The Press Box - Emergency Podcast: Iowa Meltdown Edition | The Press Box

Episode Date: February 4, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the caucus in Iowa that hasn’t gotten any results, plus cable news follies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs are Super Bowl champions. So for coverage of the game and everything that happened in Miami, check out the Ringer NFL show for their game recap. And on the site, you can read Danny Hyfitz on Andy Reid, Roger Sherman on Patrick Mahomes, and Robert Mays on Kyle Shanahan's Super Bowl deja vu. On the Ringer's YouTube channel,

make sure to check out Slow Newsday with Kevin Clark live from Miami with a bunch of special guests like Miles Teller and Glenn Powell. You can watch and subscribe at YouTube.com slash the ringer. Hello media consumers. You got Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer here. He's already laughing. He's already laughing. David, this was supposed to be an emergency podcast about the Iowa caucuses.

Using the term emergency in the figurative sense. Not the real sense like, oh my God. our democracy is doomed. Because if you're just tuning in, it's midnight on the East Coast. The Iowa caucuses happened this evening, starting at 8 p.m., but there are no results.

None. Zero. Steve Kornacki and John King have just been pointing at empty boards all night. And what we've had is four hours of cable news hosts trying to filter. time.

The more things change, the more things stay the same, Brian. You know, especially with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, kind of like leading this cast of character as the Democratic Party is, you know, definitely making the claim to be the party of the people in this election cycle. And I think that they're really succeeded tonight, because if there's one thing that all Americans can agree on, it's that we're always trying to get apps to work and they never work the way we want them to do. So that's the early story tonight.

That all over Iowa, the people reporting these results attempted to use an app that was designed for this purpose. The app did not work. Then they went to the backup system, which was a phone number, a hotline where they could call in the results. they were placed on hold for an hour or more and man can we just go ahead and play this clip there was this guy named Sean Sebastian who is as far as we know an official Iowa caucus person

he was complaining on Twitter that he was on hold they put him on CNN and then this happened I just got off hold just now so I've got to get off the phone to report the results All right. Go ahead and report your results. Can we listen in as you report them, Sean? Yep. All right.

Come up on me. Okay. I've got to get back in line on hold. They just hung up. So frustrating indeed. Sean, we're going to stay in close touch with you. Sean Sebastian from Story County out in Iowa, a precinct secretary. He just wanted to report the results of the call. Sean Sebastian's like, you know what, Wolf, please do not stay in touch with me tonight. He just screwed up my shot at this. that would an incredible moment of television by the way earlier in the clip when they were talking to him you could actually hear the hold music the democratic party of iowa's hold music unbelievable dude so now that there were no results and by the way we're just recording this because we're just going to lean into the meltdown at this point the story is the meltdown the candidates have already spoken tonight it doesn't really matter who wins iowa or it certainly matters less than it did a couple of hours ago.

So we're just going to talk about the meltdown. Here's the first part of it and the most obvious point we could possibly make. It's not like a foreign power is looking to interfere in the 2020 election and is watching this tonight and saying, my God, this is going to be easier than we thought. But Putin can just go take a horseman. another horseback ride. We didn't have to worry about this one. What a freaking mess. And what an incredible way to undermine

democratic trust in the process, the individual campaigns trust in the process. Not to mention every American's trust in the process. The New York Times reported on this, the app errors. I think the date line. It was time to eight. It would last up. dated 848 tonight, East Coast time. So this was already in the offing. We could have foreseen these problems if we were paying attention to the New York Times.

But I just want every sentence, every paragraph in this story is comical. I mean, it's like, you know, it's trite to say it sounds like an onion article, but like we're verging on sat satirical territory the whole way through. But there's a paragraph about halfway down that I want to read that says, the new app was designed to improve the speed and efficiency of reporting election results and was tested by law enforcement and security officials. But details of the app, including the type of security it uses its basic structure and even its name, were a closely held secret by democratic officials, leading to rumors and confusion over how exactly the app functioned. I mean, the piece goes into a lot of like Twitter and otherwise online speculation of conspiracies.

