Shadow government

I guess the first thing we need to dispense with is the notion that somebody "hacked" the Iowa results in order to change the number of votes or something.  Nobody is claiming that. The only places I've seen that argument appear, in fact, have been accusations of "conspiracy theory" coming from Dem Party hacks offering bad faith misrepresentations of what critics are actually saying. Don't listen to those people.

Here is what critics are actually saying about what's going on.

The Iowa State Democratic Party decided it would be a good idea to have caucus results reported via an app created by a secretive fly-by-night vendor named (apparently for the sole purpose of being hilarious) Shadow Inc.  This is a failure of basic integrity in that it follows an all too commonplace practice of handing out services contracts to consultants and cronies of various party insiders.  Which is to say it is a symbol of the very corruption that under-girds the party and which the Sanders campaign is running to dismantle in the first place.

State campaign finance records indicate the Iowa Democratic Party paid Shadow, a tech company that joined with Acronym last year, more than $60,000 for “website development” over two installments in November and December of last year. A Democratic source with knowledge of the process said those payments were for the app that caucus site leaders were supposed to use to upload the results at their locales.

Gerard Niemira, a veteran of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, is the head of Shadow. He previously served as chief technology officer and chief operating officer of Acronym, according to his LinkedIn page. In 2019, David Plouffe, one of the chief architects of President Barack Obama’s wins, joined the board of advisers for Acronym.

The introduction of Shadow's "bullshit" app is also a failure of basic competence in that it presented scores of caucus leaders with an unnecessary, unvetted, unsecure tool many of them were likely unprepared to use.

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.

Most importantly, it is a failure of democracy because when the results are released (and again nobody is claiming or has claimed that the results will be anything but accurate) that result will then be tainted in the public's mind by the chaos created by the app. Ironically what's likely to happen going forward is when we do hear complaints about the accuracy of the results themselves they will come from the same *Russiagate* bleating centrist hacks currently accusing critics of spreading conspiracy theory.

In fact, one would be forgiven for thinking this is exactly what is being encouraged. As of this writing, the party has, for some reason, decided to publicize 62% of the caucus results and then pause there for a news cycle or two. At present, those results show Pete Buttigieg in what is loosely interpreted to be "the lead" although he does, in fact, trail if we count the popular vote. Anyway, it's been just enough time for several rounds of "Gee Whiz Mayor Pete is strong" takes to make their way around the cable news circuit.  If at some point in the coming hours (days?) we learn that Bernie has actually finished first, it just makes everything look that much more uncertain.


This is unfortunate because, in all honesty, it doesn't matter that much what the delegate count coming out of Iowa is. The only reason anybody pays any attention to what happens there at all is because it is the state that goes first. The only reason that is even significant is because, once upon a time, Jimmy Carter convinced everybody that a media narrative about "momentum" was more important than the substance of how many delegates were won from a small electorate not particularly representative of the country at large. In other words, the whole point of Iowa is tone setting and perception management. Otherwise nobody would give a shit.

And now, thanks to this clusterfuck, the likely winner of the caucus (Bernie) is denied the prize typically granted to the winner via the standard punditry. Instead that goes, a little bit to Pete, but mostly to chaos. So, you know, good for them.  The good news for Sanders is, his campaign isn't really about impressing pundits and generating narratives. Instead it will head to New Hampshire now where it has a strong showing in most polls and, of course, a teeming grass roots movement as fired up now as ever.

And then it's on to Nevada where they're trying to figure out the next cool caucus app now. Can't wait to see what they come up with.

Oh also how is Joe Biden doing? Has he dropped out yet?