February 4, 2020 • 59 mins
Katy, Cody, and Robert talk about the super uneventful and totally normal 2020 Iowa Caucus.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, A production of I Heart
Radio Welcome Together Everything, So don't don't soul, baby baby,
(00:23):
Welcome back to the Worst year Ever. Who do you?
Who do you who? That's my new catchphrase, Who do yea?
And mine? Baby? Um, guys, no, no, I am just
not acknowledging it. And what are you? What are you celebrating?
(00:46):
The great day and night that all I am yesterday
and today, I am celebrating the fact that I haven't
checked in on any of the Iowa caucus results, but
I am celebrating my assumption of the fact that everything
went perfectly. The d n C really nailed, as did
the Iowa Democratic Party what needed to happen, and everybody
(01:08):
is happy with the results. Now I'm going to take
a single sip of coffee and search Twitter. Um what
uh that was a fun bit. Well, let's just say, um,
this this tweet from the Democratic Party amazing. For three
years we've been preparing for the process that officially kicks
(01:30):
off tonight in Iowa. You have the Democratic presidential primary.
Beautiful and I hope you all have gathered by now
that today we are going to talk about the unmitigated
disaster that was the Iowa Caucus, the very first voting
event of the event that sets the tone. The whole
election ended in confusion, this organization, fears of tampering, and
(01:56):
as of yet still no official winner, although at the
time of this recording it does look like Pete one
and Bernie one the popular vote. No, it doesn't. It's
only a reporting right now, you know, I know. But
the narrative that we're being told at this point, my friends,
my dear friends, Katie, I love you and respect you,
(02:19):
and I think you make a good point that that
this is part of what sets the trend for the election.
But I do think that was a slightly incomplete statement,
because I think two things have set the trend for election.
One of them is that the right wing in this
country was able to organize north of heavily armed people
to march in a state capital in favor of political
(02:39):
belief that they hold. And at the same time, the
Democratic Party was unable to launch an app with millions
of dollars of investments behind it to track the votes
of a about a hundred thousand people. Yeah, yeah, that's
those two things are important. Both they're both important. Um.
I love living in metaphors last night. There was a
(03:00):
lot of speculation running around, some of which we partook
an uh, most likely what happened last night was your
run of the mill establishment incompetent, gross incompetent, gross incompetent, unbelievable,
almost unprecedented competent. It's it's pretty wild and we're going
(03:23):
to dig into all of that. Well, it's hard is
that no matter who wins at this point, if the
aliens versus predator situations, just everything's tainted now. It's it's
truly remarkable. And so this isn't this isn't quite the
(03:43):
conversation we expected to have today. We were preparing to
have a more normal conversation. So we're kind of putting
it all together at the last minute. But it'll be fun. Yeah.
We were like, well, we'll talk about like what caucuses are,
We'll talk about the results a little bit. I'll probably
be pretty boring, but that'll be that. And we're still
going to talk about caucuses a bit. But man, but
then what happened hopefully it's not boring. Um, yeah, before
(04:06):
we get into what happened last night, I do think
that we should discuss what caucuses are, how they work,
or how they should work, whether or not they work.
Before we talked about all that. Um, Like I said,
Iowa was the first caucus of the election cycle, and
a lot of people are asking why. It's a great
question why. Indeed, the answer is because I guess they
(04:27):
have a state law mandating that they be the first
caucus of the election cycle, and somehow their state law
is something we all honor. Yeah. Interesting quick note about
that being a state law. Another law in Iowa, it's
the only state with a lifetime voting band for anyone
ever convicted of a felony. Cool that awesome. Voting issues
(04:50):
in Iowa. Pretty Iowa. Think about people I don't want
to ever be able to vote. I think someone who
at one point had an ounce of merrill want to
in their car on the wrong guy. I Also, I'm
glad because once you do a thing and there's no
going back, and there's no no going back. Yeah, no
going back formative, you can't ever change. Um. Yeah, that goes.
(05:15):
That's all part of the conversation. Iowa is small and
it is predominantly white. Uh, it's not Iowa, I know
it's not. It's not really a reflection of the of
the general America, so at large, the voting demographic. Uh
and historically it has had a very outsized uh influence
(05:39):
on the election, especially well since two thousand, everybody that's
one the Democratic Iowa caucus has gone on to get
the actual nomination. How many of those people have won
the presidency one a one Al Gore, then Carry Obama
and Clinton. So you know, it's just interesting to note
(06:01):
that the one that one was the most progressive. It
is interesting Canada. Yeah, but you know, it's a big
question why does it have this It has the influence
because it's the first one, and so people leave Iowa
and they have a lot of momentum, and people who
are in second place also usually pick up a lot
of momentum uh and and and get a big bump
(06:24):
and donors. It's largely like narrative based like present this
like oh, we're going to do it, and then it Yeah,
but this time, seeing as it's already mired in controversy,
we're not really sure. We can't predict at this point
how uh this win for whomever it is will affect
them going forward. But anyway, I do want to say
(06:44):
real quick just because I think this bit of research
and it fits here. I was kind of curious, just
sort of like in the question that you started with,
Katie's like why Iowa, why do we let them do this?
And obviously they have a state law, so they're going
to do whatever it takes to be the first UM
I wanted. I was kind curious as to whether or
not there was like a financial incentive for this too,
like if it's like a huge industry in the state,
(07:06):
And well, not quite. I found a study that was
some college, I think and some college in Iowa did
that and it was back in two thousand seven, so
two eight, like so, um, it may be a little
bit out of date, but they found that Iowa perceived
just about four point four percent of all campaigns spending
UM by measured candidates UM and which is like more
(07:28):
or less in line with New Hampshire. Like they don't
get that much more money than New Hampshire. Um, they
do make you know, like seven million dollars in labor
um for the Caucuses and like a couple of hundred jobs. Um,
it's not an insignificant um amount of money or an
insignificant amount of jobs. But Iowa was state GDP is
a hundred and thirty billion dollars, or at least it
(07:49):
wasn't two thousand and seven. So, like, you know, even
though like the value of the couses is increached a bit,
you're talking about like one of the states annual domestic
product when you divide it by the fact that it's
every four years. Um. So it's not a huge economic
gain for the state. The study does notice that, um quote,
the Iowa caucuses do provide exposure that the state, it's
(08:11):
businesses and it's boosters would find very expensive to obtain
otherwise for free and for a time, the word Iowa
is used continuously a national and international mass media and
a continuous and often sensational coverage of the political campaign
and the communities of Iowa has to be, as the
ad says, priceless. That said, it's not a huge deal.
Like if you're looking for why Iowa is so fucking
(08:32):
helping to host the caucus, it's it's got to be
more than money, because there's just not I think it's
also not that big a factor tradition. It's the fact
that we've done this and we will do it. There's
a pride in it. I guess I do think that
the tourism industry or around the time of uh, the
the election, you know, you see a spike in hotels
being booked and all that. It definitely matters for some people,
(08:55):
for sure. But anyway, interesting about the coverage leading up
to it also because it's presented like this big, big thing. Um.
The coverage leading out to this caucus uh significantly lower
than it usually is. Um. It's like, I think, what
ten minutes of time spent talking about the Iowa caucus
compared to last year or last elections eighty six minutes? Um.
(09:18):
Just interesting. They downplay it. Certain certain things are positioned.
Maybe that's good. I don't know. Anyway, here's a very
basic rundown of the mechanics of the caucus. Thank you
New York Times for this little explainer for that. For
that's as far as my thank you extends. Thank you
very much, um uh, because I don't know about you guys,
(09:41):
but it's kind be using even knowing the basics of it.
You're like, what is happening right now? Well, especially last night? Anyway? Okay.
Number One, people go to a physical designated location like
a gym or library too. There are representatives of each
candidate in the location three, everyone walks up to that
candidate area to represent their support, just like little human
(10:02):
votes bouncing around a gym Uh yeah but ahead, finished Katie. Well,
just one of the things that's important about this is
that it takes multiple hours to be a part of this,
which is ye, we'll get yeah, well, well we have
all well yeah, number four. Everyone is counted. If one
(10:24):
of the groups represents at least fift of the people,
they are considered viable, and then there's around two people
in the non viable. Groups can now choose to do
several things. They can either join another group, walk around
and convince people to join their group, or move on
to an uncommitted group. The tally is once again counted,
and based on the numbers, each candidate is awarded delegates
(10:45):
based on how many supporters they have. Iowa has forty
one pledged delegates. Those delegates will then go to the
d n C and show support for the candidate they
were assigned two. All right, it's a little convoluted, but basically,
if your candidate does isn't viable, then you go move
on to your second choice candidate. And there's a lot
(11:05):
of opportunity for people to interact in mingle and and
have so short everything so dumb um and the year
well that's yeah, Well, don't worry. So what was different
about last night? You know, I might have heard that
there were some changes made this year. Uh, some of
the campaigns UH pushed for key changes to be made
(11:29):
to this caucus system, the biggest change being that there
will now be a popular vote winner as well as
an official winner, something that's never been done before. Um,
that's been thrown around a lot as one of the
reasons reporting last night was so messed up. But if
you think that's ridiculous, I've seen a lot of that, like, uh,
(11:49):
that claim of like we changed the rules for you
for you and it's your fault. Actually that is happening,
and that's just not true. It's just not true. Not
what happened. It's now you've described the system to me, Katie,
And one thing I just want to ask for clarification
on there's no chance that this system that is still
in critical part of determining who will run the country
(12:10):
and control a nuclear arsenal, This system was not by
chance developed by people who drank mercury when they got
the flu. Right, Oh, I mean, they can't speak to
that specifically, but it very well could have been. Sounds like,
is that what they did back then? Sounds I would
I be stupid if I said no. Um, it's just
(12:32):
such a bad idea. It's such a bad idea. UM.
So this is this is from USA today. For decades,
the winner of Iowa's caucuses has been decided by a
complicated system of state delicate equivalents, which operates kind of
like the electoral College. Unlike in the November presidential vote, though,
Iowa's tally of popular support was never released, but on
Monday night, the Iowa Democratic Party will publish the two
(12:54):
raw vote totals and the delegates numbers from caucus night.
I probably didn't need to read that quote exactly what.
It's just what I explained. Um. But this goes on
to talk a little bit more, uh about how this
changes everything but this new rule. But since uh, people
look to this as a way to boost generally boosts
(13:17):
one campaign and you're like, Okay, he seems like the
clear frontrunner. Now we've got a whole different set of
data to look at, and so it's it's totally different
ballgame this year. Because I like the whole, like we've
we've talked about like it's a narrative based thing. Mostly yeah,
that creates this perception of how it Canada is doing,
and like we've got momentum, okay, but who voted like
that first round, who got the most support in the
(13:39):
first round, that's important to know who got the most
votes as important to know like how did people switch over?
That's all important information. There's also this I'm sorry Cody's Um,
I was just gonna say that, Uh, that's important information
to know. And uh that having that rule change would
(14:01):
not make what happened last night happened had nothing to
do with it, and votes and records does not equal
the disaster that was right, that's a completely different situation.
Another kind of weird new rule that not everybody knows about,
I don't think, is if your first pick ends up
being viable, you're locked in and you can't move. And uh,
(14:26):
for people who are undecided, this is weird. So a
lot of people show up and they're like, Okay, I
guess I'll go here. But um, apparently a lot of
people didn't know about this new rule and found themselves
unexpectedly locked in when they weren't, do you know what
I mean? They were like, wait, wait a minute, wait
a minute, we don't get to do that thing that
we used to do. But I was going to switch
(14:48):
over maybe because I so that's interesting. I don't know
what percentage of that is. I've just seen people talking
about it. Don't kill me if don't kill me, guys.
