By midnight Eastern time in Iowa, the media, the establishment, the delegates, and Twitter were all ready to grab pitchforks and torches to take on the geniuses that came up with this stupidly complex caucusing math, and the app it rode in on.

The end result? While caucusgoers were able to do what they were supposed to do – namely, talk amongst themselves, attempt to sneak in wine, and start casting ballots to support their chosen candidates – the Iowa Democrat party crapped the bed, thanks to an app that was apparently tested out by Robby Mook (Hillary 2016 campaign manager) and Matt Rhodes (Romney 2012 campaign manager) to make sure it worked. This app and this process have been in development for THREE YEARS. There’s a joke here somewhere – for Republicans, anyway. Bottom line – no one in Iowa knew which end was up, which left everyone pretty pissed off.

Democrats hoped that Iowa’s caucuses would provide some clarity for what has been a muddled nomination fight for much of the past year. But apparent technology issues delayed the results as the state party suggested turnout was on track to match 2016 numbers.”

Party officials held a call with campaigns as concerns were growing over the delays.”

Spokeswoman Mandy McClure said the party “found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results.”

“In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report,” she said. “This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion. The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results.”

Des Moines County Democratic Chair Tom Courtney blamed technology issues in his county, relaying precinct reports that the app created for caucus organizers to report results was “a mess.” As a result, Courtney said precinct leaders were phoning in results to the state party headquarters, which was too busy to answer their calls in some cases.”

Someone’s in trouble.

Hey, Iowa Democrats pic.twitter.com/3VpJ3mJq2d

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 4, 2020

And the campaigns are beyond furious. (I hope whoever had to tell Amy Klobuchar that they wouldn’t be getting results until the morning got properly fitted out with hockey goalie gear.)

The party told campaigns they were comparing the app results with cell phone pictures of the caucus paper worksheets, where caucus results are recorded manually by hand.”

The IDP did not take any questions.”

At one point, a participant could be heard shouting on the call: “This is an unbelievable explanation.” Another person chimed in, “I think he speaks for all of us.”

One campaign aide described the call as being “hung up” on.”

Bring in the lawyers!!!

The Biden campaign’s general counsel, Dana Remus, sent a sternly worded letter to the state party’s top leaders Monday night, expressing frustration with “considerable flaws” in the reporting process.”

“The app that was intended to relay Caucus results to the Party failed; the Party’s back-up telephonic reporting system likewise has failed,” Remus wrote. “Now, we understand that caucus chairs are attempting to — and, in many cases, failing to — report results telephonically to the party. These acute failures are occurring statewide.”

Remus also asked that official results not be released until campaigns had a chance to hear more about “quality control” measures and respond to such information. It was not immediately clear if the letter was sent before the conference call.”

Of course, each candidate was left twisting in the wind as the night dragged on and no results (but tons of conspiracy theories) came in. Candidates began to address their crowds, though with no results, everyone just seemed confused and aggravated.

In frustration, some caucus chairs took to Twitter to start publicizing their results. Oh boy. I’m sure this will end well.

This entire caucus experience seems like an apropos metaphor for the Democrat strategy in general right now. Promise big, don’t work on the delivery, watch it fail, blame Trump.

So, remember when I said that Iowa was “shaping up to be an unscripted chaos storm of epic proportions for the Democrats” just yesterday? Turns out I was right, but even I couldn’t predict how monumentally screwed up this entire process would be. I thought the fight would be among the campaigns, not the campaigns gearing up to fight the Iowa Democratic party. At this point, how do they even attempt to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, with the threat of legal action (wait, did the Biden campaign just say they weren’t going to accept the results of the caucus??? And now Team Warren??? *gasp!*) now out there.

Which means the real winner tonight is Donald Trump, who won the GOP caucus.

Big WIN for us in Iowa tonight. Thank you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2020

But really, we all know what he means.

Trump is laughing his ass off. #IowaCaucuses

— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) February 4, 2020

At this point, all you can do is get the popcorn and enjoy the show.

Featured image via Pixabay, Pixabay license