Biden didn't “win”, the Iowa Caucuses were STOLEN from Bernie – Part I: Bernie was so hot in the days before Iowa that the “gold standard” Des Moines Register poll, which predicted his VICTORY, had to be killed

Back in January, DNC insiders such as Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Tom Perez were frightened by a rather boring looking graph (see below).

Does this graph look scary to you? No? Let me explain what fabulously wealthy "public servants" who control the Democratic Party see in it that most ordinary voters don't.

  1. Sanders was SURGING.
    Biden was FALLING, Buttigieg was FLAT. Warren was on the graph too, but she was merely a blip. But above all ... Sanders was SURGING.
  2. The scary part for powerful DNC insiders? Sanders was SURGING. Can I say that again? Sanders was SURGING. The fact that Biden was falling, and would potentially not even be viable in Iowa because he had less than 15% of voter support, was important too, in a just plain embarrassing kind of way.
  3. The data on this graph comes from two surveys taken by a polling outfit that fivethirtyeight.com describes as “gold standard”, headed by Ann Selzer of the Des Moines Register, “The Best Pollster In Politics”.
  4. Politico calls the latter survey “The most consequential poll in politics”. Fun fact: it has correctly predicted the winner of the Democratic caucuses dating back to 1988!
  5. Let me repeat that bit too: The final DM Register poll taken immediately before the Iowa caucuses has correctly predicted their winner FOR OVER 30 YEARS!
  6. Politico:“The final poll from the Des Moines Register has been a critical, 11th-hour marker ahead of past caucuses. It has measured — and, in some cases, fed — a candidate's late momentum, whether positive or negative. The paper's final poll ahead of the 2008 caucuses led to a prolonged news cycle about Barack Obama's apparent surge on the eve of the vote, including measuring a wave of new caucus-goers poised to break turnout records and propel the then-Illinois senator to victory.”
  7. Do you think Barack Obama remembers the importance of the final DM Register poll taken immediately before the Iowa caucuses? Do you think HE remembers the "prolonged news cycle about [his] apparent surge on the eve of the vote" back in 2008? Of course he does, baby. Of course he does.
  8. Take another look at the above graph, then answer this question: WHO did the “the most consequential poll in politics” predict would win the Iowa caucuses? The answer: Bernie Sanders. Why? Because Bernie was at the TOP of the graph, silly, he had the MOST support from likely caucus-goers according to Oracle of Iowa, and not only that, Sanders was SURGING. I think I mentioned this before, didn't I? Sanders was SURGING!
  9. .

Considering all of the above, one of the following two statements must be true. Either

  1. the “gold standard” DM Register poll had finally broken it's long, long, long, long streak of correctly picking the winner of the Iowa caucuses (because we now know that Buttigieg "officially" won, in the bitter end), or
  2. the “gold standard” DM Register poll was actually CORRECT, and Bernie Sanders should have been the winner of the Iowa caucuses. But something went wrong, very wrong, at the Iowa caucuses, thus **stealing a rightful victory from Sanders**, and perhaps more critically, the momentum that should have and would have propelled him to victory in the entire Democratic primary presidential contest.

But which of the above two conclusions is the correct one? How can we decide?


LOOKING AT OTHER POLLS

 

Having the benefit of hindsight, we now know that the Iowa caucuses were a crap-fest beyond anyone's wildest imagination, that the IDP, DNC, and Pete Buttigieg campaign all participated in the acquisition of “an app” created by a company called “Shadow” (wait, WTF?) in order to COUNT the votes (seriously, are you kidding me?).

"It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes." - widely attributed to fascist Joseph Stalin

We also know that none other than Pete Buttigieg declared victory BEFORE THE COUNTING WAS EVEN OVER!, and that IDP chair Troy price resigned in shame as a result of the chaos. More details (and sources) will be provided in the next chapter of this series. But let's put all of that aside, just for a moment. Maybe we could look at other polls and see what support for Sanders and other candidates looked like at the time? How wildly off was this "gold-standard" DM Register poll that had never been wrong for thirty years, anyway? The one that was SUPPRESSED at the behest of, let's never forget, Pete Buttigieg.