I'm just I'm telling you what advice. Um. So, anyway,
we we've we've blown past some of these pros and cons,
and I think that we should talk about them, um
of this whole process. Um. And I'm gonna start with
(15:10):
the pros because there are way more cons um. I
mean when you watch it, especially last night. We're been
watching it, at least at the beginning, I was a
little bit jealous. I think it seems cool and fun
and and and you know, you're getting to interact with people.
It's an exciting environment. Feels like democracy and action. That's
what they keep telling you. Feels like it. And that's
why I want to stretch that. Yeah, there's an excitement.
(15:32):
They're like, I'm gonna convince you of this, and like
you give your impassioned speech, but actually going to change
your mind and that's that's what we view as like,
that's democracy, and there's something inspiring about seeing people working together, talking,
compromising and all of that stuff. And I've interacted with
a bunch of people that have been delegates there in
the past, and uh say, it's a really awesome experience. Also,
(15:55):
it also sorry, it also culminates in the results coming
out that night. So if you did do that, and
if you did work hard and you like hit the
ground and you want there's like there's a celebratory, like
communal sort of aspect of it, but there a lot
of people who worked hard were robbed of because it
was so frustrating, and it is I do suspect we
(16:17):
talked about going there ourselves, being at the Iowa Caucuses,
and I kind of suspect that if we've been we'd
been there, we would have in recorded the episode last night,
we might have had a more positive opinion of the caucuses.
I think this is one of those cases where actually
being there might have warped our perception more because I'm
sure it is emotionally positive to be involved with the
parts until you're at one am and you don't have
(16:40):
any information. Yeah, we're gonna get anyway back to the caucus.
The reality of it is that it is inherently flawed. Um,
I can see how this would have worked hundreds of
years ago, you know, but it doesn't make sense now,
like now we've got like apps and stuff that I mean,
(17:01):
we were seeing people last night literally flipping coins to
figure out which delegates going to get x amount of
you know, which candidate is going to get these delegates,
and that's unacceptable. Also, die Hard apparently die Hard supporters
were showing up without a second choice. And I'm sure
(17:21):
that this happens before in the past, but it really
happened last night and they simply left when their candidate
wasn't viable, and that kind of undermines the whole process. Also,
it's not anonymous. You're sitting there voting with your community.
Your boss is over there, and how does that not
affect people and into feeling pressured to make a decision.
(17:45):
I mean, there's an element of that that's positive though,
that since because it's not anonymous, you can go back
and objectively no, like, there's there's no chance of actually
getting the actual vote count wrong. Once they're are accounted,
you can you can check on and see who howeveryone voted.
So I I get that for this kind of an election,
I get it. There's cons to it. I get the
(18:06):
pros though, and totally. I mean I do too. I'm
just putting it out there that these are all the
different issues that make it a bit very complicated. Um,
there's also some joy I found with that element of
like because you're there, it's these people, like there's a
physicality to it there in the world, and you can
look at like, oh, here's Biden's one supporter against the wall,
(18:27):
and then you pan over and like Elizabeth Warren or
Bernie have like you know, the entire room is filled
with them, and that's there's just fun and pro or
con depending on who it is that's looking at them. Um.
Bernie does very well in a situation like this. He
turns up with a loud, very diverse crowd for him,
(18:48):
you know, really excited, enthusiastic, and that's contagious and this
is this is a good environment. Every Musli caucus and
Latino caucus. I saw that. Yeah, it's really cool. Um,
And I loved to see how many people there was
a lot obviously a lot of like Burnie number one,
War number two, and vice versa. Love that UM, but
(19:10):
perhaps the most important complaint against the whole gaucas system
is that it is inherently exclusionary to people who can't
take the time to mill around a gymnasium for hours
or you know, or people who are disabled, people who
are poor and can't take a time of work or
have children, you know, and other responsibilities. Although Warren did offer, uh,
(19:31):
take care. Also, I think they changed the time slightly,
like they extended them so that people like, yeah, there
are people who have jobs at work all the time.
They can't make it and they I think they extended
the hours a little bit so then they have to
go home and eat dinner and go to work the
next starning. It doesn't you're gonna do that on a Monday.
The UM. It's just it's a big problem. And so
(19:55):
we're looking we're going into many this election cycle wanting
to increase our voter turnout. Well, this isn't the way
to do it. You're just totally excluding a whole swath
of the population. And there was also talked about increasing
going to turn out. Also, there's all this talk last
night of how we were hoping to see numbers rise.
(20:17):
People more people showing up turns out that they match
those of which is good in a way. At least
there wasn't a drop. But we needed this blue wave.
Where's that blue wave that we think that we're going
to be relying on to beat Donald Trump? You know,
Bernie has it just about the same amount of people
so showing up for him as last time. Uh, it's
just it's a little bit it's a little bit uh demoralizing.
(20:40):
It's one of the many demoralizing things. And I think, yeah,
all the stuff we're talking about so far, go into
why that happened and why that is. Um, But also
what if um, what if we just had all the
states go on the same day and it was ranked
choice voting, and you go and you take a box right,
and that's how we vote. I'm all for the for
(21:00):
rank choice footing. I just well, like the same day too.
Like this idea of like dragging it out is actually
it's it's not baffling. I know why it's there. Everything
is stupid. Yeah, all right, we need to take a
real quick break and we're gonna come back. We're going
to talk about what the funk happened last night? Can
I swear that close to an ad Yeah, you fucking
(21:23):
advers fucking doing They're only they're they're all fucking products.
None of them are just products. These these products. Fuck,
it's the real ship, the fucking together everything don't and
(21:47):
we're back. We're gonna talk about whatever the funk happened
last night. But first an update. The New York Times
is now reporting that both Bernie and Pete have ten delegates,
each different than when we started. Is what a roller
coaster goodain. That sounds like victory for Pete. It sounds
(22:12):
like it is an outstanding victory, has a yellow highlight
and is at the time I don't understand by the way,
I one of the important stories is the the the online,
you know, social media games of each of these campaigns
and how good they are and how comprehensive they are.
And I want to note the Pete budaj is um
(22:33):
celebratory I won the Iowa Coccus post in which on
Twitter and which he says, thank you who of the
work we've done, the movement we build, we get to
turn the page and change the trajectory of our country.
I believe you will make me the next president of
the United States and I will do everything I can
to make you proud. That tweet has five point five
thousand likes and a hundred and eleven thousand views, which
is about a third of the views I got from
(22:54):
one of the random videos on my Twitter thread from
Richmond Wait views, I see. Yeah. I should also note
that his campaign has one point six million followers on Twitter,
which let's see how that compares to Bernie. I know
that that Bernie has ten point four million. Um, so
(23:14):
for some reference, Pete boudag Is Twitter is followed by
roughly a quarter of the number of people as Jeremy Renner,
who only posts on Twitter to brag about the fact
that he used to be friends with the other people
on the Avengers. Do you have any other comments about
Jeremy Renner? I have a lot, but I will not
Let's save them. Um. Let's talk about like I said,
(23:35):
let's talk about what happened last night. It was the app,
you guys, the app they've had, however long, a long
time to perfect and you think they would have perfected
it well, I mean right off the bat, just like
off the top of my head. Uh, don't use an app.
Don't use an app that one of the software developers
I follow yesterday said something along the lines of, speaking
(23:56):
as a software developer, please do not use software for anything, yeah,
which was be a good lesson for elections, and like,
you don't have to work in software to like come
to that conclusion either, likes not. Also, well, it's just
the whole thing is it's truly perplexing because they also
didn't have a good phone system in place or have
(24:17):
people trained on how to use it, I guess, so
they weren't able to either troubleshoot or report the problems
because they couldn't get through. There was that remarkable video
from CNN of being on They got this guy that
was on hold, that had been on hold for an
hour trying to report their numbers, and they came back.
(24:37):
They they they took his call while he was on air,
and by the time he went to answer them, they
hung up on him. It was the span of ten seconds. Yeah,
And there were a lot of people like they have
to like taking photos of the results and then texting
them to people who were like driving to other precincts.
Since it was just a whole mess. It's a mess.
It's just wild because we've been doing this a long time,
(24:57):
and we didn't have the app before. What did you do?
The app had just gotten developed in you know phones, Katie,
When did we invent? Was it last month that phones were?
Phones are pretty recent? They were like we want to
weren't there also reports of people that like, we're on
hold for like multiple hours? Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah
(25:19):
didn't some guys say he wasn't able to get his
results in until three am. That's cool that that's if
that's the efficiency that we want from the first one. Um,
Like we said up top, it's difficult no matter what
the results, it's hard to trust after after after this debacle,
(25:42):
um and yeah, I mean I don't want to be
a conspiracy theorist, but it's hard to not with some
of this stuff that's circling. So I want Cody and
Robert to talk a little bit about what's going on
with the development mint of this app. Who were the
people behind this app? Because yeah, yeah, I mean the
worst case scenario is grossing competence. That points to like
(26:05):
it's the worst case, it's also the most likely. I
think that we need to make that clear. Yeah, I
just h yeah, I the longer I study Pete to
Paul Montgomery. The more convinced I convinced, I am that
there is nothing c I A shady about him, um,
(26:27):
but that there is a lot of good old fashioned
Democratic Party corruption behind him and his campaign, and a
lot of good old fashioned even more than that, a
lot of good old fashioned Democratic Party in competence. And
I'd like to give a specific example from before the
caucus in our episode, is Pete budda di Cia agent?
Which we came down with the answer being no, Which
(26:47):
we came down with the answer being now. We we
discussed the fact that he had hired a mercenary army
UM that normally deployed troops to places like a rap
and Iraq and Afghanistan to protect his campaign, even after
they said they had stopped doing that sort of work,
which we thought was shady and weird and is in
fact shady and weird. And I will give credit to
(27:08):
a reporter from the Daily Beast who did the deep
digging to reveal that this was not the case. Um, Yeah,
Scott Bigsby, this was not the case. He hired a
different uh company with the same name. And that might
make it seem like I just like I saw that
they were the same name. I did not. I checked
out the FEC filing. And the reason I said the
(27:30):
wrong thing is because the Pete Boutag campaign reported that
they had hired the company that is the Mercenary Army
with that name, as opposed to the company that is
a normal security firm, and going so far as listing
the location and the address of that company's like that
Mercenary Army's Virginia address as opposed to the New York
based company that they actually hired. And it's that sort
(27:52):
of ship. It's incompetence. It's hiring an intern who I'm
sure didn't actually like just googled the first company with
that name in didn't check to realize it wasn't the
one that his campaign had hired. Um like the first
the first Patriot group that came up. Like that sort
of incompetence is what is continuously generating conspiracies. And it's
the same kind of incompetence as when you, for example, UH,
(28:17):
hire people for your campaign who also work for this
company that is providing a poorly coated app for the
Iowa Democratic Party that will break on the night of
the election declaring victory before there. I think that most
people don't understand what that means. So let's explain that
what company are we talking about. We're talking about two
companies actually, but really one um. The company that we're
(28:41):
really talking about is Acronym. The company that is getting
the blame is called Shadow, and Shadow is a subsidiary
of Acronym. Acronym is a group that was formed in
order to basically help fix the d n c's social
media and like digital strategy and stuff. They they provide
(29:03):
a lot of different like like like like, so the
whole goal of the company is like improve the way
the Democratic Party works in the digital age. Shadow is
a subsidiary software company that made software that was supposed
to help with like organizing phone banks and stuff like that,
as well as providing this app. Yeah, as well as
providing this app for the Iowa caucuses that like tabulated
(29:24):
votes and ship um now right now, because shadows app
broke and they are currently the nation's whipping boy. Uh,
Acronym is making it very clear that Shadow is just invested,
that Acronym just invested in Shadow and trying to make
it look like this is just a company, we invested
some money and they fucked up and it's not our bad.
