A resident offers a view of the 2016 election from the “People’s Republic of Johnson County.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

If Johnson County, Iowa were its own state or country, Hillary Clinton would be president today and Patty Judge one of our two senators, Bruce Braley being the other. Using public data from the Johnson County Auditor webpage, turnout for the 2016 presidential election was 77,476 votes, which is 84 percent of registered voters. Secretary Clinton pulled in 65 percent of the vote and Judge 57 percent in her bid to become US Senator. In the presidential race, Donald Trump received 27 percent of the vote, Gary Johnson 4 percent, and write-ins were higher than any other candidate at 1.2 percent.

John Deeth notes in his blog that Johnson County, Iowa tops the next best performing county for Clinton by 14 percent, and in the recent past was the only wins for Jack Hatch and Roxanne Conlin. Johnson was the only county to not favor Terry Branstad in his 2014 reelection. If more of the nation had voted like Johnson County, things would have looked more like what nearly every news source was predicting. The figure of 84 percent is remarkable for a turnout and press coverage reflected this, but I will return to this in a moment.

A former southeast Iowa resident shares insight into an unusual rural county, where Trump supporters campaigned on a unique message. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Given the increasing attention being paid to the continuing decline of rural Iowa, Jefferson County is an interesting absurdity among these conversations and the 2016 presidential election.

Jefferson County, population 16,843, is a mesh of traditional rural Iowa and a hot pot coalition of Transcendental Meditation followers from around the globe. Fairfield, the county seat, is more than 60 miles to the nearest urban center and stands out as the rare rural Iowa community that has gained population in recent years: a 4 percent population increase between 2010-2014, according to a questionable census report. (Questionable because a portion of the census’s reported increase in residents may be international students who took classes in Fairfield, but live in other states for the majority of their student/work visa.)

Fairfield is also known for its progressive views on organic farming and green energy, as well as residents’ higher than average educational attainment and religious diversity. Given those facts, Jefferson County should have been an easy win for the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton coalition in 2016. As it has been reliably, other than in 2000, when the Natural Law Party’s John Hagelin won 15 percent of the vote, shifting the county from the Al Gore to the George Bush column. Instead, Clinton lost Jefferson County to Donald Trump by 38 votes.

FiveThirtyEight’s Harry Enten observed today, “Clinton won 490 counties to over 2,600 for Trump. But within those Clinton counties, ~74.5 million votes cast. Just 63 million in Trump’s.”

His comment made me wonder: what would the Iowa numbers show?

Grant Gregory is a recent graduate who has worked on several Iowa campaigns. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Donald Trump won the presidency on November 8 because independent and Democratic voters who supported President Barack Obama in 2012 shifted their vote for Donald in 2016. Middle-class Americans flipped the switch on party identity and flocked to the anti-establishment candidate in a fantastic fashion. In fact, 37 states shifted to the right from 2012 in 2016, despite Obama approval ratings hovering around 56 percent, according to Gallup.

A combination of race, education, and incomes all likely determined the tremendous swing from Democratic strongholds, but Iowa was unique in that it demographically aligned almost perfectly with the Trump brand. Iowa shifted more than any other swing state in the country, voting +5.8 percent Obama in 2012 and +9.4 percent Trump in 2016, a total margin shift of 15.2 percent, according to David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report.

Former Republican State Senator David Johnson will remain an independent during the Iowa legislature’s 2017 session, but he will not be entirely shut out of committee work. William Petroski reported for the Des Moines Register this weekend that Democrats offered Johnson one of their positions on the Natural Resources Committee, recognizing his work on issues in that committee’s jurisdiction. In recent years, Johnson has been the leading Republican advocate for increasing conservation spending in the state budget as well as for raising the sales tax to fill the Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund.

Johnson quit the Republican Party in June to protest the nomination of Donald Trump for president. He had occasionally found himself at odds with this GOP colleagues before then. For instance, he supported the unsuccessful Democratic effort to stop Medicaid privatization and later voted for a Democratic bill on stronger Medicaid oversight.

First elected to the Iowa House in 1998 and to the Senate in 2002, Johnson told Petroski he hasn’t decided whether to run for re-election in Senate district 1 next year. Zach Whiting, a staffer for U.S. Representative Steve King, announced in August that he will run in Johnson’s district, which is the GOP’s second-safest seat in the state. The latest figures from the Secretary of State’s office show Senate district 1 contains just 7,900 active registered Democrats, 21,374 Republicans, and 13,574 no-party voters. The five counties in the district voted for Trump by wide margins in November. The GOP nominee received 81.4 percent in Lyon, 78.8 percent in Osceola, 68.2 percent in Clay, 65.5 percent in Palo Alto, and 65.2 percent in Dickinson.

Despite having only one committee assignment for the coming legislative session, Johnson sounds content with his new independent status:

“I have made some votes in the past that I wasn’t comfortable with, and I don’t believe really represented the district that I am honored to represent,” Johnson told The Des Moines Register. “I am free now to really follow my conscience and my constituents. We always talk about how you should put your district first. Well, I can now because I represent everybody. I don’t represent Republicans here. That has created quite a furor among some Republican leaders, and that’s fine.”

