Ultimate Cagefight MMXIX, Democratic Edition

[But]

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

ETA: Well now, it looks like the sources I read may have overstated the DNC's involvement in this mess! Apparently, Iowa Dems were planning to a system where people could call in their votes to the caucus, and for security reasons the DNC urged them to try something else. There's a whole cottage industry of election cyber security firms that grew up around allegations of Russian interference in 2016. An outfit call, entertainingly enough, Shadow may have trouble drumming up new business after yesterday.

There were news articles a couple of weeks ago that mentioned they were going to use this new "app" (God I hate that "word"). Fuck no was my first thought. There are things in the world that should be kept as far away from each other as possible, and two of those are computers and elections.

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by But

(God I hate that "word").

I was pretty sure I wasn't the only one, but it's good having confirmation.

[Stephen Maturin]

Nice showing for Sanders and Buttigieg thus far, with a strong third for Warren. Bernie's wheelhouse is retail politics, a big deal in Iowa (as well as New Hampshire), but Mayor Pete's showing kinda surprised me. I saw a bit of his speech last night, and was a little impressed that he managed to have three of the ... oh, I dunno ... five, maybe six black women in Iowa standing behind him.

Biden is a distant fourth in vote count, and could end up fifth seeing as how Klobuchar is close. There's no point in talking delegates at this point, since delegate assignment (all 41 of 'em ) isn't official until the state party convention in June.

And if 62% of precincts works out to roughly 62% of voters (it may or may not), Iowa turnout this time around won't be much different than is was in 2016.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

[The Man]

Obligatory:

There are lots of very smart people doing fascinating work on cryptographic voting protocols. We should be funding and encouraging them, and doing all our elections with paper ballots until everyone currently working in that field has retired.

This happens to lie at the intersection of the two fields I’ve studied in great depth at the post-secondary level, so naturally I get to kick and scream about this every two years and no one in a position of power to change anything ever listens or learns a goddamn thing from débâcles like this. I don’t expect anything to change this time, either, but the above comic becomes relevant so often these days I literally have the page URL memorised.

(This doesn’t take a conspiracy on the part of the DNC or the IA Democratic Party or anyone else, though. It just looks like garden-variety incompetence.)

[erimir]

To be honest, if you're Sanders and you had to pick between winning Iowa on all three counts (first and second preferences and SDEs) but Biden getting second... vs. what he did get, which is a split decision with Buttigieg, but Biden way back in 4th... This might be the preferable outcome. Obviously he'd prefer to win more SDEs, or of course, to win in a landslide. But it's not a bad outcome for him outside those landslide scenarios.

But anyway, potentially knocking Biden out of contention is possibly more useful than a slightly larger bump for Sanders going into NH, which he's likely to win anyway. Buttigieg, unlike Biden, doesn't have strong support among black voters, and so a matchup between Sanders and Buttigieg could be much more winnable than a Sanders vs. Biden endgame.

I guess Warren potentially creates some different dynamics in a Biden-less scenario though. According to 538 her performance was strong, but since she still only got third place, that really just means she's not knocked out of contention, rather than her position improving much. Overall outcome is pretty uncertain at this point...

(With caveats, of course, that the 2nd round vote and SDE counts are close enough that Buttigieg or Sanders could end up winning either when the remaining results come in. The NYT Upshot model ("the needle") thinks there's an ~86% chance Buttigieg comes out on top in SDEs, and a 60% chance for Sanders to win the 2nd round popular vote, while Sanders is almost certain to win the first round vote. So a split outcome is by far the most likely the outcome, it seems.)

ETA: got the numbers wrong from the NYT needle, might as well update to the current numbers

[SR71]

Freethought Forum - View Single Post - Ultimate Cagefight MMXIX, Democratic Edition

[SR71]

Originally Posted by But

There were news articles a couple of weeks ago that mentioned they were going to use this new "app" (God I hate that "word"). Fuck no was my first thought. There are things in the world that should be kept as far away from each other as possible, and two of those are computers and elections.

I agree to this extent - computers without paper backup...

Paper and computers are both subject to fuckwithery. It would be really hard to fuck with both records in a way that withstands inspection.

[SR71]

I'm glad Biden dropped. He never got to grips with the Hunter bullshit. Any dem who thinks they can just duck whatever mud is slung at them is living in dreamland. The mud is real, no how matter how much bullshit it contains. To act as if it's beneath ones dignity to respond is to capitulate.