(29:45):
Kate NIBBs, reporter on Twitter, pointed out that Acronyms about
Page Today says we invested in Shadow, but if you
look at the way back machine from last month, they
say we launched Shadow and there's a bunch of ships
like that before of Acronym has tons of tweets about
launching the company. Yes, launching the company and specifically launching
(30:06):
this app. Acronym did this. There's evidence that like employees,
they share, they share offices in multiple states. Shadow employees
went to like Acronym company retreats and stuff. Any Shadow
was a part of Acronym, Acronym is the company at
blame like Shadow also, I guess, but like they're just
a chunk of this company. Yeah yeah, and must say
(30:28):
they're just Acronyms Shadow. Sorry, thank you. Um. Last night,
I want to touch on this real quick. Uh, there
was some stuff going around about how like, okay, so
the d n C, the you know, the Iowa Democratic
Party donated X amount of dollars in the Nevada to
(30:50):
the app, and at first it was just being reported
that Pete Buddha Judge also uh contributed to that about
a lot of money. And I think all of us,
I think this is just a really good example of
taking a beat while you wait to have all the information.
Because at the time that felt very alarming. Why it's
(31:14):
still not great, but why did Pete donate so much money?
Why is he talking like he's one when we don't
have any information. But then after sitting with it for
a little bit, we started to realize that other campaigns
also donated to the funding of this app. That is
the fair true statement. Um, I just and we just
talked about this in our little text threat about like
(31:35):
that's actually a really good example of Yeah, it still
doesn't look good, but you need we need to be
able to take in these situations and see the information
coming in. We don't really have a full picture of
what happened. I mean, we've got a picture, we've got
their explanation, but we're going to be getting more right.
And like I've seen a lot of tweets that are
that's say, like Pete funded the app, and that's not accurate.
(31:58):
I mean, it's ame way that like I've funded Walmart
because I've purchased products, like he his campaign did give
a bunch of money to the firm that made the app. Yes, yeah,
Biden gave once actually Jilla Brands campaign six payments leading
(32:19):
up to December very recently. But yeah, for varying reasons,
different different things for each campaign. Um. But the this
like he funded the app, he made the app is
sort of catching on and that's not accurate. And it's
frustrating because when you try to engage with people on
this online and bust this myth, it comes across as
(32:40):
if you're defending Pete boutagage, which has never been my goal, right, Um,
And it's eternally frustrating to me. Well, it's still extremely
shady stuff and like it's very even like his campaign.
There people that work on his campaign in high level
positions who are working to work in Shadow. Yeah, tell
us more about that. I mean, his one of his
(33:01):
senior advisers is married to the CEO of acronym Um,
who is a huge Pete fan by the way, Uh
she Pete standard. Yeah, she's she like a lot of
tweets about how great it is that pizza running when
he did his Exploratory Committee incidentally the same month that
Shadow was launched or whatever. Um. But they're just like
(33:24):
a lot of people who have worked or are working
on both things um and whether and like again, there's
like a fine line we're trying to steer clear of
conspiracy stuff, but also like I don't know, basic like
basic conflict of interest, like basic incompetence, basic like well,
maybe you shouldn't be doing that. There's some there's a
(33:47):
similarity between kind of the conspiracies that I'm seeing floated
around what happened yesterday in Iowa and the conspiracies I'm
seeing floated around the base that neo Nazi terrorist group.
And the similarity is that, like it's come out of
some great reporting by Jason Wilson that the guy who
founded this group is an American who lives in Russia,
which is of course gotten a bunch of people talking
to like Russias funding like the neo Nazi movement in
(34:08):
the United States. There behind all of these different fascist groups,
and everyone that I know who is an expert both
on sort of like Ukrainian and Russian fascist movements and
American fascist movement says, no, that's not the case. What's
happening is that all of these groups have affinity for
each other and shared interests and there's a lot of
interchange between them, and it makes sense that a guy
who was into this stuff would also be into a
(34:30):
lot like would move to Russia. There's a lot of
reasons for that. There's a lot of reasons these groups,
like most of these guys, these members of Adam Waffin
in the base, expressed an interest in as Off Battalion,
this Ukrainian fascist group ahead of time. And it's like
it's shady and it's a problem and it's important, but
not for the reason people are stating. And the fact
that Shadow has a bunch of former Hillary people, the
(34:51):
fact that Shadow and uh Acronym have a bunch of
people who are sympathetic and how closely related to people
who are in the Buddhajist campaign is shady in a problem,
but not because Pete Boudage is engaging in some illegal conspiracy,
but because they all are the same kinds of people
who believe the same kinds of things and happen to
be the same kinds of folks who wind up steering
(35:11):
the Democratic Party and like like that's that's the problem.
It's not. They're not breaking the law, they're not orchestrating anything.
They're not smart enough to orchestrate anything, as this ship
shows shows. Um, I I that that's what I see
as what's actually happening here, right, It's yeah, it's common,
(35:32):
it's common interests. It's like because it's like okay, yeah,
like a like a lot of conspiracies of like, oh,
they're doing this, like these backroom deals. You don't need
like backroom deals. It's like, no, you if you do this,
I make money and you make money. Right. We tend
to sensationalize something it doesn't need be sensationalized. It's bad.
There's a reason to have regardless, Yeah, it's like not
(35:53):
great to look at. Okay, the CEO, the CTO, the
CEO of Shadow, all of them were like high level
figure and Hillary campaign, okay, but this scenario that people
are put forth, it just equals like, well, yeah, that's
like the rot. And I do think like one of
the important things to point out is that, like, because
I keep seeing that focused on in discussions online, is
(36:15):
that all these people worked for Hillary before, and like, yes,
this is part of a problem, but it's also they
also most a lot of them worked for Obama before
their old d n C hacks. Like that's that and
that is the problem, Um, but it's not. It's less
that they're organstrating a conspiracy, and more that the kind
of people who wind up at high positions in their
(36:36):
d n C and the sort of companies that are
funded entirely by d NC donors are all going to
believe in want some of the same things because the
same basic people. Yeah, there's all this like uh meritocracy,
like technocratic nonsense that leads to things like this. It's like, okay,
well your worldview is wrong and that's what has got
us well. And all this is to say to me,
(36:56):
break background to this caucus. So it doesn't look good. Okay,
Biden didn't do well. He's obviously an establishment strong fourth
strong fourth was a very funny tweet of yours, um
and almost the last finger on my unbelievable Buddha judges another.
(37:17):
Obviously we're looking at here, all this information here establishment
person and you know it's so all of his connections
to this app that went that went haywire. Bernie is
very clearly leading the popular vote here in its bizarre
This is what I mean, this is like the worst,
most toxic way for us to have started this election. Yeah,
(37:39):
you know who very vocally believes that the popular vote
matters the most most people who vote, is that what
should elect the person who Buddha judge. According to his
essays and according to a lot of quotes that he
has said in the past few months on Camera Wild
and it's it's I think, um, there's too much focus
(38:03):
on like what might be happening behind closed doors and
what we know, which is that because so many buddages people.
I thought acronym was a good idea. I thought it
was worth putting money into, thought their products were worth
putting money into. They made the same mistake everyone else
in the d n C made, and it proved to
be a bad choice because of everything that happened in Iowa,
because it was a cluster fuck in. This company is
(38:24):
bad at what they do. Whereas the Sanders campaign very
made a very pointed decision not to invest in that,
not to put not invest, but not to buy services
from that company because they were like, no, this looks
like garbage, and it is garbage, which we'll talk about more,
but like this is like, I think the problem that
we we miss when we get into conspiracy stuff is
like I don't think the problem is a conspiracy. I
(38:44):
think the problem is incompetence, and it is not everyone
in this campaign, in this race, who is incompetent. It's
specific people. Yeah. UM on that point, I'm just gonna
real quick say, uh. The group's top donor for this
this Acronym uh Seth Klarman. He's a billionaire. He's a
former GOP mega donor. He's a CEO of about Post group.
(39:09):
It's a Boston based hedge fund. UM invests heavily in
liquid natural gas companies. Um. He gave them one point
five million dollars about a month ago. Now, natural gas,
that means it makes trees. Natural is good, Natural is good,
It means natural beautiful. He runs a fart company, so
(39:33):
get that fart money. Also, I have to note there's
an amazing article The Outline. People ask all the time,
who should you be reading for news? The Outlines fucking
killing it this year, and they came out with within
hours of this clusterfucking incredible article based on insider interviews
about acronym Um, the company behind the top and one
of the yeah behind Shadow. The co founders of acronym
(39:58):
are a guy with the last name of McGowan and
Michael Dubin, and Michael Dubin is the founder of the
Dollars Shave Club. Okay, cancel your subscriptions, guys, responsor for
us then keep it okay, Yes, so the other person
(40:20):
is Tara McGowan then, and yeah, Tara McGowan. She's the
wife of one of Pete's top adviser. Yes, yes she is. Alright, guys,
we're gonna take another quick break and then we're going
to come back to talk more about this stuff because
apparently you guys have more information to share with us,
and we're very interested. Oh my god, there's so much
(40:40):
more to say together everything, don't don't. Okay, we are
back from that to talk more about we are Shadowy
Figure years and the acronyms of Shadowy figures. Yeah, so,
(41:06):
uh get to We'll get to Robert, You've got way
more to say about acronym I've probably got some real
quick We just want to think what we wanted to
comment on the name shadow Um, because my god, what
are you doing? It is unbelievable. Who wrote this movie
that we're all living in. We want to put out
(41:26):
what's the most evil sounding company name? It's wild that
they did this. Um, and I'm just gonna read really
quick on their website. Uh, they're about page why shadow
When a light is shining, shadows are a constant companion.
We see ourselves as building a long term side by
(41:46):
side shadow of tech infrastructure to the Democratic Party and
the progressive community at large. So like they kind of know,
they're like, hey, hey, Mitch, what was one of Was
there some sort of problem in twenty sixteen with people
viewing the Democratic Party's chief candidate is like shady to
people call her shady a lot? Was that like a
big issue we had? Oh yeah, it sure was. What
(42:10):
should we name the company that runs our online efforts?
I'm thinking Shadow, Corrupt the corrupt or the app, corrupt
con corrupt con the dot net. No no, but also, uh,
make sure you download it now because there are only
you only get two D downloads for the app. The
(42:31):
way they rolled out the app is very, very embarrassing.
That's why I'm a real good I want to hear
more about Acronym. Robert So Acronym is a dumb company
that should never have been formed. Um, this is this
is the key of it. It was launched ahead of
mid terms It was described as a digital first startup
(42:51):
UM and like the goal of acronym was to quote
uh with the goal of the acronym was like to
to to raise a load of money UM seventy five
million dollars initially and deployed that money on anti Trump
advertising in five key battleground states in the election, those
states being North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, in Arizona. This effort,
(43:14):
the strategy do you want to know what its name
is called? Kind of four is enough? The logic is
that these four states are the only ones you need
to win to win the election. You gotta love not
making the exact same motherfucking mistakes plenty. I'm sorry, but
they don't have an acronym for that f I E five.
(43:38):
They call it five. Fie on you fi on us.
We are not elitist to discard tens of millions of Americans.
It's like enough, Like you're like, you start a campaign,
your slogans just like come on, come on, kind of
(43:59):
like give us another ring Pete Buddha judge plenty yeah,
please continue, Robert so Uh. In November of twenty nineteen, UM,
it was revealed that acronym UH and Pacronym It's political
action committee, which actually pretty great name. If you're accompanying you,
I I would have made the same call had I
(44:21):
launched a company named Acronym. UM had raised of that
that plan seventy five million. Um. Now, so this is
where the money, that's where the fart money went. They
want to compete with the Tramp campaign's massive social media campaign.
