The feeling in the air right now is that Bernie is going to win tonight in Iowa, and may win big. We're going to see the first inklings of what his turnout and enthusiasm is this time around. It seems inconceivable to me he will lose New Hampshire. If he plants his flag in Iowa tonight with an overwhelming showing, he's going to be very difficult to stop. Iowa and New Hampshire, delegate-wise, don't mean all that much. But they shape the ENTIRE media narrative for the most important part of the race, and bad showings cause candidates to drop like flies.
The feeling in the air right now is that Bernie is going to win tonight in Iowa, and may win big. We're going to see the first inklings of what his turnout and enthusiasm is this time around. It seems inconceivable to me he will lose New Hampshire. If he plants his flag in Iowa tonight with an overwhelming showing, he's going to be very difficult to stop. Iowa and New Hampshire, delegate-wise, don't mean all that much. But they shape the ENTIRE media narrative for the most important part of the race, and bad showings cause candidates to drop like flies.
Expectations play a large role in all of this. If Bernie wins, but only barely both in Iowa and NH, then Biden will probably wind up out performing him on Super Tuesday. If Bernie outperforms expectations in Iowa and NH, then he'll have a clearer path to the nomination.
Clinton barely (barely) won Iowa last year, lost New Hampshire convincingly, and still won comfortably from that point forward.
Edit: It should also be noted that if Biden does noticeably worse than expected in Iowa, the trend will cut the other way. Very zero-sum.
In other news, It sounds like Rush Limbaugh has advanced lung cancer. While I think he's awful for all the things he preaches and how misinformed he makes his audience, I wouldnt wish cancer on anyone. I hope he can beat it, or at least forestall it.
I can't help but think of his cigar-smoking persona. Part of it was actual enjoyment of the habit, the other part was "the left is gonna tell us not to smoke?? I'll show them" (this was a thing 20 years ago). You can't find a promotional photo of Rush where he isn't smoking or holding a cigar. I mean, lung cancer seems to me like something you probably need to accept as a possible reality of your future if you consume cigars on a daily basis for 40 years. This has nothing to do with being happy about it. But the big bad government by way of the Surgeon Genral have been telling the public for that entire time-span that smoking is like injecting poison into your lungs. And it wasn't because they were trying to rain on anybody's parade. It's because it's the truth.
My mom had plenty of weight issues that also likely contributed to her heart attack and death. But you'll never convince me 20 years inhaling second hand smoke in the restaurants and bars she worked in nearly every night of the week didn't play a role. Maybe if we'd been MORE "politically correct" sooner about smoking, alot of people would still be alive. Getting cigarettes out of public indoor areas was the best public policy decision I've ever seen. The flat-out disregard shown to people who DIDN'T smoke all those years is, looking back, astounding.
Interestingly, cigars aren't really a major cause of lung cancer since the smoke isn't inhaled into the lungs (unless you're a bad-ass with no coughing reflex). I wonder now if he used to smoke cigarettes in the past. It certainly would fit the profile of his personality type...
Interestingly, cigars aren't really a major cause of lung cancer since the smoke isn't inhaled into the lungs (unless you're a bad-ass with no coughing reflex). I wonder now if he used to smoke cigarettes in the past. It certainly would fit the profile of his personality type...
I'm telling you, when it first started being implemented, this "no-smoking in bars and restaurants" was the "free speech on college campuses" issue of it's time. Smokers were incredulous. And it was the same tired line of how we were turning into a soft, less manly society. And as I said, Rush would NEVER miss an opportunity to stoke the cultural fires. Denying second-hand smoke's effects on non-smokers is probably even dumber than denying climate change.
From the time I was 5 years old going to visit my mom on her Perkins shift, I knew how rude it was. The no-smoking sections were pointless, as the smoke simply drifted across the entire restaurant. Smokers honestly have NO concept (or didn't, before the forced changes) of how literally nauseating their behavior could make other people. I don't mean that metaphorically. Headaches and nausea were common when I was around second-hand smoke when I was younger. I once worked valet at a casino and there was one car that came in frequently that had been smoked in for so many years, no one could take a breath inside of it without feeling like they were going to vomit. If you drove it down, you held your breath for the whole time it took to do so. Most of the time, we just left it parked out front. No one even wanted to deal with after awhile.
