Some things are worth preserving out of tradition. Every year, for example, my British mother makes a traditional Christmas pudding—a mélange of many different dried fruits and spices, treacle, and literal animal fat—which is then sealed in a Tupperware bowl, boiled for eight hours, and left to reside in a cupboard until Christmas Day, at which point it is reheated with further hours of boiling. Against all odds, it is quite delicious, but we all recognize that it’s mostly out of tradition that Mum makes it every year. The family enjoys the ritual of it; it is therefore worth doing, and we can always have some cake afterward anyway.

Other traditions, however, do not meet that standard, and the Iowa caucus system is undoubtedly one of these. After Monday night’s debacle, it is time to recognize that—quirky and charming though we may find it—there is too much at stake to continue treating the crucial first step of the Democratic nominating contest as an opportunity to play Model UN with our democracy.



The caucus was a disaster on multiple levels. The fact that we are still waiting to find out who won is largely due to the failure of a Democratic Party–endorsed app, which was provided for caucus secretaries to report the results. The app did not perform its intended tasks reliably. One report alleged that the app would lose any previously inputted results if the user didn’t keep the screen open. The New York Times reported last night that the app was “quickly put together in just the past two months”—a bizarre decision given that everyone involved has known this day was coming for four years.



Every aspect of this misadventure warrants further investigation. The app was created by a group called Shadow Inc., which was launched and funded by Acronym, one of innumerable Democratic-aligned nonprofits in D.C. with high-minded goals listed on a flashy website. The group distanced itself from Shadow on Tuesday morning, despite the fact that its website links to Shadow’s website under the heading “Building Tech Infrastructure” on its Playbook page. Acronym has worked with many groups in the Democratic establishment, from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to Emily’s List; Shadow’s co-founder worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Acronym’s CEO, Tara McGowan, is married to Michael Halle, a strategist for Pete Buttigieg. The Pete Buttigieg campaign paid Shadow $21,250 in July last year, for “software rights and subscriptions.” One wonders how it got the phone number for that transaction.

While the complexities of these arrangements have proven to be the fuel for untethered imaginations to run wild, this is not so much evidence of some sort of Mayor Pete conspiracy to fix the caucus results and claim victory—though he did do the latter. Rather, it is evidence that incredibly important functions in the Democratic Party are handed out to people with the right connections instead of the right expertise, and that those sorts of decisions can lead to massive screw-ups. Shadow received payments nearing $60,000 from both the state Democratic parties of Iowa and Nevada, the latter of which is reportedly not going to deploy the faulty app, out of fear that history might repeat itself in a few weeks’ time.

