Episode 809 Scott Adams： Iowa Caucus, ＂Sloppiest Train Wreck in History,＂ Schiff Sells Alaska to Russia
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
143.60559
Summary
In this episode of Morning Joe, Alex Blumberg breaks down the results of the Democratic primary in Iowa, and tries to figure out why there were so many mistakes by the Democratic candidates. Plus, a new app that counts votes.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Yeah, it's true. Some days are better than other days. Today, it's really looking good.
00:00:15.880
I'd like to start by giving you the Iowa election results.
00:00:22.280
I believe they're in here, somewhere in here. I've got all the Iowa caucus results.
00:00:32.760
No, I don't have them yet. But nobody else has them either, so I guess I'm no worse than anybody else, am I?
00:00:42.500
Oh, I know why you're here. You're here for endless laughs about the hilarious incompetence of the Democrats in Iowa.
00:00:53.560
And we're going to bring that. Don't worry. If you came here to mock the Democrats in Iowa, you came to the right place.
00:01:01.660
We're going to do that. But first, you might want to enjoy this simultaneous sip,
00:01:06.800
and all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
00:01:14.180
Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like my coffee.
00:01:19.200
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the thing that makes everything better, the dopamine hit of the day.
00:01:40.640
So, you all know that the Iowa results, the Iowa caucuses, didn't go as well as anybody hoped.
00:01:52.940
I don't know how long it's going to take before I stop laughing about this whole situation.
00:02:02.020
The hardest thing I had, the hardest part of my morning today, was organizing all the jokes.
00:02:09.560
Because I couldn't stop thinking of funny things about Iowa.
00:02:12.920
And I started writing them down and tweeting about them.
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And I thought, my God, I've got too many jokes about Iowa.
00:02:18.360
I'm going to have to organize these by alphabetical or something.
00:02:24.800
First of all, how long does it take to rig a vote against Bernie?
00:02:36.540
Don't they just subtract a little from Bernie, add it to whoever they want?
00:02:39.760
Look, so, I'm not going to say, you know, I'm not going to allege that this is all a big way to rig the vote against Bernie.
00:02:51.660
I will simply note that if you were going to bet, let's say, predict it had a betting market.
00:02:58.720
And let's say that a week ago, the bet had been this.
00:03:03.240
The bet is that if there's a major technical screw-up in the Iowa caucuses, so imagine this is a week ago and you had this option.
00:03:12.640
And you knew there was going to be a big screw-up, or if there were a big screw-up.
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Would it work against Bernie Sanders' interest or for his interest?
00:03:25.640
However, it could be just a technical mistake, just like they say.
00:03:30.380
Could be just the system didn't work as well as they'd hoped, and it'll take a while to sort it out.
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But why are all the mistakes against Bernie Sanders in one way or another?
00:03:47.000
It could be a coincidence, but it's a funny one.
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How are the Iowa caucus results like the Bloomberg box?
00:04:01.380
How are the Iowa caucus results like the Bloomberg box?
00:04:07.860
We're sure they both exist, but we can't see them.
00:04:13.260
If Democrats win the presidency and overhaul the health care system in the United States,
00:04:26.620
Because I'm a little worried now about my health care system being run by the people who couldn't make an app that counts.
00:04:40.320
Actually, I've been involved in making a bunch of apps.
00:04:42.480
But I feel as though counting is one of the easier things an app can do.
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Now, I know it has to count and put them in different buckets.
00:04:57.720
Now, there's some reporting, and I don't think you should assume that anything is accurate in the first 24 hours.
00:05:03.420
But there's some reporting that maybe the problem with the app was the volume.
00:05:14.060
When they were making that app, was there anybody in the meeting who said,
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we've tested our app with two or three users at the same time.
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But I think during the Iowa caucuses, we might have more traffic than that.
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Do you think we should make sure that we're architected so we can handle lots of simultaneous traffic?
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It seems like a question I would have asked if I'd been in the meeting.
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So I'm not sure it was really the volume that made the difference.
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But that's some of the unreliable early reporting.
00:05:52.840
Did it feel to you like the general election was over last night?