The most amazing thing about the change is that......it worked. The smoking rates have absolutely plummeted in the last 10-20 years. I suppose you could say education did it, but there was education when I was kid. We were going to be the "Smoke-free Class of 2000". We even had shirts made about it in 1st grade. That was out the window by 6th grade for at least 3 or 4 classmates. No, what changed was that people had to go outside to a small area to smoke. And it made them feel judged and ostracized. Which, quite frankly, they probably needed given their oblivious indifference to the health of others for so many years. This probably wasn't the INTENT of the law, but it was the big side-effect. Restaurants, bars, and places of work provided places to do so, but they put as little effort and money into it as possible. And it made people feel like they were doing something wrong.
Interestingly, cigars aren't really a major cause of lung cancer since the smoke isn't inhaled into the lungs (unless you're a bad-ass with no coughing reflex). I wonder now if he used to smoke cigarettes in the past. It certainly would fit the profile of his personality type...
I'm telling you, when it first started being implemented, this "no-smoking in bars and restaurants" was the "free speech on college campuses" issue of it's time. Smokers were incredulous. And it was the same tired line of how we were turning into a soft, less manly society. And as I said, Rush would NEVER miss an opportunity to stoke the cultural fires. Denying second-hand smoke's effects on non-smokers is probably even dumber than denying climate change.
From the time I was 5 years old going to visit my mom on her Perkins shift, I knew how rude it was. The no-smoking sections were pointless, as the smoke simply drifted across the entire restaurant. Smokers honestly have NO concept (or didn't, before the forced changes) of how literally nauseating their behavior could make other people. I don't mean that metaphorically. Headaches and nausea were common when I was around second-hand smoke when I was younger. I once worked valet at a casino and there was one car that came in frequently that had been smoked in for so many years, no one could take a breath inside of it without feeling like they were going to vomit. If you drove it down, you held your breath for the whole time it took to do so. Most of the time, we just left it parked out front. No one even wanted to deal with after awhile.
Interesting because second-hand smoke never bothered me even when I was a kid. I would smell the smoke on my clothes and in my hair when I went with my dad to the bar after one of his softball games but I don't recall noticing it while I was there. I wonder if that's another genetic thing?
In before @smeagolheart suggests the Iowa delays are an attempt to blunt Sander's momentum in a possible win ; )
It is kind of crazy how none of the results are being sent out yet. It sounds like whatever technology they had for the communication or tallying of the votes got messed up.
In before @smeagolheart suggests the Iowa delays are an attempt to blunt Sander's momentum in a possible win ; )
It is kind of crazy how none of the results are being sent out yet. It sounds like whatever technology they had for the communication or tallying of the votes got messed up.
In before @smeagolheart suggests the Iowa delays are an attempt to blunt Sander's momentum in a possible win ; )
It is kind of crazy how none of the results are being sent out yet. It sounds like whatever technology they had for the communication or tallying of the votes got messed up.
Caucuses are absurd. It's like dozens of separate neighborhood watch groups holding show of hands votes. THIS is not how to choose anything. We cling to this bullshit out of some sort of warped sense of "tradition". This is stupid, it's impossible to understand, and it's feeding into what is going to be Trump's main tact in the election, that it's all "rigged", so why bother voting. The Iowa Caucus should never happen again. Calling it a conspiracy would imply anyone actually knows what the fuck is going on. The word "non-viable" is being thrown around every 10 seconds, and literally no one outside of Iowa knows what it means. People don't understand that this isn't a primary, and their misunderstanding that this isn't even what anyone would understand as a typical VOTE will just feed into narrative. Christ this is dumb.