The following graph comes from RealClearPolitics; it shows the cumulative polling results for the month of January 2020. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure how the values for the daily data points are calculated. However, the graph does in fact confirm my key point: Sanders was SURGING just before the Iowa caucuses. I am not making this up. Sanders was SURGING.

This next graph was created by yours truly, using raw data as reported by RealClearPolitics for polls taken in January having an MOE better than +/- 5.0. It also includes three additional data-sets:

  1. The results from the now infamous 2/1 DM Register/CNN/Mediacom poll, which were not officially published due to “concerns” raised by the Buttigieg campaign. Clare Malone, Senior political writer at FiveThirtyEight.com, confirmed the results of this poll: Sanders 22% Warren 18% Buttigieg 16% Biden 13%. This data is added as a reference point, to show that these results are CONSISTENT WITH ALL OTHER POLLS around that time in that Sanders was SURGING.
  2. The 2/2 DFP/Civiqs poll, conducted from Jan 26-29 with an MOE of +/- 4.7.
  3. The 2/2 Emerson/7News poll, conducted from Jan 30-Feb 2 with an MOE of +/- 3.3.

Observe that in these last three polls, Bernie Sanders was at the top of EVERY ONE, and Pete Buttigieg was ALWAYS either at or near the bottom.

A reasonable person might conclude that the suppressed DM Register poll was in fact not an aberration of any kind, but was in fact an accurate reflection of voter sentiment at that time. The fact that it was suppressed did immeasurable harm to the Sanders campaign. One might even say that the Iowa caucuses were STOLEN from Bernie.


WHY WAS THE “GOLD STANDARD” DM REGISTER POLL CANCELLED, AGAIN?

 

The official explanation:

Nothing is more important to the Register and its polling partners than the integrity of the Iowa Poll. Today, a respondent raised an issue with the way the survey was administered, which could have compromised the results of the poll. It appears a candidate’s name [Pete Buttigieg] was omitted in at least one interview in which the respondent was asked to name their preferred candidate.

While this appears to be isolated to one surveyor, that could not be confirmed with certainty. Therefore, out of an abundance of caution, the partners made the difficult decision not to move forward with releasing the poll. The poll was the last one scheduled by the polling partners before the first-in-the-nation Iowa presidential caucuses, which are Monday.

J. Ann Selzer, whose company conducts the Iowa Poll, said, “There were concerns about what could be an isolated incident. Because of the stellar reputation of the poll, and the wish to always be thought of that way, the heart-wrenching decision was made not to release the poll. The decision was made with the highest integrity in mind.

The Register has published the Iowa Poll for 76 years, and it is considered the gold standard in political polling. Selzer & Co., which conducts the poll, is recognized for its excellence in polling. It is imperative whenever an Iowa Poll is released that there is full confidence that the data accurately reflects Iowans’ opinions.

Key points:

  • ONE respondent raised a POTENTIAL issue that MIGHT have affected the results. Note the use of “could have” and “it appears”.
  • That issue could not be confirmed!
  • The decision to not release the poll, which clearly hurt Bernie Sanders and benefitted Pete Buttigieg, was made “with the highest integrity in mind.” Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register conducted themselves with nothing but integrity, I have no doubt. And that pains me greatly, because I believe their integrity was cruelly exploited and used as a weapon against Bernie Sanders and his supporters.

Playing devil's advocate, because why not and also because of the tremendously high stakes involved, let us consider the possibility that a rival campaign simply MADE UP a story about their candidate's name being omitted when an important survey is conducted. A rival campaign has a clear motive for doing so – surely we can all see and acknowledge that motive, right? Here was an opportunity to damage the campaign of the clear leader, who was SURGING. Is there any PROOF that this ALLEGED interviewing mistake actually occurred? Has anyone put their hand on the Bible, and testified under penalty of perjury that what they are claiming is true? No, and apparently NONE WAS EVEN REQUIRED.

