I’m not deliberately snooting Trevor, he has no new material posted.
Secret Asset Man
Arthur, I’m not sure I agree with you
Then again, I’m an Atheist.
Seth
Feb 07 2020
The Breakfast Club (He Lies)
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
The Beatles arrive in America; Ramzi Yousef arrested for the 1993 blast at New York’s World Trade Center; Jordan’s King Hussein dies; author Charles Dickens and country singer Garth Brooks born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind – listen to the birds. And don’t hate nobody.
Feb 06 2020
The Morning After… The Night Before
Look, if you don’t click on anything else you need to see this one from Stephen-
Inside Shelly Berman. It explains the title. Look, I’m 120+ years old, this is cutting edge like Lenny Bruce.
Roy Wood Jr.
Trevor
Stephen
Seth
Feb 06 2020
DNC Thumb On The Scale For Biden
With 97% reporting I finally have Iowa results that are pretty firm-
Buttigieg 26.23
Sanders 26.06
Warren 18.20
Biden 15.80
Klobuchar 12.20
The remaining 3% is returns from “Remote Caucuses” for Iowa residents who couldn’t be present in person which were held Overseas and in some other areas of the United States. Sanders has been winning those with 75% to whatever margins.
What does this mean? Mayo Pete and Bernie get the same number of Iowa’s minuscule (41) pool of Convention Delegates.
I’ll point out that these are “State Delegate Equivalent Units” and someone will have to explain that to me because Sanders led the Popular Vote after both the First asnd Second Alignments.
Sanders 24.7 26.5
Buttigieg 21.3 25.0
Warren 18.6 20.3
Biden 14.9 13.7
Klobuchar 12.7 12.2
So, why aren’t we hearing about those results?
Well, because things don’t look so good for the Corporatist Establishment Democrats and especially their favorite son, Joe Biden.
I’ll give the man credit, he’s admitted he took a hit.
Tom Perez (Chairman of the Democratic National Committee) on the other hand is busily working to minimize Biden’s defeat, now calling for a re-canvas of the Caucus results.
Because he didn’t like them.
I feel, along with Rachel Bitecofer (you know, the one who called 2018) that there is no such thing as a “Swing Voter” (6 – 7 % at most), that elections are won on Turnout and Motivation. Her amazingly prescient models are based on the Demographics of the Electorate and how it and its priorities change over time.
She correctly identifies that there is a seething super-majority of resentment at the abject failure of Neo Liberal policies for the last 40 years. Her diagnosis is that Populism can not be stopped (well, not and maintain a small “d” democratic system) and can only be channeled Left or Right.
She’s a colorful speaker and a militant feminist.
In addition she points out that Establishment Politicians, regardless of Party, have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo that brought them to power in the first place. She doubts that will be enough to allow them to keep control.
You would be delusional to imagine that our site is in the tank for Bernie Sanders. Some people don’t like him at all, while either he or Liz Warren would be fine with me. It’s not that I think they’re particularly Left mind you (their signature policies are supported by vast super-majorities and are therefore more properly termed- “Moderate” or “Middle of the Road” or “Consensus”) just they’re to the Left of everyone else.
Bitecofer says the reason for 2016 was the visceral loathing (not undeserved mind you) of Villagers and Elitist Neo Libs. While all the elements are in place for a crushing Democratic victory in November there is something that could screw it up.
That rage is still out there. It is still motivating Voters either to come out or stay home. The “safe” choice is not an Insider preaching Centrism and a return to a flawed Past that benefited only them and left 99% of the people behind. Candidates like Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and especially Biden could easily give us 4 more years of hell.
Feb 06 2020
Pondering the Pundits
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Marie Yovanovitch: These are turbulent times. But we will persist and prevail.
It was an honor for me to represent the United States abroad because, like many immigrants, I have a keen understanding of what our country represents. In a leap of optimism and faith, my parents made their way from the wreckage of post-World War II Europe to America, knowing in their hearts that this country would give me a better life. They rested their hope, not in the possibility of prosperity, but in a strong democracy: a country with resilient institutions, a government that sought to advance the interests of its people, and a society in which freedom was cherished and dissent protected. These are treasures that must be carefully guarded by all who call themselves Americans.
When civil servants in the current administration saw senior officials taking actions they considered deeply wrong in regard to the nation of Ukraine, they refused to take part. When Congress asked us to testify about those activities, my colleagues and I did not hesitate, even in the face of administration efforts to silence us. [..]