What I'm hearing from callers from Iowa on the coverage I'm watching?? Bernie is probably going to win, but not big. But the big news is that Biden is NOT doing well. At all. And Biden and Klobuchar supporters flocked to Mayor Pete after they were found "not viable". Was clear early on Yang and Klobuchar were going nowhere from the get-go. This remains dumb ten minutes after I first typed it. There are literally delegates being decided by a coin toss. In multiple places. Again, it is not a conspiracy so much as a shit-show.
In before @smeagolheart suggests the Iowa delays are an attempt to blunt Sander's momentum in a possible win ; )
It is kind of crazy how none of the results are being sent out yet. It sounds like whatever technology they had for the communication or tallying of the votes got messed up.
The Iowa delay.... it's ... blunt Sand... Oh you already mentioned it.
So Limbaugh is the same guy who called Michael J. Fox a faker for his Parkinson’s disease.
Hate to see it but I guess we all got to go at some point - and hey he might beat it he can afford the best Medical care.
Rush lied for years about the dangers of lung cancer and smoking/second hand smoke.
Just like Ayn Rand. She decried cancer-smoking links as a liberal conspiracy too. Right up until she caught lung cancer.
Here's one radio caller to Rush:
CALLER: If you’re in an environment where somebody smokes, you can get secondhand disease from —
RUSH: No.
CALLER: — secondhand smoke.
RUSH: No. You can’t. That is a myth. That has been disproven at the World Health Organization and the report was suppressed. There is no fatality whatsoever. There’s no even major sickness component associated with secondhand smoke. It may irritate you, and you may not like it, but it will not make you sick, and it will not kill you.
pfft. Everyone knows Limbaugh got his cancer from a windmill.
"We can't prove what has caused my cancer, but I was fine until that windmill was erected 200 miles from me. I am going to start a class action lawsuit...."
The Democrats really need this primary to go without the appearance of shenanigans. It's starting to look like the only reason Iowa's first is because it's the easiest to 'fix'. Total debacle so far...
The Democrats really need this primary to go without the appearance of shenanigans. It's starting to look like the only reason Iowa's first is because it's the easiest to 'fix'. Total debacle so far...
If it was going to be fixed, it would have been fixed for Biden and that is......not going to happen. If Bernie still ends up winning (which I think he will), then what would have been the point of altering results?? Also, caucuses don't really work that way. Also, Iowa has 45 delegates. California has 495. Other than media coverage and narrative, it's pretty much meaningless. A "win" here is like a 3-5 delegate advantage among thousands. Iowa and New Hampshire are media creations.
The actual results exist, on paper, from the people running the precincts. And it is actually the BIDEN camp who is now saying the results shouldn't be trusted, because they know they bombed out tonight. Again, any "fix" would have been to benefit him, and that has not taken place. The idea that there are shenanigans going on is being pushed hard by the right-wing Twitter, which is disingenuous concern trolling, and everyone is buying into it. The problem is that caucuses are a relic and are a ridiculous way to choose anything. But the results are not being altered. Every result was reported by the local volunteers in their precinct. It would be insane to try to pretend they turned in numbers they didn't. Democratic Party head honchos are not in control here. It's a bunch of locals in community centers.
I don't think that's even a possibility. I think anyone who won the nomination besides Sanders would inevitably be accused of rigging something, and it won't be hard to simply manufacture the "appearance" of shenanigans, details be damned.
Then what's the 'top-secret' behind the doors crap going on? It just seems like they're scrambling to build a narrative if nothing else...
It seems like the software used was glitchy. That's what they are saying. They're having to manually verify data. Yes it seems bad. At least they have paper backup, there's some states that rely on electronic voting machines alone.
I'm sure the solution Republicans will trot out to this is that gee nobody should vote we need to purge voter rolls!
"The Iowa Democratic Party said early Tuesday the "underlying data" collected on the smartphone app used to report caucus results "was sound" but the system was only reporting out partial data, leading to an ongoing delay of final results from the Iowa caucuses. "
@jjstraka34 "My mom had plenty of weight issues that also likely contributed to her heart attack and death."