and I mean, I think that's, I don't know if that's overstated, but I think you made the point that, you know, if anyone's actually trying, if the conspiracies are real, this, you know, there's, there's a door wide open for someone to drive a tank through, but, but it, I mean, I think that, like I said, that it's going to be conspiracies apart for the course at this point. The big issue is not someone trying to influence the election. It's that we can't influence our own elections by casting votes, you know? I mean, it's been, this is, this is, this is, there is no amount of overstate. There's no, there's no statement that can overstate how much of a catastrophe this is, not just for Iowa. I think that, and we can talk about the, the pretense of the Iowa caucuses. I think we're probably, we're probably through the last one of Iowa being as central as it is to the nomination process after this fiasco. This is a terrible look for the Democratic Party because, I mean, in so much, I mean, it's not the candidates for. vaults. It's not necessarily the campaign's fault, but coming off of the last election cycle where everything seemed to be like, you know, contrived and in the bag for Hillary the whole way through, at least that was a perception. This was the election that's supposed to fix all that, whether or not this is

actually a reflection of that and inadequacy in that department. It still feels that way. And like, and going, and at the very base of it. I mean, this is, this is the first contest of our presidential election of the most significant, of the election that we're supposed to be most concerned. about getting the right results. And this might be, we might be getting the right results tomorrow at noon or something. But this just,

it just feels terrible. It feels like we've just failed. And that's not, that's precisely what we didn't want coming out of tonight. Absolutely. Absolutely. Let's take those points in order.

Iowa is toast. I completely agree. It was already probably toast given all the stuff we've heard about demographics and why are we letting Iowa do this again and again and again. And there's just no way in 2024 that Iowa gets to pick

that gets to go first. No chance. No chance. You blew it. As they said on CNN tonight, you had one job. And you cannot count the votes. You don't get to go first. You're out. Can I say something before separate from the, well, I mean, before we get wholly into the fiasco that is tonight. I mean, it's a little preamble to that.

I noticed that I noticed that the end of Iowa was bubbling up. I mean, or the possibility that this was the end of the Iowa caucus as being the first, the first big vote. It's been a longstanding bugaboo amongst various parts of, various quadrants of Democratic voters, right? I mean, it always kind of seemed to be this like Iowa versus the rest of the party, head-to-head sort of combat situation. Yes. and all of these early coxas have the same way they basically have like you know or exacting ransom saying that if they don't get to

vote exactly when they have in years past then all hell is going to break loose whatever but people have long had a problem with Iowa being you know in the position that it's in particularly in recent years there have been people who have taken issue with the whiteness of the Iowa electorate the sort of oversaturation

of college and like retired voters because of just the time requirements that are at stake in voting. I mean, so in some ways it's sort of like a far left issue that we need to do away with Iowa. Today or in the past couple of days, but today in particular, when I woke up this morning and turned on the TV, suddenly you started hearing the voices of the Democratic establishment, who I think were suddenly spooked by the specter of Bernie Sanders coming out ahead in all these polls. Suddenly you had like Chris Matthews on the air saying we need to do away with Iowa caucuses, which is like

the last person you'd ever expect to say that, right? I mean, it's just like there's all, suddenly this, the moderate, the institutional democratic voices are against Iowa caucus. And now, icing on the cake, as if they, like, Iowa was hanging on by a thread, they can't get their shit together to count a bunch of votes. And that's, and like, and the craziest thing about it is, I mean, I don't think the Iowa caucus has ever been subject to this much scrutiny. We were talking just before we got on the air, but like, there are cameras from every

news station in every high school gym in the state of Iowa. filming people playing this game of musical chairs. It's nuts. The degree to which people are just like willing to get on the mic and just explain and try to explain the nonsense that's happening. I mean, it's not nonsense. I understand the process here and there's a reason for it and there's history and blah, blah, blah. But it has the, it just seems the amount of scrutiny that it's getting.

I mean, it's like if 20 camera crews suddenly descended on a Sunday bingo hall and like, and everybody there is like very excited to explain to you how bingo work. Like, of course. Like, it's so, it's such nonsense. But all this is to say that with all the scrutiny that is being placed on Iowa, there's one thing that you can understand. If this is your first time watching the Iowa caucuses, the one thing you understand is people are moving around the room and sitting in chairs or standing in circles to show who they're

voting for. All of this is on camera. Like, the votes are right there on CNN and MSNBC and Fox cameras. And somehow we can't count them. There's no secret ballots here. There's no hanging chads. These are people who are being filmed and we can't count the votes. Yes.