According to legislative records cited by Petroski, an independent hasn’t served in the Iowa Senate since 1925 or in the Iowa House since 1972.

Freedom to chase any story that captures my attention is the best part of running this website. A strong sense of purpose carries me through the most time-consuming projects. But not all work that seems worthwhile is fun. Classic example: I didn’t enjoy communicating with the white nationalist leader who bankrolled racist robocalls to promote Donald Trump shortly before the Iowa caucuses.

Continuing a tradition I started last year, here are the Bleeding Heartland posts from 2016 that have a special place in my heart. Not all of them addressed important Iowa political news, but all were a joy to write.

For the first time last year, I put some thought into what posts had consumed the greatest amount of my energy. I realized that some of those deep dives were among my most satisfying writing projects. That new awareness informed my editorial choices in good and bad ways. Unfortunately, some election-related stories I would have covered in previous cycles didn’t get written in 2016, because I was immersed in other topics. On the plus side, those rabbit holes led to work I’m proud to have published.

Assembling this post was more challenging than last year’s version. Several pieces that would have been among my most labor-intensive in another year didn’t make the cut. A couple of posts that might have made the top ten were not ready to go before the holidays. Maybe they will end up in a future collection of seventeen posts I worked hardest on in 2017.

Traffic can be a touchy subject for bloggers. Most writers know the pain of pouring a lot of effort into a project that gets little traction. On the flip side, although clicks are always welcome, seeing a post take off is not as satisfying when you are less invested in the piece. The most-viewed post in nearly 10 years of Bleeding Heartland’s existence was nothing special, just another opinion poll write-up. FYI: A good way to get the Drudge Report to link to your site is to type up a long list of negative statements about Hillary Clinton.

I’ve never compiled a year-end list like this before, but since people occasionally ask what material is most popular at the blog, I figured, why not start a new tradition? Ulterior motive: I hope more readers will be inspired to write for Bleeding Heartland in 2017 after learning that guest authors wrote some of this year’s most-viewed posts, including the one at the very top.

Follow me after the jump for the sixteen posts that generated the most traffic in 2016. Some of the results surprised me.

Howard County Democratic Party chair Laura Hubka is ready to fight. Who’s with her? -promoted by desmoinesdem

Does everyone else feel like they are in a dream? Not a nice cream filled donut dream but a jalapeno pepper, hot sauce and gasoline filled tart, a terrifying joke of a dream. One where you feel like you know all the players and the places but something is just off. Totally ridiculous and confusing. Its like we all went to bed after way too much to drink and are having a really bad nightmare. Up is down, down is up.

Although some members of Donald Trump’s informal agriculture advisory committee would like the president-elect to choose former Iowa House Republican Annette Sweeney to run the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there’s no sign Sweeney is a serious contender for the job.

Guest author nwfisch knocked hundreds of doors in Dubuque County, which voted for the Republican presidential candidate this year for the first time since 1956. -promoted by desmoinesdem

As a delegate for Hillary Clinton throughout the caucus season, I became more engaged as the general election approached. I knocked on doors weekly encouraging voters to request an absentee ballot or else convince them to vote for Hillary and down ballot Democrats. I often pestered coworkers and friends about the election and the importance of speaking out against Donald Trump.

I have no regrets and don’t feel my time was wasted in standing for a competent candidate and against an unprepared and unqualified candidate. This post will air some grievances I had during my time as a volunteer this cycle, attempt to explain why Iowans flocked to the GOP, and offer some ideas for next steps for Democrats to take.

Part 2 in a planned 99-part series profiling each of Iowa’s counties before the 2018 general election. Last week’s post on Adams County is here. -promoted by desmoinesdem

This week I will review our second smallest county in terms of population, Ringgold County.

The 2010 census found 5,131 people living in the entire 539 square miles that are within Ringgold County. Ringgold County is located south and west of Des Moines. According to Google Maps, the county seat of Ringgold County, Mounty Ayr, is 89.2 road miles from the Iowa State Capitol building in Des Moines. Ringgold County was founded in 1847 when it was split from Des Moines County. The highest population in the county was 15,325 in the 1900 census. Ringgold County has lost population in every census since that time except for less than 1% increases from the previous census in the 1920 and 2000 censuses.

The racial makeup of the county in the 2010 census was 99.07% White, 0.11% Black or African American, 0.22% Native American, 0.16% Asian, 0.02% from other races, and 0.42% from two or more races. 0.24% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. An extremely non-diverse county in terms of race.

14.3 percent of the population live in households with income at or below the poverty level. The per capita income was estimated at $29,468 which ranks 93rd of 99 in counties in Iowa. Ringgold County had the 12th lowest unemployment rate in 2010, 4.7%. (As of November 2016 the unemployment rate was 2.7%.) In terms of educational attainment, Ringgold County has the 21st highest rate of residents having received a bachelors degree or higher, 20.8 percent.

Ringgold County is currently a part of the 3rd congressional district, represented by David Young-R since 2015. Currently Ringgold County is a part of the 12th District in the Iowa Senate represented by Mark Costello-R and part of the 24th District in the Iowa House of Representatives represented by Cecile Dolecheck-R.