It's massive like digital ground game, which the Trump campaign
(44:42):
has spent more than anyone has on Facebook ads. And
it's not even fucking closed. It's spent more than anyone
on digital ads. It's not even close. Um. So on
its surface, there's some reasoning that like, oh yeah, the
Democrats need a fucking counter to that. There should be
an organized group for the Democratic Party working on this. However,
all of the evidence from inside acro him suggest they
were terrible at it. Um. The Outline got quotes from
(45:04):
UH Acronym employees, one of whom noted they call it
a startup environment as the explanation for when no one
knows what's happening. Um. Yeah, yeah, And I've found some evidence,
some examples of the incredible adds that Acronym has been
running on Facebook. UM add number one, who will the
(45:27):
Democrats choose to take on the Night King? You decide
to sign up to play the hashtag Game of Elections
hashtag for the Throne, and then the two pictures are
Elizabeth Warren photo shopped on a Game of Thrones on
the Iron Throne and Pete Boodagage photoshopped on the Iron
Throne timely really hitting into that and again, yeah, hitting
(45:50):
into that fucking show everybody loves. I mean it was
April of nineteen, so it was fresher but still dumb.
Oh my god, dumb. Yeah. Another example of acronym ads
from March of two thousand nineteen, the Democrats running for
(46:10):
president or trying to distinguish themselves and televised town halls,
policy proposals, and even graphic t s emog of a
pink T shirt and this week's hashtag f w I
w WE took a dive into the world of presidential
merch stores and the strategy behind them. So, for what
it's worth, is like their average ad and their name
of this March one was the IDEs of March, which
(46:31):
is good, so it's like what. Yeah. They also launched
a news app UM let me find the fucking yeah,
and it's just like real quick about the merch store stuff.
Uh launched his store before he launched his website with
a platform. He sure did, He sure did. I wonder
(46:51):
what if that's telling about Mr Pete So. One of
the key projects launched by acronym Um was called Courier Newsroom,
a inter left content network designed to mimic the aesthetics
of local news sites UM, which McGowan cheerfully spun as
a replacement for actual local news UM. Now, have you
guys seen a lot of Courier news Room links shared? No,
(47:16):
I don't think so. I can't speak to that because
it was a massive failure of an idea. What a
bad idea. It's like, what if we destroy the credibility
of local news even more? The thing we don't need,
a thing that's bad is that how we fight Trump? Believable?
I so and again in sort of response to like
(47:36):
the ideas that this is kind of some like sinister
ci a conspiracy. One of the people who want to
quote here is is Karnik Ganapati, who is the co
founder of the democratic messaging firm m v EMT Communications
and Ganapati's partner is a senior advisor to Bernie Sanders,
although Ganapati is not a part of the campaign. But
that's kind of like the angle he's coming at this.
He's kind of from the left side of the Democratic Party.
His associates are, so he's he's on the more on
(47:58):
the Sanders side of things. And his sort of summary
of the whole situation with Outline and Shadow is there's
such a pervasive culture of self dealing when it comes
to consultants and party committees and stuff. And we have
a situation where a party whereas a party, if we
are the good guys, we have to be the good
guys not engaging in this. There's a reason why so
many Americans think politics is an Elita's plot to make
a handful of people wealthier. And it's kind of true.
(48:21):
And I mean, that's that's the issue, that's what's happening here. Yeah,
even the idea of like this like for profit, like
this private company making this app and getting all this
money to do this for a public service, like that's
what people don't like. Yeah, it's gross's dumb. It was
a bad It was never anything but a terrible idea. Um.
(48:44):
Oh yeah, here's a quote. There's also a really good
Intercept article UM on fucking acronym and shadow. I'm going
to read one quote from it. A person with knowledge
of the company's culture who asked her am an anonymous
for fear of reprisal, shared communications showing that top officials
at the company regularly expressed hostility to standard support. But
no one is married to Michael Hall. Listen, your strategist
for the bootage campaign. There's no evidence that any preference
(49:05):
of candidates had any effect on the coding issue that
has stolen the EYEOWA results. But again, everything they're like,
emails from this company are going to leak out at
some point. I already know it. They're like if if
Russia again, I don't think they orchestrated this, but they're
not dumb, Like if they could hack something, one thing
to hack would be the fucking emails of this company
because you're going to get them talking about Sanders supporters.
(49:26):
You can roll that out at the d n C,
just like happened with the d n C leaks. Like
it's of course, but that's what you're gonna do. That's yeah,
it's yeah, it's all very upsetting. Um, So what are
your takeaways here, guys. I'm excited that Biden didn't do well.
That's something that we can all resoundingly that happened tonight
(49:50):
is that Biden didn't do well week A week four. Um, Yeah,
didn't do well. Yeah. I think the Bernie winning the
popular vote first, sure, and maybe I mean probably one
a lot of the districts that I've reported. Here's what
I pause it. Even if even if this all comes
out pete one, Bernie takes the popular vote, Um, that's
(50:15):
going to give Bernie a real boost in the other states.
People are going to be mobilized and want to maybe
maybe that maybe that will draw more people out. I
don't know, maybe, Yeah. I think this The whole way
it's shaking out is like we've been talking about a
disaster and it doesn't make anybody really look good except
for like people who handle it well like Luc Warren.
Wasn't like I won or like anything like that. She
(50:36):
gave a nice speech, and then I just want to
say something real quick about her speech. She did give
a nice speech that I eventually saw when I was
watching live the Biden and her came out. The speech
at the same time, and she was on screen and
they immediately cut away to him the fourth place, the
person who at that point, I mean, everyone's like he's
(50:56):
not viable. It didn't seem and he was basically saying,
like doing terribly. He was basically saying, Sea suckers, I'm
going to New Hampshire. And and then MSNBC once it
was done, they just went back to people talking and
didn't even cut back to Warren. CNN did briefly then
cut away in the middle of her speech. I happened
to catch it hours later and they still had the
(51:18):
live Chiron underneath. Um. But her speech was good and
it was cute, Like I think, yeah, like, uh that uh,
that's generally good. Um. I think Bernie does probably benefit
from it, just because everything around it is like, well,
that's not good. You fucked up, you fucked up. Pete
declared victory when he didn't win, like every like I
think all these things ultimately, um, well, it's just a
(51:44):
disruption of what it was supposed to be, and leading
up to the Caucus was very much like trying to
get downplay it. Everything surrounding it is not good. Yeah,
And another positive takeaways that I think this be the
nail on the coffin of the Iowa Caucus, the whole process,
(52:07):
I mean, democracy went After this next election, we will
all be uh street against Donald Trump's manic legions and
there will be no more democracy. Snugglen snuggling together in
that coffin, right, being silly. But it could it could
happen here. Yeah. Um, you know the biggest heartbreak from
(52:30):
all this, Like the d I took some I took
some leaps out of the DNC's book, and I hired
about forty different people former Obama and Hillary staffers to
write my jokes for me this year. I paid them
uh seven point three million dollars um. Now a lot
of that was Bloomberg money obviously, Um, but you know
they gave me a really killer line to throw out
(52:51):
here that Because we don't have the exact numbers, I can't,
but I was going to call him Pete number two digit.
I know, I know, I know, I know. Do we
know it's a heartbreaker second in the popular vote. I
think it's so. With the popular vote, Bernie's winning two
(53:12):
hundred and Peter's close behind. H I mean, I guess
that's I said close I assume that it's close. It
seems fairly close. I don't know. Reporting in despite MSNBC
and CNN both having graphics that say it's in, doesn't
it just bumb you out when you're like, oh, we're
(53:35):
talking about like how many people are we talking about?
Two people? We are? We are talking about a covert
city voters over city being an area of Los Angeles,
cover city being a very small area of Los Angeles
with a reasonably priced rent for being on the west side.
Absolutely if you want to be good neighborhood to the ocean. Um. Yeah,
(53:57):
So there are some potential positives we can look at
in the long run. Here, I am just trying to
spin it that way, but mostly it is the ship
show that we have described. You know what, Actually, here's
a good way to look at the number of people
who voted in the Iowa cock If you count side
arms as well as primary arms, h a slightly more
(54:19):
people voted in Iowa than there were firearms in Richmond
during the gun rally. Okay, well, then that's something right there. Democracy.
I think there we go, there we go. It's important
to some important data to unpack. I feel like a
few coin flips might change those numbers a little bit,
but you know, results come in in the middle of
(54:40):
the city of the Union. I'm sure they will. They
want to prolonged and obviously the results of this as
much as possible because the results help who wins, and
I'm pretty sure they know who won. So okay, I
think that that's where we wrap things up. I think
that's where wrapped. Congratulations to Mayor Pete, who is now
(55:03):
framing this as the pundits didn't believe we could do it,
but we did it. Pete, Every pundit loves you. What
are you talking about. It's also to claim that you
won something when zero presented. Oh sure, that's also that
will always be something the way after very very Trumpian
(55:24):
of him. That quite trumping. I don't know what I mean, Hey,
I one, uh, it's just the members can't lie if
there are no numbers. Sure, all of that, but for real,
who how was he getting that information that other people
didn't have, you know, shadow, shadow, So I will say,
(55:48):
you know, um, I don't know if you guys were
aware of this, but campaigner Katie Coates won an eleven
year battle to get the Global Association of International Sports Federation.
GAP two can firm pole dancing as a professional sport,
which means that it is now possible that poll dancing
could be an Olympic sport. And I'm taking a leaf
out of Maripete's book and congratulating myself for winning the
(56:11):
gold medal and dancing. I know, I know, thank you,
thank you, victory he won at the Olympics. But haven't
happened yet. You did a h A hundred percent of
judges have not yet reported in, but based on the
early numbers, I am tracking a victory. The energy, the energy,
(56:34):
the yeah, I'm proud of you and I'm grateful that
we entered to podcast on such a positive note. On
a victory. I think this, this win might be enough
to get me to finally learn how to pull dance.
I'm rooting for your best. Um, you guys can check
us out online. We have social media, It's true. At
(56:56):
worst your pod on Twitter and Instagram. Uh, and then
you know we also tweet and stuff like that as well.
If you want we do tweet. I'm Katie Stole, I'm
Cody Johnston on Twitter. I'm gotta learn how to pull dance.
That's his new handle, guys, follow it. Oh, we're doing
our handles, not our name, Google my name and the
(57:18):
word Twitter. Yeah. I don't know why I decided we
never do that. I just you know, sometimes I feel
under the pressure to wrap when I'm wrapping it up
your words. Um, no, Katie, this is a gut field
and we're going to follow your gut wherever it leads us.
Follow your gut to my Twitter page and hit that.
There we go and then New Hampshire. This has been fun.
(57:42):
I just want to put out that I already want
you Hampshire. I know I'm not running, but I just
want your Hampshire. What's the room room full of winners,
liars and hand I mean there's there are a percent
and nobody's voted. Yeah, but definitely one Katie, so less.
That's the way, so much. Thank you so much early rounds.
I am a winner. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah,
(58:05):
all right, Well, why is this is the worst year ever?
We still have the state of the Union, the impeachment vote,
and a Democratic debate this week? I hate everyone the
worst week of the worst. Take on the Night King.
You're gonna take on the Night King. I'm just kidding
to love everyone in The Shaman, Robert Fold, and more
to the polls. Are we just going to riff around
(58:27):
until people stop? I think so yeah, until the song
sort of like slowly ramps up here the music key
Race Alert, my dog just want but what we don't know?