These are turbulent times, perhaps the most challenging that I have witnessed. But I still intend to find ways to engage on foreign policy issues and to encourage those who want to take part in the important work of the Foreign Service. Like my parents before me, I remain optimistic about our future. The events of the past year, while deeply disturbing, show that even though our institutions and our fellow citizens are being challenged in ways that few of us ever expected, we will endure, we will persist and we will prevail.
Charles M. Blow: They Acquitted Trump. Make Them Pay!
There’s a way to make Senate Republicans regret their sins.
It is done. Donald Trump, impeached by the House of Representatives, has been acquitted by the Senate. [..]
Now that Republicans have refused to do their duty out of extreme tribalism and devotion to Trump, Democrats need to make lists and take names. There is no time for crestfallen recriminations.
Republicans who have chosen party and despot over country and law must be made to pay at the ballot box in November. If a majority of the Senate cannot be expected or made to do the right thing, the Senate majority must be changed. It must be defeated.
This has long since stopped being solely about Trump. This is about the whole of the Republican Party. Indeed, there is no longer a Republican Party. There is now only the Party of Trump. He is them; they are him.
Michelle Cottle: Thank You, Iowa
You’ve definitively shown us why you shouldn’t be first on the political calendar, and so much more.
As Iowa Democrats struggle to tally votes and claw their way out of the rubble of Monday’s caucus crackup, there continues to be angst and outrage about the damage the Hawkeye State has inflicted on the democratic process — and the Democratic process. Terms like “catastrophe,” “debacle,” “fiasco” and “disaster” are being tossed about like salad greens.
That’s one way to look at the situation. Another way is that Iowa has done the Democratic Party — the nation, even — a tremendous service. Yes, the reporting of votes was a perfect storm of incompetence. And the muddled outcome failed to give any of the candidates the electoral tailwind about which they’d been fantasizing. But, delayed and deflated though they were, the results provided more clarity than anyone is giving them credit for — in some regards more than if the voting had gone off as planned. Among the valuable takeaways: [..]
5. There is a strong argument to be made that no single state deserves to hold the rest of the electorate hostage the way Iowa has for decades. Why should the parochial concerns of Iowans be forever more important than those of Arizonans or North Carolinians or Michiganders? Multiple alternative ways to set the calendar have been floated, and it’s past time to give them serious consideration. They could hardly be worse than the current system. If this year’s meltdown doesn’t spur Democrats to take long overdue action, they deserve all their future nightmares.
So, thank you, Iowa. This may be the most you have taught the electorate in a long while. Now take your bows, and step aside.
Donna F. Edwards: Pelosi’s page-ripping was a fitting end to impeachment
The concept of “channeling” has always been a little foreign to me, but the end of the 2020 State of the Union address brought it home. Capturing the mood in a single gesture, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi channeled millions of Americans as she ripped the pages of President Trump’s speech. In her description afterward, it was a “manifesto of mistruths.” [..]
The entire State of the Union show — the chanting, the demonstrably false claims, the campaign-style speech — deserved a showstopper ending. With impeachment hanging in the air, that page-ripping gesture was a fitting ending, the correct response to a president who has destroyed all norms of behavior, decorum, civility and democracy. So stop the hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over Nancy Pelosi shredding Trump’s “manifesto of mistruths” as he has shredded the Constitution. Maybe it wasn’t an end, but a prequel to the shameful end of the trial and an acquittal for a president who will be forever impeached for abusing his power and obstructing Congress.
Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Hakeem Jeffries, Val Demings, Sylvia Garcia and Jason Crow : House managers: Trump won’t be vindicated. The Senate won’t be, either.
Over the past two weeks, we have argued the impeachment case against President Trump, presenting overwhelming evidence that he solicited foreign interference to cheat in the next election and jeopardized our national security by withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance to pressure Ukraine to do his political bidding. When the president got caught and his scheme was exposed, he tried to cover it up and obstruct Congress’s investigation in an unprecedented fashion. As the trial progressed, a growing number of Republican senators acknowledged that the House had proved the president’s serious misconduct. [..]
By denying the American people a fair trial, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also deprived the president of something that he desperately sought — exoneration. There can be no exoneration without a legitimate trial. Out of fear of what they would learn, the Senate refused to hold one. The president will not be vindicated, and neither will the Senate, certainly not by history.