Not necessarily. More "healthy" weight adults die from heart attacks every year than "over weight" ones. Despite ongoing studies, no concrete connection has actually been found between weight and health, with "overweight" adults living just as long as "normal" weight ones. Studies HAVE found, however, that "overweight" people receive worse medical treatment than "healthy" ones. Most doctors will assume that all their health problems are due to weight. A little bit of research will uncover lots of cases where people died of cancer or immune issues after being told by doctors for years that it was just their weight.
Then what's the 'top-secret' behind the doors crap going on? It just seems like they're scrambling to build a narrative if nothing else...
The release of wrong or incorrect data is also really bad. So instead of giving misleading data, they are giving none.
It’s super unlikely that this is nefarious in nature. If you were going to manipulating voting data, they wouldn’t have drawn so much attention to themselves.
The hold up is due to incompetence. Maybe some good will come of it, and Iowa won’t be first anymore.
Iowa isn't really a media creation, in current year it's actually a pretty good barometer for a Democrats electablilty. Iowa is one of those states that backed Obama twice and then went for Trump, and has some of the biggest swing counties in the nation. It's actually a really good idea, electorally, to use a place like Iowa to gauge the electablilty of a candidate for states that swung to Trump. I know they always do it, but especially now.
I have a big problem with Iowa and New Hampshire doing this every 4 years, but the real problem here is clinging to this parochial tradition of caucusing. The only thing that differentiates this event from Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is that no one gets stoned to death at the end.
@jjstraka34 "My mom had plenty of weight issues that also likely contributed to her heart attack and death."
Not necessarily. More "healthy" weight adults die from heart attacks every year than "over weight" ones. Despite ongoing studies, no concrete connection has actually been found between weight and health, with "overweight" adults living just as long as "normal" weight ones. Studies HAVE found, however, that "overweight" people receive worse medical treatment than "healthy" ones. Most doctors will assume that all their health problems are due to weight. A little bit of research will uncover lots of cases where people died of cancer or immune issues after being told by doctors for years that it was just their weight.
This is true, but only up to a point. There was a major meta-analysis in 2013 done of previous research (covering in total nearly 3m people and 270,000 deaths). That found death rates no higher for people with a BMI below 35 (up to and including grade 1 obesity), but mortality is 29% higher for BMIs above 35 (grade 2 and 3 obesity).
So...Iowa went about as expected--no one can tell who the winner is so everyone is a winner solely because no one was a loser, except Democrats who spent the time to attend the caucus. I suspect that the DNC did not like how the early results were trending so they shut it down.
Also, Iowa disproves the notion that we are ready for online or app-based voting. It did not work for an event which drew only a couple hundred thousand voters so expanding that to a system where millions are trying to vote would be an absolute disaster.
Normally I'm all for putting systems on line to make them easier to access, but I think sticking to paper ballots is safer for an institution as important and vulnerable as our elections. I'd rather we spend the extra time and money to make sure there's no chance election results could be hacked.
I don't know what people think was "shut-down", as if all the voting machines turned off and everyone was told to go home. There are no voting machines. Nothing about what happens in Iowa is in any way what you would have as a vision in your head of what happens on election day (which is why it isn't even on a Tuesday). It's much more akin to the town meeting in "Hoosiers" where Jimmy Chipwood says he'll only come back to the team if Gene Hackman remains the coach.
So...Iowa went about as expected--no one can tell who the winner is so everyone is a winner solely because no one was a loser, except Democrats who spent the time to attend the caucus.
There definitely was a winner and losers, we just don't have the data yet. So people claiming victory now could have egg on their face later, for example Buttigeg apparently declared victory before any votes were counted at all. Then again that might lend credence to your next statement...
Also, Iowa disproves the notion that we are ready for online or app-based voting. It did not work for an event which drew only a couple hundred thousand voters so expanding that to a system where millions are trying to vote would be an absolute disaster.
It failed in this case, that doesn't mean we need to ditch the system entirely. It could be fixed or tweaked.
Or maybe we should ditch it.