Dan Music Ever, So everything I D Worst Year Ever
(58:56):
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, A production of I Heart
Radio Welcome Together Everything, So don't don't soul, baby baby,
(00:23):
Welcome back to the Worst year Ever. Who do you?
Who do you who? That's my new catchphrase, Who do yea?
And mine? Baby? Um, guys, no, no, I am just
not acknowledging it. And what are you? What are you celebrating?
(00:46):
The great day and night that all I am yesterday
and today, I am celebrating the fact that I haven't
checked in on any of the Iowa caucus results, but
I am celebrating my assumption of the fact that everything
went perfectly. The d n C really nailed, as did
the Iowa Democratic Party what needed to happen, and everybody
(01:08):
is happy with the results. Now I'm going to take
a single sip of coffee and search Twitter. Um what
uh that was a fun bit. Well, let's just say, um,
this this tweet from the Democratic Party amazing. For three
years we've been preparing for the process that officially kicks
(01:30):
off tonight in Iowa. You have the Democratic presidential primary.
Beautiful and I hope you all have gathered by now
that today we are going to talk about the unmitigated
disaster that was the Iowa Caucus, the very first voting
event of the event that sets the tone. The whole
election ended in confusion, this organization, fears of tampering, and
(01:56):
as of yet still no official winner, although at the
time of this recording it does look like Pete one
and Bernie one the popular vote. No, it doesn't. It's
only a reporting right now, you know, I know. But
the narrative that we're being told at this point, my friends,
my dear friends, Katie, I love you and respect you,
(02:19):
and I think you make a good point that that
this is part of what sets the trend for the election.
But I do think that was a slightly incomplete statement,
because I think two things have set the trend for election.
One of them is that the right wing in this
country was able to organize north of heavily armed people
to march in a state capital in favor of political
(02:39):
belief that they hold. And at the same time, the
Democratic Party was unable to launch an app with millions
of dollars of investments behind it to track the votes
of a about a hundred thousand people. Yeah, yeah, that's
those two things are important. Both they're both important. Um.
I love living in metaphors last night. There was a
(03:00):
lot of speculation running around, some of which we partook
an uh, most likely what happened last night was your
run of the mill establishment incompetent, gross incompetent, gross incompetent, unbelievable,
almost unprecedented competent. It's it's pretty wild and we're going
(03:23):
to dig into all of that. Well, it's hard is
that no matter who wins at this point, if the
aliens versus predator situations, just everything's tainted now. It's it's
truly remarkable. And so this isn't this isn't quite the
(03:43):
conversation we expected to have today. We were preparing to
have a more normal conversation. So we're kind of putting
it all together at the last minute. But it'll be fun. Yeah.
We were like, well, we'll talk about like what caucuses are,
We'll talk about the results a little bit. I'll probably
be pretty boring, but that'll be that. And we're still
going to talk about caucuses a bit. But man, but
then what happened hopefully it's not boring. Um, yeah, before
(04:06):
we get into what happened last night, I do think
that we should discuss what caucuses are, how they work,
or how they should work, whether or not they work.
Before we talked about all that. Um, Like I said,
Iowa was the first caucus of the election cycle, and
a lot of people are asking why. It's a great
question why. Indeed, the answer is because I guess they
(04:27):
have a state law mandating that they be the first
caucus of the election cycle, and somehow their state law
is something we all honor. Yeah. Interesting quick note about
that being a state law. Another law in Iowa, it's
the only state with a lifetime voting band for anyone
ever convicted of a felony. Cool that awesome. Voting issues
(04:50):
in Iowa. Pretty Iowa. Think about people I don't want
to ever be able to vote. I think someone who
at one point had an ounce of merrill want to
in their car on the wrong guy. I Also, I'm
glad because once you do a thing and there's no
going back, and there's no no going back. Yeah, no
going back formative, you can't ever change. Um. Yeah, that goes.
(05:15):
That's all part of the conversation. Iowa is small and
it is predominantly white. Uh, it's not Iowa, I know
it's not. It's not really a reflection of the of
the general America, so at large, the voting demographic. Uh
and historically it has had a very outsized uh influence
(05:39):
on the election, especially well since two thousand, everybody that's
one the Democratic Iowa caucus has gone on to get
the actual nomination. How many of those people have won
the presidency one a one Al Gore, then Carry Obama
and Clinton. So you know, it's just interesting to note
(06:01):
that the one that one was the most progressive. It
is interesting Canada. Yeah, but you know, it's a big
question why does it have this It has the influence
because it's the first one, and so people leave Iowa
and they have a lot of momentum, and people who
are in second place also usually pick up a lot
of momentum uh and and and get a big bump
(06:24):
and donors. It's largely like narrative based like present this
like oh, we're going to do it, and then it Yeah,
but this time, seeing as it's already mired in controversy,
we're not really sure. We can't predict at this point
how uh this win for whomever it is will affect
them going forward. But anyway, I do want to say
(06:44):
real quick just because I think this bit of research
and it fits here. I was kind of curious, just
sort of like in the question that you started with,
Katie's like why Iowa, why do we let them do this?
And obviously they have a state law, so they're going
to do whatever it takes to be the first UM
I wanted. I was kind curious as to whether or
not there was like a financial incentive for this too,
like if it's like a huge industry in the state,
(07:06):
And well, not quite. I found a study that was
some college, I think and some college in Iowa did
that and it was back in two thousand seven, so
two eight, like so, um, it may be a little
bit out of date, but they found that Iowa perceived
just about four point four percent of all campaigns spending
UM by measured candidates UM and which is like more
(07:28):
or less in line with New Hampshire. Like they don't
get that much more money than New Hampshire. Um, they
do make you know, like seven million dollars in labor
um for the Caucuses and like a couple of hundred jobs. Um,
it's not an insignificant um amount of money or an
insignificant amount of jobs. But Iowa was state GDP is
a hundred and thirty billion dollars, or at least it
(07:49):
wasn't two thousand and seven. So, like, you know, even
though like the value of the couses is increached a bit,
you're talking about like one of the states annual domestic
product when you divide it by the fact that it's
every four years. Um. So it's not a huge economic
gain for the state. The study does notice that, um quote,
the Iowa caucuses do provide exposure that the state, it's
(08:11):
businesses and it's boosters would find very expensive to obtain
otherwise for free and for a time, the word Iowa
is used continuously a national and international mass media and
a continuous and often sensational coverage of the political campaign
and the communities of Iowa has to be, as the
ad says, priceless. That said, it's not a huge deal.
Like if you're looking for why Iowa is so fucking
(08:32):
helping to host the caucus, it's it's got to be
more than money, because there's just not I think it's
also not that big a factor tradition. It's the fact
that we've done this and we will do it. There's
a pride in it. I guess I do think that
the tourism industry or around the time of uh, the
the election, you know, you see a spike in hotels
being booked and all that. It definitely matters for some people,
(08:55):
for sure. But anyway, interesting about the coverage leading up
to it also because it's presented like this big, big thing. Um.
The coverage leading out to this caucus uh significantly lower
than it usually is. Um. It's like, I think, what
ten minutes of time spent talking about the Iowa caucus
compared to last year or last elections eighty six minutes? Um.
(09:18):
Just interesting. They downplay it. Certain certain things are positioned.
Maybe that's good. I don't know. Anyway, here's a very
basic rundown of the mechanics of the caucus. Thank you
New York Times for this little explainer for that. For
that's as far as my thank you extends. Thank you
very much, um uh, because I don't know about you guys,
(09:41):
but it's kind be using even knowing the basics of it.
You're like, what is happening right now? Well, especially last night? Anyway? Okay.
Number One, people go to a physical designated location like
a gym or library too. There are representatives of each
candidate in the location three, everyone walks up to that
candidate area to represent their support, just like little human
(10:02):
votes bouncing around a gym Uh yeah but ahead, finished Katie. Well,
just one of the things that's important about this is
that it takes multiple hours to be a part of this,
which is ye, we'll get yeah, well, well we have
all well yeah, number four. Everyone is counted. If one
(10:24):
of the groups represents at least fift of the people,
they are considered viable, and then there's around two people
in the non viable. Groups can now choose to do
several things. They can either join another group, walk around
and convince people to join their group, or move on
to an uncommitted group. The tally is once again counted,
and based on the numbers, each candidate is awarded delegates
(10:45):
based on how many supporters they have. Iowa has forty
one pledged delegates. Those delegates will then go to the
d n C and show support for the candidate they
were assigned two. All right, it's a little convoluted, but basically,
if your candidate does isn't viable, then you go move
on to your second choice candidate. And there's a lot
(11:05):
of opportunity for people to interact in mingle and and
have so short everything so dumb um and the year
well that's yeah, Well, don't worry. So what was different
about last night? You know, I might have heard that
there were some changes made this year. Uh, some of
the campaigns UH pushed for key changes to be made
(11:29):
to this caucus system, the biggest change being that there
will now be a popular vote winner as well as
an official winner, something that's never been done before. Um,
that's been thrown around a lot as one of the
reasons reporting last night was so messed up. But if
you think that's ridiculous, I've seen a lot of that, like, uh,
(11:49):
that claim of like we changed the rules for you
for you and it's your fault. Actually that is happening,
and that's just not true. It's just not true. Not
what happened. It's now you've described the system to me, Katie,
And one thing I just want to ask for clarification
on there's no chance that this system that is still
in critical part of determining who will run the country
(12:10):
and control a nuclear arsenal, This system was not by
chance developed by people who drank mercury when they got
the flu. Right, Oh, I mean, they can't speak to
that specifically, but it very well could have been. Sounds like,
is that what they did back then? Sounds I would
I be stupid if I said no. Um, it's just
(12:32):
such a bad idea. It's such a bad idea. UM.
So this is this is from USA today. For decades,
the winner of Iowa's caucuses has been decided by a
complicated system of state delicate equivalents, which operates kind of
like the electoral College. Unlike in the November presidential vote, though,
Iowa's tally of popular support was never released, but on
Monday night, the Iowa Democratic Party will publish the two
(12:54):
raw vote totals and the delegates numbers from caucus night.
I probably didn't need to read that quote exactly what.
It's just what I explained. Um. But this goes on
to talk a little bit more, uh about how this
changes everything but this new rule. But since uh, people
look to this as a way to boost generally boosts
(13:17):
one campaign and you're like, Okay, he seems like the
clear frontrunner. Now we've got a whole different set of
data to look at, and so it's it's totally different
ballgame this year. Because I like the whole, like we've
we've talked about like it's a narrative based thing. Mostly yeah,
that creates this perception of how it Canada is doing,
and like we've got momentum, okay, but who voted like
that first round, who got the most support in the
(13:39):
first round, that's important to know who got the most
votes as important to know like how did people switch over?
That's all important information. There's also this I'm sorry Cody's Um,
I was just gonna say that, Uh, that's important information
to know. And uh that having that rule change would
(14:01):
not make what happened last night happened had nothing to
do with it, and votes and records does not equal
the disaster that was right, that's a completely different situation.
Another kind of weird new rule that not everybody knows about,
I don't think, is if your first pick ends up
being viable, you're locked in and you can't move. And uh,
(14:26):
for people who are undecided, this is weird. So a
lot of people show up and they're like, Okay, I
guess I'll go here. But um, apparently a lot of
people didn't know about this new rule and found themselves
unexpectedly locked in when they weren't, do you know what
I mean? They were like, wait, wait a minute, wait
a minute, we don't get to do that thing that
we used to do. But I was going to switch
(14:48):
over maybe because I so that's interesting. I don't know
what percentage of that is. I've just seen people talking
about it. Don't kill me if don't kill me, guys.