Recent election results are after the jump.

Thanks to Gary Kroeger for sharing this post-mortem, first published at his blog Gary Has Issues. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Mark Twain famously observed: “We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it-and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again — and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.”

If Democrats are to engineer a way back into being a relevant presence in state houses, Congress and the White House, they (we) must look at the election of 2016 and ask hard, tough and critical questions that lead to hard, tough and critical analysis of “what went wrong.”

It has become an almost by rote analysis-confession for Democrats to bemoan that Hillary didn’t inspire voters, she isn’t trustworthy, she didn’t speak to white, working class Americans, and that she and the DNC led the charge to rig the process and by doing so disenfranchised the already disenfranchised voter.

But, if that is true; if that is the correct “what-we-must-change-and-do-differently-next-time” lesson….then how do we explain the fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first female, major party, nominee, received more votes than any white male, running for president, in history? Including, of course, the man who went on to defeat her, who received 2.8 million fewer votes.

2.8 million votes are not insignificant. If our system wasn’t predicated on an Electoral College (it is, Trump won, and that is not being contested here…even though there is some chilling evidence of vote counting fraud…), Clinton would have been considered the winner, overwhelmingly, and we wouldn’t be talking about trust, her expediency, or her un-likeability.

We would, instead, be talking about her 68% approval rating before she entered the race, about her unequaled experience and qualifications, and the glass ceiling that was broken. And the pride of having elected the first woman to the highest office in the land.

So, which reality will determine our lesson? The one that justifies what we now must accept, or the one that is revealed by what actually happened?

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley announced on December 21 that he will continue to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee in the new Congress. In doing that job, his priorities will be “the hearings and confirmation process on executive branch nominations to the Department of Justice, starting with United States Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions. The committee will also receive and process the nomination of a new Supreme Court justice. Grassley plans to focus on reforming the federal criminal justice system, conducting rigorous oversight of the FBI and Justice Department, ensuring the immigration laws are enforced, working to keep competition in the prescription drug market, reining in excessive government regulations, and protecting whistleblowers and the tools used to root out fraud against the federal government.”

Sessions can expect a less than “rigorous” vetting when Grassley’s committee takes up his nomination next month.

Bruce Rastetter visited Trump Tower in New York today, as seen in this photo Craig Robinson posted on Twitter. Since making a fortune in the agriculture sector (large hog lots and ethanol), Rastetter has been among the largest Iowa donors to Republican candidates. He gave the maximum allowable contribution of $2,700 to Trump’s campaign in August, shortly before joining the GOP nominee’s informal agricultural advisory committee, aptly described by Brian Barth as a “who’s who of industrial agriculture advocates.” Rastetter had supported New Jersey Governor Chris Christie before the Iowa caucuses and maxed out to several Republican U.S. senators as well as to Christie’s presidential campaign.

Trump said little about food or agricultural policy during his campaign and has kept people guessing about his favored candidates to run the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Rastetter’s name didn’t appear on short lists for the job published in the New York Times or Modern Farmer, but he was mentioned in similar stories by Politico and Successful Farming. Such articles aren’t necessarily accurate; Idaho Governor Butch Otter has confirmed that he is being vetted for secretary of agriculture, and his name wasn’t on any short list that I’ve seen.

I assumed Rastetter was no longer a serious contender for Trump’s cabinet in part because of his connection to Christie, who appeared to have fallen out of favor soon after November 8. Vice President-elect Mike Pence took charge of the transition effort and specifically “assumed oversight of the transition at USDA,” according to Daniel Looker’s November 21 report for Successful Farming.

On the other hand, Rastetter is a frequent and influential adviser to Governor Terry Branstad, whom Trump selected to be U.S. ambassador to China this month. He was backstage during Trump’s December 8 “thank you” rally in Des Moines. Though he doesn’t obsessively brag about his wealth like the president-elect does, Rastetter has a large enough bank balance to fit into a cabinet packed with billionaires and multimillionaires.

Picking Rastetter to run the USDA would reassure biofuels supporters who are deeply concerned that Trump chose opponents of the Renewable Fuel Standard to run the U.S. Department of Energy (former Texas Governor Rick Perry) and the Environmental Protection Agency (Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt). For what it’s worth, Branstad has claimed “Trump personally reassured him that Pruitt ‘is going to be for ethanol.’” If Trump keeps his promises on immigration policy, the agriculture sector may be facing a different set of problems. Barth observed in this Modern Farmer story that deporting millions of undocumented immigrants “would undermine the agricultural workforce and ripple out in the food economy in unforeseen, but likely negative, ways.”

Rastetter is currently president of the Iowa Board of Regents, the governing body for Iowa’s state universities. His six-year term on that body expires in April 2017, and Democrats have enough Iowa Senate seats to block his confirmation, should Branstad appoint him to another term.