Biden should've forcefully and repeatedly made the case about why it was bullshit and gone hard on counter accusations for good measure. He could've even gone to one upsmmanship by begging to be a witness, dragging out the trial and opening the window to Prince Jerrod and Princess Barbie who Trump wants to take to a dongathon. The reps aren't fucking around here, they will throw as much mud as they can as hard as they can with zero misgivings. If dems don't respond they'll end up buried in bullshit.

Unless Unca Joe drastically changes his ways vis a vis Burisma/Hunter he's dead meat already.

[Stephen Maturin]

Unca Joe might be hosed regardless of the Hunter stuff. His campaign is already pretty broke, and that Iowa showing (last I looked, he'd dropped below 15% of the vote) isn't exactly going to make it rain.

[SR71]

The only thing he had going for him in my book was strong minority support, which I actually weighted as a heavy pro factor. That and the simple fact that anything up to and including a festering opossum carcass would be better than Dump.

[erimir]

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

Unca Joe might be hosed regardless of the Hunter stuff. His campaign is already pretty broke, and that Iowa showing (last I looked, he'd dropped below 15% of the vote) isn't exactly going to make it rain.

He's below 15% in the second alignment vote, but they use an Electoral College-like system where the delegate weights of precincts and counties is set beforehand. Which means that turnout being high in Des Moines doesn't get extra delegates for Sanders and Warren, whereas Buttigieg or Biden winning in rural areas with few votes can be worth more per vote.

Which is to say: Biden is above 15% in SDEs ("state delegate equivalents") in the current count, which means he will probably win statewide delegates. He could fall behind when the rest of the results come in.

AND because they have this multi-stage procedure of county conventions and then the state convention which ultimately chooses the national delegates, he could end up not making the cut that way if his delegates don't show up to the later stages. If he gets too close to 15%, having a few flakes among his county/state delegates could cost him national delegates.

This whole process is much dumber than just having a statewide primary where you get to score or rank as many candidates as you like.

[chunksmediocrites]

Let's note right here that today is Wednesday and last update the Iowa Democratic Party and the DNC now have released a total of 75% of the vote. Keep in mind that:

• on Monday precinct captains phoned, or texted, or emailed, or all three into HQ.
• up until 2020 the system had been to phone in results.
• Reports are that many precinct captains waited on perpetual hold or finally got through or texted and emailed after being unable to get through on the phone.
• turnout was similar to 2016 so the system was not in any way overwhelmed with caucus-goers.
• on Tuesday Precinct captains again phoned, texted, or emailed, or all three, wanting to confirm that HQ had the results.
• Tuesday morning Iowa Democratic Party releases 62% of the results showing Sanders ahead in the popular vote count but Buttigieg gaining the highest delegate count based on incomplete- i.e. 38% of the caucus that is yet uncounted.
• Tuesday Buttigieg declares himself "victorious in Iowa."
• Some precinct captains were contacted Tuesday by HQ claiming HQ did not have their data; those precinct captains stated they had already sent in data, re-sent or re-reported.
• Tuesday people were sent out to each location to pick up the physical records to take back to HQ
• Wednesday the total creeps up to 71%
• 14 hours later the masterminds have decoded an additional 4%.

You can't fuck up this hard on accident. I will be very interested to see what the final tally is, that last 25% that is apparently in super difficult mode on the video game console they are apparently using as a spreadsheet, the very hard task of taking the fucking reported totals and plugging them in. These were public caucus events where most organized candidates had a captain on site reporting the totals to the campaign as well, it is hard to cheat the final count... unless you accidentally fuck it up, then more assholes jump in to help slow play the entire thing in a way certain to have these outcomes:

Normally a winner in Iowa would tout that in the news cycle; that has been imploded by the Iowa Democratic Party and the DNC.

This would be a huge springboard, but weird how centrists appear to be burning the field and their manor to the ground rather than bend the knee.

It is a sign of the power of Bernie's message, the popularity of his progressive agenda, and the focus on "Not me, Us." A candidate with a huge, dedicated, broad, multi-racial, young base that will fight for him with everything we've got, because we're fighting for something bigger. The first image of caucuses out of Iowa was shift workers- immigrants from Ethiopia and Honduras who work in a hog slaughtering plant- lined up to caucus for Bernie Sanders. I know whose side we're fighting for.