“[Pete Buttigieg] looked me in the eye and said, ‘This is a competition, you say whatever you need to say to win,’” Ms. Greene said. “That’s when I saw who the real Mayor Pete was.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/us/politics/democrats-2020-tom-perez.html

Perhaps the most remarkable part of this little saga is that no other presidential candidate ever thought of pulling this particular trick before. Talk about a flaw in the democratic process. Who knew that a gold standard poll that was so extremely consequential could be taken out so easily without hard proof? Is it possible that Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Neera Tanden, and Pete Buttigieg knew? Not only do I think the answer is yes, I also think it reasonable to believe that Mayor Pete was actually given an assignment by powerful elites to do so, and that he is being handsomely rewarded for his efforts.

The matter of What To Do About Bernie and the larger imperative of party unity has, for example, hovered over a series of previously undisclosed Democratic dinners in New York and Washington organized by the longtime party financier Bernard Schwartz. The gatherings have included scores from the moderate or center-left wing of the party, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader; former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia; Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., himself a presidential candidate; and the president of the Center for American Progress, Neera Tanden.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/us/politics/bernie-sanders-democratic-party.html

Biden didn't “win” the Democratic Party presidential nomination, the Iowa Caucuses were STOLEN from Bernie. A major component of that theft was the suppression of the gold standard Des Moines Register poll that showed results comparable to ALL OTHER CREDIBLE POLLS taken at that time. The theft of the nomination from Bernie is devastating; because of it, BOTH SIDES OF THE AISLE OF CONGRESS will continue to allow

  • health insurance companies to price-gouge life-saving medicines and medical procedures - even during a RAGING PANDEMIC - thus causing the death of AT LEAST 68,000 Americans to die every year
  • white law enforcement to openly brutalize and kill persons of color with little to no accountability
  • fossil fuel companies to poison our planet to the degree that fires, droughts, and water shortages will be rampant in the next few decades.

@BernieSanders: Tomorrow night the world will be watching Iowa.

Let Iowa be the beginning of a new America.

An America based on the principles of justice. Social justice. Economic justice. Racial justice. Environmental justice.

Let us show the world what America can become.

https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1224066652637188096

Establishment Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Neera Tanden, and Pete Buttigieg disagree with Bernie's vision, so they needed to destroy his campaign. We cannot remain silent about this blatant attack on democracy. We cannot! We must push back against those who stole the Democratic presidential nomination away from Bernie. #NotMeUs

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Pluto's Republic's picture

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Older and Wiser Now's picture

@Pluto's Republic Thank you so much. This one means the world to me.

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~OaWN

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Older and Wiser Now

https://caucus99percent.com/content/outside-asylum-32

And, good work.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Older and Wiser Now's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal I had missed it, thanks so much for sharing! Very nice essay! The elites are doing whatever they can to Manufacture Consent, only more and more of us seem to be catching on to their con. That of course is step 1, before we can do anything about it. But the road ahead is certainly daunting, and fills me with anger and dread. Nice to see you again! Smile

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~OaWN

was noticed before the Iowa Caucuses:

National Public Radio:

Despite Election Security Fears, Iowa Caucuses Will Use New Smartphone App

Iowa's Democrats hope the new app lets the party get results out to the public quicker, says Troy Price, the chairman of the state party.

In an interview, Price declined to provide more details about which company or companies designed the app, or about what specific measures have been put in place to guarantee the system's security.

But security is a priority, he says.

The state party worked with the national party's cybersecurity team, and with Harvard University's Defending Digital Democracy project, but Price declined to answer directly whether any third party has investigated the app for vulnerabilities, as many cybersecurity experts recommend.

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I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.

@fire with fire If electronics are involved neither security nor verifiability is certain. Likely, not even possible imo.

For all this fear of foreign hacking of our elections, it's stunningly odd that no establishment creature has insisted we get off that.

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

lotlizard's picture

@jim p  
And even if one granted the assumptions that (1) there is such a thing as a wholly independent, totally knowledgeable, unbribable, unblackmailable, unpressurable security expert and that (2) the authorities could find such experts and have them inspect and vouch for a certain version of the system, how can you or I or any non-expert ever verify for ourselves without simply taking someone else’s word for it that the version we are using to vote here and now is indeed absolutely identical to the version the experts tested some time ago on a setup somewhere else? We can’t.