UPDATE: Ryan Foley of the Associated Press predicted that Rastetter’s attempt to use Iowa State University to promote a major land acquisition in Tanzania “will be thoroughly re-examined” if Trump names Rastetter to his cabinet. Foley reported in 2012 that Rastetter “blurred the line between his role as investor in AgriSol Energy […] and his position on the Board of Regents” when working with ISU on his company’s “plan to develop 800,000 acres of Tanzanian farmland for crop production.” Bleeding Heartland posted many more links here on Rastetter’s attempted “land grab” in Africa.

Tom Philpott reviewed the top prospects for the USDA job in a December 20 piece for Mother Jones. Rastetter’s not on his list. Philpott considers him a “truly heinous” option for various reasons.

SECOND UPDATE: Speaking to the Des Moines Register’s Jason Noble on December 21, Trump spokesperson Jason Miller said, “I do not know if Mr. Rastetter is being considered for a particular post. Obviously he’s someone who comes with a wealth of knowledge and is very well-known in Iowa politics. But [I] don’t have any particular updates on his meeting with transition officials.” (Trump is spending this week at his Florida resort.)

JANUARY UPDATE: After a late push to find a Latino for the USDA position, Trump was supposedly leaning toward former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, according to Politico’s morning “Playbook” on January 2. Marvin G. Perez and Jennifer Jacobs reported for Bloomberg later the same day,

Perdue appears to be emerging from a broad pack of candidates. Trump and his aides have interviewed several others, including former Texas A&M University President Elsa Murano, former Texas U.S. Representative Henry Bonilla, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs, former California Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado, Idaho Governor Butch Otter, and North Dakota U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat

First in a planned 99-part series by guest author DMNATIVE. -promoted by desmoinesdem

I am starting our tour with our smallest county in terms of population, Adams County. The 2010 census found 4,029 people living in the entire 426 square miles that are within Adams County. Adams county is located south and west of Des Moines. According to Google Maps, the county seat of Adams County, Corning, is 94.7 road miles from the Iowa State Capitol building in Des Moines. Adams county was founded in 1853 when it was split from Pottawattamie County, and was further reduced in size when Union and Montgomery County were established.

Johnson County Supervisor-elect Kurt Michael Friese is skeptical Republicans would react calmly if the shoe were on the other foot. -promoted by desmoinesdem

What you Republicans and the American political right are telling me is that if President Obama had nominated a no-foreign-service-experience businessman with close ties to, say, Saudi Arabia, as Secretary of State, you’d say, “yeah that’s cool, he’s the boss, after all.”

You’re saying that if Obama had more than a dozen allegations of sexual harassment and groping leveled against him, your response would be “hey, those are just accusations.”

If he had 2.8 million fewer votes than Mitt Romney, but won the electoral college thanks to about 80,000 votes in 3 states, your reaction would be “that’s how the system works.”

Your contention is that if he had tried to get security clearance for Sasha and Malia, we’d hear you saying that it’s important that his family know what’s going on.

President-elect Donald Trump continues to assemble a cabinet full of people “who have key philosophical differences with the missions of the agencies they have been tapped to run.”

But arguably, the scariest news of the week was the political reaction to the Central Intelligence Agency assessment that it is “quite clear” Russia intervened in the U.S. elections with the goal of electing Trump.

Despite what one retired CIA officer described as a “blazing 10-alarm fire,” only four Republican senators have taken up the call for a bipartisan investigation of Russian interference in U.S. elections. For his part, Trump dismissed the CIA’s findings as “ridiculous,” while members of his transition team discredited the agency and leaked news that Trump will appoint a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin as secretary of state.

Progressive advocate Ruth Thompson warns how much Iowans have to lose if “Obamacare” is repealed. -promoted by desmoinesdem

With the new Administration and Republican led congress, The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is in peril. Republican leadership plans to use the Budget Reconciliation process to repeal at least parts of the ACA. They are expected to hold a vote in January that may include language to do just that. If this doesn’t happen in January, it will almost certainly happen by September, 2017.

The nonpartisan Urban Institute estimates that the partial repeal of the ACA would cause almost 70 million people Americans to lose health insurance. In 2016, 55,089 Iowans enrolled in health insurance coverage for 2016. US Census data show that the uninsured rate in Iowa in 2015 was 5 percent as compared to 9.3 percent in 2010.

In 2016, of the Iowans who signed up through the Health Care marketplace, 85 percent of them were eligible for an average tax credit of $303 per month and 70 percent could obtain coverage for $100 or less.

As to the impact to employers, the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that employer-sponsored health plans grew just 3.4 percent in 2016, extending a period of unusually slow growth since 2010. The White House Council of Economic Advisers reports that the average family premium in Iowa was $3,500 lower in 2016 than they would be if premiums had grown at the same rate as the pre-ACA decade.

Jennifer Jacobs reported for Bloomberg last night that Governor Terry Branstad has accepted President-elect Donald Trump’s offer to become the next U.S. ambassador to China. Jacobs cited three unnamed sources, and an unnamed member of Trump’s transition team confirmed the news to the Washington Post this morning. I expect Trump to make the official announcement during his Thursday “thank you” rally in downtown Des Moines. (By the way, many central Iowa Democrats as well as Republicans received a robocall invitation to that rally, featuring Donald Trump, Jr.)