I mean, the electoral college has failed us twice two overriding voters choice twice but we still keep it around. There's a lot of people saying we should ditch it too. ~40k die a year from gun violence, maybe we should do something about that too.
I think Buttigieg declaring victory was the smartest thing he could do. The very very anecdotal results are positive for him and Bernie. If Buttigieg *doesnt* win Iowa, he is totally screwed. So the egg on his face kind of wouldnt matter since his campaign would be effectively over.
There is absolutely 0 evidence of any kind of shenanigans. DNC isn’t involved in state party operations.
I think Bernie, Buttigieg and Warren are the worst off here. Bernie because he seemed to be on track to win, and Buttigieg and Warren because this was their only real shot, and it was taken away.
I love the First Amendment, though. *All* hypotheses are "conspiracy theories" until evidence proves otherwise. Consider the Hoffa disappearance--no one has been definitively named as the shooter (presuming he was shot, as opposed to knocked out and put in a car trunk), no one has credibly confessed, and no body has been found.
Anyway...I see that they are going to putting up some results later today. I suspect Sanders is going to be in the lead.
I mean, the electoral college has failed us twice two overriding voters choice twice but we still keep it around. There's a lot of people saying we should ditch it too. ~40k die a year from gun violence, maybe we should do something about that too.
Once again, ditching the EC would take a Constitutional Amendment, a process which would probably take ten years to accomplish if we started it today.
Lest we think this is the first time Iowa has been ridiculous, apparently everyone in the world has blocked out the 2012 Republican version. Rick Santorum "won".....but that wasn't revealed until days later. Until then, it was assumed Mitt Romney had barely pulled it out. But it didn't really matter, because Romney came away with more delegates even in a "loss". And BOTH men got less delegates than.....Ron Paul, whose supporters used the in's and out's of the arcane rules of the caucus process to attain them.
Simply put, American elections from top to bottom are ridiculous. They are a combination of antiquated ideas that are decades if not CENTURIES old, and are compounded by having 50 separate states that have 50 separate sets of rules for who, when and how people can vote. We love to think of ourselves as so above it all, so advanced. We're backwards fools compared to the rest of the world in so many respects, healthcare and elections being the top two.
And frankly, more than anything, this is about Americans DEMANDING instant results. Since the entire thing is treated like a sporting event, everyone simply demands that the winner MUST be announced as soon as possible. God forbid we have to wait 18 hours, or 2 or 3 days. And I think this tweet sums up quite clearly why caucuses suck:
Frankly, they should toss the results from last night and move on, because the Iowa Caucus is LESS organized than the way elemetary school children choose kickball teams at recess, and just as "cliquey". When you read what goes on at these things you almost have to reflexively assume it's an Onion article. At this point I'm expecting to hear two Iowa housewives broke a 3rd place tie between Biden and Klobuchar in their precinct by doing 2 out of 3 Rock, Paper, Scissors.
For any given precinct, it should not be that difficult to hand out pieces of paper that state "fill in the box for your first choice" above a list of names, then "fill in the box for your second choice" above the same list, then "fill in the box for your third choice above the same list. Put your name and voter id at the line on the top of the paper then hand it to a precinct official to count the votes. Once all the votes are counted and the first, second, and third choice people are chosen, those results are e-mailed to the State chair.
Everyone has already moved on to New Hampshire. Iowa results almost don't even matter at this point.
edit/add: apparently Rand Paul read his question out loud, the one Chief Justice Roberts refused to read. The question mentions two people's names, one of which is the suspected whistleblower (Eric Ciaramella) who started the entire "Ukraine phone call" nonsense. That person's identity counts as one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington since everyone has known the identity for months.
edit/add 2: Iowa results via CNN may be found here. It auto-updates every 10 seconds.
Comments
Maybe we shouldn't stop him.
Expectations play a large role in all of this. If Bernie wins, but only barely both in Iowa and NH, then Biden will probably wind up out performing him on Super Tuesday. If Bernie outperforms expectations in Iowa and NH, then he'll have a clearer path to the nomination.
