After watching UNC lose (again – bummer) Monday night, I tuned into Fox News just in time to watch Klobuchar deliver (I was thinking) a victory speech. Turns out there was no victor, because the DNC changed the Iowa caucus format and used a new app that didn’t report results as promised. It was the DNC in a nutshell. Not only did they ignore caucus precedent, but they replaced the pencil with the next big thing – and it did not work as promised.
Iowa was a textbook example of why Democrats must remain the out-party. Politicians should adhere to precedents that we the people accept as the legitimate norm, but Democrats tried to re-define “caucus winner” in Iowa, right after trying to re-define “due process” in impeachment. For some reason, Democrats wanted to give credit to the person who came in second, which is akin to awarding participation trophies in peewee soccer.
This great idea traces back to their 2016 obsession with immaterial election results. When 437 super-delegates guaranteed the convention outcome (Hillary Clinton’s nomination), Sanders supporters couldn’t stop talking about DNC fairness. After Trump won a substantial majority of electoral votes, Clinton supporters couldn’t stop talking about the popular-vote. So, Iowa precincts had to report a “first alignment” (pick your candidate) and a “second alignment” (pick your second choice).
The Democrat solution invites calls for do-overs that sow division and confusion. When Clinton fell short in 2016 electoral votes, it was divisive to proclaim the Electoral College an assault on true democracy. After Dems fell 20 votes short in the Senate trial – and the Chief Justice proclaimed the president’s acquittal – they sowed confusion by proclaiming a trial without witnesses is no trial. Sorry, if you’re close, you absolutely did not kinda-sorta win.
And what’s up with Democrats and technology? After the Obamacare website, Hillary Clinton’s home-brew email server, classified emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop, a Pakistani felon managing House Democrats’ computers, the DNC ignoring the FBI’s hacker alert, and John Podesta falling for an email-phishing scam, Iowa’s skeptical secretary of state was prescient: “We have this pencil [and] this is how we vote in this state and you can’t hack this pencil.” The DNC can’t say it wasn’t warned.
It took until Thursday to ascertain the results of Monday’s Iowa caucus. Yet, there was Amy Klobuchar speaking Monday night as if she’d won, while every media outlet lambasted the DNC for its technology flop. As far as “good ideas” go, the DNC’s new reporting app was worse than your kid brother’s idea to corner the lemonade market by spiking it with dad’s vodka. Both are fool’s gold, but the DNC is not your kid brother.
For Democrats, Iowa was the most embarrassing moment – until the State of the Union address. While President Trump recited one dazzling economic milestone after another, the cameras caught Democrats rolling their eyes – even during the heart-touching recognition of fellow Americans. The night’s Demo-flop reached a mega-embarrassing crescendo when Speaker Pelosi made the “futile and stupid gesture” of ripping up her copy of the SOTU address. Now, Democrats want the Republican “shred video” removed from social media. In short: it was a good week for the RNC.