00:05:59.920
I felt as though the general election, the election in which Trump will run against the eventual nominee,
00:06:09.140
Now, of course, it's too early, you know, and so many things could change before election day.
00:06:22.140
Pick your favorite, strongest Democrat and hold the election today.
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Trump is the Republican and you take your strongest Democrat,
00:06:36.540
Well, if it's today, I think there are a lot of people, the Democrats,
00:06:41.420
who I have this theory about some percentage of the Democrats.
00:06:55.220
But I feel as though the Democrats who support Bernie and Elizabeth Warren in particular,
00:07:06.760
There's one world in which Bernie, his policies make sense and they all add up.
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But there's another world that I think they live in simultaneously,
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Now, I might be wrong, because, again, you don't know what's in people's minds.
00:07:24.780
But it looks like they simultaneously prefer Bernie
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and also know that his policies couldn't possibly work.
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It feels like it, because I don't know how they could not be aware of that.
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You know, it seems, you know, there are enough Democrats who are saying it
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that it seems like everybody would be aware of it.
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So this is one of those situations where it collapses one of the two movies.
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Because the whole argument about Bernie, stay with me here,
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the argument for Bernie, the best argument you could make,
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he wouldn't be able to do something as extraordinary as what he is proposing,
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which is transforming the economy, you know, canceling student debt,
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raising taxes on the rich, you know, free college,
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The only way to do that stuff is if you were really, really capable
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Now, after last night, who among you believes that the Democrats, any of them,
00:08:45.740
have the capability to make a complicated system run like a clock?
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So I'm not saying that there's anything about this Iowa situation that should be generalized.
00:09:03.520
So there's no reason to think this one-off mistake says anything about Democrats
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or says anything about the candidates or anything about anything.
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But it doesn't feel that way because of the timing, the attention.
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Now, here are a couple of rules that really stick out.
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You know it from human interactions when you have a first impression of a person,
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first impression of a candidate, a first impression of anything.
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Iowa is our first impression of the professional DNC machine and Democrats as a brand.
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If this had been, let's say, the fourth state, it kind of wouldn't matter, would it?
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It's only because it's first that it has this big hold on our imaginations.
00:10:13.800
The other thing that captures our imagination is exceptions.
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You don't remember or note things that are just the way they're supposed to be because your brain can't process everything that happens.
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So Iowa is two things that are the worst things for the Democrats.
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It's first, so that first impression for the season is sticky, but it's also a weird exception.
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And it really captures your imagination, and we're really going to look at it as an exception.
00:10:49.540
So all of our focus is, at least until there's another primary, are just drilled down onto the exception and the fact it was first.
00:10:59.000
The election, the general election, might be over, because this is such a damning thing.
00:11:10.700
Let's say a genie appears and finds a typical Democrat voter.
00:11:18.560
But it's just a voter for the most progressive policies.
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And the genie says this, there's going to be a system in this country.
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The only thing you get to decide is who gets to run the system.
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Do you want a Democrat to be in charge of running it?
00:11:38.800
Say, let's say, with the efficiency that Democrats run major cities in this country,
00:11:43.540
or the efficiency that they ran the Iowa caucus.
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You can have a Democrat, or you can have a Republican.
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Even if you're a Democrat, who do you want running the system?
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Remember, you don't even know what the system is, so you don't know if it's one you like or one you don't like.
00:12:04.040
But you do know you want it to run well, whatever the system is.
00:12:11.280
If nobody's watching, nobody's watching, so you can just be honest.
00:12:17.080
Who do you pick to run your complicated system?
00:12:27.660
I feel like Republicans, because they just sort of chug along doing things correctly,
00:12:35.600
I don't think Republicans get as much credit as they earn by simply making things run smoothly.
00:12:42.400
The GOP has a pretty well-oiled machine, and I think people are noticing.
00:12:50.040
Now, here's another irony, and the simulation is just serving up all kinds of delicious things.
00:12:57.820
Who was the one Democrat who was running for president who could have made an app that worked?