Know these things:

• Bernie is going to destroy in New Hampshire, based on polling and ground game organization.
• Biden is fucking done.
• Bloomberg is doubling his spending and is going to attempt to challenge Bernie for the nom, because he said in 2016 if Warren or Sanders look like they might get the nomination he would run to prevent it. He does not want anything to threaten his $60 billion, so he figures he'll buy the presidency.
• Buttigieg is done after New Hampshire- he has no support in South Carolina, and no campaign structure in the rest of the states.

[erimir]

Of course any fucking thing that is even slightly bad for Sanders is a conspiracy. This is why I can't stand so many of his stans. The funny thing is that many of the same people will whine that Hillary Clinton can't accept responsibility for anything, that blaming it all on Comey and Russia is just excuse making or conspiracy theory hoaxes, despite there being actual evidence for it and dozens of criminal prosecutions. The minute anything happens that isn't even that bad for Bernie and it's all a conspiracy, it cannot possibly merely be that Our Revolutionary Leader fell slightly short of a complete victory. No need to have any evidence of malfeasance, of course.

Of course, you have to assume that Sanders will come out on top in SDEs in order for this conspiracy to make any sense. The chance that he might have legitimately not won the most SDEs is dismissed as an impossibility. It appears highly likely that Sanders will not win the most SDEs. An immediate declaration that Buttigieg won the most SDEs would be far more damaging to Bernie than what happened, yet that is not what happened.

The Iowa Democratic Party has shown that they prioritize keeping Iowa's first-in-the-nation status quite strongly. This "conspiracy" to harm Bernie is far more damaging to Iowa itself than it is to Bernie, and you have to ignore the competing incentives of different actors and think there's a grand conspiracy of Iowa to implode their first-in-the-nation caucuses just to announce that... Bernie Sanders won the popular vote but not the most delegates. How in the fuck is that worth it for the Iowa Democratic Party?

They're pulling a conspiracy to damage Bernie but they couldn't manage to help Biden, Bernie's strongest competitor, do better than 4th fucking place?

They're pulling a conspiracy to damage Bernie, yet the results show that he outperformed his polls and Biden underperformed his. So damaging to Bernie!

And as you say, Bernie Sanders is heavily favored in the next state, New Hampshire, which means that a split decision isn't good enough to stop him there. You're confident that Bernie is going to now roll to the nomination, so they threw this international shitshow for nothing, yet you're certain that it's a conspiracy. Get a fucking grip.

What happened is probably this:

1. Buttigieg did better in rural areas, which get more delegates per person than urban areas, while Sanders did better in urban areas. This results in an advantage for Buttigieg in SDEs. This was known and predicted before Monday.
2. The possibility of Biden or Buttigieg picking up lots of second alignment votes from each other and from Klobuchar, Bloomberg, etc. was obvious. Just because you didn't think it could work out for one of them doesn't mean it wasn't entirely plausible.
3. Particularly given how Sanders staffers, surrogates and supporters attack other candidates and their supporters so much, it's hardly surprising he didn't make huge gains in the second alignment, although he did make some gains.
4. Warren was polling near the threshold, there were still undecided voters and she picked up the biggest newspaper endorsement in Iowa, it's not that surprising she did a bit better than the polls, very few of which were from after the DMR endorsement, indicated. So instead of her falling below 15% in most places and Bernie picking up tons of second alignment votes from her, she kept them. But he still did pick up second alignment votes from her supporters in many places where she fell under the threshold (and vice versa).
5. Since Biden underperformed so much, Buttigieg picked up a lot more second alignment votes from him, which probably pushed him ahead of Bernie in SDEs. Ironically, Biden's underperformance may have harmed Sanders, resulting in Buttigieg coming out ahead on that measure.
6. The moderate wing (Biden+Buttigieg+Klobuchar+Bloomberg) was polling higher than the progressive wing (Sanders+Warren, even if you include Yang+Gabbard) in the leadup to Iowa. It's hardly surprising that second alignment votes could result in a moderate significantly catching up to Sanders. The moderate wing consolidating against Bernie doesn't require a fucking conspiracy.
7. The caucus has never reported anything other than SDEs in the past. This time they changed the rules on how second alignment works AND they were reporting three different measures of support AND they decided (stupidly) to use an app to make it "easier". But most caucus volunteers are old people who aren't tech savvy, so this resulted in a royal fuckup. The reason they were using these new rules is partly because Bernie's people wanted it! Which is good for him, because otherwise the story would be ONLY that Buttigieg had won, instead of a popular vote/delegate split! But bad because it contributed to this chaos!
8. They're probably being so slow in reporting NOW partly out of an abundance of caution, because the chances that dipshits like chunks wouldn't screeeeam rigged if they made a mistake in reporting the results that made it look like Bernie did worse that they later had to correct is basically 0%.
9. Bernie Sanders's appointees to the Democratic Unity Committee wanted to keep fucking caucuses, which use these bullshit non-proportional rules. Why? Because Bernie Sanders did much better in caucuses in 2016. Now you're discovering that the caucus rules don't inevitably help Bernie and only Bernie, and you're calling it rigged. People were pointing out the problems with caucuses back in 2016 and 2017 and they didn't want to hear it because they were hoping the problems would help Bernie. Now that the monkey's paw has made caucus rules slightly hurt Bernie, you cry rigged. Fuck you, seriously.