I'm just I'm telling you what advice. Um. So, anyway,
we we've we've blown past some of these pros and cons,
and I think that we should talk about them, um
of this whole process. Um. And I'm gonna start with
(15:10):
the pros because there are way more cons um. I
mean when you watch it, especially last night. We're been
watching it, at least at the beginning, I was a
little bit jealous. I think it seems cool and fun
and and and you know, you're getting to interact with people.
It's an exciting environment. Feels like democracy and action. That's
what they keep telling you. Feels like it. And that's
why I want to stretch that. Yeah, there's an excitement.
(15:32):
They're like, I'm gonna convince you of this, and like
you give your impassioned speech, but actually going to change
your mind and that's that's what we view as like,
that's democracy, and there's something inspiring about seeing people working together, talking,
compromising and all of that stuff. And I've interacted with
a bunch of people that have been delegates there in
the past, and uh say, it's a really awesome experience. Also,
(15:55):
it also sorry, it also culminates in the results coming
out that night. So if you did do that, and
if you did work hard and you like hit the
ground and you want there's like there's a celebratory, like
communal sort of aspect of it, but there a lot
of people who worked hard were robbed of because it
was so frustrating, and it is I do suspect we
(16:17):
talked about going there ourselves, being at the Iowa Caucuses,
and I kind of suspect that if we've been we'd
been there, we would have in recorded the episode last night,
we might have had a more positive opinion of the caucuses.
I think this is one of those cases where actually
being there might have warped our perception more because I'm
sure it is emotionally positive to be involved with the
parts until you're at one am and you don't have
(16:40):
any information. Yeah, we're gonna get anyway back to the caucus.
The reality of it is that it is inherently flawed. Um,
I can see how this would have worked hundreds of
years ago, you know, but it doesn't make sense now,
like now we've got like apps and stuff that I mean,
(17:01):
we were seeing people last night literally flipping coins to
figure out which delegates going to get x amount of
you know, which candidate is going to get these delegates,
and that's unacceptable. Also, die Hard apparently die Hard supporters
were showing up without a second choice. And I'm sure
(17:21):
that this happens before in the past, but it really
happened last night and they simply left when their candidate
wasn't viable, and that kind of undermines the whole process. Also,
it's not anonymous. You're sitting there voting with your community.
Your boss is over there, and how does that not
affect people and into feeling pressured to make a decision.
(17:45):
I mean, there's an element of that that's positive though,
that since because it's not anonymous, you can go back
and objectively no, like, there's there's no chance of actually
getting the actual vote count wrong. Once they're are accounted,
you can you can check on and see who howeveryone voted.
So I I get that for this kind of an election,
I get it. There's cons to it. I get the
(18:06):
pros though, and totally. I mean I do too. I'm
just putting it out there that these are all the
different issues that make it a bit very complicated. Um,
there's also some joy I found with that element of
like because you're there, it's these people, like there's a
physicality to it there in the world, and you can
look at like, oh, here's Biden's one supporter against the wall,
(18:27):
and then you pan over and like Elizabeth Warren or
Bernie have like you know, the entire room is filled
with them, and that's there's just fun and pro or
con depending on who it is that's looking at them. Um.
Bernie does very well in a situation like this. He
turns up with a loud, very diverse crowd for him,
(18:48):
you know, really excited, enthusiastic, and that's contagious and this
is this is a good environment. Every Musli caucus and
Latino caucus. I saw that. Yeah, it's really cool. Um,
And I loved to see how many people there was
a lot obviously a lot of like Burnie number one,
War number two, and vice versa. Love that UM, but
(19:10):
perhaps the most important complaint against the whole gaucas system
is that it is inherently exclusionary to people who can't
take the time to mill around a gymnasium for hours
or you know, or people who are disabled, people who
are poor and can't take a time of work or
have children, you know, and other responsibilities. Although Warren did offer, uh,
(19:31):
take care. Also, I think they changed the time slightly,
like they extended them so that people like, yeah, there
are people who have jobs at work all the time.
They can't make it and they I think they extended
the hours a little bit so then they have to
go home and eat dinner and go to work the
next starning. It doesn't you're gonna do that on a Monday.
The UM. It's just it's a big problem. And so
(19:55):
we're looking we're going into many this election cycle wanting
to increase our voter turnout. Well, this isn't the way
to do it. You're just totally excluding a whole swath
of the population. And there was also talked about increasing
going to turn out. Also, there's all this talk last
night of how we were hoping to see numbers rise.
(20:17):
People more people showing up turns out that they match
those of which is good in a way. At least
there wasn't a drop. But we needed this blue wave.
Where's that blue wave that we think that we're going
to be relying on to beat Donald Trump? You know,
Bernie has it just about the same amount of people
so showing up for him as last time. Uh, it's
just it's a little bit it's a little bit uh demoralizing.
(20:40):
It's one of the many demoralizing things. And I think, yeah,
all the stuff we're talking about so far, go into
why that happened and why that is. Um, But also
what if um, what if we just had all the
states go on the same day and it was ranked
choice voting, and you go and you take a box right,
and that's how we vote. I'm all for the for
(21:00):
rank choice footing. I just well, like the same day too.
Like this idea of like dragging it out is actually
it's it's not baffling. I know why it's there. Everything
is stupid. Yeah, all right, we need to take a
real quick break and we're gonna come back. We're going
to talk about what the funk happened last night? Can
I swear that close to an ad Yeah, you fucking
(21:23):
advers fucking doing They're only they're they're all fucking products.
None of them are just products. These these products. Fuck,
it's the real ship, the fucking together everything don't and
(21:47):
we're back. We're gonna talk about whatever the funk happened
last night. But first an update. The New York Times
is now reporting that both Bernie and Pete have ten delegates,
each different than when we started. Is what a roller
coaster goodain. That sounds like victory for Pete. It sounds
(22:12):
like it is an outstanding victory, has a yellow highlight
and is at the time I don't understand by the way,
I one of the important stories is the the the online,
you know, social media games of each of these campaigns
and how good they are and how comprehensive they are.
And I want to note the Pete budaj is um
(22:33):
celebratory I won the Iowa Coccus post in which on
Twitter and which he says, thank you who of the
work we've done, the movement we build, we get to
turn the page and change the trajectory of our country.
I believe you will make me the next president of
the United States and I will do everything I can
to make you proud. That tweet has five point five
thousand likes and a hundred and eleven thousand views, which
is about a third of the views I got from
(22:54):
one of the random videos on my Twitter thread from
Richmond Wait views, I see. Yeah. I should also note
that his campaign has one point six million followers on Twitter,
which let's see how that compares to Bernie. I know
that that Bernie has ten point four million. Um, so
(23:14):
for some reference, Pete boudag Is Twitter is followed by
roughly a quarter of the number of people as Jeremy Renner,
who only posts on Twitter to brag about the fact
that he used to be friends with the other people
on the Avengers. Do you have any other comments about
Jeremy Renner? I have a lot, but I will not
Let's save them. Um. Let's talk about like I said,
(23:35):
let's talk about what happened last night. It was the app,
you guys, the app they've had, however long, a long
time to perfect and you think they would have perfected
it well, I mean right off the bat, just like
off the top of my head. Uh, don't use an app.
Don't use an app that one of the software developers
I follow yesterday said something along the lines of, speaking
(23:56):
as a software developer, please do not use software for anything, yeah,
which was be a good lesson for elections, and like,
you don't have to work in software to like come
to that conclusion either, likes not. Also, well, it's just
the whole thing is it's truly perplexing because they also
didn't have a good phone system in place or have
(24:17):
people trained on how to use it, I guess, so
they weren't able to either troubleshoot or report the problems
because they couldn't get through. There was that remarkable video
from CNN of being on They got this guy that
was on hold, that had been on hold for an
hour trying to report their numbers, and they came back.
(24:37):
They they they took his call while he was on air,
and by the time he went to answer them, they
hung up on him. It was the span of ten seconds. Yeah,
And there were a lot of people like they have
to like taking photos of the results and then texting
them to people who were like driving to other precincts.
Since it was just a whole mess. It's a mess.
It's just wild because we've been doing this a long time,
(24:57):
and we didn't have the app before. What did you do?
The app had just gotten developed in you know phones, Katie,
When did we invent? Was it last month that phones were?
Phones are pretty recent? They were like we want to
weren't there also reports of people that like, we're on
hold for like multiple hours? Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah
(25:19):
didn't some guys say he wasn't able to get his
results in until three am. That's cool that that's if
that's the efficiency that we want from the first one. Um,
Like we said up top, it's difficult no matter what
the results, it's hard to trust after after after this debacle,
(25:42):
um and yeah, I mean I don't want to be
a conspiracy theorist, but it's hard to not with some
of this stuff that's circling. So I want Cody and
Robert to talk a little bit about what's going on
with the development mint of this app. Who were the
people behind this app? Because yeah, yeah, I mean the
worst case scenario is grossing competence. That points to like
(26:05):
it's the worst case, it's also the most likely. I
think that we need to make that clear. Yeah, I
just h yeah, I the longer I study Pete to
Paul Montgomery. The more convinced I convinced, I am that
there is nothing c I A shady about him, um,
(26:27):
but that there is a lot of good old fashioned
Democratic Party corruption behind him and his campaign, and a
lot of good old fashioned even more than that, a
lot of good old fashioned Democratic Party in competence. And
I'd like to give a specific example from before the
caucus in our episode, is Pete budda di Cia agent?
Which we came down with the answer being no, Which
(26:47):
we came down with the answer being now. We we
discussed the fact that he had hired a mercenary army
UM that normally deployed troops to places like a rap
and Iraq and Afghanistan to protect his campaign, even after
they said they had stopped doing that sort of work,
which we thought was shady and weird and is in
fact shady and weird. And I will give credit to
(27:08):
a reporter from the Daily Beast who did the deep
digging to reveal that this was not the case. Um, Yeah,
Scott Bigsby, this was not the case. He hired a
different uh company with the same name. And that might
make it seem like I just like I saw that
they were the same name. I did not. I checked
out the FEC filing. And the reason I said the
(27:30):
wrong thing is because the Pete Boutag campaign reported that
they had hired the company that is the Mercenary Army
with that name, as opposed to the company that is
a normal security firm, and going so far as listing
the location and the address of that company's like that
Mercenary Army's Virginia address as opposed to the New York
based company that they actually hired. And it's that sort
(27:52):
of ship. It's incompetence. It's hiring an intern who I'm
sure didn't actually like just googled the first company with
that name in didn't check to realize it wasn't the
one that his campaign had hired. Um like the first
the first Patriot group that came up. Like that sort
of incompetence is what is continuously generating conspiracies. And it's
the same kind of incompetence as when you, for example, UH,
(28:17):
hire people for your campaign who also work for this
company that is providing a poorly coated app for the
Iowa Democratic Party that will break on the night of
the election declaring victory before there. I think that most
people don't understand what that means. So let's explain that
what company are we talking about. We're talking about two
companies actually, but really one um. The company that we're
(28:41):
really talking about is Acronym. The company that is getting
the blame is called Shadow, and Shadow is a subsidiary
of Acronym. Acronym is a group that was formed in
order to basically help fix the d n c's social
media and like digital strategy and stuff. They they provide
(29:03):
a lot of different like like like like, so the
whole goal of the company is like improve the way
the Democratic Party works in the digital age. Shadow is
a subsidiary software company that made software that was supposed
to help with like organizing phone banks and stuff like that,
as well as providing this app. Yeah, as well as
providing this app for the Iowa caucuses that like tabulated
(29:24):
votes and ship um now right now, because shadows app
broke and they are currently the nation's whipping boy. Uh,
Acronym is making it very clear that Shadow is just invested,
that Acronym just invested in Shadow and trying to make
it look like this is just a company, we invested
some money and they fucked up and it's not our bad.