Clinton barely (barely) won Iowa last year, lost New Hampshire convincingly, and still won comfortably from that point forward.
Edit: It should also be noted that if Biden does noticeably worse than expected in Iowa, the trend will cut the other way. Very zero-sum.
In other news, It sounds like Rush Limbaugh has advanced lung cancer. While I think he's awful for all the things he preaches and how misinformed he makes his audience, I wouldnt wish cancer on anyone. I hope he can beat it, or at least forestall it.
My mom had plenty of weight issues that also likely contributed to her heart attack and death. But you'll never convince me 20 years inhaling second hand smoke in the restaurants and bars she worked in nearly every night of the week didn't play a role. Maybe if we'd been MORE "politically correct" sooner about smoking, alot of people would still be alive. Getting cigarettes out of public indoor areas was the best public policy decision I've ever seen. The flat-out disregard shown to people who DIDN'T smoke all those years is, looking back, astounding.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-rush-limbaugh-smoking-effects-cancer-diagnosis-20200203-4ma66mowazektovzh7hg2aynhq-story.html?outputType=amp
Interestingly, cigars aren't really a major cause of lung cancer since the smoke isn't inhaled into the lungs (unless you're a bad-ass with no coughing reflex). I wonder now if he used to smoke cigarettes in the past. It certainly would fit the profile of his personality type...
I'm telling you, when it first started being implemented, this "no-smoking in bars and restaurants" was the "free speech on college campuses" issue of it's time. Smokers were incredulous. And it was the same tired line of how we were turning into a soft, less manly society. And as I said, Rush would NEVER miss an opportunity to stoke the cultural fires. Denying second-hand smoke's effects on non-smokers is probably even dumber than denying climate change.
From the time I was 5 years old going to visit my mom on her Perkins shift, I knew how rude it was. The no-smoking sections were pointless, as the smoke simply drifted across the entire restaurant. Smokers honestly have NO concept (or didn't, before the forced changes) of how literally nauseating their behavior could make other people. I don't mean that metaphorically. Headaches and nausea were common when I was around second-hand smoke when I was younger. I once worked valet at a casino and there was one car that came in frequently that had been smoked in for so many years, no one could take a breath inside of it without feeling like they were going to vomit. If you drove it down, you held your breath for the whole time it took to do so. Most of the time, we just left it parked out front. No one even wanted to deal with after awhile.
The most amazing thing about the change is that......it worked. The smoking rates have absolutely plummeted in the last 10-20 years. I suppose you could say education did it, but there was education when I was kid. We were going to be the "Smoke-free Class of 2000". We even had shirts made about it in 1st grade. That was out the window by 6th grade for at least 3 or 4 classmates. No, what changed was that people had to go outside to a small area to smoke. And it made them feel judged and ostracized. Which, quite frankly, they probably needed given their oblivious indifference to the health of others for so many years. This probably wasn't the INTENT of the law, but it was the big side-effect. Restaurants, bars, and places of work provided places to do so, but they put as little effort and money into it as possible. And it made people feel like they were doing something wrong.
Interesting because second-hand smoke never bothered me even when I was a kid. I would smell the smoke on my clothes and in my hair when I went with my dad to the bar after one of his softball games but I don't recall noticing it while I was there. I wonder if that's another genetic thing?
It is kind of crazy how none of the results are being sent out yet. It sounds like whatever technology they had for the communication or tallying of the votes got messed up.
Caucuses are absurd. It's like dozens of separate neighborhood watch groups holding show of hands votes. THIS is not how to choose anything. We cling to this bullshit out of some sort of warped sense of "tradition". This is stupid, it's impossible to understand, and it's feeding into what is going to be Trump's main tact in the election, that it's all "rigged", so why bother voting. The Iowa Caucus should never happen again. Calling it a conspiracy would imply anyone actually knows what the fuck is going on. The word "non-viable" is being thrown around every 10 seconds, and literally no one outside of Iowa knows what it means. People don't understand that this isn't a primary, and their misunderstanding that this isn't even what anyone would understand as a typical VOTE will just feed into narrative. Christ this is dumb.