All of this conspiracy bullshit to explain something that requires no conspiracy is doing exactly what Trump wants - he wants people to think it's all rigged, so there's no point in voting. He wants Democrats to be divided. The polls showed a tight 4-way race in Iowa, not a Bernie blowout. Bernie is going to end up as the frontrunner in the 538 model after this, and you fucks still can't quit crying about how it's all so unfair that he's not just waltzing to the nomination.

But it's no surprise from someone who likes to make false claims about what the polls say, doesn't have a single clue what's in the Heritage Plan but is certain that the ACA is a Republican plan, knows nothing about how other countries' healthcare systems work but is sure that only the one Bernie has proposed can work, etc. Of course all the shit he doesn't understand is a conspiracy. It's so much easier to explain it that way than to actually learn how it works.

[erimir]

For what it's worth, in keeping with my preference for ranked choice voting over plurality voting, I think the second alignment results should be covered by the media as more important than the SDE results. And that measure is where Bernie does best as of this time.

But caucuses are stupid so we have this SDE bullshit

[chunksmediocrites]

The last update from the "quality controlled" information from Iowa Democratic Party had datasets where large chunks of Sanders and Warren votes were swapped with datasets of Deval Patrick and Tom Steyer; they got called on it and have had to retract.

Seriously this gets more embarrassing for the Democratic Party as each moment passes, but damn, you already shit your pants, might as well light the couch on fire.

Hey remember when a vote count got delayed by 22 hours in Bolivia and then the US backed a coup?

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites

you already shit your pants, might as well light the couch on fire.

Words to live by.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

NEW: We obtained the smartphone app behind the #iowacaucases fiasco and had it analyzed. Turns out a skilled hacker could intercept — and even change — vote tallies and other sensitive data if they wanted to. My latest w/ @JessicaHuseman https://t.co/qLghEaPRsu

— Jack Gillum (@jackgillum) February 5, 2020

[erimir]

538 just updated their model, giving Buttigieg most of the credit for winning Iowa since SDEs are traditionally the way the winner is determined and the media is focusing on them more as a result.

Chances of winning a plurality (very few scenarios will result where the plurality winner is not the nominee)

Before > After Iowa (change):
Biden: 51% > 28% (-23%)
Sanders: 33% > 47% (+14%)
Warren: 6% > 14% (+8%)
Buttigieg: 4% > 9% (+5%)
Klobuchar or Bloomberg: less than 1% > 2%

What a cunning DNC conspiracy this has been, to cut the establishment favorite's chances in half, make Bernie the frontrunner and make Buttigieg the winner, who nonetheless only improves his chances to a mere 9%.

Take the win, Berners, instead of whining. This is very good news for the progressive wing - the biggest winner was Bernie, followed by Warren!

You'll probably find more value in crowing about how good your performance was and how poor Biden's was than in conspiracy mongering, such makes you look like sore losers, when you can instead just talk about how the popular vote means you won.

[specious_reasons]

Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites

You can't fuck up this hard on accident.

Well, yeah, you can. It's actually pretty easy when you have a lot fault-intolerant processes that depend on each other, and the whole caucus process is probably too complex.

I think the preliminary results are a good indicator that this wasn't a conspiracy, because Biden screwed the pooch, and there's nothing to indicate that the DNC is abandoning Biden for Buttigieg.

It was just really shitty optics that the reporting mechanisms failed.

[erimir]

This is a plausible source of delays:

SCOOP: Trump supporters flooded a hotline used by Iowa precinct chairs to report Democratic caucus results after the telephone number was posted online, worsening delays in the statewide tally, a top state Democrat told party leaders Wednesday. w/ @jeneps https://t.co/AMlFNKf1F4

— Tyler Pager (@tylerpager) February 6, 2020

Of course, it was a mistake to post the number online, but if it came from caucus paperwork then it could've been any number of hundreds of volunteers.

