False Landing

How do I feel now that the Democrats won the election? I feel it is the dawning of a new era, full of potential to make the country a better place for us all. It is a time to take control of what is lagging in my life and make something in the active days remaining. (Personal Journal, Nov. 19, 2006).

When Barack Obama won the presidency two years later, these feelings deepened. It affected me personally in that I felt I could leave my employer of 25 years and strike out again on my own. The country was going to be okay.

It was a false landing.

The reaction of the electorate in 2010 was brutal. It got worse. With today’s trifectas in the state and national governments, Republicans have been dismantling the world we knew. If in 2006 I felt Democrats had arrived, that feeling is gone today as we struggle our way back into a majority, or at least into breaking the trifecta. We can do that, yet the old ways are unlikely to work.

Iowa has been a Republican state for as long as I can remember. As Johnson County Supervisor Rod Sullivan pointed out,

There were only two windows EVER – one in the 1960s and one from ’06-’10 – where Iowa Democrats held a trifecta of the House, Senate, and Governor. Democrats typically did not run things, but made up a large enough minority that the GOP needed them to govern. So compromises were struck. (Sullivan’s Salvos, Nov. 27, 2025 by Rod Sullivan).

I remember the landslide victory of Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and the coattails he had in Iowa and everywhere. The election replaced ten-year incumbent Republican Congressman Fred Schwengel with Democrat John Schmidhauser, for whom my father campaigned. However, the landslide did not have staying power and Schwengel was reelected after Schmidhauser served a single term.

During the 2006 election, Dave Loebsack was elected to Congress and served until January 2021. Notably, Loebsack won in part by running up the voter margin in Johnson County. His successor in the Congress, Mariannette Miller-Meeks buffered the effectiveness of that liberal county, margin-style strategy and won three elections. Loebsack was an effective congressman, yet his success has not yet been replicated.

Where do we go from here? We go on living our best lives.

While Iowa voted for Richard Nixon in 1960, our family was proud to have supported John F. Kennedy and claim him as our president. The national impetus after JFK’s assassination was to elect LBJ and Iowa voted for him and other Democrats like Schmidhauser. It was a landslide like no other in American politics. There will be a similar impetus in the electorate as Republicans overstep their mandate in our present political life. What Republicans are doing already negatively affects so many people I know. Our lives are poorer for their governance and that will not stand.

This time, Democrats must realize any victory lacks permanence. There is no landing platform. If anything voters are more fragmented than ever with the help of computer applications we all use. If Democrats break the trifecta, or gain a majority, we must do everything we can to advance our agenda as quickly as we can, knowing the period of opportunity will have a short half-life. We can win an election, yet permanent change does not appear to be part of the bargain. With staying power off the table, we must work at it both before and after the election. I believe we can do that.

I am hopeful a good life is still possible in Iowa. What I have come to know is it must be lived outside party politics. That’s hard for me to say as I’ve been a partisan most of my life. However, I will grasp the opportunity for a better future wherever together we can make one.