” he added.
Blizzard conditions will be heading tonight to my childhood home in Council Bluffs which basically means there will be no fair weather turnout in a good deal of Eastern Iowa. It also means that youngest daughter will be digging out on Tuesday since she’s out there in the Omaha Boonie Suburbs.
My continued fascination with the parallels between Bernie and the Strump has me thinking on how the both of them seemed to have made the Super Pac and the billionaire donor class appear irrelevant. Trump is self-financing his campaign. Sanders has just passed a record for collecting money from small donors. It’s amazing to watch Jeb Bush struggle for attention while swimming in all that money.
With billionaire Donald Trump sitting firmly atop the Republican field, the willingness of big establishment donors to underwrite his competitors’ war chests has fizzled.
About 17 donors gave $1 million or more to groups backing Republican presidential candidates in the last six months of 2015, 60 percent fewer than the number who gave that much in the first half of the year, according to Federal Election Commission filings. And outside groups that can accept unlimited contributions accounted for about 27 percent of Republican fundraising in the second half, down from 78 percent.
Many donors contributed large sums early to create the perception that their candidate was financially viable to go the distance. Now, with the first-in-the-nation caucuses taking place today in Iowa and several other primaries happening in the coming weeks, much of that money isn’t being replenished as candidates enter a grueling and expensive phase of the campaign.
“Part of this is the Trump effect,” said Tony Corrado, a government professor at Colby College. “Some major establishment Republican donors are undoubtedly waiting to see which candidate will emerge as the best alternative to Trump.”
For some, that’s already begun. Marco Rubio, who has emerged as the leading establishment candidate in recent months, won the backing of two major conservative hedge fund donors — Paul Singer and Ken Griffin — each of whom gave $2.5 million in late 2015 to a super-PAC supporting Rubio, Conservative Solutions PAC.
Rubio’s also winning over some big money that previously backed Bush, who, as a frequent target of Trump’s jibes, has struggled to get traction with voters. After raising a record $103 million in the first half of the year, the super-PAC supporting Bush, Right to Rise USA, pulled in only $15 million over the next six months, the bulk of it from one donor.
Rubio joins Clinton and Sanders as the top fund raisers.
The former secretary of state brought in over $37 million in the final three months of 2015 and started the year with $38 million in the bank. At the same time, the campaign spent $35 million in those three months. She continues to benefit from millions of dollars raised by her super PACs, including Priorities USA, which said Friday it has raised $50 million through this month. Two other groups supporting Clinton, American Bridge and Correct the Record, brought in an additional $6 million total.
And while Sanders has sworn off super PACs and criticizes Clinton’s largesse, a group run by National Nurses United is backing the Vermont senator regardless and has raised $2.3 million, with about half of that remaining, the group reported.
Clinton’s haul also meant a windfall for the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic parties across the country, who worked with Clinton’s campaign to raise money for the Hillary Victory Fund. In total, Clinton’s campaign raised $18 million for the DNC and state parties.
“We’re heading into the first caucuses and primaries with an organization second to none thanks to the support of hundreds of thousands of people across the country,” said Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager. “We will have the resources necessary to wage a successful campaign in the early states and beyond.”
Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver touted the number of individual contributions — 3.25 million — the campaign has received. “As Secretary Clinton holds high-dollar fundraisers with the nation’s financial elite, our supporters have stepped up in a way that allows Bernie to spend the critical days before the caucuses talking to Iowans about his plans to fix a rigged economy and end a corrupt system of campaign finance,” Weaver said in a statement.
It looks like Hillary and the Strump are the expected winners tonight. Sanders, Cruz and Rubio all appear poised to close with some delegates since Iowa is not a winner take all state.
It would be entirely reasonable to presume that Bernie Sanders has momentum in Iowa. He’s gained on Hillary Clinton in national polls. Hekeeps pulling further ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire. And he’s made substantial gains in Iowa relative to his position late last year. December polls of Iowa showed Sanders behind by an average of 16 percentage points; the race is much closer now.
There’s just one problem: Sanders’s momentum may have stalled right when it counts the most.
The Des Moines Register’s Iowa poll released Saturday, for example, had Clinton leading Sanders by 3 percentage points. That means Iowa is close and winnable for Sanders; polling errors of 5 or even 10 percentage points are not uncommon in the caucuses. But it also means that Sanders hasn’t gained on Clinton. The previous Des Moines Register poll, released earlier in January, showed Clinton up by 2 percentage points instead.
The same story holds for other polling companies that have surveyed Iowa twice in January. A couple of these pollsters — American Research Group and Quinnipiac University — show Sanders leading. But they don’t show him gaining; Sanders also led in the previous edition of the ARG and Quinnipiac surveys.
Clinton and Cruz are relying on a substantive ground game and good commit to caucus plans for GOTV activities. Sanders and Trump are hoping for a large turnout and the ability to overwhelm the caucuses where they do have a base. Cruz appears to be the one Republican with a substantive ground game. Cruz has a natural base with evangelicals that Trump has somewhat eroded. Cruz goes after the right wing religious voters.
It’s little more than 24 hours before the pivotal Iowa caucuses begin, and the presidential campaigns are still going strong. Especially for Ted Cruz, who TIME reporter Alex Altman says digs deep to his religious roots to connect with his conservative voters on the trail.
“Ted, the voice of sanity, in this time of calamity!” a voter exclaims at a campaign stop in a public library in northwest Iowa.
Cruz has been touring several towns in Iowa, and is one of the few candidates who planned to stop in all of the state’s 99 counties.
“This is part of Cruz’s strategy to win it the old fashioned way,” Altman said, “which is to go hand-to-hand in small towns, visit people, and tell them why he wants their vote.”
Iowa is primarily a rural state although there are vast differences between the east and western sections of the state. It is home to several really good universities and to the Amish. There are still plenty of farmers there including the grandfather of my future son-in-law who used to buy his F150s from my dad. Iowa folks are also very fond of their agriculture and ethanol subsidies. It’s going to be interesting to see how they weigh in tonight. I’m seeing lots of pictures and shots from places I recognize that don’t seem to have changed much in my 60 years on the planet. Parts of the state do not have reliable wifi still. There is also a large contingent of immigrants that work the slaughterhouses. It’s a state that looks like Mayberry in many ways. We’ll just have to see.
We will be posting a live blog with the returns later tonight. Caucus doors lock down around 8:30 cst. The weather will be important as will the intensity of the supporters. Who do you think is going to win tonight?
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