And pete wildly overperformed, unfortunately. Bernie winning is a
lot less impressive when it's alongside nearly tying or losing to the blighter. Hopefully the next few primary things go better for sanders (or warren, who only came third, but still beat biden, and didn't have pete's shady looking shit or bernie's contributions to making the caucus such a shitshow by pushing for rules changes), or a least continue going poorly for biden and not continue this instance of mayor "faked black endorsements" performing well.
Though so far as the SDEs go, the emphasis there mostly just seems like consistency. They've
usually been the focus of reporting, iirc, and are of similar importance as the shitty electoral college. It's less some kind of deliberate consent manufacturing or whatever ("nearly matched sanders in popular vote out of nowhere" would have done that just fine) and more just laziness or habit.
I've heard the head of the DNC is calling for recount, but was refused or something. Still not clear on that part.
The DNC seems determined to not just shoot themselves in the foot, but blow their legs clean off.
One thing to remember about the iowa mess is that the
DNC doesn't actually have much control over it. 90+% of the failures causing this shitstorm has been the fault of the state IDP, of which the DNC has little to no meaningful control over, especially when it comes to the actual implementation of the caucus. They can make suggestions and whatnot, and theoretically refuse delegates or whatev', but most of the primary running stuff is more or less entirely devolved/state run. The national party just doesn't have genuine control.
As much as folks seem to want to blame them, the DNC itself is just pretty blameless for this debacle. Fault here is on Iowa's population, the local IDP, and their collective insistence on running fuckstupid caucus horseshit.