Politics mostly social commentary.
It was a perfect day for inspecting the roof and cleaning gutters. No wind and moderate temperatures, the whole job took less than 15 minutes. At age 70, I feel confident climbing the ladder to do this work. I’m not yet ready to pay someone a hundred bucks to do this 15-minute job. I don’t know how many more years I will continue.
I took a traditional photo of the garden.
Not much to say today, or any day before the midterm election. Here’s a photo of my front yard with leaves piling up. It’s great mulch for the garlic and more work to do! Thanks for reading.
Requests to vote by mail in the Nov. 8 election declined by 39 percent over 2018, the last midterm election. Republicans have successfully suppressed early voting by mail in Johnson County. Democrats are advising people to vote early in person if they have to, instead of risking the uncertainties of the United States Postal Service. An average 836 voters per day are voting early at the county administration building. With 14 days left, it seems unlikely early voting, especially in Big Grove precinct, will reach the level of 2018. It’s still early, yet if that holds true, it will be problematic for Democrats who are already in the minority in our House and Senate districts.
We cast our ballots at the administration building yesterday after returning from Des Moines. I’ll walk in the university homecoming parade on Friday with Mike Franken who is in the county most of the day. I’m door knocking with Kevin Kinney’s campaign this weekend. I sent in my last letters to newspaper editors for this cycle. I volunteered to be a Democratic poll watcher and the training is next week. In 2020 Republicans sent no poll watcher to our precinct even though most of their voters cast a ballot on election day. I don’t expect any trouble, yet there are stories of voter intimidation. These are the last days of the campaign and it feels a bit eerie, like we are not yet over the pandemic.
After the general election I expect my Twitter use will change. Instead of using the platform for editorializing, I expect to revert to news gathering as its primary function. That’s to be expected after a long campaign season.
It is also a reaction to Elon Musk’s potential acquisition of the social media platform. We don’t need oligarchs structuring our social media any more than they already are.
There is also this from the Washington Post:
Twitter’s workforce is likely to be hit with massive cuts in the coming months, no matter who owns the company, interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Post show, a change likely to have major impact on its ability to control harmful content and prevent data security crises.
Washington Post, Oct. 20, 2022.
Whether or not this is accurate, I don’t know. Musk told the newspaper he would seek new ways of extracting revenue from the platform once the acquisition is consummated. It would be another blow to the foundational attractions of social media.
More than anything, composing a tweet helps me think things through and put ideas into words. Sometimes the process is successful, sometimes not so much. It seems essential to a writer to have some method of taking abstract, random contemporary experience and render it into something meaningful. Twitter accomplishes that, even if it is not the only methodology I use.
While working on my autobiography last winter, the writing process served as Twitter does, arguably to more useful purpose. I would locate some artifact or piece of writing, then think through what it meant in context of my narrative. I would either incorporate or discard it. I’ll need Twitter less for this type of function as I return to autobiography.
When I referred to Twitter use as having a news gathering function, I mean a person can follow specific people writing about current affairs without the structure of a news organization. I read seven newspapers yet it also matters what Jane Mayer, Naomi Oreskes, Elizabeth Kolbert and others have to say. If they have written something new, they are likely to post it on Twitter soon after publication. The same is true of a number of journalists and commentators I follow. This puts me ahead of the news curve.
There is a human side of Twitter. I met many of the 180 people I follow in real life and have a relationship with them. I would miss updates from them. At the same time a lot of accounts I follow are utilitarian in nature. Someone is running for office, or is important for a project, and there is a timeline on their useful nature. There will be a purging after the election.
After the election, I expect to protect my tweets to minimize the tweet-crashing experience and focus on what I want to say and write there. Life seems too short for distractions.
I haven’t studied how much time I spend on Twitter yet by reducing its use, I should free valuable time for other projects. There is an addictive quality to the platform. While aging I need less addictions. In my post-pandemic retirement, I also yearn for connection with people. That feeling will grow as I age.
I joined Twitter in September 2008 after our child graduated college and left Iowa. I needed a way to stay in touch. Twitter was okay for that, even if I feel a bit like a lurker. Lurking is actually a good thing on social media platforms like Twitch. One hopes our real life relationship continues more than our social media one.