I wish Branstad well in his new adventure. He’ll have a lot to contend with: the president-elect’s recent overture to Taiwan was destabilizing; Trump’s threats to punish China for supposedly unfair trade and currency practices could spark a trade war; and horrific air pollution has made Beijing “almost uninhabitable.”

Kim Reynolds is the fifth woman to hold the office of Iowa lieutenant governor and will soon become the first woman governor in our state’s history. Branstad has been saying for years he wanted her to succeed him, and many Democrats expected him to step down before the end of his sixth term, to give her the advantages of incumbency going into the 2018 campaign. The domain KimReynoldsforgovernor.com has been registered since 2012, Mark Langgin pointed out today.

Reynolds will select the next lieutenant governor, and she may use that power to neutralize a potential rival, such as Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey. (Why Northey would agree to that arrangement is a mystery to me.) I don’t expect Reynolds to clear the field for the 2018 Republican primary, but as governor, she will be able to raise more money and possibly deter some ambitious people. Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett has been laying the groundwork for a gubernatorial campaign for years. I don’t know how many major donors would back him now that Reynolds will be the incumbent, though. Running a credible campaign against her would require millions of dollars.

Many Democrats were delighted to read this morning that Representative Steve King told The Hill’s Scott Wong he is thinking about running for governor himself. I suspect this will play out like the early months of 2013, when King attracted a lot of attention by saying he might run for U.S. Senate. I never believed then and don’t believe now that King will run for higher office. However, two recent developments may have changed the equation for him.

First, Iowa’s sharp turn to the right this November may have convinced King he has a chance to win a statewide election, which didn’t appear to be the case a few years ago. Second, he and Branstad are not on good terms. King was a leading surrogate for presidential candidate Ted Cruz, whom Branstad attacked shortly before the Iowa caucuses. Reynolds and many other prominent Iowa Republicans endorsed King before this year’s GOP primary in the fourth Congressional district, but Branstad didn’t join them. Adding to the insult, soon after King defeated State Senator Rick Bertrand in that primary, the governor’s son Eric Branstad hired some of Bertrand’s former staffer to work on Trump’s campaign.

Any thoughts about Branstad’s prospects in China or the 2018 campaign are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: The Des Moines rumor mill sees State Representative Peter Cownie as a likely lieutenant governor choice for Reynolds. Further updates are after the jump.

The Daily Kos Elections team has been filling in a spreadsheet showing “presidential election results for both the 2016 and 2012 elections according to the congressional district lines used in the 2016 elections.” A few points jumped out as I looked at the Iowa numbers, just added this week.

Let’s start with the bad news.

The scale of Iowa’s unexpectedly large swing toward Donald Trump has been clear for nearly a month. But until today, we didn’t know how much early and election-day voters contributed to transforming Iowa from a bellwether state to one that voted much more Republican than the rest of the country, from a state the Democratic presidential nominee carried by nearly 6 points in 2012 to a state the Republican nominee won by more than 9 points four years later.

According to numbers released following the official state canvass, Hillary Clinton went into election day with a cushion less than half as large as Barack Obama’s early vote lead in 2012. Meanwhile, Trump’s advantage among election-day voters was more than four times as large as Mitt Romney’s.

As hard as it is for me to believe Governor Terry Branstad would move halfway around the world from his grandchildren, news reports and rumors in Iowa Republican circles point to Branstad being President-elect Donald Trump’s choice as ambassador to China.

We Democrats lost because we failed to adequately represent the political interests of the Middle Class, especially the Millennials (who, had they voted would have given Hillary a landslide victory).

The Trump Political Insurgency employed a classic insurgent campaign while we were caught flatfooted and in denial of his political strength. To prevent further consolidation of Trump’s power, we must act very soon and mount an effective political counter-insurgency. This will mean (at times) joining with moderate Republicans, who will soon lose as much as did we. The principles of counter insurgency are well known, and we will need a full multi-focal effort to defeat the Trump movement.

The nation was ripe for a political revolution. The recent Great Recession left no prisoners, and a whole generation of working class people are now permanently relegated to near poverty existence. As Cornell West so aptly states: “The lethal fusion of economic insecurity and (Trump’s) cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism to its knees. In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the arrested mobility and escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and protectionism that threaten to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy. And since the most explosive fault lines in present-day America are first and foremost racial, then gender, homophobic, ethnic and religious, we gird ourselves for a frightening future….
Dr. James Conroy, Sigourney

Thanks to Democratic activist Paul Deaton, “a low wage worker, husband, father and gardener trying to sustain a life in a turbulent world,” for cross-posting these ideas from his blog. -promoted by desmoinesdem

The Iowa Democratic Party should be blown up and its structure re-engineered — from scratch.

There has been a lot of internet discussion about what’s next for the Iowa Democratic Party after three terrible election cycles. That is, terrible in terms of winning elections.

Here are my thoughts, most of which have been expressed previously.

After meeting with his longtime colleague Jeff Sessions on November 29, Senator Chuck Grassley signaled that he will not only support President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for attorney general, but also limit Democrats’ ability to expose the nominee’s record during confirmation hearings.