Instead, Yves Smith and Lambert Strether’s principle of the phishing equilibrium applies, succinctly restated in yesterday’s NC Water Cooler as “Any system that can be gamed will be gamed.”

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snoopydawg's picture

Nicely done and great work! I said just this in a previous essay, but boy did you nail it shut. But then I also remarked on how Bernie accepted what was done to him. And us even knowing how many people have one foot over the financial edge.

I wonder what Pete was promised for stepping out even though he was way ahead in the polls to ByeDone? And what Warren was to stay in just to make sure she stripped votes from Bernie? Lots of under the table help for her re-election cuz people are pissed?

It’s great to see you here again and I hope you won’t be a stranger.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

gulfgal98's picture

@snoopydawg Mayo is exactly why they love him. He is bland and malleable. He will have a cabinet position in the Biden administration as his reward.

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6 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Shahryar's picture

or Warren.

There was a point, before Super Tuesday, when my list went
1. Bernie
2 through most of the rest. Anyone not in the bottom two
Next to last. Warren
Last. Boot

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@Shahryar
Below Trump.

Catfood Commission. Interstate credit cards not subject to state controls. I'll never forgive.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Older and Wiser Now's picture

Thanks snoopy! Apparently Joe Biden has been talking about building bridges to "the next generation of great Democrats" like Mayor Cheat. He has great prospects in a corrupt Democratic Party.

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~OaWN

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gulfgal98's picture

@gjohnsit of why no one should trust Joe Biden or his campaign.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Older and Wiser Now's picture

Thanks Shahryar! Mayor Cheat is an illustration of everything that is wrong in politics today.

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~OaWN

Pricknick's picture

He then did nothing.
Great essay but bernme has done nothing about any of the cheating in the last two primaries.
I'm sure someone will chirp up about how he or his family were threatened.
Beyond the experation date.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

gulfgal98's picture

@Pricknick I believe Bernie sold out to protect his committee assignments in the Senate. IMHO, if he was willing to sell out like this two times, he would have never held fast in the face of opposition if he had been elected President. I did not post this comment lightly because it pains me very much to see Bernie destroy his own legacy for so little power in return.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

MsGrin's picture

@gulfgal98 eh. I think they threaten family members' continued existence.

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Pricknick

to point these things out on Bernie's behalf, but only in the interest of truth.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Thank you.

You should know I'm one who thinks "Of course the thing is fixed! How many more decades are we going to be outraged at the fact."

So even though the matter is in the past for me, your post was so compelling, clear, and bullshit-free I went through it like it was a cool drink in a hot day. Thanks.

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

Older and Wiser Now's picture

@jim p TY for your kind words. Smile

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~OaWN

but I don't think that the suppression of that final DM Register poll had much effect. It didn't differ that much from its prior poll. +1 or +2 isn't a surge. And in that last week, several other polls had Sanders with a much stronger lead.

By 13 November, DMR had it at:
Sanders 15
Biden 15
Butti 25
Warren 16
Klob 6

Biden had slipped considerably during October from early polls that had him at 20 or more. (Was always a mystery to me why Biden polled so well during the first round of the 2020 primary campaign.) Biden bounced back in December and after 13 November when Harris dropped out, but in January four pollsters, including DMR, had him at 15. Butti faded in January, but that's to be expected for the "buzz" candidate (young, fresh face) offering new jargon for the same old.

Generally in the IA caucus, the default candidate is the party stalwart: Gore, Kerry, Hillary.* Difficult for me to assume that team Biden didn't expect that default factor to kick in for him at the end. Is it possible that the complaint about the DMR polling was cleverly planted by team Biden? (Wouldn't discount collusion between Biden and Butti.)

