Brian Bruening lives in Clayton County and has been involved in Democratic Party leadership since 2017. He is on Bluesky at @iowarural.bsky.social.

When I wrote just under two years ago about my unsuccessful bid for the Iowa House, I affirmed the importance of running as a Democratic candidate in a very red district and said I would do so again. Last fall, I made good on that commitment, and ran for Iowa Senate district 32, with similar results. We ran a lean campaign, raising and spending a little more than $21,000 in a three month span starting from my nomination via special convention in late July through Election Day.

Having long ago given up on expecting much help from the state party beyond a phone call or two and some technical assistance, I relied on local volunteers and county party infrastructure to spread my message. I created and sent out targeted online and streaming ads, sent text messages, direct-to-door mailers, distributed hundreds of signs and banners, filled local airwaves with radio ads, participated anyway I could in local newspapers and TV, and spoke and debated throughout the district.

I focused on issues that directly affected voters in local communities: public education and defunding of the Area Education Agencies, health care, and rural economics, all the most potent issues the Iowa Democratic Party told us to run on. I added water quality issues to my platform, something our Big Ag-beholden state Democratic Party seemingly doesn’t have the stomach to discuss. The end results were as expected: the Republican incumbent held his seat with 64.6 percent of the vote.

LOOKING AT THE NUMBERS

Four years earlier, when there was no incumbent in the roughly similar Senate District 28, the Republican won with 62.5 percent of the vote. I compared a voter registration snapshot from the primary counties in the Senate district (Allamakee, Winneshiek, Howard, and Clayton)—excluding the four precincts in Fayette County and one precinct in Dubuque County, which are now in Senate District 32. We can see a huge shift towards Republican registration: a 6.8 percent increase in GOP affiliation as a percentage of all registered voters.

December 2020 (Allamakee, Winneshiek, Howard, and Clayton)

Republican – 15,180 (36 percent)

Democrat—12,189 (28.9 percent)

No Party—14,556 (34.5 percent)

Other—227 (0.5 percent)

Total:  42,152

December 2024 (Allamakee, Winneshiek, Howard, and Clayton)

Republican—16,154 (42.8 percent)

Democrat—9,065 (24 percent)

No Party—12,319 (32.6 percent)

Other—201 (0.5 percent)

Total: 37,739

The most striking number to me is the decrease of more than 4,400 registered voters in the four-county area. While I can make assumptions, I will note that Democratic registration decreased 3,124 during the same time period. While some of these voters may have switched to No Party or elsewhere, there is no doubt Democrats are fleeing rural Iowa in droves. 

All this is to say, I feel proud of my campaign which managed to hold the line, garnering 12,080 votes (35.32 percent) in a district where Democratic registration continues to crater. The issues and outreach did strike a chord with some voters. Anecdotally, I have heard that regardless of agreement with my policy stances, many voters could not bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. 

THE TARNISHED DEMOCRATIC BRAND

After the last several weeks, and indeed eight years, national and state Democrats have done little to counteract the view that Democrats can’t get things done. How can you convince voters that Democrats will fight for them when party leaders seem complicit at best and completely ineffective at worst?

Since Donald Trump glided down the escalator in 2015, Democratic voters keep waiting for justice and a rebuttal to the clearly fascistic actions taken by Trump and Republicans. Waiting for Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Waiting for impeachment. Waiting for impeachment again. Waiting for Attorney General Merrick Garland. Waiting for Special Counsel Jack Smith. All the time waiting for the rule of law to finally kick in.

But the legal system has continuously failed, because it only works when the majority of people believe in it. Right now, the people in charge of our government, and a sizable majority of the Republicans over the past 40 years, believe laws only apply to immigrants, enemies, and Democrats.

And I cannot stress enough the damage that the Democrats have done and continue to do to their position with younger voters. If Trump can convince people that he can eliminate the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with mere strokes of his pen, why couldn’t President Joe Biden eliminate student debt? If Democrats really are the party of working folks, why didn’t the government under Biden do more to break up food and agriculture monopolies and support workers? If MAGAs can hold white supremacist marches and throw Nazi-salutes at government events, why weren’t students allowed to peacefully protest on college campuses under a Democratic president?

Side note: Many Democratic die-hards refuse to admit this, but the Biden administration’s stance on the genocide in Gaza hurt Democratic candidates up and down the ballot. It demonstrated how callous and insensitive the Democratic administration was to human suffering as it green-lighted and funded Israel’s war against the civilian population of Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Don’t forget, people have been waking up to the most horrendous acts of wartime violence on their social media feeds for the last fifteen months with nothing more than lip-service at best from their party.