The Constitution is a wondrous document, but it is not self-effectuating; it requires vigilance, and a pledge by every new generation of voters and public servants to safeguard and fulfill its lofty promise. And it requires a kind of courage that Robert F. Kennedy once said is more rare than that on the battlefield — moral courage. Without it, no constitution can save us, but with it, no hardship can overcome us. We remain committed to doing everything in our power to preserve this marvelous experiment in self-governance.
America is worth it.
Feb 06 2020
The State of the Union is BAD
Really.
What a nice smile
Bargaining
A cultural note: My family is from the Midwest where that’s really not something you do. Sure you can ask someone to give you their best price, but the price is the price. Shows like Pawn Stars and American Pickers (along with a raft of others) both fascinate and appall me. If I don’t know the real price how can I possibly come to a decision about a purchase?
Steve Kornacki has a Heart Attack
Feb 06 2020
The Breakfast Club (Greatness)
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
President Ronald Reagan born; Hillary Clinton runs for the U.S. Senate; Britain’s King George VI dies; baseball legend Babe Ruth and reggae superstar Bob Marley born
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.
Feb 05 2020
A Statement From Mitt Romney, The Last Republican
The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor.
Yes, he did.
The president asked a foreign government to investigate his political rival. The president withheld vital military funds from that government to press it to do so. The president delayed funds for an American ally at war with Russian invaders. The president’s purpose was personal and political. Accordingly, the president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust.
What he did was not “perfect.” No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security, and our fundamental values.
Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.
(Full text @ Politico)
Feb 05 2020
The Bloomberg Boom
Now that Biden has stumbled in Iowa some Centrists are looking to Michael Bloomberg to thwart the rise of the Democratic Left. He’s certainly an interesting candidate.
- #8 in the Forbes 400 2019
- #9 in Billionaires 2019 (not quite sure why those are different but I also don’t care)
Forbes estimates his current net worth at $61 Billion. Using a hyper-conservative return on investment of 1.5% (1 Year T-Bills were yielding 1.485% as of writing) that’s merely $915 Hundred Million a year.
That’s kind of a big number. Let me break it down, Hammertime-
That’s-
- $2,506,849 every day
- $104,452 every hour
- $1,740 every minute or
- $29 per second
Depending on how you want to figure it. I like that per second number because it’s easy for a wage earner to grasp but you have to remember it includes all the time he’s asleep or otherwise doing things that might be deemed non-productive and that’s per second.
I charge $35 an hour and it’s really quite reasonable.
So that’s Bloomberg money. $100 Million a Month until the Election? No problem, won’t even notice it.
Feb 05 2020
Pondering the Pundits
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Sherrod Brown: In Private, Republicans Admit They Acquitted Trump Out of Fear
One journalist remarked to me, “How in the world can these senators walk around here upright when they have no backbone?”
Not guilty. Not guilty.
In the United States Senate, like in many spheres of life, fear does the business.
Think back to the fall of 2002, just a few weeks before that year’s crucial midterm elections, when the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq was up for a vote. A year after the 9/11 attacks, hundreds of members of the House and the Senate were about to face the voters of a country still traumatized by terrorism. [..]
History has indeed taught us that when it comes to the instincts that drive us, fear has no rival. As the lead House impeachment manager, Representative Adam Schiff, has noted, Robert Kennedy spoke of how “moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle.”
Playing on that fear, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, sought a quick impeachment trial for President Trump with as little attention to it as possible. Reporters, who usually roam the Capitol freely, have been cordoned off like cattle in select areas. Mr. McConnell ordered limited camera views in the Senate chamber so only presenters — not absent senators — could be spotted.
And barely a peep from Republican lawmakers.
One journalist remarked to me, “How in the world can these senators walk around here upright when they have no backbone?”
Fear has a way of bending us.
Neal K. Katyal and Joshua A. Geltzer: Trump Was Not Convicted. But He Was Exposed.
The impeachment process yielded a public education that will come back to haunt the president and his enablers.
The vote to acquit President Trump was a dark day for the Senate. Uninterested in hearing from witnesses (and likely scared by what they would say), uncritical of outrageous legal arguments made by the president’s lawyers and apparently unconcerned about the damage Mr. Trump has done to the integrity of America’s elections, a majority of senators insisted on looking the other way and letting him off the hook for a classic impeachable offense: abuse of public office for private gain.
