Democrat fixers deliver themselves an upper cut

Iowa Democrats prepare to caucus for the presidential candidates at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

What a monumental stuff-up for the Democrats.

The complete meltdown of their own system of tallying votes for the most important and watched primary president caucus in the country was almost beyond parody.

The nation was on edge for this moment which shapes the presidential race like no other.

The world’s media had flown to Iowa to trumpet the result, the Democrat contenders were ready to declare a triumphant victory — or a shy retreat — on their march to topple Donald Trump.

Instead, the party was hit with a thumping black eye for not being able to manage the relatively simple task of tallying votes to see who Iowa Democrats chose as their preferred president candidate.

While officials were scrambling to identify the problem, it seemed to be linked to changes made to the already byzantine method of collecting votes which was demanded by senator Bernie Sanders after his very narrow loss to Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus in 2016.

The Sanders camp cried foul about that result and demanded changes to the voting method to get more transparency, but these changes means that there was far greater reporting required of each stage of the voting than previously required. It appears, at first blush, that this new requirement overwhelmed the voting tally system, leading to problems that were so serious that organisers felt compelled to withhold any results to an eager nation.

Understandably, Donald Trump and his campaign capitalised on this mess, questioning the Democrats ability to run a country if they can’t run a caucus in a small midwestern state.

The timing of this mess for the Democrats could hardly be worse. In 24 hours Mr Trump will deliver his annual State of the Union address to the nation which will dominate the headlines.

The following day, the Senate will deliver its formal vote on impeachment, acquitting the President of the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress over the Ukraine controversy.

So this media cycle guarantees that the Democrats will be robbed of their moment in the sun for their winning candidate — whoever that is — by the state of the union speech and the impeachment vote.

The bizarre impasse allowed each Democrat candidate to come out and give an opportunistic “victory” speech without knowing whether they were the king of the mountain or toast.

In a county where the norms of politics are being rewritten everyday, this was as strange as it gets.