[Discussion] The (likely) Depressing Road to the 2020 Election Thread

It's going to be a circus.

Will 45 get impeached or step down or challenged? All 3? MAYBE.

Will the democrats eat themselves alive and hobble literally every potential candidate before the primaries are done? PROBABLY.

Talk about that junk here.

gewy wrote:

I could go on, but basically there are plenty of reasons to fear for the future of this country as a functioning democracy.

No, there's really not. This forum is so panicky sometimes.

Anyway, as for Iowa, it's really not a big deal guys despite what CNN wants you to think. Caucuses are complicated, there were bunch of rule changes this election, and they went with an untested app to report the results. The issue is only with the reporting and not with the results, so there's a delay of a day. That's it.

Yes, mistakes were made with the app and caucuses are dumb, but eh. Whatever. Go to work/school and you'll have the results when you get home before you even eat dinner.

Djinn wrote:
gewy wrote:

I could go on, but basically there are plenty of reasons to fear for the future of this country as a functioning democracy.

No, there's really not. This forum is so panicky sometimes.

Anyway, as for Iowa, it's really not a big deal guys despite what CNN wants you to think. Caucuses are complicated, there were bunch of rule changes this election, and they went with an untested app to report the results. The issue is only with the reporting and not with the results, so there's a delay of a day. That's it.

Yes, mistakes were made with the app and caucuses are dumb, but eh. Whatever. Go to work/school and you'll have the results when you get home before you even eat dinner.

EVERYTHING MUST BE A GATE!

Reaper81 wrote:
NY Times wrote:

Even before Monday, there were other concerns with the app itself, which was developed by a private firm called Shadow. Cybersecurity experts worried that it had not been vetted, tested at scale, or even shown to independent experts before being introduced in Iowa.

Christopher C. Krebs, the director of the Homeland Security Department’s cybersecurity agency, said late Monday that the mobile app had not been vetted or evaluated by the agency.

Look at these f*cking idiots go.

Wait, we're quoting Trump's cyber guy about this? Shocking he's saying things that make the Dems look bad. Shocking, I tell ya.

What if I were to say that no app had ever been vetted or evaluated by the agency? Cause that's probably a true statement. I'm not sure if I were an Democrat organization would I send my app to a Trump-created organization.

ruhk wrote:

It’s still sh*tty, but I’m pretty certain this was just a reaction to Buttigieg officially declaring himself the winner several hours ago.

Exactly. Pete calling himself victorious on Twitter and apparently on CNN as well seems a lot sh*ttier.

I guess two sh*ts don't make a right but still. I can't be mad at Bernie about this.

the Democrats' new slogan should be: "move slow, but still manage to break things"

It’s just frustrating that Iowa knew this was coming and, from what I’m reading, instead of developing and testing in a timely manner they waited till the last minute and had an app developed in 2 months. It certainly doesn’t seem like they did any load testing of the app.

And from an optics perspective- Did you REALLY have to award the contract to a company called, “Shadow?”

We're in a period of our political history warning of the dangerous vulnerabilities of electronic voting and what do they do at the caucuses? Make it more electronic-y!

JC wrote:

It’s just frustrating that Iowa knew this was coming and, from what I’m reading, instead of developing and testing in a timely manner they waited till the last minute and had an app developed in 2 months. It certainly doesn’t seem like they did any load testing of the app.

this should be the Democratic appeal to coal miners: please re-train and learn to code, because we sure can't!

And from an optics perspective- Did you REALLY have to award the contract to a company called, “Shadow?”

behind the scenes as they try and fix this...

As and Iowan, it is quite embarrassing.

Of course considering our low population, our lack of diversity, etc. I am actually hoping it makes us less important. We shouldn't be nearly as important on the political stage. Perhaps this will push us out of the limelight.

they should just cancel the results and give them all Participation Trophies.

Spoiler:

I am actually a fan of participation trophies when not trying to deal with watching disasters like this.

farley3k wrote:

As and Iowan, it is quite embarrassing.

Of course considering our low population, our lack of diversity, etc. I am actually hoping it makes us less important. We shouldn't be nearly as important on the political stage. Perhaps this will push us out of the limelight.

Been heading this way a long time as more and more states moved earlier. This may simply be the straw to break yall's back or whatever.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

they should just cancel the results and give them all Participation Trophies.

Spoiler:

I am actually a fan of participation trophies when not trying to deal with watching disasters like this.