In a statement enclosed in full below, the Judiciary Committee chair warned he will not allow a repeat of the 2001 debate over President George W. Bush’s nominee for the same job, John Ashcroft. In Grassley’s view, those hearings “turned into a reckless campaign that snowballed into an avalanche of innuendo, rumor and spin.”

Citing Senate consideration of the last four attorneys general as precedent, Grassley promised a “fair and thorough vetting process” for Sessions: hearings lasting one to two days, without a large number of outside witnesses. He expressed the hope that Democrats “will resist what some liberal interest groups are clearly hoping for – an attack on [Sessions’s] character.”

Grassley “intends to hold the hearing before the President-elect is sworn in.” His statement explained, “it is customary to hold a hearing for the Attorney General prior to the Inauguration as was the case with both Attorney General Eric Holder and Attorney General John Ashcroft.”

In other words, after presiding over a committee that slow-walked numerous federal judicial nominees, after obstructing a Supreme Court nominee for an unprecedented length of time, Grassley is in a hurry to get Sessions confirmed. He doesn’t want to get bogged down examining the nominee’s extreme views on immigration policy or criticism of the Americans with Disabilities Act or the racially motivated conduct that kept Sessions out of a federal judgeship in the 1980s.

Still no word from Grassley on any of Trump’s abnormal behavior or disregard for the Constitution. Some watchdog.

Tracy Leone has been involved with organized labor since 1997 and with elections in Iowa since 2006. Today she shares her thoughts on the path forward for Democrats. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Thanks to Bleeding Heartland for publishing diverse views regarding what the Democratic Party ought to do to get back to the business of winning elections again. While there is no single practice or set of principles to cure all that ails us, there are certainly things that have not been done that contributed to the Democratic failures at all levels of government.

It is urgent that we boldly resist the attacks on our democratic humanistic institutions, whether they come from Republicans or Democrats. Obama’s drone policy, his mass deportations and 5AM raids on immigrant families, his signing into law of Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act that strips US citizen of due process are right-wing policies and we Democrats need to have the courage to criticize when one of our own takes position against our values.

What we now face at the state and national levels means this is not just an intellectual exercise. Our democracy depends on it.

Nearly every day brings news of another Donald Trump cabinet appointee whose agenda would hurt millions of Americans. Yesterday, we learned that the next secretary of Health and Human Services will be U.S. House Budget Committee Chair Tom Price, who favors rapid privatization of Medicare, less protection for people with pre-existing health conditions, and total repeal of the Medicaid expansion that has saved lives.

But I want to set government policy aside for now and focus on an equally urgent matter. The president-elect is not mentally fit for the world’s most important job. Unfortunately, all signs point to Republicans in Congress enabling and normalizing his erratic and dangerous behavior.

Having studied the fragility of democracy abroad, political scientist Kieran Williams draws lessons for America in the age of Trump. -promoted by desmoinesdem

In the weeks since the US election, a word that keeps popping up in commentary has been “normalization”. It has been used to refer to (and explain) efforts to accommodate behavior and attitudes that previously we would have dismissed as outrageous or improbable, and thus “abnormal”. The abnormal frightens us, and one way to manage that fear is by tricking ourselves, through euphemism and neologism, into thinking the abnormal as normal. As Peter Bradshaw puts it,

[Normalization] either means: “Trying to kid yourself that President Trump will forget his bigoted views and accept he must govern more or less normally.” Or: “Trying to kid other people into forgetting President Trump’s views and into accepting bigotry in government as more or less normal.”

But for those of us who have studied Central and Eastern Europe, “normalization” is itself a euphemism, and one with a long history. It refers to the process by which a country is sidetracked from having a government responsive to the preferences and needs of the people. That diversion usually involves a shocking moment – an Event with a capital E – that was being prepared in plain sight yet still came as a surprise, accompanied by some degree of coercion or menace. Ultimately, however, “normalization” happens because people in a position to stop it decide to play along, and find ways to convince themselves that they are doing the right thing, for either the greater good or the narrow good of kith and kin.

A belated happy Thanksgiving to the Bleeding Heartland community. I didn’t cook this year, but for those who did, here are four ways to make soup from Thanksgiving leftovers; two involve turkey, two are vegetarian. My favorite way to use extra cranberry sauce: mix with a few chopped apples and pour it into a pie crust (I use frozen, but you can make your own crust). Make a simple crumbly topping with a little flour, rolled oats, butter, brown sugar and cinnamon, and sprinkle over the top. Bake and you’ve got an extra pie to share.