*Obama was an exception, but IL (MN, IN, MO) 'bleeds' into IA, he was the "buzz" candidate, and he had a first rate ground game in IA. Not as much 'bleed' from IN as IL, not as much "buzz" for Butti, but he and his team were on the ground (much as Edwards was in '04 and '08). And the MN factor kicked in as a default for Klob. HRC didn't watch her back in '08 and Sanders didn't watch his in '20.

None of the 2020 Democratic candidates were particularly good on the debate stage. In part because they all spent their time running against Trump instead of their competitors which led to the debates becoming snooze fests and viewership going down. (Gabbard was somewhat better but they kicked her out after a couple of debates.) To win, Sanders had to up his game from '16. Instead, he tried to coast on his not so good debate skills and depreciated what made him different by subscribing to Russiagate and aligning himself too closely with too much DP BS.

There's no magic equation for the first four DP primary contests that lead to the nomination. Perhaps I should say first three because SC is always a gift to the DP stalwart (and sometimes by a huge margin). Sanders didn't do well enough anywhere to get a bounce into the next primary(ies). Leaving the blob with enough tools to strike back.

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PennBrian's picture

I bookmarked this. Everything you cite is accurate and I remember it in vivid detail. It is great to have such a thorough and compact assessment.

Bernie won Iowa by thousands of votes on the first ballot and again on final choices but victory was manufactured by rigging SDE counts, including deciding after votes were counted (!) to shave SDE's off of precincts that Bernie won. It would be the equivalent of DNC saying "Oh our candidate lost Pennsylvania so instead of 20 electoral votes, let's make it have 4." They did all of this in the shadows, all puns intended, knowing that few people would have the time or energy to follow the byzantine rules knowing all that really mattered out of Iowa was narrative. I wouldn't be surprised if Pete had people pretend they were polled without his name on it. He's that much of a snake.

Oh and he's writing a book called "Trust" now. Serious theatre of the absurd/Psych thriller.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@PennBrian

Maybe I should write a book called "When Hell Freezes Over."

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@PennBrian

It would be the equivalent of DNC saying "Oh our candidate lost Pennsylvania so instead of 20 electoral votes, let's make it have 4."

That's exactly what the DNC did in 2016 in NH and several other states. Not including the 'superdelegates' in the tally of delegates during the primary election cycle beginning in 2020 was the one concession that Bernie got for his publicly enthusiastic support for HRC.

The shaving of IA SDE tallies may not have been new in 2020, but as the IA DP has made the process needlessly complicated and opaque it's not possible to prove one way or the other.

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I have no doubts Bernie was cheated in Iowa in 2020. In 2016 I have no doubts that Bernie was cheated in the NYC vote for example. But here is the thing. There does not seem so far to be evidence that Bernie was cheated out of victories on Super Tuesday and following primaries. And finally the Southern African American vote gave Biden the nomination without accusations of cheating (that I know of). Again as far as I can tell, no major cheating to change the final results (that I know of).

I have worked many of democratic primary back in the day. And democrats cheat the living shit out of each other. In some elections, those in power do not need to cheat. The base is with them which is what I believe happened in both 2016 and 2020.

My final take is that the democratic party cannot be reformed and will never implement progressive policies pushed by Bernie and his supporters. Progressives and organizations like Justice Democrats think that because polls show that democrats support M4A make the leap to believing the BASE will vote for candidates who support those policies. Democrats and so called liberals may poll left, but in the end they vote right. Over and over again, the base votes for candidates who do not support progressive policies.

Here is thee reality. The base of the democratic party is simply not progressive.
And for five years Bernie tried to convince them and failed because, to be redundant, the base is not progressive. Part of the party faithful is progressive, but not enough to matter.

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@MrWebster of being cheated out of a primary win, it's unknown what would have otherwise happened.

I'm confident that Bernie was cheated in the 2016 IA caucuses. Not by much, but enough that he was unable to count it as a win. I'm also confident that he was cheated in the 2016 NV caucus. Perhaps not by enough to win, but without the IA cheating, he would have had more momentum going into NV and the NV cheating wouldn't have been enough to give HRC the win. With wins in the first three states, SC becomes irrelevant.