What I'm hearing from callers from Iowa on the coverage I'm watching?? Bernie is probably going to win, but not big. But the big news is that Biden is NOT doing well. At all. And Biden and Klobuchar supporters flocked to Mayor Pete after they were found "not viable". Was clear early on Yang and Klobuchar were going nowhere from the get-go. This remains dumb ten minutes after I first typed it. There are literally delegates being decided by a coin toss. In multiple places. Again, it is not a conspiracy so much as a shit-show.
The Iowa delay.... it's ... blunt Sand... Oh you already mentioned it.
So Limbaugh is the same guy who called Michael J. Fox a faker for his Parkinson’s disease.
Hate to see it but I guess we all got to go at some point - and hey he might beat it he can afford the best Medical care.
Rush lied for years about the dangers of lung cancer and smoking/second hand smoke.
Just like Ayn Rand. She decried cancer-smoking links as a liberal conspiracy too. Right up until she caught lung cancer.
Here's one radio caller to Rush:
CALLER: If you’re in an environment where somebody smokes, you can get secondhand disease from —
RUSH: No.
CALLER: — secondhand smoke.
RUSH: No. You can’t. That is a myth. That has been disproven at the World Health Organization and the report was suppressed. There is no fatality whatsoever. There’s no even major sickness component associated with secondhand smoke. It may irritate you, and you may not like it, but it will not make you sick, and it will not kill you.
Source:https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/04/17/we_really_should_thank_smokers/
CDC: "Secondhand smoke exposure contributes to approximately 41,000 deaths among nonsmoking adults and 400 deaths in infants each year. "https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/secondhand_smoke/index.htm
"We can't prove what has caused my cancer, but I was fine until that windmill was erected 200 miles from me. I am going to start a class action lawsuit...."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/03/opinions/iowa-caucus-is-an-embarrassment-toobin/index.html
If it was going to be fixed, it would have been fixed for Biden and that is......not going to happen. If Bernie still ends up winning (which I think he will), then what would have been the point of altering results?? Also, caucuses don't really work that way. Also, Iowa has 45 delegates. California has 495. Other than media coverage and narrative, it's pretty much meaningless. A "win" here is like a 3-5 delegate advantage among thousands. Iowa and New Hampshire are media creations.
The actual results exist, on paper, from the people running the precincts. And it is actually the BIDEN camp who is now saying the results shouldn't be trusted, because they know they bombed out tonight. Again, any "fix" would have been to benefit him, and that has not taken place. The idea that there are shenanigans going on is being pushed hard by the right-wing Twitter, which is disingenuous concern trolling, and everyone is buying into it. The problem is that caucuses are a relic and are a ridiculous way to choose anything. But the results are not being altered. Every result was reported by the local volunteers in their precinct. It would be insane to try to pretend they turned in numbers they didn't. Democratic Party head honchos are not in control here. It's a bunch of locals in community centers.
It seems like the software used was glitchy. That's what they are saying. They're having to manually verify data. Yes it seems bad. At least they have paper backup, there's some states that rely on electronic voting machines alone.
I'm sure the solution Republicans will trot out to this is that gee nobody should vote we need to purge voter rolls!
"The Iowa Democratic Party said early Tuesday the "underlying data" collected on the smartphone app used to report caucus results "was sound" but the system was only reporting out partial data, leading to an ongoing delay of final results from the Iowa caucuses. "
So too many candidates for the app?
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2020/02/04/iowa-caucus-democratic-party-blames-app-coding-error-results-delay/4653639002/
Not necessarily. More "healthy" weight adults die from heart attacks every year than "over weight" ones. Despite ongoing studies, no concrete connection has actually been found between weight and health, with "overweight" adults living just as long as "normal" weight ones. Studies HAVE found, however, that "overweight" people receive worse medical treatment than "healthy" ones. Most doctors will assume that all their health problems are due to weight. A little bit of research will uncover lots of cases where people died of cancer or immune issues after being told by doctors for years that it was just their weight.
