How Did Buttigieg Win In Iowa? Two Words: Quality Control.
Somehow, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has won the Democratic Iowa Caucus. The Mayor from Indiana, a gay far left christian with a father who was a card carrying member of the communist party, is not the type of person who comes to mind when you think of a person resonating with Iowa voters. But Mayor Pete is all those things, and he bested Senator Bernie Sanders to take the victory in Iowa. This is a huge achievement for Pete; he was never expected to win in Iowa.
But the caucuses were tarnished by a catastrophe when caucusing ended and caucus leaders tried reporting their numbers to party bosses. The party bosses wouldn’t accept the numbers. They wouldn’t even answer phone calls.
They blamed the debacle on an app aptly named “Shadow,” set up by a company only months prior to the Iowa Caucus, and paid big money to develop this voting app. Candidates went to bed unable to know who won, or even how many votes were cast.
“I really think it’s over with,” John Deeth, a caucus organizer for the Johnson County Democrats, told Iowa City’s KCRG News. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the legislature, ultimately I think it’s going to be taken away from us.”
“As far as the impact of the Iowa Causes on the presidential race, it’s like they never happened,” Deeth said. “People were very, very confused by the preference cards, which was a new thing. People were getting them and, as we expected, immediately wanted to write their choice on them, immediately wanted to write their second choice on them, immediately wanted to write their second choice on the backside, even though that wasn’t the procedure. It’s not the fault of the local activists that the reporting system failed.”
As waiting for results turned into questions about what’s going on, the Democrats released bland statements saying that they were having “quality control” issues that they need to fix.
The issues, democratic activists are blaming, were with an app. An app named Shadow. The app was designed by disgruntled Hillary Clinton campaign veterans from the previous election. One of them even worked for Google. An app designed by Democratic Party veterans, technology geeks, and Clinton loyalists sounds like a great solution for a Democratic Party Caucus right? Wrong.
The app failed miserably.
Precinct captains all across the state couldn’t even download the app to share their results, and when they tried using a backup phone line to call in their results, they were never even allowed to speak with someone. It was pandemonium across the state. Why were the Democrats at party headquarters not accepting phone calls?
The Shadow app was designed by a shadowy progressive PAC called ACRONYM, which says on their website:
“ACRONYM is a values-driven organization focused on advancing progressive causes through innovative communications, advertising and organizing programs. Since its creation in March 2017, ACRONYM has run dozens of targeted media programs to educate, inspire, register, and mobilize voters, and has worked with dozens of partners to accelerate their advocacy programs and investments.
In 2018, ACRONYM and its affiliated PAC, PACRONYM, helped elect 65 progressive candidates across the country with new tech and digital-first strategies to register and turn out voters. In January 2019, we invested in Shadow, a tech company focused on enabling organizers to run smarter campaigns. ACRONYM is also an investor in Courier Newsroom, a digital-first local media company and Lockwood Strategy, a digital strategy firm. “
“When a light is shining, Shadows are a constant companion,” they go on to say.
Nevada has their primary coming up on February 22nd and the Democrats there were due to use Shadow app as well. Nevada State Democratic Party Chair William McCurdy II said his organization “will not be employing the same app or vendor used in the Iowa caucus. We had already developed a series of backups and redundant reporting systems, and are currently evaluating the best path forward.”
Strangely, Pete Buttigieg’s campaign paid $44,000 to Shadow in July 2019 for rights to some kind of special service the app provides. The only other candidates to make payments to Shadow are no longer in the race.
Today, ACRONYM made a statement on their relation to Shadow App.
For Trump though, the day was a great success. For an incumbent President to get 30,000 votes in an Iowa Caucus was thought impossible before last night. But that’s exactly what President Trump did. The media has shy’d away from this though for obvious reasons, instead focusing on Democrat Caucus Armageddon.
The Democrats may have been late to know who won the primary, but they knew real quick how many people showed up to caucus, and it is not looking good for them. Previously, Democrats predicted a record turnout for the caucus in comparison or beatable to 2008. But this wasn’t the case at all from what we saw last night.
What’s ironic is that the Democrats have touted a predicted record turnout as proof of a blue wave for November against Donald Trump. Instead, swing and new voters are apparently not excited by the prospects of a Democrat for President.
And on top of this, only 1/3 of caucus goers were first timers for the Democrats, much less than 2016 when almost half had never caucused with the Dems before. This is further proof that new voters do not want any of the Democratic candidates. Democrats had hoped to break their record turnout ever which was in 2008. Back then, 240,000 people caucused in the Democratic primary in Iowa. Early predictions for this year are at most, 170,000. That is more like 2016, and it may even be less. It spells very very bad news for the DNC.
When all votes are counted and the official winner of Iowa is announced, they will have a win from lackluster numbers. Bloomberg meanwhile is reported to have gotten 0%.
President Trump meanwhile has long touted that he has 95% support among Republicans in the party. But last night in Iowa, Republican caucus goers everywhere proved him wrong.
President Trump won the Iowa caucus with a whopping 97.1% of the vote, with both a record high win for an incumbent and a record high turnout for an incumbent. President Trump smashed records. In total over 30,000 Republicans caucused just to show their support for the President. This is widely seen as a rubber stamp of approval from conservatives in farm country, who the media has been reporting erroneously on as leaving the President due to his trade war. Obama for example, only received about 8000 votes to win his democratic Iowa caucus while running as an incumbent in 2012.
And for the few Republicans who tried going against the President, it didn’t go well.
Joe Walsh got booed out of an Iowa GOP Caucus last night while trying to badmouth President Donald Trump. The incident was captured on video which can be seen below.
Democrats went to sleep last night not knowing who won the Iowa caucus on Monday because of a fancy new app that was supposed to be used to track voting. The app has malfunctioned, much like the Obamacare website, causing the entire system to meltdown and chaos to ensue throughout the state. President Trump made jokes about it on twitter this morning.
“The Democrat Caucus is an unmitigated disaster. Nothing works, just like they ran the country. Remember the 5 Billion Dollar Obamacare Website, that should have cost 2% of that. The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is “Trump.”
The President then went on to retweet an image of a burning dumpster that was posted by Dan Scavino.