00:13:18.620
But Bloomberg certainly could have gotten an app working,
00:13:23.780
because he has a trillion-dollar company that makes apps and software
00:13:32.140
I think Bloomberg could have made an app that worked,
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but I don't think anybody asked him, and Yang could have, too.
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basically suggesting that he's the kind of president
00:13:50.600
All right, contrast is another persuasion concept that comes into play.
00:14:03.040
And imagine, if you will, that you're looking at the Iowa,
00:14:13.280
Who do you compare that to just automatically in your head?
00:14:22.100
We are a comparing, pattern-looking kind of species.
00:14:26.820
So in my mind, I somewhat irrationally compare the Iowa digital app people
00:14:33.780
to the Republican effort that I know that does digital stuff,
00:14:40.140
Now, Brad Parscale is head of the campaign, as I understand it,
00:14:44.080
but their digital part of their campaign is considered the most world-class amazing thing
00:14:54.740
So unfortunately, not only did Iowa fail in their technology,
00:15:00.020
but your brain automatically compares it to the Darth Vader of digital work.
00:15:07.260
You know, I mean that in a good way, not in the bad, the good Darth Vader reference.
00:15:12.720
Meaning that Parscale, he's like a monster of competence and success in that field.
00:15:21.220
And unfortunately, he's going to be the natural comparison to this little failure.
00:15:27.140
So I loved what the Trump campaign said about this.
00:15:34.500
Now, the quote I'm going to give you was not attributed to anybody specifically.
00:15:42.000
But the quote from the Trump campaign was, quote,
00:15:46.600
Democrats are stewing in a caucus mess of their own creation
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I'm going to read that sentence at least two more times because it's delicious.
00:16:04.180
Yeah, somebody in the comments, you know exactly where I'm going.
00:16:09.500
Just, it's not just visual, but feel the words.
00:16:18.020
Feel the sound of the words and how perfect the sentence is.
00:16:23.840
Now, I assume this was a written statement, it looks like.
00:16:29.900
Democrats are stewing in a caucus mess of their own creation
00:16:43.080
Whoever wrote this sentence knows how to write a sentence.
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This is like, this is a 10 out of 10 for a sentence.
00:16:53.620
See, what's right about it is it's very visual.
00:16:57.380
But when they add sloppy, a sloppy train wreck, you almost can hear it, can you not?
00:17:05.420
If you imagine a train wreck, the first thing you imagine metal and steel, crash, crash, crash.
00:17:11.580
You know, that's what a train wreck would sound like.
00:17:14.360
But when they add sloppy, it almost sounds like dropping a bunch of watermelons on a hard floor.
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So there's something about the word sloppy that modifies train wreck in a way that's just genius, frankly.
00:17:35.080
And then it also says Democrats are stewing in a caucus mess.
00:17:39.740
You can actually see the stew in that sentence.
00:17:46.560
And they're in there and they're just, they're just soaking in the bile, the stew.
00:17:57.520
Dems want to run, Democrats want to run health care.
00:18:06.800
I thought to myself, oh, I'm going to be the first one to say that if they can't run this Iowa caucus,
00:18:12.880
how are they going to run health care for the nation?
00:18:14.940
And I typed out my little tweet and I thought, I'm first, I'm first.
00:18:19.780
And then I go on to, I go on to Twitter and there's Ted Cruz beat me to it by, I don't know, hours or something.
00:18:39.080
There's a lot that's interesting about this Iowa situation.
00:18:49.140
It should have been a big launch point, a big moment for Bernie.
00:18:53.140
And then Bernie would go to New Hampshire and presumably because it's close to Vermont, he would win again.
00:19:01.080
Then he would have Bernie with two solid wins going into the third one.
00:19:05.420
That would probably help Bernie a lot in the third election.
00:19:09.760
Now, so it should have been Bernie all the way for the first three.
00:19:15.120
Instead, by coincidence, an app that was built by, let's see, who built the app that failed?
00:19:32.560
So Hillary Clinton's supporters built an app that screwed Bernie.
00:19:40.340
So Bernie not only doesn't get the first win, but here's the diabolical part.
00:19:48.000
Should he go ahead and win in New Hampshire, what are people going to say?
