Why Sanders Should Have Won Iowa

… and Did:

Has Hillary’s campaign become the Worst of Bush AND Gore?

With her Iowa “victory”, the Hillary campaign is in the same moral position as Bush’s in Florida after election day in November, 2000.

Because, it sure seems that Bernie Sanders, who surged out of nowhere, from 30 point deficit, to end in a statistical tie — with just two- tenths of a percent between them — had the real victory in Iowa. Even the Hillary-supporting Des Moines Register in an article comparing it unfavorably to an earlier “fiasco”, said, “what happened Monday night was a debacle, period.”

Yet, still, all sorts of establishment media was falling all over itself to spin the razor thin “victory” that should have been a cakewalk into a huge loss for Sanders.

Hillary’s victory?

How so?

The Des Moines Register went on enumerate questions left hanging like so many chads: “Too many accounts have arisen of inconsistent counts, untrained and overwhelmed volunteers, confused voters, cramped precinct locations, a lack of voter registration forms and other problems. Too many of us, including members of the Register editorial board who were observing caucuses, saw opportunities for error amid Monday night’s chaos.”

Chaos. Their word.

And the coin tosses? That gets really bizarre. Yes, there’s the statistically very improbable (but certainly not impossible — www.radiolab.org/story/91684-stochasticity) streak of coin tosses… six straight for Hillary, for a probability of 1.56 percent.

But then there were other caucuses decided coin tosses, some that were written about in some places, some that are shrouded in mists of vagueness caused by the different reporting methods — some were by phone, some were via software supplied by Microsoft, helpfully, for free.

Um… About that free software: it’s closed source.

We don’t know what’s in it. How hard would it be to, maliciously or intentionally alter a couple lines of code, siphon off a few votes here and there? (Answer: ridiculously easy.)

Consider that most Microsoft support has gone to Hillary and Marco Rubio — the latter did way better than expected; the former eeked out a razor-thin 2 tenths of a percent “victory”. And that the app was plagued with failures — either Microsoft is crap at what they do, or there’s something fishy… or both.

Am I saying Microsoft’s app altered results? I’m saying I have no idea. And no one else does, either. And that’s the problem. (Yes, the software can be audited, in theory, but Microsoft decides who gets to do that, who gets that look, who gets that business… and we saw how well that worked out with the financial markets).

Now, consider that the Democratic party machine is very solidly behind Clinton (but she’s not the establishment candidate, she’ll tell you — she just can’t be, because… she’s female). And the whole thing is a gigantic mess, rife with possibilities for error, described by the state’s most important newspaper, despite having endorsed Hillary, as chaos, and is calling for

The margin of her glorious victory: was two-tenths of one percent. Ten times that would have triggered an automatic recount anywhere such rules are in place… actually… fifty times that would usually trigger the recount.

The more I read about it, the more explanations of the other coin tosses and the reason the disgraceful, error-prone, chaotic mess is all okey-dokey business as usual-y (just channeling some Palin), the more confused I am. The explanations intended to set our worried little minds at ease have just left everyone more bewildered, which, paradoxically, makes us more certain: something is very wrong here, or, as the Register puts it, “Something smells in the Democratic Party.

But the Hillary machine doesn’t care about that. She’s become the anti-transparency candidate, while she can to claim victory.

Just like the Bush camp in 2000.

Because, even though it’s looking increasingly like her party doesn’t really want her to represent them (well, the people who make up the party — but who cares what they think), just like Al Gore in 2000, she’s convinced that the nomination, and the Presidency, are things that rightfully belong to her.

She’s paid her dues, and there were deals made in 2008. They didn’t involve the voters, who soundly rejected her then.

And Hillary doesn’t want them involved now. This is hers. She’s entitled to this.

Some of us just seem to be too stupid to accept it.