They have all everything you just said is right. Iowa fucked up. They're fucked up. That's so great. And I think it's a combination of scrutiny for Iowa, as you were saying, because of the demographics and all that stuff. And then also, last but certainly not least, the cable networks need for content. Right. Tonight at the beginning of all their shows, which started more or less,

around 8 o'clock, they were going to correspondence in these random precincts and saying, hey, look, Klobuchar's campaign is not viable. Oh, my goodness, look, there's a lot of Bernie Sanders people in this corner. All of that was completely out of context to somebody watching at home. That doesn't mean anything. That'd be like just going to random polls on a normal election and going, I don't know, I just met a guy who voted for Trump. Very interesting.

Very interesting. was so stupid. But I think that's part of it too. Your second point was about the Democrats. It absolutely screws the Democrats. Absolutely. It screws the party as a whole because it makes them look like a clown car. It screws the individual candidates because as people have pointed out on TV,

somebody was going to get to declare victory tonight. They were already going to get stepped on by Trump's State of the Union speech on Tuesday. Now there's really no time to declare victory. victory and New Hampshire and New Hampshire becomes the kind of de facto first contest of this primary. Your third point was about conspiracy theories. Brad Parscale of the Trump campaign has already used the word rigged on Twitter tonight. Now, he's a bad actor, but Joe Biden's people wrote what CNN is calling a scathing letter

to the Democratic Party saying they want to see, they want to hear about these irregularities. before the results are announced. And you see what everybody's doing here. If you lose whatever the Iowa caucuses turn out to be if we ever learn the results, you can look at it and go, I don't know if we should count this. Maybe this is all one big batch of tainted meat. You know,

let's just put that to the side and we'll start this campaign in New Hampshire, especially if you lose, right? Right? and you don't even have to get into rigged, all that kind of stuff. You just say, look, this was a fiasco. Let's go to New Hampshire. That's exactly what's going to happen. I think it's already started to happen tonight.

I think that's right. But I find it, I mean, I think the big loser, you're right, is going to be whoever won. I mean, ironically. Now, you know, if Bernie Sanders wins in a landslide, that's going to be, that's going to matter tomorrow as well, right? It's going to matter whenever we get the votes. But, you know, it's just, it's just really hard to see anybody looking good coming out of this. And it's just, it's, I mean, I mean, I will, we can, we can talk about, you know, the winners and the losers. And you mentioned, by the way, that Biden's statement. It's important, I think, to point out that

that statement came from Biden's top attorney on his campaign. And I don't think, I mean, Biden, for one thing, was the second candidate to give a speech tonight, which was now everybody's given a speech before the results came out. And Klobuchar was smartly first. She got out there ahead of everybody else. Biden's, you know, definitely seemed a little bit conciliatory. He knew he had to fly to New Hampshire to keep his campaign moving. But also the fact that he was the first one to go to go to his attorneys, I don't think was a good look for that campaign. Right. I mean, it had to be done. And they're all, and everyone's going to. everyone's going to be, you know, brawling over this to some degree. But for the first, for the second statement after the, after the Biden speech from that campaign to be from the attorney saying, you better check with us before you release any results.

That seems a little bit petty considering just the fiasco that we're in right now. Maybe it's not. Unless you feel you lost the Iowa caucuses. No, I think he did lose the Iowa caucus. I mean, I think that's the one thing that we know for sure is that is that Biden came out is going to come out not looking great in this. But I don't, I think that he, I think that the best thing he could have done was to give a speech and move on in New Hampshire. I don't know that he needs to get in the, get in the trenches in Iowa and seem like, you know, just make it pronounced to the world that he's got a team of lawyers ready to work on his behalf like every corrupt campaign before him. I mean, I don't know.

Maybe I'm just overthinking it. As we sit here at 1218, we're in this amazing half state of an American election where nobody lost and nobody wants. So as you mentioned, cable news is sitting there filling time. And Amy Klobuchar gets the idea that since no results are coming anytime soon, she's just going to walk out to the podium and start talking. And the thing is, she has nothing to say about tonight because one, she didn't know anything. Two, what's her best possible result that she kind of came in a sneaky fourth or something? Yeah.

So she goes out and gives her entire stump speech. and the cable networks just take the whole thing. It turns into a free ad for Amy Klobuchar. And since she's first, we're all kind of paying attention because we're like, oh, here, finally we're hearing from a candidate. And then it just turns out to be Amy Klobuchar's, please vote for me message. Yeah. And beyond all that, all the other candidates immediately followed her.