00:19:53.380
So if he doesn't get the first win, the second win isn't going to look important because it was the thing, getting two in a row in our minds feels like, whoa, there's momentum, two in a row, first two.
00:20:12.160
But suppose Iowa is inconclusive and then he goes and he does win the second one, but the second one's going to feel like he was supposed to win anyway.
00:20:25.280
He's going to go into the third state with nothing instead of everything.
00:20:32.340
That is a big change in history and it was done by, who made that app again?
00:20:43.840
Well, we found out who is the smartest candidate who campaigned in Iowa.
00:21:00.260
I think your comments are a little behind, so I'll just give you the answer.
00:21:07.860
Should you ever find yourself in a situation where there's been some kind of a contest or vote and you're in it and the result is ambiguous and it looks like it might always be ambiguous, what should you do in that situation?
00:21:29.580
Buttigieg just showed he's the smartest guy in the race because he did the smartest thing.
00:21:36.140
Amy Klobuchar was also brilliant because she got out there early.
00:21:40.320
So the two smartest people in the race, Buttigieg and Klobuchar.
00:21:43.940
Klobuchar for going first and getting the attention because, I mean, it was so smart because the news was all geared up for this coverage and they had nothing to talk about.
00:21:55.480
So Klobuchar says, well, I'll give them something to talk about.
00:21:58.580
So she goes out and gives a talk in front of a crowd and she gets all the attention.
00:22:23.940
I wouldn't want a president who wasn't smart enough to claim victory and leave town.
00:22:30.600
I got to say, and I've said this before, you know, there's a lot you can say to criticize the democratic field.
00:22:42.760
But if you were to look at the larger group of people, not all of them made it to the, you know, made it to the big stage.
00:22:49.520
But if you were to look at the larger group of Democrats who were running for president, it's a really smart group.
00:22:58.880
I mean, academically, if we're talking academically, it's a super smart group of people.
00:23:03.940
Buttigieg being probably, you know, near the top of that group.
00:23:18.940
You know, since the beginning, when we saw Biden leading in the polls, what have I been saying, provocatively?
00:23:27.020
I've been saying, have any of you ever met a Biden supporter?
00:23:31.820
Because I've met, it seems like I've met every other kind of supporter.
00:23:35.180
I see, you know, Yang is way down in the polls, but I meet Yang supporters all the time.
00:23:53.200
They talk to me, they're on TV, you know, Joe Rogan is supporting them.
00:24:09.240
I've not met one single Joe Biden supporter in person.
00:24:16.720
And I wondered, you know, of course, you think in terms of conspiracy theories, because that's the world we live in.
00:24:23.120
And I thought to myself, what are the odds that there never was any polling for Joe Biden, and all the polls are just rigged?
00:24:35.500
I don't think it's possible, because there should be enough polling companies that if any one of them got a different result, it would be obvious that the game was over.
00:24:55.960
It's somewhat coincidental that the very day we were going to find out if the polling about Biden was in the ballpark, because we would have an actual vote for the first time, and it would be harder to fake that.
00:25:11.440
The very time we were going to find this out, the vote gets messed up, and we can't find it out.
00:25:16.500
Now, Will, is it possible that the New Hampshire primary will happen before we know what happened in Iowa?
00:25:23.640
Because it almost feels like if I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say that the polls have all been rigged to keep Biden in the race.
00:25:33.420
But I don't think that's physically, mathematically, practically possible.
00:25:38.280
But if anybody has a theory how that could have happened, let me know.
00:25:45.580
Jeffrey Toobin, over at CNN, points out that Iowa's a terrible place for Democrats to have their first contest because it's 90% white.
00:25:55.440
It's not a bad point, but it also turns it into a race thing.
00:26:05.340
I mean, it's a reasonable thing to say, especially for the first one.
00:26:10.120
It's reasonable to say that your first one should represent the country and not have crazy rules and stuff.
00:26:20.460
The Democrats have a terrible problem with their own philosophies because they have to grapple with their own problems of being woke enough.
