That is Slime, Not Grease, on Pete Buttigieg's Hands

With the Iowa debacle still unresolved, the candidates headed off to New Hampshire for the first primary of the election season. As we know, Pete Buttigieg declared victory on Monday with only 40% of the precincts reporting and him in second place. Apparently, he had received word ahead of the actual results being posted because of a service he purchased from the software company tabulating the votes.

All the reporting stopped when Bernie Sanders campaigners disclosed that the tallys didn't match the numbers his precinct captains had been entering into an app his team designed and didn't mention to the Democratic party. Numbers weren't adding up the same, so the Iowa party and the DNC went into lock down.

The problems with the vote counting and Pete Buttigieg claiming what seemed to be a premature victory became really suspicious when it turned out that the app used to count the votes was developed by some of Pete Buttigieg's rich supporters. It also turned out that he and Joe Biden had both paid thousands of dollars to the company for some enhanced services.

This is one of the problems with money in politics. It can cause us to lose track of who really is sponsoring whom in the elections. It also makes the company's excuse that these problems were simply flaws in the programming when every flaw went against Sanders or for Buttigieg seem really suspect. It also makes Pete Buttigieg's claim of a victory while trailing with less than half the ballots counted that were cast seem suspect.

It is my opinion that it is so suspect on so many factors in the equation that I truly suspect it is something more on the order of criminal conspiracy or racketeering, but I must admit, that I am not qualified to state those things for certain. Plus, I am not in a position to pursue claims of either the criminal or civil sorts since I am not a prosecutor, nor would I have standing to bring charges since I have not been personally damaged. Still, based on what I read, hear, and see as evidence, it sure seems criminal to me, if only figuratively so.

By the time all the numbers were corrected, Bernie had several thousand more votes than slick ol' Mayor Pete.

Even members of the establishment were outraged at the debacle, and many called for the resignation of DNC Chair Tom Perez, who is also a bit slimy in this gooey situation. He has yet to honor the request, but both he and Buttigieg are trying to grease the wheels of corruption with the slime on their hands.

For Perez's part, he is calling for a recanvassing of what happened in Iowa. He doesn't necessarily want to believe the visual evidence. For example, there was a note left on a bag for the person who ran one of the caucuses with instructions to leave the ballots in an envelope. That precinct went to Buttigieg. Sanders was clearly the favorite in most of the precincts, and it wasn't even close in some. They haven't announced a winner with 97% of the votes counted and Sanders with thousands more votes, but Perez now wants to make sure no funny business went on before declaring a winner.

Meanwhile, I get in my Facebook feed an appeal from Pete Buttigieg saying he needs contributions and support because Bernie Sanders is using deep money advertising to distort the truth!

Well, there isn't much I can do to stop him. About all I can do is write blog posts and attach them to replies on his advertising, but that is probably more cathartic than effective. Still, it is one thing I can do to point out how slimy this polished young man is becoming. He is certainly more intelligent and better spoken than Joe Biden, but he also has that same charm that Joe has with the billionaires who are trying to keep him viable. He will play for pay, or so it seems.

Buttigieg also has other advantages over Biden. Though, he fired the Black police chief, and the police force became much whiter during his time as mayor of South Bend, he didn't defend the segregationists who were still in the party and hadn't yet croaked in the 1970s like Biden did. He has been called out for claiming he understands the issues of the Black population when he has had a privileged life. He contradicts himself on some of the issues regarding Black demographics. 

For example, we know that Black people are disproportionately incarcerated, and are thereby disproportionately represented among those who lose the right to vote due to felony convictions. Mayor Pete claims to support equity in justice but is fine with convicted felons losing the right to vote, even after serving their sentences. Those statements conflict. How does he reconcile them? He doesn't. He doesn't bring the conflicting ideas up at the same time; he just uses the one that best fits the audience.

Anyway, now he is accusing Sanders of running dark money advertising in order to lure campaign donations to run competing ads in New Hampshire. Don't worry if you don't donate. There are billionaires running dark money ads for him, too! In fact, they are talking about emphasizing his experience as a military man in a tweet that would be illegal communication if it weren't on a public venue.

No one doubts that it costs money to run for president. However, when a candidate's palms are greased by people who will manipulate tallies to make it appear he won when he didn't win, and he does not call them out for it or explain what happened, that isn't really grease. It's slime.