I copy-pasted that post in an Evernote 3 years ago and still ocassionally trot it out. It's over HERE if anyone's interested.

Trump’s popularity is the highest it’s been at 49% with a big spike from independents. Not to sound alarmist but that’s plenty enough to win if he keeps loyalists and can win the center right in key states.

And fair or not, there’s a perception that if the Democrats can’t properly organize a caucus in a small state how can they run the country. Though I’m not sure how much of this is due to the national party dropping the ball or local snafus. (Is the national party even allowed to help coordinate things?)

dejanzie wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

they should just cancel the results and give them all Participation Trophies.

Spoiler:

I am actually a fan of participation trophies when not trying to deal with watching disasters like this.

I copy-pasted that post in an Evernote 3 years ago and still ocassionally trot it out. It's over HERE if anyone's interested.

I'm...speechless!

: )

garion333 wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:
NY Times wrote:

Even before Monday, there were other concerns with the app itself, which was developed by a private firm called Shadow. Cybersecurity experts worried that it had not been vetted, tested at scale, or even shown to independent experts before being introduced in Iowa.

Christopher C. Krebs, the director of the Homeland Security Department’s cybersecurity agency, said late Monday that the mobile app had not been vetted or evaluated by the agency.

Look at these f*cking idiots go.

Wait, we're quoting Trump's cyber guy about this? Shocking he's saying things that make the Dems look bad. Shocking, I tell ya.

What if I were to say that no app had ever been vetted or evaluated by the agency? Cause that's probably a true statement. I'm not sure if I were an Democrat organization would I send my app to a Trump-created organization.

I am not shocked that a system guy would say a thing that supports the system.

I am shocked that this is the very best that the Dems can offer up.

I'll go back into hiding with an occasional lurking readthrough, but figured at least some of you might be interested in a report from my precinct with the obvious full disclaimer that this is just one precinct out of hundreds in the state.

I was the Sanders whip for my precinct in Cedar Rapids. The precinct, interestingly enough, covers three main neighborhoods: an affluent neighborhood (very upper-middle), a neighborhood that is solidly middle to lower-middle class (where I live), and a lower class neighborhood comprised of some of the city's cheaper apartment complexes and a trailer park. So while yes, this is Iowa and the typical Mayonnaise jokes apply, it's a precinct that represents a decent spectrum of the economic and age strata.

The Sanders crowd was mostly lower to lower-middle class, mostly people in their 40's or younger (estimating here), roughly 60% were women, and the few minorities who were present in our caucus all supported Sanders which actually surprised me given all the complaints we hear about "another old white guy". We did have a small group of what would qualify as "Bernie Bros" -- none of whom have helped us actually campaign -- but they were at most 10% of the Sanders total.

My estimates are sadly just that -- estimates -- because while I had intended to take more detailed notes while handling the count, our ambassador flaked out on us so I spent too much of my time having to completely step out of my comfort zone and reach out to other groups & people in the "try to convince others to join you" parts of the night. All credit for us being one of the two most organized groups of the night goes to my precinct captain -- she was exemplary and it is heartening to know that like a growing number of Millenials seem to be doing, she is striving to take a more active role in local politics and is already a leader in the city teacher's union. The other most organized group of the night was the Warren crew, more on that in a moment.

Before the first alignment, each campaign group had the opportunity to have their leader give a 1-minute speech to the room about why to choose their candidate. The Sanders and Warren captains spoke about the candidates' policy platforms and why they're important, the Klobuchar captain spoke about Amy's experience in getting legislation passed, the Biden captain spoke about his military experience (his, not Joe's lack of it) and how we need to "get rid of the dog poop in the room" (I lost track of how many times he actually said "dog poop"), and the Buttigieg captain talked about his experience (his, not Pete's) and how Pete was mayor of a city like Cedar Rapids (but didn't explain how that experience directly related to a presidential run). None of the other campaigns sent someone up to speak.

During the first alignment, I spent time with the smallest groups who were either obviously or very likely not viable, mostly listening to them discuss what they should do. The campaign volunteers like me had lanyards with our campaign and role designation on them, so this wasn't any sort of "spy" stuff. I talked with the Yang folks, noting the platform similarities and encouraging them to consider Sanders in the second alignment, applauding them for standing firm in the first alignment to make their statement of support for Yang. I visited with some of the Klobuchar folks as they were firmly below the viability threshold, but was not terribly surprised to learn that they were more in line with Warren and Pete. I stopped over by the three people standing for Gabbard, and spent the most time talking with them out of sheer curiosity, because the more they said, the more I wondered why they were even at a Democrat caucus. They all claimed the impeachment was a sham, that the House never should have passed articles of impeachment, that I needed to watch the full Trump defense team's presentation from Saturday because it was ironclad and would show me everything I needed to know about this witch hunt (their words, not mine), that Gabbard was the only candidate worth anything, and when I turned to one of my favorite questions to ask people during this whole process (who is your favorite president in the history of the US), the only one who answered said "Reagan".