So it looks like she's a leader, right? I mean, it looks like she was the first one with a good idea. The right leadership for America. Amy Klobuchar knows who to take advantage of free content. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I mean, to me, I mean, from where I'm sitting and I just have like, I think it's MSNBC playing in a tiny like pop-up window on my screen. The loser in this seems to be Elizabeth Warren who is speaking at the same time as Joe Biden.

I can't wait to hear that read the TikTok of who's most offended by this by this incredible faux pa of giving your non-victory non-concession speeches at the same time. But Elizabeth Warren's speech is now being played on tape delay because she was going at the same time as Biden. She's like the NBA finals used to be in the early 80s. We don't carry this live. We show it on tape delay. By the way, did you notice watching these speeches tonight? This revealed how empty election night speeches are.

How 98% of it is just the same speech, no matter whether you won or lost, or in this case, neither one nor lost. It's just the same, just rickety old speech. Mm-hmm. It's only exciting if you have just some result to attach to it. I thought that was really funny. So Klobuchar went first, then Biden. As you say, Warren was speaking, came out while Biden was already on the stage, apparently. Then Bernie came out and did his bid.

I think we're still waiting on. Pete Buttigieg is now on TV. I'm spotting my TV here. I got to say this too about tonight, David. This was one of the most glorious nights in the history of cable news. I realize that's a big statement. I really do. It was an absolute mess, an absolute mess.

I turned on CNBC before 8 o'clock. There was this weird handover from Brian Williams to Rachel Maddow, which felt like the handover of the White House from Obama to Trump. You know, like, you know, we're all smiles here, but it feels like there's a lot of tension beneath the surface. There's this handover. They're doing, as I said, they're going to Katie Turr and all their big correspondence. or anchors who are just in these random caucuses

and just throwing just information at the audience that doesn't make any sense at all? And it's useless. It's useless. It's useless. It's like this one group of 45 people did a thing one way. Does that have any bearing on the rest of the state? Probably that.

And they came out later and said there are almost 1,700 caucuses happening in Iowa. So of course some little snapshot doesn't make any difference at all. So they do that, but they're just waiting. And they keep saying, we think we're going to have election results almost immediately. Any moment, you know how Wolf Blitzers is like the greatest hype man in television history.

Any moment now, folks, stay with me. Stay with me. We expect to be giving you some information very shortly. Also, I noticed Rachel Maddow an hour into her MSNBC show said, this is the part of the show you're going to be watching. You didn't tell me that an hour ago. You didn't say that at 8 o'clock. You said that at 9 o'clock.

and wait a minute and we were just filling for an hour then the results don't come in and oh my gosh how much did you enjoy ways that cable news hosts fill time I turned on CNN and David Axelrod and Terry McCalliffe were just trading war stories

about campaigns and it felt like a kind of a sleepy night at the 92nd Street why it was just absolutely credible anything to say. Tell me a story about when Obama beat Hillary in Iowa. We should have sent out

15 more correspondence to random polling places. That would have really helped fill up the time. Aaron Gloria Ryan, funny person on Twitter says, please Iowa, for the love of God, release your results. The pundits would like to put on their matching jammies

and getting into their monogram seven dwarf-style pundit beds in the big, big tree house where they all live together. I would, I would give anything for the CNN panel to have monograms pajamas so I could tell the dude, if I could remember whose name was what, uh, it, this whole thing is just like, it's, I mean, CNN is like the cliche of the, of the football halftime show where they have like

5,000 people that are just sitting at an ever-growing desk. MSNBC, as you mentioned, was just like a rotating cast. Like, they were bringing in like the starter. They had like the starters out and then like the bench mob came and they were just like, just like ready to keep things rolling. It was, but going back and forth. the whole thing was, the presentation was very bizarre. What little I watched a Fox News tonight was just like,

seemed to be a regular episode of Hannity where he was just like going to a correspondent who was, uh, who was at a caucus and showing like a highlight package of, of, uh, democratic voters seeming stupid. Um, and I mean,

just the presentation, everybody's presentation was just fantastic. Um, they turned it into Waters world or something like that. Yeah, that was their coverage of the caucus. I think Waters has moved on. So we have some,