But while the Senate got it wrong, the American people learned what’s right. This impeachment was about much more than the final vote of 100 senators. It was a process, and that process yielded a public education of extraordinary value. While the Senate may emerge from the process weakened, the American people, on the whole, emerge from it strengthened by a sharpened sense of what’s right and what’s wrong for an American president; of what it means for a political party to show moral courage; of what it looks like when dedicated public servants speak truth no matter the consequences; and of the importance of whistle-blowers for ensuring accountability.
Andrew Gawthorpe: Impeachment was a health-check for American democracy. It is not well
The Republican-controlled senate collectively shrugged in the face of Trump’s crimes. So much for checks and balances
The acquittal of Donald Trump reminds us once again of the fragility of American democracy. The failure of impeachment along blatantly partisan lines means that the crucial barriers protecting us from authoritarianism cannot be relied on. The fate of the country’s institutions are left to the mercies of a man singularly unfit to safeguard them.
The slow-creep of authoritarian rule need not be dramatic. It can even, as impeachment seemed at times, be rather boring. Democracy can die by inches, with precedents being established and barriers swept away so gradually that we don’t see what is happening until it is too late. Historians may look back on the past few years as just such a time, with today’s acquittal bringing to maturity a process from which American democracy may take a long time to recover.
Amanda Marcotte: State of the Union: Trump trolls the libs and defiles his office; Pelosi upstages him
Trump’s speech featured reality-show stunts, racism and pompous, empty rhetoric. But he can’t erase impeachment
For whatever reason, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has still failed to wrap up his sham impeachment trial of Donald Trump, denying his orange overlord the much-anticipated acquittal that Trump clearly wished to trumpet. And so it was that Trump took to the House chamber on Tuesday night, one day short of his kangaroo exoneration, to give the annual State of the Union or, as I like to call it, the Sniffing Olympics.
Though the soon-to-be-forgotten Iowa caucus snafu dominated the news cycle for a full day leading up to Trump’s speech, some Democrats managed to capture media attention away from the breathless incompetence and point it toward the, dare I say, more pressing moral concern of the criminal in the White House and the corrupt Republican Party that is protecting him.
Heather Digby Parton: State of the Union: Surreal and angry, with way too much Rush Limbaugh
The speech was mostly wooden, hateful Trump boilerplate — plus a brilliant reality-TV moment for the MAGA tribe
Weirdly enough, Tuesday night wasn’t the first time a president delivered a State of the Union address in the middle of his impeachment trial. Back in 1999, Bill Clinton delivered one in the same circumstances. It’s hard to believe the timing would work out almost exactly the same way but it did.
Clinton was skilled at giving State of the Union speeches under stressful situations. In 1994 he gave the speech without a Teleprompter for several minutes and nobody knew the difference. In 1997, it was broadcast on a split screen with the verdict in the O.J. Simpson civil case. In 1998, his speech came just two weeks after the revelations about his affair with Monica Lewinsky and was good enough that many people believe it may have saved his presidency. Still, the speech during his impeachment must have been very tough. [..]
The anger and aggression is much more intense this time, even though there’s almost no chance that any Republicans will vote to convict Trump. And while Clinton was remorseful for his behavior, publicly apologizing to the nation for putting it through the whole ordeal, Trump is clearly furious and reportedly plotting his revenge,
Feb 05 2020
The Real Conspiracy
I hope my generally dyspeptic nature doesn’t bleed through too much on the page because for me it’s policy, not personality or group identity. I thought Obama was a nice guy (except for the War Crimes stuff), just horribly wrong on the issues, same goes for Bill and Hill. Biden is a closeted Racist (Anita Hill? School Bussing? Crime Bill?) and also deeply misguided about most things in addition to being one of the sleeziest Pols around, so I like him less. Reminds me of LIEberman (a close friend of Joe’s, they share a name) because every time I see him I want to wash up after with Brillo and Bleach.
I can hardly think of a clearer example of the Crony Capitalist Neo Liberal Rot at the center of the Establishment Democratic Party than the Iowa App.
I’ll let our old friend dday explain.
Welcome to the Bullshit Economy
by David Dayen, American Prospect
February 4, 2020
The Iowa caucus disaster is a function of a broken economic structure that rewards con artistry over competence.
