Guest Post by Derek Eadon, Candidate for Iowa Democratic Party Chair

I have recently announced that I am seeking the position of Iowa Democratic Party Chair. The past few weeks have been filled with hundreds of conversations on what went wrong in 2016 and what we need to do moving forward. I think it is a good thing that we are having these conversations. The problems we saw this cycle were not unique to this election, many of them were years in the making. I have felt the same frustrations that many people are sharing about how our party has operated the last two cycles. And even though sometimes the conversations that have been had since November 8 are uncomfortable, and although we know more conversations will be coming that force us to self-reflect, it is important we have this discussion. We can do better.

Tactics, message, candidates, and operations can always be improved. There are great ideas being discussed and some past best practices we have chosen to ignore. There is one factor that will be harder to change, and it is one that we cannot lump in with the others: our party is not accessible enough to the people that we need the most.