I don't know who's, world it is now. But yeah, it was just a very, it was just so, so bizarre. Fox is playing Mayor Pete's speech right now. So I don't know if we can grasp anything or draw anything from that, but who knows? Mike Francesa, talking about funny people on Twitter, has chimed in to say the two big winners tonight were President Trump and Bloomberg. Okay. Well, there were a lot of Bloomberg ads tonight. Yeah, and I've, there were people I think on the other channel, on MSNBC and CNN making this case too, that Bloomberg, I guess, is like, well, for one thing,

he's above the fray on this madness that's going on tonight, but also there's a little bit of like the, like, you know, it's a good look for the technocrat out there to say like, oh, I could, you know, I fixed a lot of things in this, in New York City. I could, I could certainly have run a better election than this, I guess, or I don't really know what the, I mean, I'm not quite sure. He certainly, if anything, has had the success. of getting under Trump's skin and, you know, leading to Trump, tweeting incessantly about

him today. So this is the new campaign promise I can fix how Iowa votes? I mean, I don't, not not health care or something like that. Did I, by the way, did I, did my eyes deceive me that Henry Lewis Gates Jr. kind of endorsed Bloomberg today? Did you see that? I saw that. I saw that, I saw that that the Gates was in like the New York Times magazine.

And I didn't realize there was like an endorsement. And is this part of a media push? I don't really know what's going on. Among all the candidates, the person who I believe could stand toe to toe, strongest and longest with Donald Trump is Mike Bloomberg. Henry Lewis Gates Jr. Okay. But I have a feeling you're right, by the way, and I think that is the next day story,

which is because people were starting to believe in Bloomberg. They've just seen so many ads. He's gotten under Trump's skin. They've seen the Super Bowl thing. it would be the most exciting story to write at this point, which is as we know is a great driver of journalism. And this whole thing of maybe it's going to be a big muddle, starting with tonight through three more primaries,

and then we get to Super Tuesday and Mike Bloomberg somehow magically wins the election. I don't know. If you want, your people are going to talk about that. If I were going to be conspiratorial, I think that, I mean, I think I would just draw,

line directly to the withholding of these results is a deliberate attempt to sandbag the Sanders campaign, right? I mean, to deprive him of the victory speech. This is David, by the way, coming up with a conspiracy theory

that he thinks he's going to. This is not David's saying this. No, no, and to bring it around and to deliberately muddy the waters for Bloomberg or someone of his ilk to sort of be able to to ride in, you know, on his white horse or whatever. But, but, I mean, I don't believe that to be true.

I'm just, you know, making up conspiracy theories here. But I do think that that's, I do think that we're, that because of the, because of what happened in Iowa tonight, we're, we are, for whatever reason, going to hear the name Bloomberg a lot in the coming days. And I don't, I don't, I don't, it's just sort of maddening, you know, if that's, if that turns out to be the case. I mean, I guess now it would be that, I mean, if we're talking about, if we're talking about Bloomberg, I guess now is the time to also mention at least in passing the specter of the John Kerry right in Kansas or whatever. Oh, my God.

He was apparently caught in the buffet line talking too loudly on the phone about having to run for president to keep Bernie Sanders from destroying the party. I assume he wasn't being too serious. Maybe he was, but it seems sort of unnecessary to pass judgment. I do think that the, I am sort of stunned. You mentioned last week, you mentioned more than once about this idea that, you know, the mistake that the institutional Democrats made was going after Elizabeth Warren and then, like, opening up the door for Bernie Sanders just to bulldoze on through. I don't think that like we've actually heard enough about just like the institutional Democratic Party's distaste for Bernie Sanders outside of the halls of like, you know, the Bernie Bros subreddit.

I mean, I think that this is a real thing that the party is going to, should be wrestling with out in public and not in back rooms. I mean, this is exactly what the people were concerned about in the last primary. Yes. Well, we're going to, if Bernie is the winner at some point over the next week of the Iowa caucuses, we'll hear a lot about it. because, I mean, I was all prepared tonight to talk about burning winning Iowa and the Democratic establishment just getting in line to try to stop him before he won New Hampshire and maybe effectively sealed the Democratic nomination by winning the first two. I thought that was going to be a story tonight, honestly. Yeah. But this may have, and can you imagine if this is what results, this just total fiasco, the late reporting of results is what. results in Bernie not winning the nomination.

You thought 2016 was a little weird with Bernie versus Hillary online? Oh my God. That is going to be awful. It is going to be a huge mess.

