It Was A Set Up
More today on the actions taken by national Democrats to deny Iowans—and Midwesterners generally—the right to weigh in early on the presidential nomination process.
The target has been on Iowa’s back for some time, but it was brought to a head during the turbulent tenure of Tom Perez as chair of the Democratic National Committee. He made it clear that he did not like caucuses, regardless of where they were held…but since Iowa’s caucuses were the first in the system, they were the biggest mark.
Recall that the longtime compromise was to have four early states in different parts of the country, two that were primary elections and two that were caucuses. Nevada was the other caucus state.
Perez was against this, however…probably because it’s harder to manipulate the results of a caucus, harder to handpick a preferred candidate, harder to get independently minded voters to fall in line with what the elites want.
Recall that in 2020, Iowa and Nevada as caucus states were required to use an app in order to report results. Never mind that the Iowa way of reporting over time had worked just fine for Democrats, the DNC required that this one app be used. It coincidentally was developed by a DNC donor, who got scads of cash for selling the app to the party. Oh, and it was such a hurry up process that the app had not been fully tested. All its flaws were on full display on Iowa’s caucus night in 2020, resulting in a national embarrassment.
But again, it was not the fault of Iowa Democrats…it was the crummy equipment forced on them by a national party chair hell-bent on getting rid of caucuses. Not surprisingly, it was a mess…with very few of the flaws fixed by the time Nevada had its turn a few weeks later.
So you have a party chair that hated caucuses, requiring an untested way of reporting results…leading to a debacle that then is blamed on the state and the method of indicating preference.
Where I come from—and that’s Iowa—that’s called a set up.
Not that Iowa’s Democrats are blameless. That’s our topic for tomorrow.