If your family is anything like mine, you’ve had a lot of conversations this weekend about the impending national nightmare as Donald Trump prepares to become the world’s most powerful person. Can Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hang on as the fifth vote to preserve Roe v Wade for five more years? Could Trump have chosen a worse candidate for attorney general than Jeff Sessions? What about his National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a hothead with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin who has compared Islam to a “cancer,” and had technicians break security rules to install an internet connection in his Pentagon office? Then there’s Trump’s pick for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos: she’s never worked in the education field, has long sought to undermine public schools, is a well-known homophobe and hostile to the concept of church/state separation. DeVos has admitted to using her family’s wealth to buy political influence. Mother Jones has taken a couple of deep dives into the DeVos family’s efforts to change American policies and policies: click through to read those pieces by Andy Kroll and Benjy Hansen-Bundy and Andy Kroll.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this election is how the Russian government got away with brazen attempts to get Trump elected. Craig Timberg’s report for the Washington Post is a must-read: independent researchers described how Russia’s “increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery […] exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment.” Whether Russian subterfuge was decisive can be debated, but we all saw the extensive media coverage of mostly unremarkable e-mails among Clinton campaign staff and strategists. Most of us had fake news pop up on social media feeds. I can’t believe how many journalists and politicians have reacted casually to this development. Eric Chenoweth of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe is nailed it in his editorial for the Washington Post: “Americans continue to look away from this election’s most alarming story: the successful effort by a hostile foreign power to manipulate public opinion before the vote.”

Two people who aren’t looking away are Yale University history Professor Timothy Snyder and Masha Gessen, who reported from Russia for many years under Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. I enclose below advice from Snyder on how to adapt to authoritarian government and excerpts from Gessen’s recent commentary, “Autocracy: Rules for Survival.” Like the old Russian saying goes, “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

UPDATE: My husband Kieran Williams, who has studied democracy in other countries, shared his perspective on how “normalization” happens after a “shocking event”: “people in a position to stop it decide to play along, and find ways to convince themselves that they are doing the right thing, for either the greater good or the narrow good of kith and kin.”

Kurt Friese, a newly-elected supervisor of Johnson County, has a message for Republican State Representative Bobby Kaufmann. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Dear Representative Kauffman,

You and I have only met in passing once or twice, so I will not presume to know your motives in putting forth what you termed your “Suck it up, buttercup” legislation, which press reports say you plan to introduce when the legislature returns in January. What I can tell you, though, is that the proposal is intellectually, logically, and compassionately void.

Suggesting that you, or any third party (especially in government), should have the authority to decide what is or is not a legitimate fear, worthy of receiving compassionate counseling or friendly support, demonstrates a disturbing lack of empathy. I do not know if you have had personal or family experience with trauma, but one defining characteristic of it is that the person experiencing it knows it to be very real, and when a person who is not experiencing it attempts to delegitimize the fear, well, that is simply being cruel.

Ben Nesselhuf is a veteran of many Democratic campaigns and managed Jim Mowrer’s 2014 Congressional race against Steve King. -promoted by desmoinesdem

‘Don’t Panic’ – The Hichhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy

First, my fellow Democrats, Don’t Panic. Election night was horrific. It was especially difficult because we all expected something different but, Don’t Panic. The Democratic Party, both in Iowa and on the national level, is far from the dumpster fire that the national media is portraying it as. We are in much better shape than the GOP was after the 2008 elections. If you recall, the national punditry was talking about the death of the modern day Republican Party. That was going to be nothing but a regional party that couldn’t win a race outside of the south. Obviously, that is not the case. In 2010 they came back in a big way and we will too. So, again I say, Don’t Panic.

Let me take a moment to introduce myself. I have not met nearly as many democratic activists in Iowa as I would like and it is very likely that you, dear reader, have no idea who I am.

Steve Wilke-Shapiro, a Des Moines-based architect with a passion for historic preservation and sustainable development, shares how Donald Trump’s victory has divided the community of architects. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Architecture is an odd profession. We fancy ourselves as masters of a universe where the smallest details (the edge around a door frame, for example) have meaning. We talk to each other about Design as if buildings themselves were sentient: “I don’t think that window wants to stretch all the way up to the ceiling.”

We don’t do this to be elitist and self-absorbed, though many an architect has been justly accused of nurturing an overdeveloped ego. Rather, we honestly believe in design as a tool for enhancing the human experience. We have the privilege of influencing the disposition of huge amounts of capital and human energy. We believe that through design, we can be agents of positive social change.

To some extent, the architect is by definition “progressive.” Our job is to alter the world, to imagine things that have never been and then describe them to others so that those things can be made real. There is an element of hope in every line we draw that our work will change the world for the better, and a sense of value in discharging this responsibility.

Yet architecture is also a conservative venture. There is a huge weight in the fact that our decisions have broad implications for our clients, our businesses, our reputations. Our creativity is circumscribed by a framework of building codes, financial, and logistical constraints. Despite our best efforts to fight these forces of inertia, there are tangible negative effects. We are as a profession too accepting of mediocre design (it pays the bills). Our leadership is measurably whiter than the American population as a whole, and primarily male. The “entry fee” to become an architect requires substantial investment in education followed by arduous and expensive licensing hurdles, both of which tend to favor people with middle- to upper-income resources. These qualities breed a resistance to institutional change.

Architecture is also highly sensitive to cycles largely outside our control: economic, environmental, and social. This season however, it is of course politics, not design that has driven a wedge into the profession.