Yeah. By the way, Rick Santorum is one of those 900 people on CNN. He reminded everybody that Rick Santorum won the Republican caucuses in Iowa in 2012. Here was the problem. Romney was declared the winner on election night. And Rick Santorum wanted a day later. And as he said, and I thought he was actually the

person you went here from tonight. He says, all that matters is tonight. Because tomorrow, it's already about New Hampshire. And he said, even though I won, I never won. And Romney won. And then he won New Hampshire and he sealed the, and he sealed the nomination. And I thought that was a great point and I do think whoever wins tonight and by the way there was enough anecdotal evidence basically to pick everybody except Biden on Twitter it is going to be in the news street to predict Biden on Twitter I mean

that's that was the problem with Twitter is you just had people that were people that were tweeting out you know just photos of every of every voting block from every caucus room and if you just saw one you know you would see six photos and it would be very compelling anecdotal evidence, right? I mean, but you're right. I think that in all, it does seem like, right, like, you know, Biden didn't win, and that is enough to sort of pencil in what we're going to be thinking of his campaign tomorrow

and the next day. We didn't mention John Kerry, by the way, tweeted a kind of denial or at least affirmation of his support for Joe Biden that included the F-bomb, then deleted the tweet and tweeted a cleaner version of it. This is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, 2020 is the ultimate, why not me election. Michael Bloomberg actually, why not me? John Kerry is walking around Iowa on Joe Biden's behalf thinking that all the time, obviously. All kinds of people wish that, Deval Patrick thought that.

Remember, Deval Patrick is still, is currently running for president. Just a reminder. I know. He thought, why not me? These, these guys don't look so tough. I could win this. I don't want to get away from cable news without fully appreciating it tonight, David. A couple more highlights.

One was we talked about that Sean Sebastian guy. Van Jones read his anecdotal tweet on the air before Sebastian went on with Wolf Blitzer in that clip we paid. He read the tweet and then he said, I don't know if it's true or not. Just on the air. We're just reading Twitter tonight on cable news. what is this the press box I like that speaking of which our old friend Lindsay Zolads

100 bucks says somebody broke the whole caucus app by trying to write in these nuts I think she could be right another favorite highlight from Twitter tonight Wolf Blitzer I had this at 946 called the IRA results a cliffhanger is it's going to be a cliff it's a cliffhanger by the way it is currently 1234 a.m.

So we are my boy are my arms tired. Yeah. I'm just, I am hanging on the cliff. Credit to David Graham on Twitter for that joke. The, um, we talked about Amy Klobuchar, basically getting to do her stump speech. The whole thing,

I mean, it really reminded me, obviously it's not quite as, as pervasive, but the cable networks when they used to just air the whole Trump speech because they just wanted something to show, they're doing that tonight. Mayor Pete is still talking on.

television because hey, why not? Yeah. Well, maybe he made the right move to go on last. We could just talk as long as he wanted. I mean, you're right that these some speeches are the same thing over and over again. And one of the real subtle geniuses is the Trump campaign was that he never said the same thing. Or he didn't rely on some of the same catchphrases and went in the same riffs and whatever else. But it seemed like a new, you never knew what he was going to say.

And so it was always must see TV, right? So they always aired it. And he was a very particular sort of magnetic candidate. But, you know, I mean, I thought Bernie Sanders, who gave a speech that, I mean, that was just a bullet point list of, you know, all of his big ideas. And it's a speech that he's given many times before, although probably an abbreviated one. I thought he was really impressive tonight. And I think that sitting, I mean, in the seats that we sit in, the most voters are sitting in. You see, most of your exposure of these candidates is in, well, commercials if you're in a voting state, or primary a caucus state. But for the most part, it's the these debates and you and it's easy to forget how good or bad someone can be on the stump right i mean and bernie sanders i think was really was was was really good elizabeth warren i would say again i only caught part of her part of her speech because you know of the of uh you know the airing issues but uh she's she's fairly consistent i would say i mean she's she's you know good on you know

about the same quality on both both halves and you can kind of go down the go down the row and sort of great people but burning i thought was really impressive tonight and i think a lot you know if a lot of people are watching this because of the, because of the lunacy of what's going on, you know, maybe his speech, maybe some of these speeches will actually affect people's opinion, you know, of the, and affect their votes going forward. It's just a pity that it happened the way that it did. The other big highlight for Bernie tonight, by the way. And again, all of the tweets, all the notes that we've both made, I'm sure, are completely outmoded

because they're just, because they didn't, everything happened before we realized the story of the night was that the votes are not going to be, they've not been tallied yet. But Bernie's other, Bernie's other big vote, there was a scene I saw where Bernie voters in one of the polling places were doing organized loud cheers to distract the other voters from moving to the, from voting the way they were, they were intending to vote. Because they're in these big gyms and it's just like, oh, whatever, the Biden voters are trying to decide where they're going to and the Bernie voters just yelling really loudly, soccer crowds and they can't tell what they're supposed to do.