(29:45):
Kate NIBBs, reporter on Twitter, pointed out that Acronyms about
Page Today says we invested in Shadow, but if you
look at the way back machine from last month, they
say we launched Shadow and there's a bunch of ships
like that before of Acronym has tons of tweets about
launching the company. Yes, launching the company and specifically launching
(30:06):
this app. Acronym did this. There's evidence that like employees,
they share, they share offices in multiple states. Shadow employees
went to like Acronym company retreats and stuff. Any Shadow
was a part of Acronym, Acronym is the company at
blame like Shadow also, I guess, but like they're just
a chunk of this company. Yeah yeah, and must say
(30:28):
they're just Acronyms Shadow. Sorry, thank you. Um. Last night,
I want to touch on this real quick. Uh, there
was some stuff going around about how like, okay, so
the d n C, the you know, the Iowa Democratic
Party donated X amount of dollars in the Nevada to
(30:50):
the app, and at first it was just being reported
that Pete Buddha Judge also uh contributed to that about
a lot of money. And I think all of us,
I think this is just a really good example of
taking a beat while you wait to have all the information.
Because at the time that felt very alarming. Why it's
(31:14):
still not great, but why did Pete donate so much money?
Why is he talking like he's one when we don't
have any information. But then after sitting with it for
a little bit, we started to realize that other campaigns
also donated to the funding of this app. That is
the fair true statement. Um, I just and we just
talked about this in our little text threat about like
(31:35):
that's actually a really good example of Yeah, it still
doesn't look good, but you need we need to be
able to take in these situations and see the information
coming in. We don't really have a full picture of
what happened. I mean, we've got a picture, we've got
their explanation, but we're going to be getting more right.
And like I've seen a lot of tweets that are
that's say, like Pete funded the app, and that's not accurate.
(31:58):
I mean, it's ame way that like I've funded Walmart
because I've purchased products, like he his campaign did give
a bunch of money to the firm that made the app. Yes, yeah,
Biden gave once actually Jilla Brands campaign six payments leading
(32:19):
up to December very recently. But yeah, for varying reasons,
different different things for each campaign. Um. But the this
like he funded the app, he made the app is
sort of catching on and that's not accurate. And it's
frustrating because when you try to engage with people on
this online and bust this myth, it comes across as
(32:40):
if you're defending Pete boutagage, which has never been my goal, right, Um,
And it's eternally frustrating to me. Well, it's still extremely
shady stuff and like it's very even like his campaign.
There people that work on his campaign in high level
positions who are working to work in Shadow. Yeah, tell
us more about that. I mean, his one of his
(33:01):
senior advisers is married to the CEO of acronym Um,
who is a huge Pete fan by the way, Uh
she Pete standard. Yeah, she's she like a lot of
tweets about how great it is that pizza running when
he did his Exploratory Committee incidentally the same month that
Shadow was launched or whatever. Um. But they're just like
(33:24):
a lot of people who have worked or are working
on both things um and whether and like again, there's
like a fine line we're trying to steer clear of
conspiracy stuff, but also like I don't know, basic like
basic conflict of interest, like basic incompetence, basic like well,
maybe you shouldn't be doing that. There's some there's a
(33:47):
similarity between kind of the conspiracies that I'm seeing floated
around what happened yesterday in Iowa and the conspiracies I'm
seeing floated around the base that neo Nazi terrorist group.
And the similarity is that, like it's come out of
some great reporting by Jason Wilson that the guy who
founded this group is an American who lives in Russia,
which is of course gotten a bunch of people talking
to like Russias funding like the neo Nazi movement in
(34:08):
the United States. There behind all of these different fascist groups,
and everyone that I know who is an expert both
on sort of like Ukrainian and Russian fascist movements and
American fascist movement says, no, that's not the case. What's
happening is that all of these groups have affinity for
each other and shared interests and there's a lot of
interchange between them, and it makes sense that a guy
who was into this stuff would also be into a
(34:30):
lot like would move to Russia. There's a lot of
reasons for that. There's a lot of reasons these groups,
like most of these guys, these members of Adam Waffin
in the base, expressed an interest in as Off Battalion,
this Ukrainian fascist group ahead of time. And it's like
it's shady and it's a problem and it's important, but
not for the reason people are stating. And the fact
that Shadow has a bunch of former Hillary people, the
(34:51):
fact that Shadow and uh Acronym have a bunch of
people who are sympathetic and how closely related to people
who are in the Buddhajist campaign is shady in a problem,
but not because Pete Boudage is engaging in some illegal conspiracy,
but because they all are the same kinds of people
who believe the same kinds of things and happen to
be the same kinds of folks who wind up steering
(35:11):
the Democratic Party and like like that's that's the problem.
It's not. They're not breaking the law, they're not orchestrating anything.
They're not smart enough to orchestrate anything, as this ship
shows shows. Um, I I that that's what I see
as what's actually happening here, right, It's yeah, it's common,
(35:32):
it's common interests. It's like because it's like okay, yeah,
like a like a lot of conspiracies of like, oh,
they're doing this, like these backroom deals. You don't need
like backroom deals. It's like, no, you if you do this,
I make money and you make money. Right. We tend
to sensationalize something it doesn't need be sensationalized. It's bad.
There's a reason to have regardless, Yeah, it's like not
(35:53):
great to look at. Okay, the CEO, the CTO, the
CEO of Shadow, all of them were like high level
figure and Hillary campaign, okay, but this scenario that people
are put forth, it just equals like, well, yeah, that's
like the rot. And I do think like one of
the important things to point out is that, like, because
I keep seeing that focused on in discussions online, is
(36:15):
that all these people worked for Hillary before, and like, yes,
this is part of a problem, but it's also they
also most a lot of them worked for Obama before
their old d n C hacks. Like that's that and
that is the problem, Um, but it's not. It's less
that they're organstrating a conspiracy, and more that the kind
of people who wind up at high positions in their
(36:36):
d n C and the sort of companies that are
funded entirely by d NC donors are all going to
believe in want some of the same things because the
same basic people. Yeah, there's all this like uh meritocracy,
like technocratic nonsense that leads to things like this. It's like, okay,
well your worldview is wrong and that's what has got
us well. And all this is to say to me,
(36:56):
break background to this caucus. So it doesn't look good. Okay,
Biden didn't do well. He's obviously an establishment strong fourth
strong fourth was a very funny tweet of yours, um
and almost the last finger on my unbelievable Buddha judges another.
(37:17):
Obviously we're looking at here, all this information here establishment
person and you know it's so all of his connections
to this app that went that went haywire. Bernie is
very clearly leading the popular vote here in its bizarre
This is what I mean, this is like the worst,
most toxic way for us to have started this election. Yeah,
(37:39):
you know who very vocally believes that the popular vote
matters the most most people who vote, is that what
should elect the person who Buddha judge. According to his
essays and according to a lot of quotes that he
has said in the past few months on Camera Wild
and it's it's I think, um, there's too much focus
(38:03):
on like what might be happening behind closed doors and
what we know, which is that because so many buddages people.
I thought acronym was a good idea. I thought it
was worth putting money into, thought their products were worth
putting money into. They made the same mistake everyone else
in the d n C made, and it proved to
be a bad choice because of everything that happened in Iowa,
because it was a cluster fuck in. This company is
(38:24):
bad at what they do. Whereas the Sanders campaign very
made a very pointed decision not to invest in that,
not to put not invest, but not to buy services
from that company because they were like, no, this looks
like garbage, and it is garbage, which we'll talk about more,
but like this is like, I think the problem that
we we miss when we get into conspiracy stuff is
like I don't think the problem is a conspiracy. I
(38:44):
think the problem is incompetence, and it is not everyone
in this campaign, in this race, who is incompetent. It's
specific people. Yeah. UM on that point, I'm just gonna
real quick say, uh. The group's top donor for this
this Acronym uh Seth Klarman. He's a billionaire. He's a
former GOP mega donor. He's a CEO of about Post group.
(39:09):
It's a Boston based hedge fund. UM invests heavily in
liquid natural gas companies. Um. He gave them one point
five million dollars about a month ago. Now, natural gas,
that means it makes trees. Natural is good, Natural is good,
It means natural beautiful. He runs a fart company, so
(39:33):
get that fart money. Also, I have to note there's
an amazing article The Outline. People ask all the time,
who should you be reading for news? The Outlines fucking
killing it this year, and they came out with within
hours of this clusterfucking incredible article based on insider interviews
about acronym Um, the company behind the top and one
of the yeah behind Shadow. The co founders of acronym
(39:58):
are a guy with the last name of McGowan and
Michael Dubin, and Michael Dubin is the founder of the
Dollars Shave Club. Okay, cancel your subscriptions, guys, responsor for
us then keep it okay, Yes, so the other person
(40:20):
is Tara McGowan then, and yeah, Tara McGowan. She's the
wife of one of Pete's top adviser. Yes, yes she is. Alright, guys,
we're gonna take another quick break and then we're going
to come back to talk more about this stuff because
apparently you guys have more information to share with us,
and we're very interested. Oh my god, there's so much
(40:40):
more to say together everything, don't don't. Okay, we are
back from that to talk more about we are Shadowy
Figure years and the acronyms of Shadowy figures. Yeah, so,
(41:06):
uh get to We'll get to Robert, You've got way
more to say about acronym I've probably got some real
quick We just want to think what we wanted to
comment on the name shadow Um, because my god, what
are you doing? It is unbelievable. Who wrote this movie
that we're all living in. We want to put out
(41:26):
what's the most evil sounding company name? It's wild that
they did this. Um, and I'm just gonna read really
quick on their website. Uh, they're about page why shadow
When a light is shining, shadows are a constant companion.
We see ourselves as building a long term side by
(41:46):
side shadow of tech infrastructure to the Democratic Party and
the progressive community at large. So like they kind of know,
they're like, hey, hey, Mitch, what was one of Was
there some sort of problem in twenty sixteen with people
viewing the Democratic Party's chief candidate is like shady to
people call her shady a lot? Was that like a
big issue we had? Oh yeah, it sure was. What
(42:10):
should we name the company that runs our online efforts?
I'm thinking Shadow, Corrupt the corrupt or the app, corrupt
con corrupt con the dot net. No no, but also, uh,
make sure you download it now because there are only
you only get two D downloads for the app. The
(42:31):
way they rolled out the app is very, very embarrassing.
That's why I'm a real good I want to hear
more about Acronym. Robert So Acronym is a dumb company
that should never have been formed. Um, this is this
is the key of it. It was launched ahead of
mid terms It was described as a digital first startup
(42:51):
UM and like the goal of acronym was to quote
uh with the goal of the acronym was like to
to to raise a load of money UM seventy five
million dollars initially and deployed that money on anti Trump
advertising in five key battleground states in the election, those
states being North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, in Arizona. This effort,
(43:14):
the strategy do you want to know what its name
is called? Kind of four is enough? The logic is
that these four states are the only ones you need
to win to win the election. You gotta love not
making the exact same motherfucking mistakes plenty. I'm sorry, but
they don't have an acronym for that f I E five.
(43:38):
They call it five. Fie on you fi on us.
We are not elitist to discard tens of millions of Americans.
It's like enough, Like you're like, you start a campaign,
your slogans just like come on, come on, kind of
(43:59):
like give us another ring Pete Buddha judge plenty yeah,
please continue, Robert so Uh. In November of twenty nineteen, UM,
it was revealed that acronym UH and Pacronym It's political
action committee, which actually pretty great name. If you're accompanying you,
I I would have made the same call had I
(44:21):
launched a company named Acronym. UM had raised of that
that plan seventy five million. Um. Now, so this is
where the money, that's where the fart money went. They
want to compete with the Tramp campaign's massive social media campaign.