My apologies, I didn't bother talking to the one affluent-looking gentleman standing for Bloomberg.

I spent some time with a few people in the undecided center of the room, mostly with an elderly lady who was actually from my neighborhood but whom I haven't met before. We actually ended up just friendly chatting for a good bit of it, so it was nice to get to know another neighbor from just a couple blocks away. She was very thoughtful and being careful with the decision process, as the most important thing to her -- as I believe it likely is for most of us -- was to get someone with true integrity back into the leadership of our nation. Her other biggest concerns were gun control and ending our horrible treatment of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. I noted that of course I'd love it if she joined the Sanders contingent, but thanked her just for being there because we're all in this together, and that no matter who she picked we're all on the same side of the fight for the soul of our nation. And yes, I mean that -- I'm just noting that she and I had such a good heartfelt conversation and to me it was one of a few moments in the night that were encouraging in building bonds amongst us that despite a contentious candidate selection process for our nation, we need to continue building a community to stand together stronger in the end.

Looking over the Biden and Buttigieg group as we commenced the first alignment count, Biden's support was very heavily tilted towards the elderly (no one looked younger than perhaps qualifying as a Gen X'er, and there were few of those) and Pete's support was mostly distributed from middle age to youths (high school or college age) and appeared to be primarily from the affluent neighborhood. Yes, I know it's stereotyping, but speaking from experience there is a distinct difference in the bearing and dress of people from the affluent neighborhood in my precinct compared to those in the other two neighborhoods. It's a stratification for which I don't understand cause, but the empirical evidence is abundant and quickly became apparent to me during the years my stepdaughter attended the local elementary school (and even the kids aligned themselves as they progressed through the years there to a degree that disturbed me).

After the first alignment, the only viable groups were Sanders, Buttigieg, and Biden (in that order). I was genuinely shocked that Warren's group wasn't viable -- at the start of the night they were the second biggest group at a glance after Sanders.

After reviewing the numbers with my captain, I headed over to find the captain for the Warren campaign in the hopes of teaming up to get them to viability as well as perhaps secure a second delegate for Sanders. Yes, this ridiculous ball of anxiety and stress attempted to broker a caucus. I didn't really think about it in that term, I just wanted my two favorite candidates (Sanders and Warren) to get the most delegates together and that overrode my fear and anxiety in the moment.

I caught the Warren captain as she was heading back to her group with some new folks and learned that she had gotten a good chunk of the Klobuchar supporters to join her. I think by her expression she was surprised to see my immediate and genuine excitement to learn that this brought the Warren crew into viability. With no other non-viable candidate having a large enough group to become viable now, that meant that of the 5 delegates my precinct would commit, one each was going to Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, and Biden. Now it was really down to securing a second for one of the groups. I talked with the Warren folks a bit to try to appeal to the commonality of our candidates, noting that they were well over the viability threshold now but still well below Pete & Joe. With Sanders still holding a solid lead my thought was that it made sense for a few of the new Warren folks to commit for Sanders so that the two candidates would secure three delegates between us.

Bear in mind that with the new rules this year, if you commit to a viable candidate in the first alignment, you are locked in and cannot change for the second alignment. So I really could only appeal to the Klobuchar people who moved over to Warren, not to the solid Warren supporters.

Unfortunately I couldn't convince anyone, but that's ok. I still thanked them again for letting me talk with them, and gave them another heartfelt congratulations for securing a candidate for Warren. There may have been some high-fives involved.

During this time, my captain had been focused on the remaining undecideds in the middle, and the Klobuchar folks who hadn't moved over to Warren. I tried once more to appeal to the Yang crew, but most of them ended up choosing to support Pete. They were less focused on specific policies, with their interest focusing on his youth, military experience, and tech-bro-ness.

In the end, we only picked up one person who hadn't already settled on Sanders in the first alignment. Disappointing, but neither my captain nor I are particularly gifted or experienced proselytizers and only a couple other people from our group even tried to talk to the other campaigns, so it's not surprising. The most evangelical (not in a religious sense) people in the room were in Pete's corner, so it was not surprising to see that in the second alignment count, they picked up the most new supporters.

