Bloomberg Wins Iowa Caucus

Michael Bloomberg's strategy is to wait out the early Democratic primary votes and swoop in on Super Tuesday to save the Party from Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden.

The Democratic National Committee has to be afraid of Bloomberg and determined on a more dependent and malleable candidate like Pete Buttigieg.

But Bloomberg's strategy is looking pretty good so far--whatever happened yesterday in Iowa it wrecked the victory for the victor and no one emerged a clear winner anyway:

When the unfinished count eventually materialized Tuesday evening, it recorded a pileup at the top of the leader board between former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and five candidates attracting double-digit support for the first time ever in the caucuses.

The Democrats will give themselves over to Bloomberg to avoid Bernie if it comes to that. Their desperation at Elizabeth Warren's fadeout and Bernie's remarkable strength broke out into the open when John Kerry was overheard expressing it in public.

Meanwhile Tuesday's ineptitude is extremely suspect. It might be Bernie Sanders getting cheated again, in plain sight this time:

The tech firm that designed the app used by the Iowa Democratic Party to report the results of its caucus is run by veterans of the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign.

The Huffington Post reported the app was designed by Shadow, Inc., which was founded by Gerard Niemira and Krista Davis. Both Niemira and Davis worked on the Clinton campaign, Niemira as director of product and Davis as a software engineer, according to their LinkedIn profiles. Shadow’s own product manager, Ahna Rao, also worked on the Clinton campaign as special assistant to the campaign’s chief technology officer.

Shadow is an affiliate of Acronym, a Democratic non-profit. Acronym’s website states it is an “organization committed to building power and digital infrastructure for the progressive movement.”  

The Iowa Democratic Party had refused to disclose the company building its caucus reporting app due to cybersecurity concerns.

 HuffPost reported that the Nevada Democratic Party also paid Shadow to design its caucus reporting app.

How brazen do you have to be to name your democracy-hacking organization "Shadow"? Here's Clinton veteran Niemira's statement on yesterday:

We sincerely regret the delay in the reporting of the results of last night's Iowa caucuses and the uncertainty it has caused to the candidates, their campaigns, and Democratic caucus-goers. As the Iowa Democratic Party has confirmed, the underlying data and collection process via Shadow's mobile caucus app was sound and accurate, but our process to transmit that caucus results data generated via the app to the IDP was not. Importantly, this issue did not affect the underlying caucus results data. We worked as quickly as possible overnight to resolve this issue, and the IDP has worked diligently to verify results. Shadow is an independent, for-profit technology company that contracted with the Iowa Democratic Party to build a caucus reporting mobile app, which was optional for local officials to use. The goal of the app was to ensure accuracy in a complex reporting process. We will apply the lessons learned in the future, and have already corrected the underlying technology issue. We take these issues very seriously, and are committed to improving and evolving to support the Democratic Party's goal of modernizing its election processes.

The DNC has to take out Bernie for Buttigieg or Warren. But they need a clear establishment candidate, strong enough to withstand the coming Bloomberg assault. Iowa didn't help that.

If Bernie takes this one lying down, like last time, his supporters should abandon him.