So yesterday we got to hear Donald Trump whine, gloat and introduce some of his sycophants to the general public (Mike Braun, Josh Hawley, among others). He would have had it a day sooner, but Mitt Romney’s vote against him would not permit the equilibrium to do so.
Still, like OJ, the public knows he’s guilty and nothing he says will change that. So what else are the pundits saying?
In Iowa (remember Iowa?), Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttegieg are virtually tied (at least within the Margin of Incompetence), and now it’s on to New Hampshire. But get rid of these caucuses. The people who participated are wonderful. The systems issues, however, do not do them justice.
I have an unpopular idea about the 2020 primary, moving forward. Why don’t we just let the voters choose, instead of telling us what we should do or what will happen?
Nate Cohn/NY Times:
Iowa Caucus Results Riddled With Errors and Inconsistencies
The mistakes do not appear intentional, but they raise questions about whether there will ever be a completely precise accounting.
Some of these inconsistencies may prove to be innocuous, and they do not indicate an intentional effort to compromise or rig the result. There is no apparent bias in favor of the leaders Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders, meaning the overall effect on the winner’s margin may be small.
But not all of the errors are minor, and they raise questions about whether the public will ever get a completely precise account of the Iowa results. With Mr. Sanders closing to within 0.1 percentage points with 97 percent of 1,765 precincts reporting, the race could easily grow close enough for even the most minor errors to delay a final projection or raise doubts about a declared winner.
Onion:
DNC Offers Startup $500 Million To Develop Pencil That Can Accurately Record Election Results
Hoping the yellow, graphite-based writing instrument would allay voter doubts following the chaos of the Iowa caucuses, the Democratic National Committee reportedly offered a technology startup $500 million Tuesday to develop a pencil that can accurately record election results. “As of this morning, we have commissioned the design and manufacture of a cutting-edge tabulation device that will be able to legibly report vote totals on a sheet of paper 99% of the time,” said DNC chair Tom Perez, holding up a rough prototype of the 7.5-inch hexagonal marking implement, which will be built and rigorously stress-tested by a new Silicon Valley business venture known as Sharpen. “It may not be easy to encase a cylinder of graphite with wood or put a slick coat of glossy paint on its outside. But with this new partnership, we believe we will soon have at our disposal a pencil that is both reliable and totally resistant to any attack by foreign powers. Also, because it can be sharpened, this new delegate-reporting tool can be used repeatedly, lasting us through New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and perhaps even Super Tuesday.” At press time, sources confirmed plans for the pencil had been scrapped after election security experts warned the rubber eraser on its tip would quickly erode public trust in the product.
Great job, Iowa.
Stuart Rothenberg/Roll Call:
After Iowa, a boost for Buttigieg and concerns for Biden and Warren
Partial results put the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor in enviable position
Veteran pollster Gary Langer described Buttigieg’s performance in the Iowa caucuses entrance poll as showing a “broad-based appeal,” while candidates like Sanders and Biden demonstrated much more narrow appeal.
Sanders did extremely well among young voters, but poorly among seniors.
Biden was strong with seniors but weak among younger voters.
Sanders did well among the most liberal voters, while Biden was strong among so-called moderates.
Iowa was not kind to Biden. His fourth-place showing was unimpressive, and while it is fair to note that the state is not necessarily ideal for him, his weak showing doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence in his ability to win the nomination.
The nominee will have to battle the Republicans. And to be clear, Republicans are using more than pencils:
McKay Coppins/Atlantic:
The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President
How new technologies and techniques pioneered by dictators will shape the 2020 election
The story that unfurled in my [test] Facebook feed over the next several weeks was, at times, disorienting. There were days when I would watch, live on TV, an impeachment hearing filled with damning testimony about the president’s conduct, only to look at my phone later and find a slickly edited video—served up by the Trump campaign—that used out-of-context clips to recast the same testimony as an exoneration. Wait, I caught myself wondering more than once, is that what happened today?
As I swiped at my phone, a stream of pro-Trump propaganda filled the screen: “That’s right, the whistleblower’s own lawyer said, ‘The coup has started …’ ” Swipe. “Democrats are doing Putin’s bidding …” Swipe. “The only message these radical socialists and extremists will understand is a crushing …” Swipe. “Only one man can stop this chaos …” Swipe, swipe, swipe.
I was surprised by the effect it had on me. I’d assumed that my skepticism and media literacy would inoculate me against such distortions. But I soon found myself reflexively questioning every headline. It wasn’t that I believed Trump and his boosters were telling the truth. It was that, in this state of heightened suspicion, truth itself—about Ukraine, impeachment, or anything else—felt more and more difficult to locate. With each swipe, the notion of observable reality drifted further out of reach.
What I was seeing was a strategy that has been deployed by illiberal political leaders around the world. Rather than shutting down dissenting voices, these leaders have learned to harness the democratizing power of social media for their own purposes—jamming the signals, sowing confusion. They no longer need to silence the dissident shouting in the streets; they can use a megaphone to drown him out. Scholars have a name for this: censorship through noise.
Politico:
An Unsettling New Theory: There Is No Swing Voter
Rachel Bitecofer’s radical new theory predicted the midterms spot-on. So who’s going to win 2020?
Bitecofer, a 42-year-old professor at Christopher Newport University in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, was little known in the extremely online, extremely male-dominated world of political forecasting until November 2018. That’s when she nailed almost to the number the nature and size of the Democrats’ win in the House, even as other forecasters went wobbly in the race’s final days. Not only that, but she put out her forecast back in July, and then stuck by it while polling shifted throughout the summer and fall.
And today her model tells her the Democrats are a near lock for the presidency in 2020, and are likely to gain House seats and have a decent shot at retaking the Senate. If she’s right, we are now in a post-economy, post-incumbency, post record-while-in-office era of politics. Her analysis, as Bitecofer puts it with characteristic immodesty, amounts to nothing less than “flipping giant paradigms of electoral theory upside down.”
The model, of course, assumes no cheating.
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
What’s next after a sham impeachment trial?
The first step toward national sanity and constitutional recovery after impeachment, therefore, is to acknowledge what happened: Senate Republicans cowardly submitted to their gang leader and concocted retroactive excuses for their lack of principle.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) acknowledges as much in a bracing op-ed in the New York Times. “So watching the mental contortions they perform to justify their votes is painful to behold: They claim that calling witnesses would have meant a never-ending trial. They tell us they’ve made up their minds, so why would we need new evidence? They say to convict this president now would lead to the impeachment of every future president — as if every president will try to sell our national security to the highest bidder,” he writes. He says this crowd "cannot fathom a fate worse than losing an upcoming election.” In short, Republicans are putting themselves above country because they are afraid Trump will chase them out of office otherwise.
That leads to the second step: To smash that defend-your-seat-at-all-costs mentality, the senators who capitulated to Trump must be voted out. The lesson learned must be that, if you want a career in politics, you need to do the right thing, especially when the stakes are so high.
Pandemic designation refers to geographic spread of a new disease, not severity. No reason to panic (and news coverage isn’t panic in any case.) But follow the news.