00:26:32.880
Here's a very interesting comment by Twitter user Banzai Sharma, who points out to me and sent me a video of Joe Biden.
00:26:42.980
He was leaving some retail business in Iowa before the votes.
00:26:51.840
And Joe said that he'd survive, that he would survive Iowa.
00:26:58.800
And I thought to myself, well, there's a winner.
00:27:13.240
I have taught you before that people reveal what they're really thinking in their choice of words.
00:27:18.360
In other words, if you look at the full sentence, it could be that the sentence says one thing.
00:27:24.280
But when you look at the choice of words, they're actually telling you something else.
00:27:28.280
In this case, it's an unusual choice of words to say survival.
00:27:41.180
It's, you know, we're going to win it in the next one.
00:27:51.720
And Banzai Sharma points out correctly, I think, that that's a strong indicator that what he's thinking about is his own mortality.
00:28:00.440
And remember, we know that because he brought it up.
00:28:06.000
When he talked about who he would have for a vice president, he said somebody young because he's an older guy.
00:28:12.680
I don't know how to interpret older guy other than he might not be around that long.
00:28:21.680
So I think Joe Biden is literally thinking about surviving more than he's thinking about winning.
00:28:32.420
Chris Matthews over on MSNBC basically said he thinks that if Bernie is the nominee, that the Democrats have no chance at all.
00:28:48.280
If you see people like Chris Matthews, who is no Republican, if you see him saying that Bernie is just like the, I think he likened him to an old man in the park with communist or socialist literature.
00:29:09.820
Did you catch the news about Adam Schiff when he was giving his closing argument there in the impeachment, which seems, it feels like it's already over, but it's not.
00:29:20.520
And he was using a hypothetical saying that if Trump is allowed to continue in office and he gets emboldened by not being impeached and all of his quid pro quos, that he, quote,
00:29:37.400
could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for sport in the next election, or to decide to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and leave Jared Kushner to run the country, delegating to him the decision whether they go to war.
00:29:55.300
Now, his point, of course, is that presidents need to have limits, and that if the president can do anything that's not illegal, and apparently it wouldn't be illegal, according to Schiff, to offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for sport in the next election.
00:30:15.100
But I have to ask myself, is that something that a president can do?
00:30:24.980
I'm not an expert in this, but I don't think a president can sell off a state, even if they want to, even if they get a good price.
00:30:35.080
I'm almost positive you'd have to get the Congress involved.
00:30:39.700
And wouldn't the public have something to say about, or maybe the Alaskans themselves might have something to say about selling their state to Russia?
00:30:50.960
Now, of course, Schiff didn't mean it literally, but if he didn't mean it literally, why is he saying it?
00:30:57.720
Because he's doing what should be a credible argument in front of the public in the most solemn situation you could ever have.
00:31:05.820
If it's, if it's solemn and important and it's in front of the Senate, in front of the country, is he supposed to just make up crazy stuff?
00:31:15.860
I don't think he's supposed to make up crazy stuff.
00:31:24.900
Because you know that facts and truth don't matter,
00:31:27.720
I think you're going to see that the Adam Schiff, his statement about the president hypothetically doing that,
00:31:35.960
is going to quickly morph into Adam Schiff saying we should sell Alaska to Russia.
00:31:45.280
Even though he was talking about a potential future Trump doing it,
00:31:49.460
it feels like the topic is getting paired with Schiff, not Trump,
00:31:53.460
because Trump didn't have anything to do with it.
00:31:55.280
It's not something he talked about, thought about, joked about, tweeted about.
00:32:07.980
does Adam Schiff want to sell Alaska to the Russians?
00:32:14.320
But he's pairing himself with that idea, which is crazy.
00:32:18.980
I was reading an article in newyorker.com about China disallowing some translated books into the country.
00:32:29.760
So first the books get translated, and then they're published.
00:32:34.020
And I'm reading this article, and it turns out to be about me.
00:32:39.740
Sometimes I just want to read the news about other people,
00:32:58.700
I don't know how long ago they figured that out,
00:33:05.500
that mine was on the list of books that got banned.
00:33:21.860
They just don't execute and put it into the market.