It wasn't quite enough though -- we still had the largest group, so the fifth delegate went to Sanders. Final count for my precinct delegates in descending order of supporters: Sanders 2, Buttigieg 1, Biden 1, Warren 1.

Most people left at this point. The rest of us settled down for the closing business items. My captain and I were the only two to volunteer as the official delegates for Sanders to the county convention in March, but we did get a couple alternates as well. When the precinct chair asked who wished to be considered for the platform committee, I was the only person who expressed interest (and am fairly enthusiastic about it). We needed to designate two, so I ended up encouraging my captain and her husband enough that her husband volunteered, so we'll be committee buddies. I was honestly surprised that neither the Buttigieg nor the Biden campaign groups expressed any interest in joining the committee, since we will be working with the other committee members of our county to write planks to be submitted to the state party for consideration. If you have issues and policies that are clearly important enough to drive you to caucus for a candidate, why wouldn't you want to make sure your candidate has representation in establishing elements of those issues and policies in the official party stances? I don't understand.

To wrap up the caucus, we all helped clean up the room (the elementary school's gym served as our location), filled out any forms necessary for us delegates, I thanked everyone I could for attending and tried to encourage everyone -- regardless of their chosen candidate -- to keep up their morale and remember that regardless of which candidate is ultimately chosen to remember that we're all neighbors in a fairly small precinct -- our kids attend school together, we share the same utilities and services and taxes, and we're all ultimately fighting for the same thing: leadership ranging from locally all the way up to nationally of integrity, who are working to improve the lives of all Americans regardless of our differences and to ultimately bring us together into more united communities that stand up for each other and work to lift us all up, not just a limited selection.

I don't know how far I will go in this process -- maybe I won't be involved beyond my county. I don't know if I'm even actually going to make a difference.

But godsdammitall, I'm going to keep trying -- trying to get important issues addressed for my community, my state, and our nation; trying to cultivate unity amongst our wide-ranging community despite the challenge of having such a diverse "big tent"; trying to remind people to look beyond the bullsh*t sports rivalry tribalism that we keep devolving into and to instead remember our very real human ties; trying to do whatever I can in my own pathetic and potentially meaningless way to still make even just a small positive difference.

But I'm still just a horribly flawed individual with no real influence to wield. And I'm still plagued with my own weaknesses, such as having any patience or tolerance for some of the more bitter and divisive people amongst us. It's part of why GWJ has become such a pain point for me since 2016 and I've mostly stayed away. I miss part of the community, but I also have grown to loathe part of it. And I apologize but I am weak enough that the part I loathe gets too much into the way of the part I miss. I'm sorry that even just saying this no doubt pisses some of you off. Maybe I was a fool to even write this post up. I mostly just wanted to share my caucus experience -- yes, it's all anecdotal and may not mean anything in the bigger picture, but sometimes we get too wrapped up in the bigger picture to think about the importance of the little picture too.

And hell, while my internal conflict with regards to the GWJ community is obviously a big deal to me and has very clearly weighed on me a lot over the last few years, I'm under no illusion of grandeur -- I know that I mean little to nothing to this - or any - community at large, so a lot of this maundering lament on my part is pure navel-gazing indulgence. Hell, I don't even know what the point of typing any more of this is, so... yeah. Sorry. I'll stop here.

Kind regards,

Chris

Well... huh. Okay.

Farscry wrote:

And hell, while my internal conflict with regards to the GWJ community is obviously a big deal to me and has very clearly weighed on me a lot over the last few years, I'm under no illusion of grandeur -- I know that I mean little to nothing to this - or any - community at large, so a lot of this maundering lament on my part is pure navel-gazing indulgence. Hell, I don't even know what the point of typing any more of this is, so... yeah. Sorry. I'll stop here.

Kind regards,

Chris

Personally I like seeing your posts. I feel like you are a person I know more about that some other posters so it feels good to see your posts. Sorry you think you are not more meaningful.

Thanks for posting that. I think you're right about the little picture.

jdzappa wrote:

Trump’s popularity is the highest it’s been at 49% with a big spike from independents. Not to sound alarmist but that’s plenty enough to win if he keeps loyalists and can win the center right in key states.

Outside of a surprisingly fast economic crash in the next 6 months, at this point Trump certainly seems like the relatively strong favorite to win. Ugh. I feel sick just thinking about it.

