by Frank Holmes, reporter
Democrats, frustrated with their inability to tabulate election results in the Iowa caucuses, are increasingly blaming their problems on one man: President Donald Trump.
The idea that a Republican president is at fault for a state Democratic party’s failure at conducting their own primary election sounds unusual to most Americans — but at least one Democratic presidential hopeful has jumped on the bandwagon.
The Iowa caucuses ended Monday night, but the Democratic Party has continued to release results in drips and drabs more than 48 hours later. The party blames the delay on a new vote-reporting app, which it said would provide “transparency” to the behind-the-scenes horse trading and vote-swapping.
The party may officially blame the app’s failures, but longshot businessman Andrew Yang jumped into the fray the day of the Iowa election meltdown with a message seemingly blaming Trump.
“It might be helpful to have a President and government that understand technology so this sort of thing doesn’t happen,” Yang tweeted on the day of the caucuses.
It might be helpful to have a President and government that understand technology so this sort of thing doesn’t happen.
— Andrew Yang🧢⬆️🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) February 4, 2020
People across the political aisle interpreted the statement as a criticism that Trump didn’t do enough to secure the Democrats’ caucuses results—and reacted accordingly.
“This is almost like blaming Russia for Hillary losing in 2016,” wrote Joe Newby and Jeff Dunetz at The Lid.
“The Caucus disaster was strictly a Dem problem – things went just fine for Republicans last night,” wrote conservative commentator John Betts.
Even President Trump shot back that Democrats need to stop scapegoating others for their own shortcomings.
“When will the Democrats start blaming RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, instead of their own incompetence for the voting disaster that just happened in the Great State of Iowa?” he asked on Twitter.
When will the Democrats start blaming RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, instead of their own incompetence for the voting disaster that just happened in the Great State of Iowa?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2020
“The Democrat Caucus is an unmitigated disaster” the president also tweeted. “Nothing works, just like they ran the Country.”
Of course, Yang may not have meant the comment as a potshot at President Trump but as a way of promoting his floundering candidacy.
The billionaire, who made his fortune creating a series of Silicon Valley start-ups, may have intended to highlight his expertise in cutting-edge tech and development—but that didn’t play well on social media.
Some Twitter users began pointing out that Yang supported the widespread voting by apps, like the one that malfunctioned in Iowa.
“The machines being used in most locales” are “vulnerable to tampering and hacking,” according to the candidate’s official website, Yang2020.com. “Americans should be able to vote via their mobile device.”
It looks like that backfired in Iowa, as the app allegedly had a “coding issue” that wouldn’t report the vote tallies to Democratic Party headquarters.
It’s a stretch to blame that on President Trump, since the app was created by Shadow, Inc. — an affiliate of the D.C.-based tech firm ACRONYM, which has several ties to the most recent Democratic political debacle: Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
In fact, a Washington Democrat insider told Politico that the head of ACRONYM, former Obama aide Tara McGowan, was allegedly engaging in a “cover-up” of the app’s failure.
Yang can hardly pin the Clinton and Obama alumni’s failures on Donald Trump.
Then, there’s the fact that the Iowa Democratic Party rejected an offer from the Department of Homeland Security to test the app.
“Our Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has offered to test that app from a hacking perspective,” Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told Fox News
He said DHS had officers “on-site and ready” to make sure the app functioned before Monday night’s vote, but the state Democratic Party “declined” their offer..
The news was so damning that the chairman of Iowa’s Democratic Party, Troy Price, offered a non-denial denial, saying he had “no knowledge” of the Trump administration’s offer to help.
The Democratic Party’s incompetence in running its own election raises questions about the security of elections nationwide, if a Democrat is elected president in November.
Wolf said the Iowa caucuses shambles is “a concerning event and it really goes to the public confidence of our elections.”
The election malfunction can’t be laid at the feet of the Trump administration, despite what some Republicans describe as the Democrats’ “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Even Yang knew better in the past, before he came in a distant fifth in Iowa, with about one percent of the vote.
“The Democratic Party, unfortunately, is acting like Donald Trump is the cause of all of our problems,” Yang said during a debate last fall.
If the Democratic Party doesn’t get its act together, Trump may hand them one major electoral headache come November.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”