In one sense, the Iowa caucus debacle will last just a couple news cycles. We have the data on paper, tabulated in front of tens of thousands of witnesses, and it merely needs to be collated. Eventually it will, and though the damage to the news cycle is irreparable—Joe Biden’s disappointing outcome has been diluted in particular—the process will go on with an accurate count. Caucuses are horrible and probably a dead letter, but for different reasons than the delayed count; the real problems arise from the electoral college-style distortions between the initial percentages and the final delegates, and the tacit vote suppression from forcing people to attend a two-hour meeting on a weeknight when they might be working.
But the spectacle has highlighted a much more consequential problem in America, something I have coined the bullshit economy. We’ve seen elements of it all over the place. When MoviePass offered unlimited screenings for ten bucks a month, when Uber gets an $82 billion valuation for a low-margin taxi business it has never made a dime on, when WeWork implodes after the slightest scrutiny into its numbers, that’s the bullshit economy at work. We have seen the farcical bullshit of Juicero and the consequential bullshit of Theranos.
…
We have endured the more comprehensive bullshit of the financial industry marking corporate progress by manipulated stock prices and air rather than productive advances for society. We had a financial crisis based on bullshitters telling us housing prices would endlessly rise. We have the bullshit of the private equity industry extracting value from companies through the skillful use of debt and other financial engineering, without regard for whether the companies succeed or fail.The story of Shadow, makers of the app that utterly failed to deliver in Iowa, is a perfect example of the bullshit economy. It starts by being a tech solution to a non-existent problem. Iowa counties are compact; the largest one has a landmass of 973 square miles, and it’s close to twice the size of the average county in the state. Even there, no major city is more than a 30-minute drive from the county seat, Algona. Even with that ancient technology of the car, you could have each of the 99 counties report final results within a couple hours of the end of the caucuses.
Somehow, the Iowa Democratic Party got sold that they needed to improve upon this, to “disrupt” the caucus reporting. Already, the party had to increase what they would keep track of and tabulate, reporting the first set of results before the 15 percent viability threshold, the second set afterwards, and how that translated into delegate counts. It wasn’t clear why anyone needed to adding another layer of complexity into this with the app. But the app’s backers must have been persistent, getting $60,000—really nothing for the purposes of app development—to design a tool to forward the results to a central repository.
I’ll highlight this because it’s important.
Shadow is a subsidiary of ACRONYM, a non-profit with lots of connections to the Democratic consultancy, including veterans of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and David Plouffe, the Obama campaign manager who sits on the ACRONYM board. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes asked Plouffe on a late-night panel about his participation, and as he swiveled in his chair uncomfortably he disclaimed any knowledge of Shadow or the app.
Similarly, ACRONYM issued a statement positioning themselves as a mere investor in Shadow, without knowledge of their inner workings. But last year, ACRONYM announced they were “launching” Shadow, as part of an effort to help Democrats “win” the Internet and run better campaigns. The head of ACRONYM, Tara McGowan, is married to a Pete Buttigieg strategist.
Ok. Did you get that? And the funding for the Iowa App came from the Biden and Buttigieg campaigns.
I’m sure they had our best interests at heart and no intention of hacking the Primaries.
To continue-
All this doublespeak is a hallmark of the bullshit economy. Your mind doesn’t have to travel to the nether regions of conspiracy, but you can hardly blame people for doing so. This is reflective of the rolling incompetence covered by confidence within the modern economy, especially when you sprinkle on the labor-saving promise of techtopia. When the bullshit economy fails, it robs people’s belief in the basic bargain of commerce, the idea that you get what you pay for, that companies operate in good faith to provide quality service. But when placed in contact with politics, it just demolishes faith in the system. The bullshit economy spurs distrust.
So there we have it: an unnecessary app that narrows the supply chain of votes to the central tabulator, and when the supply chain fails it creates chaos. We see this all over our economy; useless services, narrow supply chains, magnified fiascos. As long as confidence men lie to the right people, they can gain entry and take on enormous responsibility, until it all falls apart. We live in a country where you can spout New Age consultant speak, charm a large foreign investor, and make off to your guitar-shaped living room with over a billion dollars, paid effectively to go away. That’s WeWork guru Adam Neumann’s story, and increasingly it’s our story.
The Iowa disaster is a sign that our economic structures are breaking down, that private enterprise has become a shell game, where who you know matters more than what you can do. The bullshit economy has bled over into politics, with the perfect president but also the perfect amount of grifting and consultant corruption and unbridled tech optimism. This has long been part of politics—anything with that much money sloshing around will invite a little corruption—but the combination of political grift, the ardor for public-private partnerships, and the triumph of ambition over talent has created a fetid stew.