I wish people wouldn't make it so easy for ratfuckers to sow discontent though, because naturally certain people's first instinct is to blame people who are on the same team and agree with them about most things. Remember, the other side has a compulsive liar, inveterate fraudster, extortionist sociopath as their leader.

[chunksmediocrites]

Originally Posted by specious_reasons

Well, yeah, you can. It's actually pretty easy when you have a lot fault-intolerant processes that depend on each other, and the whole caucus process is probably too complex.

I think the preliminary results are a good indicator that this wasn't a conspiracy, because Biden screwed the pooch, and there's nothing to indicate that the DNC is abandoning Biden for Buttigieg.

It was just really shitty optics that the reporting mechanisms failed.

There's separate issues. I don't think the App was supposed to fail. I'm saying they are exploiting the failure of the App to only report 62% of the caucus results and then allow conclusions to be drawn, then critically fail day after day after day to give accurate or complete data. More and more errors are being found in the "quality controlled" data.

Now additionally there's a lot of rounding errors found- in the "quality controlled" results:
Iowa Rounding Errors | SMART Elections

Understand this is not a conspiracy theory- it's showing them actually fucking up data that Black Hawk and Polk County supervisors who know what they totaled and reported are seeing their data corrupted in the released "quality controlled" results and forcing the Iowa Democratic Party to retract their obvious errors.

I get the caucus system is overly complex. Tabulating this shit was not. Literally results from every county in their hands- but they fail and fail and fail and fail and fail. This is a rigged result- rigged for slow release and rigged to throw doubt on the results- for good fucking reasons so far since they have fucked up over and over and over on collating basic fucking data.

Also understand the expectation is for some of the centrist Democrats to cheat at every stage of the election process and to attempt to get Trump to win rather than allow Sanders to win the presidency. Their only unity is to their professional managerial class interests and their clinging to power they do not deserve to hold. They will be overcome, organization defeats all; cuts through all obstacles. This play only increases the resolve of the supporters.

Know even more importantly we're not complaining after the fact like waah oh noes those cheaters what will we do we are undone waah- we knew ratfucking was on the menu and will continue to be on the menu forever and give zero fucks; we welcome their hatred. We organize on the assumption that every step will be corrupted, undermined, distorted to favor our opponents and hurt Sanders. They will be overcome just like all the rest, and cannot break our resolve. This is a once in a lifetime election where a progressive has an actual chance to take the White House. Over 1,700+ Bernie supporters traveled from all over to canvass on the ground for Bernie Sanders in Iowa, along with the local support; many are now in New Hampshire. I'm going to Las Vegas around Valentines to canvass for Bernie for a long weekend along with others from my cadre here in Portland; I know of four others who will be there for sure, many for more like a week.

Long distance runner, organizer-in-chief. Let's go here comes Friday debate and Tuesday New Hampshire primary. Maybe by then we'll have... all? of the results from Iowa

[erimir]

Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites

Now additionally there's a lot of rounding errors found- in the "quality controlled" results:
Iowa Rounding Errors | SMART Elections

Quit being such a gullible conspiracy believing dumbass and actually learn how things work before you complain that everything is RIGGED. Jesus fuck, you don't even put in a minute of thought to figure out whether it's actually wrong before you claim it's evidence that you're being cheated.

Only one of those pictures has an error - and the error gives BIDEN a delegate that should go to BUTTIGIEG. Buttigieg is the only one being harmed in your pictures meant to demonstrate a conspiracy against Sanders and in favor of Buttigieg!

Here, I'll do an example so everyone can see how it works:


Notice how it says there are SEVEN delegates to be assigned! Well, Warren gets 1, Buttigieg gets 2, Biden gets 1 and Sanders gets 1, that's clear enough. But that only assigns FIVE delegates. There are two extras! Since Biden has the highest remainder (0.3039), he gets the first one. Since Buttigieg has the next highest, he gets the other. Thus there are seven total delegates assigned.

Now, there's an alternate way you could calculate it that would be clearer. Notice that they divide by the total number of people at the caucus, 204. But if you add up the supporters for the viable candidates (Warren, Buttigieg, Biden and Sanders) you only get 171. This is because 33 other people didn't end up supporting a viable candidate. You can see that Klobuchar had 30 supporters, which gave her 14.7%, below the viability threshold of 15%. Presumably Yang or someone else had a couple supporters left as well. That leaves only 171 people for viable candidates, as I said. If you instead use 171 as the divisor, you'd end up with delegates like so:

Warren = (33/171) * 7 = 1.35, rounds to 1
Buttigieg = (67/171) * 7 = 2.74, rounds to 3
Biden = (38/171) * 7 = 1.55, rounds to 2
Sanders = (33/171) * 7 = 1.35, rounds to 1

This makes it so there are no longer any strange "rounding errors", but you get the exact same result.

