Poor Communication
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When it comes to anything in life, communication is key. It keeps everyone on the same page and ensures that plans are able to run smoothly. However, for the 2020 Iowa caucus an event that can make or break candidates and potentially kill entire campaigns there seemed to be little to no communication whatsoever. Organizers were taking interviews and going out drinking amid the crisis that was going on, they tried to calm the media frenzy by releasing entirely incomplete data with a promise it was accurate ( it wasn’t ), in the end the issues with communication between volunteers and communication of data was so poorly managed that the DNC Chairman had to step in and request that everything be added again from scratch to give it even a hint of accuracy.
Hobnobbing Organizers
Organizers like Democratic Party chairman Troy M. Price spent the entire week of the caucus drinking at the Marriott bar in Des Moines, and other Des Moines bars, doing back-to-back cable interviews, and generally hobnobbing about loving the perceived celebrity they now had and basking in it. They were nowhere to be found when the issues started to appear. They couldn’t be reached and refused to do interviews themselves. Instead, Troy Price opted to have a junior staffer under him send a statement that is allegedly from him. A shocking change after he spent that whole week basking in all the attention he was getting.
Half The Data
As more and more issues began to arise, and as the data was found to be less and less reliable, it was decided that there was a need for another delay. This widely upset the public and the media, prompting stories questioning if the results are accurate and if we’d even get the truth. Without fully communicating what was happening, they made the ill-fated decision to release about half of the results to help sate the public and give everyone an idea of where candidates stood when it came to Iowa. It was later found that these results, though promised to be accurate, were inaccurate and, like the others, needed to be recounted.
The DNC Gets Involved
After seeing the catastrophe unfold and having to declare an actual emergency, the DNC Chairman, Tom Perez, had to step in and request that everything be added again, from scratch, to give it even a hint of accuracy. This meant that they messed up so badly that the higher-ups thought it best to throw out everything that was done up till that point and start entirely from square one. However, at that point it was too late and the court of public opinion had already soured against the DNC and the entire caucus as a whole. There was nothing that could save that and restore confidence in the process again.