Anyway, caucus voting is as usual such a weird way to vote. Let's make sure everyone in the neighborhood can see what each other vote, and it should certainly take hours to do it...
Struggling to deliver a result out of the mess is probably the least crazy thing about it.

Farscry, thank you very much for the long in depth write up. It was interesting and heartening and i plan to share it out with my NC friends as a good insight into how the caucus process works.

Farscry wrote:

I know that I mean little to nothing to this - or any - community at large

Hi, Chris,

I tried to send you this in a PM but wasn't able to. Thanks for sharing your experience at the caucus and the other things you've posted recently. We have our political disagreements, but I've missed seeing you around and reading your contributions. Good luck with your efforts in the election going forward. You're doing some amazing things and good on you for being so involved.

Goddamn, Farscry, you have absolutely been missed around here. Thank you for the writeup and everything you're doing that's completely out of character for you. Big props, there!

You weren’t a fool for writing that, Farscry. It was good to hear from you and especially to get a detailed breakdown of this weird process. Hopefully it’s the last caucus and in 2020 you can just knock on doors / help drive people to the polls like in states with more sane systems.

Reaper81 wrote:
garion333 wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:
NY Times wrote:

Even before Monday, there were other concerns with the app itself, which was developed by a private firm called Shadow. Cybersecurity experts worried that it had not been vetted, tested at scale, or even shown to independent experts before being introduced in Iowa.

Christopher C. Krebs, the director of the Homeland Security Department’s cybersecurity agency, said late Monday that the mobile app had not been vetted or evaluated by the agency.

Look at these f*cking idiots go.

Wait, we're quoting Trump's cyber guy about this? Shocking he's saying things that make the Dems look bad. Shocking, I tell ya.

What if I were to say that no app had ever been vetted or evaluated by the agency? Cause that's probably a true statement. I'm not sure if I were an Democrat organization would I send my app to a Trump-created organization.

I am not shocked that a system guy would say a thing that supports the system.

I am shocked that this is the very best that the Dems can offer up.

As an aside, I meant the ire for the NYT.

Great post, Fars.

Well.. sh*t, you folks are making me cry. In a good way.

I'm sorry, I know I'm overly emotional and probably being silly. I'm not exagerrating when I say that my mental and emotional health has significantly deteriorated over the past few years. I mean, I'm in counseling and see a psychiatrist and we seem to be finally getting me into a somewhat stable (most of the time) position. But I feel completely absurd for struggling so damn much for someone in my 40's... I mean, I should have my sh*t together better by now.

Bah, I'm sorry, I'm rambling indulgently again.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Farscry wrote:

I know that I mean little to nothing to this - or any - community at large

Hi, Chris,

I tried to send you this in a PM but wasn't able to. Thanks for sharing your experience at the caucus and the other things you've posted recently. We have our political disagreements, but I've missed seeing you around and reading your contributions. Good luck with your efforts in the election going forward. You're doing some amazing things and good on you for being so involved.

Hi Clocky, I'm sorry for overreacting recently to you and a few others when I tried to make an analogy and failed miserably. It's been very frustrating to try to engage and fail to convey my real thoughts in any sort of effective manner these days. I had my PM's disabled from quite a while back but they're re-enabled now.

My efforts in this campaign really are completely WAY out of my comfort zone (and have led to a few breakdowns already, but I refuse to give up). I don't think I'm really making that much of a difference, but I know that each one of us really does matter, and I intend to be involved this year all the way up to November. We have to win back our nation's leadership.

I'll try to stick around again too. I know I keep apologizing over and over, but I'm sorry for being so impatient and...whatever other words I can use to describe my inability to handle conflict. Like I said, I do miss the community, but I also struggle with some elements of it that have been too much for me to handle in recent years (and maybe still are).

farley3k wrote:

As and Iowan, it is quite embarrassing.

Of course considering our low population, our lack of diversity, etc. I am actually hoping it makes us less important. We shouldn't be nearly as important on the political stage. Perhaps this will push us out of the limelight.

Seriously, last night had me hit a pretty good "high" by the end of the caucus after so many encouraging interactions with people across the liberal and moderate spectrum.

Then I got home and after settling in, tuned in to the dumpster fire that this whole thing turned into. "Discouraging" doesn't even begin to describe it. I then stayed up far too late in the hopes that things might pull together somewhat. It's a rough morning.

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ FARSCRY TAKE MY ENERGY ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

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