So where's the error? Who should get those remaining two delegates after the first five are assigned? It's not the most obvious system, but it's not designed to screw any particular candidate.

In fact, in 2016, these types of rounding rules resulted in Bernie Sanders getting more pledged delegates than he would've otherwise. It's not a conspiracy, it's just a weird rule.

I mean, I know I've harped on this but: chunks doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, he just knows that he and his side are being screwed. He doesn't even put in a modicum of effort to understand what's going on before he cries it's all unfair, or they're corrupt, or they're basically Republicans. I mean like, it's nice that you gave such a perfect demonstration of how you don't bother doing any fact checking before crying rigged.

At what point can we conclude that chunks knows he's full of shit and he's just a garden variety liar?

I get the caucus system is overly complex. Tabulating this shit was not.

It is quite apparent that it is too complex for you and many of your fellow conspiracy theorists to follow the delegate assignment procedure. Like, literally, you are in the very same post failing to do the very thing that you claim is not hard.

Know even more importantly we're not complaining after the fact like waah oh noes those cheaters what will we do we are undone waah-

That's absolutely what you're doing. You're complaining about the delegate assignment without even bothering to know the correct way for them to be assigned, which is the way they've always been assigned. That's whiny baby shit. Your biggest establishment rival just shit the bed, significantly improving Bernie's chances of winning, and you're still convinced that the establishment is fucking you.

Why the fuck wouldn't they be cheating to help Biden instead of Buttigieg, who has nonexistent support among black Democrats? In the meantime, the people actually responsible for this supposed conspiracy, the Iowa Democratic Party, may have just fucked over themselves by ensuring that Iowa doesn't go first in 2024. Why would they do that just to give a minor benefit to the mayor of fucking South Bend?

But the conspiracy doesn't have to make any sense, of course.

I don't know WHY they're being so incompetent at this, but it is barely coherent as an anti-Bernie conspiracy and overall the results are quite good for Bernie and disastrous for Biden. And if Bernie manages to take the lead in SDEs (which is still possible), it's only going to be better for him.

[slimshady2357]

Right as Bernie may take the lead Perez tweets this. It's like this is performance art on how to generate conspiracy theories. https://t.co/2HMyGN9dAj

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) February 6, 2020

[erimir]

Matt Stoller, of course, would like to encourage the conspiracy theories. But he thinks it's concerning. It appears either way that the SDE count will be incredibly close, and therefore Buttigieg or Sanders would have an interest either way in asking for a recanvass to ensure that there were no missed errors. If your side is losing by like 0.1% of SDEs, of course it makes sense for there to be a recanvass. This would be the case even if the initial count had gone off without a hitch! But it's very concerning and indicates a conspiracy. As we know, they only do recounts in close contests because they're RIGGING it

The opportunity here, for Bernie and his supporters, is to say, we appear to have won the popular vote and delegates are too close to call, it's clear we had the best performance when looking at both elements. It's regrettable that there were all these problems, but people (i.e. Buttigieg!) shouldn't be prematurely declaring victory when there are clearly issues in determining the results quickly or complaining that the results can't be trusted just because they clearly got fourth place (i.e. Biden!).

Point to Buttigieg being presumptuous and opportunistic, and Biden being a sore loser, while your guy was patient and eventually vindicated as the true winner.

I don't see how it benefits Bernie for his supporters to be whining sore-loser conspiracy theories which is all about whether you win a minuscule victory in SDEs (which Bernie might not have really won anyway!), a stupid measure that is merely related to things people should care about (votes or national delegates) and only exists because of their stupid-ass caucus rules, when you have a much clearer victory on the popular vote and should be taking a victorious and magnanimous tone instead based on that!

One of the things a lot of people dislike about Bernie and his stans is the constant grievance politics - here's an opportunity to ACT LIKE YOU'RE THE FRONTRUNNER (which Bernie is at this point!) and soothe some of people's concerns, and instead you're validating exactly why other people don't like Bernie! You have plenty of material to use to go after Buttigieg, why waste your time on this silliness?