For the first time this election season, the Iowa Democratic and Republican Parties will be partnering with Microsoft to provide their caucuses with a technology platform that allows each party to report results from their individual posts to party headquarters via an app.
Good ol’ Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT), the anti-capitalist presidential candidate who prides himself on being the only candidate who has never worn a tuxedo and has often joked about owning just one pair of underwear, is so suspicious of the multi-billion dollar corporation’s involvement with the caucuses that his campaign has built their own independent reporting system that will check the results from the official Microsoft app.
“It’s just a way that our folks can have an app that we trust to get the numbers to us in a timely fashion,” Pete D’Alessandro, the Sanders aide running the Iowa portion of the campaign, said in an interview with MSNBC. “I’m always going to be more for sure on the stuff that my people had control over the entire time… If there are any problems, we can spot them right away.”
What could be making the Bernie campaign so suspicious of Microsoft that it would spend money on its own reporting system? you ask.
Simply put, the “free for all” Bernie campaign is suspicious of Microsoft for giving away software for free.
“You’d have to ask yourself why they’d want to give something like that away for free,” said in an interview with MSNBC.
Funny, I always thought the Bernie campaign, however delusional, genuinely wanted to give me free stuff. Just last week, the Democratic candidate called for free tuition for everybody at a CNN-sponsored town hall in Des Moines, Iowa. But it seems that the Bernie campaign does not really believe that anyone, not even a multinational corporation worth tens of billions of dollars, would genuinely give away free software without strings attached.
One could argue that Sanders’ suspicions of Microsoft for giving away free stuff are kind of suspicious. So let’s ponder a possible Microsoft conspiracy:
A few Sanders aides suspiciously noted that Microsoft employees have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton throughout her career, and that it would have made sense for the Iowa Democratic Party to partner with a software company based in Iowa if not for suspicious motives existing between Microsoft and Clinton.
Okay, so Microsoft could be deliberately dominating the platform to rig the caucus in favor of Clinton’s campaign. The problem with that, according to a Clinton campaign aide, is that Clinton’s campaign is also preparing to run its own backup reporting system that involves an app and telephone hotline, independent from the Microsoft program. So that theory didn’t work.
D’Alessandro told MSNBC that his suspicions are not with the Iowa Democratic Party, but with Microsoft specifically.
The Iowa Democratic Party confirmed that the Microsoft app, which has been under development for over a year now, has no ulterior motives and will offer completely honest results.
“Microsoft and their app partner, InterKnowlogy, are global leaders in the technology industry, and we completely trust the integrity of their staff and the app,” a spokesperson for the Party wrote in a statement. “The app will help make caucus reporting more efficient, accurate and secure, and we look forward to seeing it in action on caucus night.”
One thing is for certain when considering the socialist candidate’s skepticism of Microsoft: it all boils down to his deep disdain for the rich guys.
Here are a few things that Sanders has said in the past about big business and capitalism:
The business model of Wall Street is fraud. That’s what it is. Let me make this promise. Whether it’s Republican administrations or Democratic administrations, we have seen Wall Street and Goldman Sachs dominate administrations. Here’s my promise: Wall Street representatives will not be in my cabinet…. Their business model is greed and fraud. And for the sake of our economy, the major banks must be broken up. (CNN SOTU 2015 interview series: 2016 presidential hopefuls)
Money cannot be the God of life. (CBS Face the Nation 2015 coverage:2016 presidential hopefuls)
People do not like the idea that, as a result of Citizens United, our campaign finance system has become corrupt and politicians are dependent upon super PACs and billionaires for money. People want us to deal with climate change, make college affordable. (CNN SOTU 2015 interview series: 2016 presidential hopefuls)
It means there’s something wrong when the rich get richer, and almost everybody else gets poorer. It means there is something wrong, and government should play a role in making sure that all of our kids, regardless of their income, are able to get a higher education… Which is why I’m calling for free tuition at public colleges and universities, and why we have to deal with this horrendous level of student debt that people are having. (CNN 2016 town hall)
So, what Democratic Socialism means to me in its essence is that we cannot continue to have a government dominated by the billionaire class, and a Congress that continues to work for the interest of the people on top while ignoring working families. (CNN 2016 town hall)
Sanders will use any argument to attack large corporations and business enterprises that threaten his idealistic socialist vision, even if it means shedding doubt on his own image of the genuine free handout guy, which was never real to begin with. Sanders believes more than anyone and now admittedly, that nobody, not even the wealthiest corporations, gives away major free handouts without ulterior motive.
For you, Bernie:
Suspicion haunts the guilty mind.
-William Shakespeare