There is no need to attribute sinister motives to actions that can be explained by Greed and Stupidity.
New Details Show How Deeply Iowa Caucus App Developer Was Embedded in Democratic Establishment
Lee Fang, The Intercept
February 4 2020
Throughout the caucus yesterday, Democratic officials reported widespread problems downloading the app and inconsistencies uploading caucus results, leading to the Iowa Democratic Party’s decision to take the unusual step of delaying the release of the results. This is the first year the app was used, and ahead of the caucuses, the Iowa Democratic Party asked that the app’s name be kept secret. The New York Times reported that “its creators had repeatedly questioned the need to keep it secret.”
Kyle Tharp, a spokesperson for Acronym, released a statement on Monday night downplaying his company’s affiliation with Shadow.
“ACRONYM is an investor in several for-profit companies across the progressive media and technology sectors,” Tharp said. “One of those independent, for-profit companies is Shadow, Inc, which also has other private investors.”
David Plouffe, a former campaign manager to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential bid who joined Acronym’s board, also distanced himself from the company during an MSNBC panel last night. “I have no knowledge of Shadow,” said Plouffe. “It was news to me.”
But previous statements and internal Acronym documents suggest that the two companies, which share office space in Denver, Colorado, are deeply intertwined.
Last year, McGowan, a co-founder of Acronym, wrote on Twitter that she was “so excited to announce @anotheracronym has acquired Groundbase,” a firm that included “their incredible team led by [Gerard Niemira] + are launching Shadow, a new tech company to build smarter infrastructure for campaigns.” McGowan also noted that “With Shadow, we’re building a new model incentivized by adoption over growth.” The acquisition was announced in mid-January of last year.
In an interview on a related podcast last month, McGowan described Niemira as “the CEO of Shadow, which is the technology company that Acronym is the sole investor in now.”
What’s more, internal documents from Acronym show a close relationship with Shadow. An internal organizational chart shows digital strategy firm Lockwood Strategy, FWIW Media, and Shadow as part of a unified structure, with Acronym staff involved in the trio’s operations.
In an all-staff email sent last Friday, an official with Lockwood Strategy reminded team members about “COOL THINGS HAPPENING AROUND ACRONYM.” The list included bullets points such as, “The Iowa caucus is on Monday, and the Shadow team is hard at work,” and “Shadow is working on scaling up VAN integration with Shadow Messaging for some Iowa caucus clients.” (VAN refers to the widely used Democratic voter file technology firm.) Acronym staffers also attended the Shadow staff retreat.
…
Federal campaign finance records show that the Iowa Democratic Party and the Nevada Democratic Party retained Shadow to develop its caucus app. Shadow has also been retained for digital services by Buttigieg’s campaign, which paid the company $42,500 for software-related services last July, and by Joe Biden’s campaign, which paid Shadow $1,225 for text messaging services, last July as well.Shadow was launched by former staffers to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, including Niemira, Krista Davis, Ahna Rao, and James Hickey, according to professional biographies listed on LinkedIn. Shadow did not respond to a request for comment.
Acronym, which includes a hybrid model of a 501(c)4 entity that does not disclose donors and a Super PAC that does, has been a favorite for deep-pocketed Democratic donors. Donald Sussman, the founder of Paloma Partners, and Michael Moritz, a partner at Sequoia Capital, each donated $1 million to Acronym last year. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg gave $500,000. Investor Seth Klarman, once a major donor to Republican causes, gave $1.5 million to Acronym.
Acronym appears to have deleted portions of its website showcasing its involvement in Shadow. “ACRONYM is thrilled to announce the launch of Shadow, a new technology company that will exist under the ACRONYM umbrella and build accessible technological infrastructure and tools to enable campaigns to better harness, integrate and manage data across the platforms and technologies they all use,” wrote Niemira in a now-deleted blog post.
This morning, William McCurdy II, the chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, released a statement announcing that the party will not be using the Shadow app for its February caucus.
“NV Dems can confidently say that what happened in the Iowa caucus last night will not happen in Nevada on February 22nd. We will not be employing the same app or vendor used in the Iowa caucus,” said McCurdy. “We had already developed a series of backups and redundant reporting systems, and are currently evaluating the best path forward.”
Nothing to see here.