It's massive like digital ground game, which the Trump campaign
(44:42):
has spent more than anyone has on Facebook ads. And
it's not even fucking closed. It's spent more than anyone
on digital ads. It's not even close. Um. So on
its surface, there's some reasoning that like, oh yeah, the
Democrats need a fucking counter to that. There should be
an organized group for the Democratic Party working on this. However,
all of the evidence from inside acro him suggest they
were terrible at it. Um. The Outline got quotes from
(45:04):
UH Acronym employees, one of whom noted they call it
a startup environment as the explanation for when no one
knows what's happening. Um. Yeah, yeah, And I've found some evidence,
some examples of the incredible adds that Acronym has been
running on Facebook. UM add number one, who will the
(45:27):
Democrats choose to take on the Night King? You decide
to sign up to play the hashtag Game of Elections
hashtag for the Throne, and then the two pictures are
Elizabeth Warren photo shopped on a Game of Thrones on
the Iron Throne and Pete Boodagage photoshopped on the Iron
Throne timely really hitting into that and again, yeah, hitting
(45:50):
into that fucking show everybody loves. I mean it was
April of nineteen, so it was fresher but still dumb.
Oh my god, dumb. Yeah. Another example of acronym ads
from March of two thousand nineteen, the Democrats running for
(46:10):
president or trying to distinguish themselves and televised town halls,
policy proposals, and even graphic t s emog of a
pink T shirt and this week's hashtag f w I
w WE took a dive into the world of presidential
merch stores and the strategy behind them. So, for what
it's worth, is like their average ad and their name
of this March one was the IDEs of March, which
(46:31):
is good, so it's like what. Yeah. They also launched
a news app UM let me find the fucking yeah,
and it's just like real quick about the merch store stuff.
Uh launched his store before he launched his website with
a platform. He sure did, He sure did. I wonder
(46:51):
what if that's telling about Mr Pete So. One of
the key projects launched by acronym Um was called Courier Newsroom,
a inter left content network designed to mimic the aesthetics
of local news sites UM, which McGowan cheerfully spun as
a replacement for actual local news UM. Now, have you
guys seen a lot of Courier news Room links shared? No,
(47:16):
I don't think so. I can't speak to that because
it was a massive failure of an idea. What a
bad idea. It's like, what if we destroy the credibility
of local news even more? The thing we don't need,
a thing that's bad is that how we fight Trump? Believable?
I so and again in sort of response to like
(47:36):
the ideas that this is kind of some like sinister
ci a conspiracy. One of the people who want to
quote here is is Karnik Ganapati, who is the co
founder of the democratic messaging firm m v EMT Communications
and Ganapati's partner is a senior advisor to Bernie Sanders,
although Ganapati is not a part of the campaign. But
that's kind of like the angle he's coming at this.
He's kind of from the left side of the Democratic Party.
His associates are, so he's he's on the more on
(47:58):
the Sanders side of things. And his sort of summary
of the whole situation with Outline and Shadow is there's
such a pervasive culture of self dealing when it comes
to consultants and party committees and stuff. And we have
a situation where a party whereas a party, if we
are the good guys, we have to be the good
guys not engaging in this. There's a reason why so
many Americans think politics is an Elita's plot to make
a handful of people wealthier. And it's kind of true.
(48:21):
And I mean, that's that's the issue, that's what's happening here. Yeah,
even the idea of like this like for profit, like
this private company making this app and getting all this
money to do this for a public service, like that's
what people don't like. Yeah, it's gross's dumb. It was
a bad It was never anything but a terrible idea. Um.
(48:44):
Oh yeah, here's a quote. There's also a really good
Intercept article UM on fucking acronym and shadow. I'm going
to read one quote from it. A person with knowledge
of the company's culture who asked her am an anonymous
for fear of reprisal, shared communications showing that top officials
at the company regularly expressed hostility to standard support. But
no one is married to Michael Hall. Listen, your strategist
for the bootage campaign. There's no evidence that any preference
(49:05):
of candidates had any effect on the coding issue that
has stolen the EYEOWA results. But again, everything they're like,
emails from this company are going to leak out at
some point. I already know it. They're like if if
Russia again, I don't think they orchestrated this, but they're
not dumb, Like if they could hack something, one thing
to hack would be the fucking emails of this company
because you're going to get them talking about Sanders supporters.
(49:26):
You can roll that out at the d n C,
just like happened with the d n C leaks. Like
it's of course, but that's what you're gonna do. That's yeah,
it's yeah, it's all very upsetting. Um, So what are
your takeaways here, guys. I'm excited that Biden didn't do well.
That's something that we can all resoundingly that happened tonight
(49:50):
is that Biden didn't do well week A week four. Um, Yeah,
didn't do well. Yeah. I think the Bernie winning the
popular vote first, sure, and maybe I mean probably one
a lot of the districts that I've reported. Here's what
I pause it. Even if even if this all comes
out pete one, Bernie takes the popular vote, Um, that's
(50:15):
going to give Bernie a real boost in the other states.
People are going to be mobilized and want to maybe
maybe that maybe that will draw more people out. I
don't know, maybe, Yeah. I think this The whole way
it's shaking out is like we've been talking about a
disaster and it doesn't make anybody really look good except
for like people who handle it well like Luc Warren.
Wasn't like I won or like anything like that. She
(50:36):
gave a nice speech, and then I just want to
say something real quick about her speech. She did give
a nice speech that I eventually saw when I was
watching live the Biden and her came out. The speech
at the same time, and she was on screen and
they immediately cut away to him the fourth place, the
person who at that point, I mean, everyone's like he's
(50:56):
not viable. It didn't seem and he was basically saying,
like doing terribly. He was basically saying, Sea suckers, I'm
going to New Hampshire. And and then MSNBC once it
was done, they just went back to people talking and
didn't even cut back to Warren. CNN did briefly then
cut away in the middle of her speech. I happened
to catch it hours later and they still had the
(51:18):
live Chiron underneath. Um. But her speech was good and
it was cute, Like I think, yeah, like, uh that uh,
that's generally good. Um. I think Bernie does probably benefit
from it, just because everything around it is like, well,
that's not good. You fucked up, you fucked up. Pete
declared victory when he didn't win, like every like I
think all these things ultimately, um, well, it's just a
(51:44):
disruption of what it was supposed to be, and leading
up to the Caucus was very much like trying to
get downplay it. Everything surrounding it is not good. Yeah,
And another positive takeaways that I think this be the
nail on the coffin of the Iowa Caucus, the whole process,
(52:07):
I mean, democracy went After this next election, we will
all be uh street against Donald Trump's manic legions and
there will be no more democracy. Snugglen snuggling together in
that coffin, right, being silly. But it could it could
happen here. Yeah. Um, you know the biggest heartbreak from
(52:30):
all this, Like the d I took some I took
some leaps out of the DNC's book, and I hired
about forty different people former Obama and Hillary staffers to
write my jokes for me this year. I paid them
uh seven point three million dollars um. Now a lot
of that was Bloomberg money obviously, Um, but you know
they gave me a really killer line to throw out
(52:51):
here that Because we don't have the exact numbers, I can't,
but I was going to call him Pete number two digit.
I know, I know, I know, I know. Do we
know it's a heartbreaker second in the popular vote. I
think it's so. With the popular vote, Bernie's winning two
(53:12):
hundred and Peter's close behind. H I mean, I guess
that's I said close I assume that it's close. It
seems fairly close. I don't know. Reporting in despite MSNBC
and CNN both having graphics that say it's in, doesn't
it just bumb you out when you're like, oh, we're
(53:35):
talking about like how many people are we talking about?
Two people? We are? We are talking about a covert
city voters over city being an area of Los Angeles,
cover city being a very small area of Los Angeles
with a reasonably priced rent for being on the west side.
Absolutely if you want to be good neighborhood to the ocean. Um. Yeah,
(53:57):
So there are some potential positives we can look at
in the long run. Here, I am just trying to
spin it that way, but mostly it is the ship
show that we have described. You know what, Actually, here's
a good way to look at the number of people
who voted in the Iowa cock If you count side
arms as well as primary arms, h a slightly more
(54:19):
people voted in Iowa than there were firearms in Richmond
during the gun rally. Okay, well, then that's something right there. Democracy.
I think there we go, there we go. It's important
to some important data to unpack. I feel like a
few coin flips might change those numbers a little bit,
but you know, results come in in the middle of
(54:40):
the city of the Union. I'm sure they will. They
want to prolonged and obviously the results of this as
much as possible because the results help who wins, and
I'm pretty sure they know who won. So okay, I
think that that's where we wrap things up. I think
that's where wrapped. Congratulations to Mayor Pete, who is now
(55:03):
framing this as the pundits didn't believe we could do it,
but we did it. Pete, Every pundit loves you. What
are you talking about. It's also to claim that you
won something when zero presented. Oh sure, that's also that
will always be something the way after very very Trumpian
(55:24):
of him. That quite trumping. I don't know what I mean, Hey,
I one, uh, it's just the members can't lie if
there are no numbers. Sure, all of that, but for real,
who how was he getting that information that other people
didn't have, you know, shadow, shadow, So I will say,
(55:48):
you know, um, I don't know if you guys were
aware of this, but campaigner Katie Coates won an eleven
year battle to get the Global Association of International Sports Federation.
GAP two can firm pole dancing as a professional sport,
which means that it is now possible that poll dancing
could be an Olympic sport. And I'm taking a leaf
out of Maripete's book and congratulating myself for winning the
(56:11):
gold medal and dancing. I know, I know, thank you,
thank you, victory he won at the Olympics. But haven't
happened yet. You did a h A hundred percent of
judges have not yet reported in, but based on the
early numbers, I am tracking a victory. The energy, the energy,
(56:34):
the yeah, I'm proud of you and I'm grateful that
we entered to podcast on such a positive note. On
a victory. I think this, this win might be enough
to get me to finally learn how to pull dance.
I'm rooting for your best. Um, you guys can check
us out online. We have social media, It's true. At
(56:56):
worst your pod on Twitter and Instagram. Uh, and then
you know we also tweet and stuff like that as well.
If you want we do tweet. I'm Katie Stole, I'm
Cody Johnston on Twitter. I'm gotta learn how to pull dance.
That's his new handle, guys, follow it. Oh, we're doing
our handles, not our name, Google my name and the
(57:18):
word Twitter. Yeah. I don't know why I decided we
never do that. I just you know, sometimes I feel
under the pressure to wrap when I'm wrapping it up
your words. Um, no, Katie, this is a gut field
and we're going to follow your gut wherever it leads us.
Follow your gut to my Twitter page and hit that.
There we go and then New Hampshire. This has been fun.
(57:42):
I just want to put out that I already want
you Hampshire. I know I'm not running, but I just
want your Hampshire. What's the room room full of winners,
liars and hand I mean there's there are a percent
and nobody's voted. Yeah, but definitely one Katie, so less.
That's the way, so much. Thank you so much early rounds.
I am a winner. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah,
(58:05):
all right, Well, why is this is the worst year ever?
We still have the state of the Union, the impeachment vote,
and a Democratic debate this week? I hate everyone the
worst week of the worst. Take on the Night King.
You're gonna take on the Night King. I'm just kidding
to love everyone in The Shaman, Robert Fold, and more
to the polls. Are we just going to riff around
(58:27):
until people stop? I think so yeah, until the song
sort of like slowly ramps up here the music key
Race Alert, my dog just want but what we don't know?
Dan Music Ever, So everything I D Worst Year Ever
(58:56):
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