As I posted earlier this month on Bluesky, “if Harris had engaged with Palestinians, Arabs, activists EVEN ONCE instead of yelling at them and speaking down to them (“I’m speaking…”) perhaps these voters would have had some faith that she actually would be better (than Trump). Remember, Joe Biden, to whom she was VP, completely supported the worst, most visible genocide of our lifetime, so forgive people for not just taking her word for it.”

Iowa Democrats are in no way exempt from criticism. I have not forgotten the shameful lack of support from party donors and activists that Deidre DeJear received in her run for governor—a fact foreshadowed by Ras Smith when he dropped out of the primary race earlier that year. More recently, state and national Democrats ignored Sarah Corkery’s campaign in Iowa’s second Congressional district. If the party won’t even support their candidates, how can they be expected to fight for anyone else in their supposedly big tent? (Except perhaps millionaire and billionaire donors.)

NOT UP FOR THE MOMENT AT HAND

Washington Democrats, and most Democrats writ-large, have remained loyal believers in the Constitution and a rule-based order in the face of near constant evidence that such a system no longer exists in the United States of America. They bind themselves to laws that the rich and powerful refuse to accept. Amazon recently said they wouldn’t be bound by the successful Whole Foods Unionization vote, because with the National Labor Relations Board gutted by Trump, there was no one to enforce the law.

Elon Musk and his DOGE flacks have run rough-shod over one department after another in the federal government and the courts are struggling to keep up. (If, as Vice President JD Vance posits, the Trump administration is bound by the courts. Oh wait, I guess they aren’t.) Indeed, with the overthrow of the executive by Trump lackeys and sycophants, our system of norms has proven to be ineffective. Who will watch the watchman when the watchman is in on the heist?

Earlier this month, U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies said, “What leverage do we have? They control the House, the Senate and the presidency; it’s their government.”

That would be news to Senator Mitch McConnell and his Republican caucus, who decided in December 2008 to obstruct President Barack Obama in every way possible. Why did Democratic senators fight to maintain the filibuster over the last eight years when they won’t use it now in the face of actual constitutional crisis? Somehow Senator Tommy Tuberville, perhaps the most incompetent senator, figured out how to hold up military appointments for months! Yet Democrats can’t even keep their members from voting to confirm the actual architects of Project 2025.

How in the face of all of this can we ask local folks to run for office, to volunteer, to take a principled stance in public, when our elected Democratic leaders prevaricate and appease?

AT A CROSSROADS

When I became a county party chair in 2017, I had faith in the system. I believed that through interaction with our elected officials and work on the ground, we could counteract the anti-democratic forces unleashed by MAGA. There was an up-swelling of interest and participation in monthly meetings and actions as people wanted to get involved, to somehow react positively to the disaster they saw on the news. And the actions of the first Trump Administration were fought, up to and including a defense against a violent coup on January 6, 2021.

This time, 20 days into a second Trump Administration, things feel very different. Almost to a person, Democratic activists I talk to feel scared, powerless, and anxious about the future of democracy in our country. Long supposed media stalwarts against fascism such as the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and CNN have all seemingly bent the knee to the Dear Leader.

Even some elected Democrats have signed on to the right-wing playbook of denigrating vulnerable populations such as trans folks and people of color. (Of course, some people rightly suggest that supporting “cultural issues” such as trans rights don’t gain voters in rural districts, but they forget that Democrats did not bring this issue to forefront of political discussion—Republicans did as a way to divide and conquer. I will not accept that the answer is to concede to hateful Republican policy and abandon our trans brothers and sisters to such a cruel fate.)

Perhaps after the long painful years of the Republican trifecta in state government, Iowans have become more accustomed to political helplessness. We have been in the wilderness so long that we have lost hope, or worse create fantasies of paths to power that fail again and again.

THE END OF LIBERAL CENTRISM

Students of world politics have reported a disturbing trend: the ascendency of right-wing authoritarianism. Less commented upon is the corresponding failure of centrist parties in Western democracies to effectively combat this rise. Looking back, there are so many examples of the centrist who gets into power, buoyed by the threat of a right-wing ideologue. But once elected, they move toward right-wing and pro-corporate policies, erasing distinctions between the middle and the right in voters’ minds. As a result, they further normalize the extreme right-wing. Emmanuel Macron in France, Justin Trudeau in Canada, Olaf Scholz in Germany, Keir Starmer in the UK, and indeed Joe Biden are but the most obvious examples.