Bernie's campaign is more responsible for his 2020 performance than any possible cheating that went on. In a multi-candidate field, it's imperative for an outsider to maximize IA caucus turnout. Obama would never have won IA if turnout in 2008 had been 171,109 as it was in 2016. (It was 239.000+ in 2008) It was only 176,000 this year. He needed a solid win in IA and a much larger win in NH to run away with the NV caucus despite the cheating that was almost guaranteed. Still surprising that a weak second in NV after not placing in IA and NH could move to the top of the leader board based on winning SC, a state that is irrelevant in the general election.

wrt the Democratic base by which I assume you mean Democratic Party primary voters. Not sure if it's a question how conservative or progressive these voters are, but rather how informed they are. How many 2020 Biden voters thought he supported Medicare for All? Not an insignificant number. The vote based on impressions or their trust in leaders in their communities who tell them how to vote but not why. Finally, some candidates are simply more attractive* than others and people tend to invest more positive attributes to those that are attractive and assume they support what the voter does. (Obama benefited from that as did GHWB in '88.)

*Attractive is a combination of visible qualities and not limited to standard measures of physical attractiveness. Charisma, vigor, and speaking voice are all part of this factor.

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@Marie
Last week I saw a yahoo editorial about Biden's MfA. Sorry I didn't note a link. I don't really know if this is Biden's real plan or the yahoo editor's idea, but it sounds plausible.

Basically, he turns Medicare into Obamacare and removes the government component. Essentially, everyone is required to buy a Medicare Part C policy, Part A & B go away along with the different Obamacare tiers. So the insurance companies will have total control over US healthcare just like God (Obama) intended. Seniors get a government subsidy (means tested?).

Personally, I'd rather go back to the 1950's when doctors charged patients based on their perception of the patient's ability to pay. Most of all I'd rather move to Europe. About twenty years ago, my Uncle John, my father's younger brother and a WW II veteran, told me, "I never thought I would ever say this, but I think maybe it's time to move back to Europe." Unlike my father, he was a lifelong Democrat. (My father would vote cross-party as I have also and probably will this Fall because of racist #BLM blackmail).

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness "racist #BLM blackmail?"

You have a very idealized version of healthcare in the US in the 1950s. Wasn't even anything like that in the decades before then. Health insurance was an historical accident. A non-taxable employer benefit during WWII and outside the wage/price freezes. Didn't cost employers much and was profitable for the insurers because doctors couldn't do that much. Post WWII, the women left their jobs to become housewives and produce lots and lots of babies which freed up industrial jobs for their men. (USG propaganda facilitated that shift.) Truman advocated for national healthcare, the AMA fiercely fought it, the UK adopted it. Meanwhile Taft-Hartley put the kibosh on unions and union leaders sold health insurance to their members in lieu of wage increases. By the 1960s those left out were those at the bottom of the income ladder and the non-service related disabled and the elderly. Medicare and Medicaid covered a large percentage of the left out.

The health care delivery system at that time was more robust. There were community hospitals; catered to wealthier residents but accepted insured patients if capacity was available. There were charity hospitals; many discriminated by religion. (Catholic hospitals operated with lots of free labor, aka nuns.) Public hospitals and clinics which those with private health insurance or money avoided, but Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries were restricted to those providers. A bit later there was the HMO experiment that initially catered to lower wage earners. Any of those hospitals/clinics could have been university affiliated for training new doctors and nurses.

Then Wall Stree got into the act. Not much difference today among the private hospitals/clinics, they're all corporations and for-profit. Big surprise that costs began to escalate and by extension so too did insurance and co-pays. The public hospitals/clinics continue to serve the poorest while being starved for funding as Medicare/Medicaid beneficiaries can go anywhere that will take them. (Another really stupid move by the Clinton admin.) There is no insurance model that will solve this mess!

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@Marie
My father never had health insurance until he worked for Grumman in the '70s. But my mother had two children, my father had a hernia operation and both of us kids had tonsillectomies and he didn't go broke working for (1960's) $100 a week. I know our family doctor charged his patients based on what they did for a living. Oh, and my grandfather had a cancer operation in the early '50s without losing his house. But it was at Loretto Hospital (Catholic) and he was a practicing catholic.

