Democrats started the week on a bad note - the Senate vote against calling further witnesses for the impeachment trial of President Trump. Then things got worse.
Monday was supposed to be the BIG DAY when the primaries finally started. All 144 candidates had been hitting the state for months. Sanders and Warren had private jets to fly them back and forth from Iowa to the Senate impeachment trial and back (Warren was caught getting off of a private jet and hid behind a campaign staffer). This was going to be the moment that added some clarity to the race and defined who really was winning and losing. Iowa was ready with new rules that called for three separate counts to make the process more transparent and and app that would relay the results to the state headquarters. The press and pundits eagerly waited for the first results to come in. And waited and waited and waited. Press time came and went. People gave up and went to bed. As of Wednesday morning exactly 0% of the vote had been counted. Both Sanders and Buttigieg released incomplete counts showing that they were the winners.
It seems that the new app hadn't been tested and had failed. The party had counted on the app and didn't have a phone bank large enough to act as a reliable fail-over. Communications were confused and garbled. Eventually they told people to bring pictures of the vote count to the headquarters to be counted by hand. By 5 pm they only had 70% of the vote counted.
Tuesday was the State of the Union Speech. It had been carefully timed so that the President would be in the middle of the impeachment trial when he gave the speech in hopes that he would have a melt-down. It didn't work. President Trump gave a high-energy positive speech. He did miss a handshake with Speaker Pelosi after he handed her the official State of the Union document but that was fair - she'd slighted him in her introduction. While Trump was recounting accomplishments she was looking anywhere but at him. At the end of the speech she pointedly tore it up then was pictured waving the halves with a smile on her face.
By Wednesday it was clear that Pelosi had partially stolen the show from the President but not in a good way. She came across as the one who had a melt-down. Three House members, including a Democrat, filed complaints. The most serious was the one filed by the Democrat. There is a statue against destroying or mutilating government documents. Remember, the State of the Union is the signed report that the President is constitutionally mandated to send to Congress. That's what she tore up. The speech itself is a theatrical event appended to the report in the early 20th century.
Sharp-eyed people watching a replay of the speech noticed that Pelosi had done a test-tear of the document while people were distracted. That's when she divided the document into three piles so it was a planned action rather than a spontaneous reaction to a "dirty speech" as she had claimed.
And on Wednesday the Senate voted to acquit the President. It was no surprise that Mitt Romney voted with the Democrats on the first count, abuse of power. It was more surprising that he voted with the other Republicans to acquit on the charge of contempt of Congress.
And Iowa finally released some more vote counts. Then they issued corrections.
On Thursday Iowa finally released 99% of the vote but admitted problems in the count that may lead to recanvassing the entire state. Both Sanders and Buttigieg claimed victory. Bernie supporters are claiming that the whole mess was caused purposely to distract from Sanders's win. Some have blamed Buttigieg's campaign, pointing to an unrelated financial relationship between them and Shadow, the company that wrote the app. What is sure is that the prestige that usually comes from winning Iowa has evaporating in the long-drawn out count. Candidates and reporters have moved on to New Hampshire. This hurt both Sanders who got the most votes and Buttigieg who got the most delegates. Both can claim victory but no one cares. Warren, who placed third in a primary no one cares about, had to cancel a half-million dollar ad buy after she failed to get an expected bounce in fund-raising from Iowa.
As of Thursday, the Democratic Party continues to be fractured while President Trump looks stronger than ever. The House has announced further investigations but after Pelosi's document-tearing she can no longer claim that this is anything but partisan bickering. At the same time the Senate has announced its own investigation into the Bidens. If they should turn up anything incriminating at all then President Trump will claim total vindication.
The Democrats must be wondering what bad news Friday will bring?
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