It’s not a conspiracy, it’s incompetence

We still don’t know the full results of the Iowa caucus.

Make all the excuses you want. I’m happy to agree that this result wasn’t planned, it wasn’t the result of interference by the Russians or Pete Buttigieg, there’s no evil mastermind somewhere chortling while stroking his white cat. It’s a fuck-up, pure and simple. The Iowa Democrats bungled everything.

They relied on an archaic mechanism to determine a ‘winner’ — it was so creaky and antiquated that you could predict confusion and flubbed results, yet they persist in sticking with it. Why? Because that’s the way they’ve always done it, and no one has the bones to insist on modernizing it.

It produced humiliating results. Individual caucuses don’t rely on reporting just the numbers, they have to put the results in rank order — so when there’s a tie, they can’t just accept it, they have to flip a coin to make a decision. A coin flip that gets onto the internet and makes the whole process look ridiculous.

In case twitter tries to take it down, here’s the coin flip #IowaCaucuses #IowaCaucuses2020 #IowaCaucusDisaster #Coinflip ps, notice how shocked and confused people are (and then they just go with it) pic.twitter.com/txKeGDvptL

— JustAnotherDeplorable (@AndrewBartunek) February 4, 2020

Sometimes, worse than ridiculous.

Watch Buttigieg's surrogate ‘randomly’ win this coin toss for a delegate. pic.twitter.com/1Magee4yTg

— ᏔმƦ𝔢ჳ (@mooncult) February 4, 2020

Their only attempt to modernize was to use an app…an app that wasn’t adequately tested, and that people didn’t know how to use.

Shadow’s app seems to fit that definition. Reports suggest that the app was engineered in just the past two months. According to cybersecurity consultants and academics interviewed by the Times, the app was not tested at statewide scale or vetted by the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency. And even if the app was working just fine, reports suggest the roll out of the tool was bungled, to the point where those tasked with reporting via the app weren’t trained to know how to use it.

This is what the Democrats always do. They fuck it up. Best intentions in the world, but total bumblefuckery when it comes to execution. Bush v. Gore, anyone? For that matter, how did W get a second term after he screwed everything up? Because the Republicans are evil, but they’ve got the focus and determination and ideological fanaticism to plow ahead while the Democrats are still trying to puzzle out how to count votes. Also, because the Democrats don’t know what kind of party they are — they’re still spinning in circles trying to claim that centrist middle ground, while the electorate is standing way to the left, yelling at them to come this way.

Oh, except when the Democrats decide to change the debate rules to allow a billionaire to buy his way into the limelight. If that doesn’t tell you how they operate, I don’t know what does. It’s all about money, not principle.

That also explains why establishment Democrats are so hostile to Bernie Sanders. He’s going to shake up their blundering, failed system.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the Republican party must be destroyed, because it’s a malignant blight on democracy. But now this current debacle convinces me that the Democratic party must also be destroyed or radically transformed, because it’s a neoliberal nothingburger populated with incompetent chucklefucks who only care about the status quo…which isn’t working.

I love Elizabeth Warren as a brilliant, hardworking wonk, but I am so fed up with the Democrats that I’ve decided that, in the Minnesota primary, I’ll be voting for Bernie. It’s the only way to break the cycle of failure.

My biggest concern is that we could have a motivated electorate that turns out in droves on election day next November to boot out the boob at the top, but it won’t matter, because the Democrats will fumble the ball at the last moment. It’s not the Republican coup that should make us worry, it’s that the Democrats will botch it all and accidentally hand it all to the forces of evil.