It's kind of genius. It is, but it's like this is, I mean, if there's any good, if there's any upshot for, I mean, upside for the Iowa caucus process, it's that like all of the jokes that we were going to tell about how just inane this process is are now completely out the window. Now we're just complaining that their app is broken. But, you know, I guess we'll see. I mean, where do we go from here? I mean, what happens?

What happens next? Let's just say we, let's say we wake up tomorrow. and have results. What's the next step? I think you get a weird, belated victory speech. But I think what we said a minute ago is going to happen is that you have, you're going to have a lot of people just kind of looking askance at the results. All the losing campaigns saying, look, it was weird.

Maybe we need to do more research on this. Maybe we need to do something. and kind of again, not going full Trump, the election was rigged, but just kind of introducing enough skepticism that officially makes, or semi-officially makes New Hampshire the first primary. I think that's exactly what's going to happen. You're probably right. That's not great.

And that's not great. By the way, save a spot in your heart tonight, David, for Data Guy. You know how every cable news network has Data Guy? Mm-hmm. Who gets to stand in front of that screen. and tonight for Steve Kornacki the screen was just blank and he kept pushing the buttons

it's like when I used to like take the batteries out of one of my kids toys because I just didn't like the noise anymore and the kid would just push the button for a while you know and wonder what was wrong that's what Steve Kordacki looked like today poor Steve Kordacki

John King eventually John King left the big board and went and sat at the desk and like I'm done with this this damn thing doesn't That's sad. That's like Christopher Robin walking away from Winnie the Pooh. That's like that's a terrible state of affairs. Oh man. I mean, I, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that one really effective, one of the most effective lines of argument that Trump used four years ago was saying that the primaries were rigged in Hillary's favor and that so and that Bernie got screwed. And. And, and, and, and, and, and that Bernie got screwed. And. And, and, that managed to probably depress turnout and flip some Bernie voters

over to his side at the same time and that obviously whether I mean that something worked out really well for him I think that was a real big part of it this might just be the perfect storm for Donald Trump because Bernie Sanders is going to come out and win and this is the only Democrat that he's been giving

any sort of like positive rub to for the for it at all throughout the campaign and especially for the past you know four years ago and Bernie Sanders is going to win and it's and he's so going to, Trump is still going to be able to tell the story about how corrupt the Democratic voting process is. I think this is all just a perfect storm for Trump. Yeah. I think, I think we're just, maybe I've been in Florida for a week and that's why I think that we, I think we just, it's, yeah,

who what an election we got here. By the way, Sean Finacy sent us to note too. I don't want to, I don't want to forget this. The cable news panel was melting down about how this would impact the morning newspapers tomorrow, the fact that this decision was lame. yes we are print guys and we were not worried about the fact that the morning paper would not have the headline

oh brother oh man all right oh man David it's it's 1240 we got nothing we just got a meltdown let's put away our notes

about Biden's rural strategy and how Hillary may have swung the election to Bernie I'm looking reading off my paper here about first alignment and second alignment and all that other crap there we're going to report tonight we got nothing. This is

a caucus with no results. That's it. I... One of my lost notes, one of the notes I was going to read before everything just went to shit was that I was just entranced by this concept of the viability threshold. As we were doing, as in

every caucus room, it was like if you didn't get X number of votes, you didn't meet a viability threshold and this phrase kept getting repeated over and over again. And it just made it seem so unnecessarily serious. And also sort of like a science fiction movie from the 80s. But I think at the end of the day, what we've proven is that the Iowa caucus has not passed the viability threshold. And now we're just all left adrift and probably going to be doing another emergency podcast

within the next 36 to 48 hours. American democracy is not viable. But damn it, this podcast is. He is David Schuemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Erica Servantes and Chris Almeid, a production magic by Jim Cunningham. I guess we're back later this week with a winner. I guess, man.

What the hell? And more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian. Mayor Pete is still talking. Jesus.