The first-in-the-nation caucuses in Iowa Monday have turned into a debacle for Democrats amid reports of “chaos” and “confusion” in the process — and, perhaps most notably, “conspiracy,” particularly from one crucial campaign.
The supporters of democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — who has been steadily gaining ground in the polls in recent weeks, surpassing frontrunner former Vice President Joe Biden in a few prominent polls — headed into Iowa suspicious enough of their own party. Now, amid the meltdown in Iowa, Sanders’ supporters are reportedly looking at the party and other Democratic campaigns with even more suspicion.
As the results failed to come in Monday night, Iowa Democratic Party citing “inconsistencies” and the need to begin “manually verifying all precinct results,” the Washington Examiner‘s Joseph Simonson reported on some overheard conversations among workers on Bernie’s campaign:
While the political world waited late Monday to get results due more than an hour before, the Washington Examiner overheard several field organizers for the Vermont senator complaining that supporters of rival candidates were conspiring to block them from winning delegates.
One individual also complained about the campaign’s strategy of telling supporters to leave the caucus locations after the first round of voting, known as first alignment.
“I guess I shouldn’t have left after all,” one male organizer said to another woman.
“I don’t understand what was going on; all the other supporters seemed to be against us,” she responded.
Both individuals were wearing staff passes.
Simonson also cites a woman who spoke on condition of anonymity about an incident she said took place at her location in Des Moines. The precinct captain there, she told the Washington Examiner, appeared to be biased against Sanders, allowing Pete Buttigieg supporters to vandalize their promotional material without recourse.
“We put up our signs to show undecided caucusers and others during the realignment where to stand for Sanders, but then, supporters of Buttigieg rushed us and put stickers over the sign,” the woman said. “When it was our turn to give a speech, the Buttigieg supporters kept interrupting us, and the campaign didn’t do anything.” (Read Simonson’s report here.)
Sanders supporters have long complained about the party conspiring against him, a grievance that dates back to the 2016 Democratic primary, when the Democratic National Committee appeared to stack the deck in Hillary Clinton’s favor.
As The Daily Wire reported Monday, one of Sanders’ most vocal supporters, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), fired a few warning shots across the bow of the DNC on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, warning the committee against attempting “to use superdelegate[s] or other kind of subversive policies to deny anybody the nomination” unless they want to end up in “dangerous territory in terms of defeating Trump.”
The mess in Iowa has only exacerbated the fears of an unfair process designed to keep Sanders from winning the nomination he is increasingly poised to take. NBC News provides the latest from Democratic Party in Iowa:
Party chair Troy Price said the party is “validating every piece of data we have against our paper trail. That system is taking longer than expected, but it’s in place to ensure we are eventually able to report results with full confidence.”
The state Democratic party’s communications director, Mandy McClure, said on Monday night that there were “inconsistencies” in the reporting of three sets of results. “In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report,” McClure said.
“This is simply a reporting issue. The app did not go down, and this is not a hack or an intrusion. The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results,” McClure added.
Related: Ocasio-Cortez: Democrats Could Get In ‘Dangerous Territory In Terms Of Defeating Trump’