Democrats seem bound to this centrist path, but they cannot be both the party of corporate centrists and of the working people, regardless of how big the tent. They have suffered from this split personality since at least the 2016 primaries when Hillary Clinton was elevated over Bernie Sanders. (It’s not lost on me that the only real push-back against Trump administration overreach and destruction over the past month has come from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, others on the left of the party—not centrists.)

Recently Hakeem Jeffries laid out Democrats plan to retake the House in 2026: “Democrats [a]re reaching toward the center, while Trump will swing harder right.” Apparently, Democrats are so bereft of ideas they must take the same approach they have taken since I was born nearly 50 years ago.

When I was in second grade, I, along with nearly everyone else in my class, was obsessed with the mini-series V. We played V on the playground, turning the show into a game in a way I no longer remember. V told the tale of aliens that came to earth, nominally in friendship, but it soon became obvious that they were here to loot the earth’s resources. The twist of the story was that the Visitors looked like us, but were in fact lizards hiding behind human masks.

Some humans collaborated with the Visitors even when their true intentions became known; some kept their heads down and went along with the new status quo, unable or unwilling to speak up and relying on the imagined safety of capitulation; and some rebelled, took up arms, and fought for their lives and freedom. Which group do you think were the heroes of the show?

DESPAIR ISN’T AN OPTION

In December 1977, writer and poet Audre Lorde delivered a speech before the Modern Language Association which later became the essay “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” In it she wrote, “I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.”

Saying nothing has no benefit to you, to your community, or to the future. Fear, she states, must be overcome. “We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.”

I am in a privileged position. I am white, I am male, I am cisgender. I am employed, I am able-bodied, I own property. I am educated. I am married. I have the support of my family. I was born in this country. I have some degree of political influence. If you remove the fact that I am gay, I would fit the model of the ideal citizen for the fascistic thugs currently undermining our government. And yet, I am deeply, personally, afraid of what is to come, that a pluralistic and diverse democracy is dying in this country to be replaced by autocracy and oligarchy.

What then must transgender people be feeling? What must people of color be feeling? What must immigrants be feeling? I have the privilege to sit here at my computer and reflect and predict what may come to be while they are under direct and immediate attack.

My loss of faith in the Democratic Party mustn’t translate into a loss of faith in democracy or a descent into apathy and nihilism. Instead, this must be a call to use my privilege to speak up, to fight, to defend, to absorb the blows directed at those weaker than me. We don’t have the luxury of time to debate, to rally the troops, to think and rethink: every moment we sit in silence, the stronger anti-democracy forces get, and the easier it will become to give up.

WE MUSTN’T BE SILENT

One of the most challenging conversations I had while running for state Senate last year came during a candidate forum in Volga City. The very first question from the audience came from a man demanding the removal of trans kids from athletics in schools and a banning of trans health care. I could have, like most of the folks on the stage, nodded in agreement or said nothing. But I could not. I had to call out the question for what it was: a mean-spirited punching down of the most vulnerable people in our entire country. I doubt I gained any votes, but I left there feeling at peace with myself.

We can make positive changes in our communities in many ways: volunteer and donate to food banks, at public schools, visit folks at senior citizen care facilities. Personally, I have redirected my focus on fighting to preserve and protect the last bastion of good water in our state through the Driftless Water Defenders. I will continue to speak up for and defend LGBTQ+ people in my little town and rural area. I donate to Wikipedia, to the Internet Archive, to the Iowa Abortion Access Fund. Party politics is not the only way to counter the fascist overthrow of our democracy.

I am hopeful that state and national Democrats will awaken and fight for us, but I will not remain quiet in the background waiting for them to finally lead, or expend my time and energy on a structural system unable or unwilling to adapt to the visceral danger we currently face.

I recently started some plants for my summer garden—mainly hot pepper seeds I saved from last summer’s bounty. But I also planted various aloes and agaves, drought-tolerant succulents that live for decades and longer. When winter feels its most hopeless in early February, this seems the best time to plant seeds. Gardening is a bet against destruction and chaos, a mark of confidence in the future.

We may be in the darkest days of America since the Civil War, but we are not without voices. Like the abolitionists and the suffragists and the labor unionists and the civil rights organizers and the feminists and the gay rights and AIDS activists, standing up in the face of insurmountable odds is not a reason to stop fighting nor a promise of failure. Be kind, protect those around you, and don’t be silent!

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Top photo of Brian Bruening was provided by the author and published with permission.