Try to find a story like that in today's "finest healthcare system in the world". It isn't a unique story, either. Insurance was only available to Union members and not all of them. When you saw a new doctor he didn't ask what insurance you had. He asked your occupation and salary. Yes, it was almost always "he".

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

travelerxxx's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness

Some years ago when visiting my parents (in their 90's now), they showed me the hospital bill for my birth, which was in 1953. The grand total due was something like (because I forgot the exact amount) $27.85. Seriously.

Sidebar: I also am fond to amuse others with the fact that I was born in a fraternity house. Well, okay, it was a hospital at the time, but later it did become a frat house...

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MsGrin's picture

Had to jump in to see anything related! @The Voice In the Wilderness Interesting assessment of Biden's plan.

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@MrWebster

https://caucus99percent.com/content/outside-asylum-32

No, it's not hard evidence. It is logic. But eventually, one must at least give logic a hearing.

I also wonder how often we're going to allow the establishment to rely on always being able to return history to a factory reset. In other words, why does what happened to Bernie in 2016 have no relationship to what happened in 2020? I first ran into this problem in 2004. No one believed me when I said George W. Bush won through fraud in Florida in 2004. They said, "That was last time. It's all happening in Ohio now." That's when they didn't literally run away from my questions.

Obviously, since Bush's brother was still governor, and still appointing his Sec. of State (who ran the elections) and obviously, since most of the local Supervisors of Elections were the same, and the courts and cops were the same, why the hell would anybody suppose that George W. Bush *wouldn't* receive the same preferential treatment? Did his brother John Ellis have a road to Damascus moment?
The same thing can be said of Sanders. The same people were in control of the Democratic party and the press as were in control four years previous. Should their past behavior not be considered a factor? Do all powerful people get a factory reset after every bit of wrongdoing? I know that if I robbed you blind and then asked for your trust four years later without having done anything to earn it, much less repent or even apologize, you would tell me to get lost. Why aren't we telling the DNC, its satellite organizations, and the corporate press to get lost?

In any case, whether you think it proves fraud or not, my essay presents questions that must be answered--or would have to be answered if our political process had even a nodding acquaintance with good faith.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

lotlizard's picture

wall-of-text explanation why, once again, what we know we saw is only what we as uninitiated, unsophisticated outsiders think we saw when actually it was something entirely different, a skillful pirouette by insiders which our rough perceptions are just too unrefined to grasp.

And even if crooks did crooked things still it’s all justified because Trump.

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11 users have voted.

laid out why running in a democratic party primary is a losing proposition unless you're meeting the approval of party officials and their donors. Bernie didn't have a chance unless he modified everything he ran on into an Obama lite platform.

While we can blame him for sheepdogging or whatever, somehow I get the feeling it was us that failed, that we didn't do enough to fight for a platform that would directly help us in a significant way. We don't know how to fight this. Two narrow parties doesn't work for most of us.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@Snode

Walk away from both of them. Find (or start) a party to your liking and build it.

Enough people did just that in 1854 - which is the only reason we even have a Republican Party today (not that it took it long to sell out everything it originally stood for).

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3 users have voted.

There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Am anticipating Part II with dread
(because this crime against voters is painful to read about)
and gratefulness that someone is documenting this thoughtfully and thoroughly.

Thank you for your work.

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... after the NV results, which Sanders won by a wide margin, but before SC, when there was a CNN poll in CA that had Sanders at around 40% and NO OTHER CANDIDATE above 15%. (Keep in mind, 15% was the minimum requirement for "viability" to be awarded delegates on a statewide basis.) I'm convinced that this one CA poll really scared the shit out of the Dem establishment, given that Bernie's campaign was now in position to take a commanding 400+ delegate lead on Super Tuesday. By contrast, even a big win in IA would only net him a small lead in delegates, maybe 10-15 at best, given that three other candidates hit the 15% threshold. But, in a state like CA, winning all or almost all the delegates would have been a really big deal.