The release of wrong or incorrect data is also really bad. So instead of giving misleading data, they are giving none.
It’s super unlikely that this is nefarious in nature. If you were going to manipulating voting data, they wouldn’t have drawn so much attention to themselves.
The hold up is due to incompetence. Maybe some good will come of it, and Iowa won’t be first anymore.
Iowa isn't really a media creation, in current year it's actually a pretty good barometer for a Democrats electablilty. Iowa is one of those states that backed Obama twice and then went for Trump, and has some of the biggest swing counties in the nation. It's actually a really good idea, electorally, to use a place like Iowa to gauge the electablilty of a candidate for states that swung to Trump. I know they always do it, but especially now.
This is true, but only up to a point. There was a major meta-analysis in 2013 done of previous research (covering in total nearly 3m people and 270,000 deaths). That found death rates no higher for people with a BMI below 35 (up to and including grade 1 obesity), but mortality is 29% higher for BMIs above 35 (grade 2 and 3 obesity).
Also, Iowa disproves the notion that we are ready for online or app-based voting. It did not work for an event which drew only a couple hundred thousand voters so expanding that to a system where millions are trying to vote would be an absolute disaster.
It failed in this case, that doesn't mean we need to ditch the system entirely. It could be fixed or tweaked.
Or maybe we should ditch it.
I mean, the electoral college has failed us twice two overriding voters choice twice but we still keep it around. There's a lot of people saying we should ditch it too. ~40k die a year from gun violence, maybe we should do something about that too.
There is absolutely 0 evidence of any kind of shenanigans. DNC isn’t involved in state party operations.
I think Bernie, Buttigieg and Warren are the worst off here. Bernie because he seemed to be on track to win, and Buttigieg and Warren because this was their only real shot, and it was taken away.
I love the First Amendment, though. *All* hypotheses are "conspiracy theories" until evidence proves otherwise. Consider the Hoffa disappearance--no one has been definitively named as the shooter (presuming he was shot, as opposed to knocked out and put in a car trunk), no one has credibly confessed, and no body has been found.
Anyway...I see that they are going to putting up some results later today. I suspect Sanders is going to be in the lead.
Once again, ditching the EC would take a Constitutional Amendment, a process which would probably take ten years to accomplish if we started it today.
Simply put, American elections from top to bottom are ridiculous. They are a combination of antiquated ideas that are decades if not CENTURIES old, and are compounded by having 50 separate states that have 50 separate sets of rules for who, when and how people can vote. We love to think of ourselves as so above it all, so advanced. We're backwards fools compared to the rest of the world in so many respects, healthcare and elections being the top two.
And frankly, more than anything, this is about Americans DEMANDING instant results. Since the entire thing is treated like a sporting event, everyone simply demands that the winner MUST be announced as soon as possible. God forbid we have to wait 18 hours, or 2 or 3 days. And I think this tweet sums up quite clearly why caucuses suck:
Frankly, they should toss the results from last night and move on, because the Iowa Caucus is LESS organized than the way elemetary school children choose kickball teams at recess, and just as "cliquey". When you read what goes on at these things you almost have to reflexively assume it's an Onion article. At this point I'm expecting to hear two Iowa housewives broke a 3rd place tie between Biden and Klobuchar in their precinct by doing 2 out of 3 Rock, Paper, Scissors.
Everyone has already moved on to New Hampshire. Iowa results almost don't even matter at this point.
edit/add: apparently Rand Paul read his question out loud, the one Chief Justice Roberts refused to read. The question mentions two people's names, one of which is the suspected whistleblower (Eric Ciaramella) who started the entire "Ukraine phone call" nonsense. That person's identity counts as one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington since everyone has known the identity for months.
edit/add 2: Iowa results via CNN may be found here. It auto-updates every 10 seconds.
I wonder what the 'defenders of the polls' on this forum think of this one? Fake news???