Matt McDonald

Six months ago, you would have predicted a Joe Biden win in the Iowa caucuses. Four months ago, Pete Buttigieg looked like the favorite. Twenty-four hours ago, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders seemed set to storm to victory. But no one foresaw an outcome this disastrous for the Democratic party. Precinct captains across the Hawkeye state reported faults with an app used in the caucuses for the first time. In a statement, a spokesperson for the Iowa Democratic party described 'inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results': 'In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report.

The next time Elizabeth Warren offers you a beer, be sure not to turn your back on her lest she crack you across the back of the head with it. That's the message the Warren camp has sent out with the latest Liz-Bernie spat — just in time for the seventh (I know!) Democratic debate in Iowa tonight. Pulling a dirty trick worthy of Roger Stone, Warren's associates briefed CNN about a December 2018 meeting between the two senators, during which Sanders allegedly said 'he did not believe a woman could win.' Saagar Enjeti of The Hill lays out the apparent Warren strategy nicely: 'Progressives. Allow me introduce you to the media ecosystem that has bedeviled conservatives in the Trump age: Step 1) Leak a bullshit smear sans any real confirmation to CNN.

Tulsi Gabbard is looking pretty good right now. I mean, even better than usual. The veteran and Hawaii congresswoman has stood out from the crowded Democratic field with her peacenik foreign policy-focused campaign. And now President Trump, with his impulsive killing of Qasem Soleimani, has become the Big Bad Hawk Gabbard has described him as all along. When she entered the race in February of last year, Gabbard pledged to strike out against the military-industrial complex: 'We must stand up.

Little over a week on from the sad demise of the Kamala Harris presidential campaign, the California senator is the bookies' favorite to be the Democratic vice presidential candidate. Yes, despite her candidacy's high-point coming at the expense of Joe Biden in the first debate — shivving the front-runner for holding a stance on busing remarkably similar to her own — there have been rumblings about her being the right woman to balance his ticket. In most presidential elections, the vice presidential candidates do not matter — arguably the only one to move the needle in the past 50 years was Sarah Palin, and not in a good way. But 2020 could be different, especially if Joe Biden ends up as the Democratic nominee.

Fear not everyone — there are only seven Democratic debates left this cycle. As if the prospect of a fifth in six months wasn't exhausting enough, the Atlanta bonanza kicked off after 11 hours of impeachment hearings. No wonder the spin room was more muted than usual. Host Rachel Maddow opened proceedings with an impeachment question, making the huge assumption that most viewers had watched them (they hadn't). Of the senators running, only Bernie Sanders didn't take the bait. 'We should not be consumed by Donald Trump', he said, 'we can deal with Trump's corruption, but we also have to stand up for the working families of this country.' Much of the night appeared like business as usual.

Who would you like to see better represented in the already-crowded Democratic primary? Septuagenarians? Centrists? Or billionaires? For those of you who answered 'all three', you may be in luck, as the New York Times reports that former New York mayor and current 17th richest person in the world Michael Bloomberg is set to file paperwork in Alabama designating himself a presidential candidate. Bloomberg has sat on the sidelines over the past few months. He has watched once-respected politicians address near-empty tents in New Hampshire and seen Tom Steyer splurge his own cash on TV and internet ads to distort the proportion of his popularity. It takes real guts to observe that and think 'I too would like to get 3 percent in a poll — how much of my money would you like?

Get your skates on! The Democrats on Ice roadshow rolls into Houston this evening, and the media are poised for a slip-up. Tonight is the night Brooklyn-based content creators have been yearning for: when Joe Biden finally lines up alongside the Anointed One, Elizabeth Warren. Surely it's here, they speculate, that Uncle Joe will commit one blunder too many and the era of Elizabeth will be ushered in. How's he gonna mess it up? Will he call Cory Booker 'Barack'? Maybe both eyeballs will explode this time? Gosh I can't wait! Liberals online are so fixated on the narrative of 'Biden gaffe-Warren competent', that they're not considering a series of other possibilities.

Marianne Williamson has garnered fervent online attention in the months since her first debate appearance in Miami. Her every action has been the talk of Twitter and once more she found herself the most Googled candidate tonight. Many people act like the internet is all that matters...so how well does this support translate into the real world? Judging by the attendance at the Williamson watch party I showed up to in America's biggest city...not particularly. I was the seventh person to slink into the back of a small experimental theater space in the Chelsea district of Manhattan, two doors down from a psychic. Twenty-four chairs had optimistically been laid out by the host, the theater's artistic director.

The DNC are ditching porn stars, yacht rides and Pitbull for rusty motors and the 8 Mile Road, as the Democratic primary circus rolls from one Art Deco metropolis to another. In Detroit as in Miami, 20 contenders will face each other in sets of 10 across two nights. Funnily enough, the debacle will take place in the Fox Theater, though of course CNN will be hosting. Anderson Cooper breathlessly announced which Democrats would debate each other on which night during an hour-long special Thursday. For all the complaints about Trump turning politics into reality television, the major networks don't half lean into it. Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg find themselves shunted to the undercard night with Elizabeth Warren, as they will take the stage on Tuesday July 30.

Of all the low-profile candidates vying for national attention in the Democratic debates this week, Marianne Williamson stood out. In coverage immediately before, she was derided for simply being an 'author and activist': descriptors, it's worth noting, that could be applied to everyone else standing. The 66-year-old was placed at the far edge of the Thursday debate stage and only got four minutes and 58 seconds of speaking time. But she made those seconds count. First, she struck out against her arch-nemesis: plans. 'I’ll tell you one thing, it’s really nice if we’ve got all these plans, but if you think we’re going to beat Donald Trump by just having all these plans, you’ve got another thing coming,' she said. 'Because he didn’t win by saying he had a plan.

Who was the last person you felt genuinely sorry for? A newly unemployed blue-collar worker who’s been ‘innovated’ out of a job by mechanization, perhaps. Or that elderly widower in an old folks’ home whose family never seems to visit. Maybe even a single mother in the Rust Belt, trapped in the bleak throes of opioid addiction. There’s enough suffering in this country to go around – it’s not hard to pick someone. Then ask yourself this: what about the real victims? Those struggling through the hardship of sleepless nights and non-stop travel, met with at best indifference, at worst disdain wherever they go. When have you given them a moment’s thought?

‘Charlottesville, Virginia is home to the author of one of the great documents in human history. We know it by heart,’ says a freshly sanded Joe Biden over swooping strings, in tight focus and excruciating high-definition. As the camera cuts closer, you can just about notice his watery eyes flicking from one side of the autocue to the other. The former vice president is taking up arms in ‘the battle for the soul of America’, and he’s doing it on YouTube. The build-up to elections used to center upon television air-time: CNN town halls, fierce attack ads, appearances on late-night talk shows. But the humanoid sociopaths over in Silicon Valley changed all that in the Obama era. Now the key battleground is social media, and the hunt is on for a viral moment.

The Mueller report was published this morning on the Justice Department’s website. Perhaps understandably, a fair few people are interested in seeing what the Special Counsel has to say, and many weren’t able to get on the site. Spectator USA to the rescue: here’s the full report.

Has Joe Biden finally made up his mind? The former vice president has told a House lawmaker that he is running for the 2020 Democratic nomination and asked for an endorsement, according to The Hill. The site reports that Biden called the lawmaker and said ‘I’m giving it a shot’, before asking if he could run some campaign strategy ideas by them and proposing an in-person meeting at a later date. The Democratic lawmaker did not commit to supporting Biden, and spoke to the publication on condition of anonymity ‘due to the sensitive nature of the conversation.’ If it was that sensitive, surely they could have kept it to themselves?