If there was any doubt that the Democratic Party was out to ruin Bernie Sanders’ chance at winning the 2020 presidential nomination, Monday night’s debacle in Iowa erased it.
The Iowa caucus, one of the most important pieces of the presidential primary puzzle, was a complete and utter disaster from the start. A new app used to poll voters has apparently caused a massive issue at HQ, and as we approach 2am EST, still no results have been made available.
Despite this, former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg is declaring himself the victor.
The Bernie Sanders campaign may have something to say about that, however.
Sen. Bernie Sanders’s supporters angrily stormed out of a caucus here on Monday night, calling the process a “joke” and a “waste of time” after they started out with more than twice as much support as any other candidate, ending up in a five-way tie, with all viable candidates sharing one delegate apiece.
Under the complicated caucus system, there are multiple stages of voting. First, there is a vote to determine initial support. After that point, only candidates with 15% of the vote are considered viable. However, those voters who did not initially choose a viable candidate can migrate to another candidate. After the final numbers are counted, they are translated to delegate equivalents.
After the initial vote at the First Presbyterian Church, just Sanders, with 32 votes, and Pete Buttigieg, with 15 votes, met the viability threshold of 13.
But then, in the second vote, Biden’s support started to grow to as high as 16. Because he had votes to spare, his representatives siphoned them off to Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. As a result, all three just met the viability threshold.
After the shift, Sanders ended up with 37% support in the room, Buttigieg had 17%, and the three other campaigns each had just cleared 15%.
There is already plenty of worry that Sanders will find himself cheated out of the Democratic primary, especially after his treatment at the hands of Hillary Clinton and the DNC back in 2016.