Since election day, I’ve spoken with many Iowa Democrats and have observed many conversations and debates on social media. People process grief in different ways. Some Democrats are still bogged down in arguments over who is to blame (e.g. centrist or “establishment” Democrats, the FBI director, political journalists). Some are despairing over how Republicans will use total control over state government to destroy safety net programs and erode civil rights. Some have already moved on to pondering how we can create a stronger statewide party, and how Democrats could mitigate the harm Congressional Republicans will be able to inflict on Americans.

I applaud the forward-thinking people who are preparing for the tasks ahead. At the same time, I’m concerned that many Democrats haven’t absorbed the long-term consequences of what happened here on November 8.

For decades, politically-engaged Iowans have enjoyed the attention that comes with being first in the nominating process and a swing state later in the year. Our popular vote tracked closely to the national popular vote margin in six straight presidential elections. Both major-party nominees campaigned here and paid for field networks to get out the vote, with collateral benefits for down-ticket candidates.

We need to recognize that during the next couple of election cycles, we will likely be on our own.

Thanks to susaniniowa for stating it so clearly: “This is the first moment of the election of 2018. If we blow it, we can expect to lose.” -promoted by desmoinesdem

I have been reading a lot of social media comments from Bernie Sanders supporters who think he “sold out” because he said Clinton would remain an important voice in the party. I think they are profoundly wrong about Bernie, and about how to respond to what we face now. We cannot confront the coming threats to the well-being of our fellow citizens and the planet itself if we allow ourselves to be divided. Our first and biggest fight may come as soon as January. We cannot afford to lose it.

For years, I’ve predicted Governor Terry Branstad would step down before the end of this term in order to allow his chosen successor Kim Reynolds to run for governor as an incumbent in 2018. My thinking was influenced by political reality: the lieutenant governor has neither a strong ideological or geographical base nor the stature in Iowa Republican circles to win a statewide primary from her current position.

I saw two likely windows for a Branstad resignation: soon after the 2016 general election, or immediately following the 2017 legislative session. Either time frame would give Reynolds a boost on fundraising and other incumbency advantages going into a gubernatorial primary against rivals such as Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett and Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey.

In recent months, I’ve become convinced Branstad would serve out his sixth term after all. At least a dozen sources have independently indicated that the governor sounds open to running for re-election again in 2018. The resounding Republican victories in this year’s Iowa House and Senate races give Branstad another reason to stick around: the chance to work with a GOP-controlled legislature for the first time since 1998.

Yet President-elect Donald Trump has hinted Branstad might be his pick to serve as U.S. ambassador to China. Speaking to reporters before his birthday party/fundraiser last night, Branstad said, “I’m not ruling anything out.”

I don’t see it happening.

The city of Waterloo has agreed to pay $2.75 million this year to settle a wrongful death case and four other lawsuits over excessive uses of force by police. Other officers’ actions toward African-Americans led to an acquittal in a murder trial and will likely inspire more lawsuits. The series of scandals nearly cost Police Chief Dan Trelka his job in September.

After ignoring experts’ advice for many months, Trelka insists he is trying to improve relationships between his department and the African-American community in Waterloo.

Let’s all hope he is sincere, because under Donald Trump’s administration, police misconduct and especially excessive force against black people will face a lot less scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice and its Civil Rights Division.

Representative Steve King said last week he might leave Congress if offered the right position in Donald Trump’s administration. I’m for that, because King stepping down is the only realistic path to electing someone less hateful and embarrassing to represent Iowa’s fourth Congressional district.

King has worked with Kellyanne Conway, a key figure in Trump’s campaign. He’s on good terms with Trump’s chief White House strategist, the racist demagogue Steve Bannon.

But by all accounts, loyalty is very important to Trump. Would the president-elect give an important Homeland Security post to Ted Cruz’s leading Iowa surrogate before the caucuses?

How about this to sweeten the deal: King was a fan of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership style way before Trump was running for president.

In fact, King was being briefed by Russian security officials while Trump’s national security adviser-to-be, the Putin-friendly retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, was still working for President Barack Obama as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Health care reform will be a top-priority issue for the incoming Congress and President-elect Donald Trump. Allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines has become a central element of Republican promises to replace “Obamacare” with something better. But that idea didn’t make Iowa Insurance Commissioner Nick Gerhart’s list of ten ways to improve the Affordable Care Act.

On the contrary, Gerhart wrote, selling health insurance policies across state lines would not be “a major factor that would help drive down costs.”

He also warned members of Congress against repealing the 2010 health care reform law without simultaneously passing its replacement.

Stephen Wolf of the Daily Kos Elections team compiled a spreadsheet of U.S. presidential election results by state, along with each state’s “partisan voting index,” from 1828 to 2016. The partisan voting index, developed by the Cook Political Report, shows “how strongly a United States congressional district or state leans toward the Democratic or Republican Party, compared to the nation as a whole.”

For six presidential elections in a row, Iowa’s top of the ticket results tracked remarkably closely to how the country voted. I say “remarkably” because demographically, Iowa’s overwhelmingly white electorate has not been representative of the U.S. population for many decades.

The streak was broken this year. So was the streak for Iowa’s best bellwether county.