It was at this point, that the dominos began to fall as the establishment decided to coalesce around Biden, despite his 4th place in IA and 5th in NH, which would have been sufficient to knock any other candidate out in any other year. In quick succession, you had (1) the Clyburn endorsement, which led to Biden winning his "firewall" state of SC, followed by (2) the rapid withdrawal of both Bootyjizz and Klobuchar which, coupled with Warren's decision to stay in, just a day or so before (3) Super Tuesday cost Bernie at least three states (TX, MN and MA), and denying him the "big win" in CA (which of course didn't get its votes counted until a week later), all of which changed the whole narrative of the race, leaving Biden with the big "momentum" as the "inevitable" choice even though over half the states had yet to be heard from and the delegate count was still neck-and-neck.

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Older and Wiser Now's picture

@JCWeb FYI, I wasn't trying to say that the suppression of the poll was "the turning point", I was trying to highlight the fact that

  1. suppression of such a key poll was essentially such an easy trick to pull off,
  2. suppression of the poll damaged Bernie Sanders campaign significantly, he was denied the press coverage that every other winner of the poll has received, including Barack Obama
  3. DNC insiders interfered with the 2020 primaries in order to Stop Bernie, and
  4. Pete Buttigieg was treated with an abundance of "fairness", and he returned the favor by behaving with gross dishonesty.
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~OaWN

Bob In Portland's picture

Stalin was a Communist. A totalitarian, not a fascist. These days it may seem a moot point, but the meaning of words is important.

By the way, yes, they stole it from Sanders.

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travelerxxx's picture

@Bob In Portland

Thanks. That bothered me, too. And it does indeed matter.

Stalin a dictator? Absolutely. A fascist? Hardly. His armies did kill a lot of them, though.

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2 users have voted.
gulfgal98's picture

Your presentation and analysis lays out very graphically how Bernie was cheated. Excellent job.

Bernie was definitely cheated once again and failed to challenge it. And to me, the bigger take away from this is how we the voters are being cheated by the systemic rigging of polling, elections, and the media. If it had not been Bernie, it would have been someone else who was running a populist left campaign. And for all of us, that is the truly important lesson of your outstanding essay. Seeing how it was done in plain sight makes it even more important that we change the way we conduct elections in this country.

BTW, it is good to see you back. I both dread (due to election fiasco flashbacks) and cannot wit for part 2.

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5 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Older and Wiser Now's picture

@gulfgal98 Thanks for stopping by, gulfgal98, so nice to see you again!

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0 users have voted.

~OaWN

The Dems fought for anything they claim to stand for half as hard as they fought to keep Sanders from winning, the world would be a much better place.

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7 users have voted.

Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Dr. John Carpenter

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2 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

the essay includes what is purported to be the final DMR/CNN poll, 1-2 February 2020, but I can find no evidence that the results of that poll were ever released.

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1 user has voted.
Older and Wiser Now's picture

@Marie From the essay, which also has a link to Clare Malone's tweet:

The results from the now infamous 2/1 DM Register/CNN/Mediacom poll, which were not officially published due to “concerns” raised by the Buttigieg campaign. Clare Malone, Senior political writer at FiveThirtyEight.com, confirmed the results of this poll: Sanders 22% Warren 18% Buttigieg 16% Biden 13%. This data is added as a reference point, to show that these results are CONSISTENT WITH ALL OTHER POLLS around that time in that Sanders was SURGING.

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~OaWN

TheOtherMaven's picture

Nobody cares about Iowa any longer. It's over, done, history. Just like nobody cared when a re-analysis of the Florida votes showed that Gore had actually won.

It. Didn't. Matter.

It. Doesn't. Matter.

The goons that run this country are shredding the last remnants of what we laughably thought was "democracy", and there's not a single damn - legal - thing we can do about it.

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3 users have voted.

There is no justice. There can be no peace.

MsGrin's picture

Had to jump in to see anything related!

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1 user has voted.

'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

Older and Wiser Now's picture

@MsGrin Howdy MsGrin! So nice to see you again!

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~OaWN