I’ll remain on Twitter for now and see how the Musk deal proceeds. One useful function is to refer people to this website to read my posts. That may be reason enough to stay.
When a person lives in Iowa it is hard to avoid noticing the harvest.
74 percent of Iowa soybeans and 38 percent of corn had been harvested as of Oct. 17. We are running a few days ahead of historical averages because it has been exceedingly dry. The entire state is experiencing drought conditions. I held off burning the brush pile because there is a Red Flag Warning, which means extreme fire conditions combined with high wind and low relative humidity. Everything is parched.
As I write this post on a Saturday afternoon, the ambient temperature is 78 degrees with a high of 82 expected in a couple of hours. The average high temperature here is 61 degrees in October. For Oct. 22, it is warm. One needn’t be a scientist to understand something is going on.
On Thursday I delivered my spouse to her sister’s place in Des Moines. We had a lot to talk about as we passed fields with farmers harvesting corn and beans. Between Williamsburg and Altoona, Interstate 80 is a hinterland of row crops, wind turbines and the detritus of retail establishments grown up to service a few locals, but mostly travelers. Towns and cities are hidden from sight.
On the way back, I turned on the car radio and began searching for channels. I avoided the religious stations and settled on a couple of country music and classic rock programs to help me make it back within range of my usual ones. From the ads, it became clear that Republicans dominate rural Iowa.
Governor Kim Reynolds has a substantial campaign war chest and attorney general candidate Brenna Bird just got a major donation from the Republican Attorneys General Association to defeat incumbent Tom Miller. These two Republicans have money to burn on their campaigns. The radio ads repeated during my trip. Whether any farmers were listening while running the combines and grain wagons, I don’t know. Republican messaging filled the vacuum left by Democrats.
To be effective, radio advertising must exist and be repetitive. In the Iowa hinterlands, it is the domain of statewide candidates and big money. Tom Miller was unlikely planning to spend millions on his campaign. Republicans are trying to buy an attorney general.
Our gubernatorial candidate, Deidre DeJear, simply doesn’t have the money for radio advertising even though it is cheap. My worry is her television advertising goes dark as we enter the last two weeks of the campaign, leaving Republicans the only voices heard there as well. During the primary, another Democratic candidate for governor dropped out of the race because he couldn’t get a meeting with major Democratic donors.
As the miles fell behind me the ads repeated. Running down President Biden and associating the Democratic candidates with him because of his unpopularity. Every sentence repeated was a pack of lies. When it is the only political voice rural people hear, it’s hard to stand up to it.
The election is in 17 days. Whatever the outcome, we have to do better to dig out of the hole we dug for ourselves. It’s possible, yet without the rural areas, I’m not sure how that happens.
Some days it is best to just be.
The first batch of results from the new Iowa Poll are in. Retired Admiral Michael Franken has closed the distance between him and incumbent U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley to within the margin of error, 43-46 percent.
“It says to me that Franken is running a competent campaign and has a shot to defeat the seemingly invincible Chuck Grassley — previously perceived to be invincible,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co. which conducted the poll, to the Des Moines Register.
The race is closer than any Grassley faced since he was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1980. The difference may be in so-called independent voters turning away from Grassley toward Franken.
Active voter registrations in Iowa were 1,867,161 on Oct. 3. Of these, 596,776 were Democratic, 684,800 were Republican, and 570,789 were No Party (independent), along with 14,796 others. A candidate must do well with No Party voters to win Iowa elections. In July, No Party voters were evenly split between the candidates. In the new Iowa Poll, they favor Franken by 46 to 35 percent or 11 points. The movement is substantial and important. If no party voters continue to break for Franken, Grassley’s long tenure in the U.S. Senate could be coming to an end.
The race leans Republican as we enter the final three weeks before the Nov. 8 election, with early voting starting on Wednesday, Oct. 19. A lot can happen in three weeks.
As the results of the Iowa Poll trickle out over the coming days, political activists will decide how to spend the remaining time before the election. Since the coordinated campaign was eliminated this cycle, Franken has his own operation, tactics and processes to chase and identify voters. To align with Franken now is to spend less time working on other campaigns. Yet, a race this close is encouragement enough to work to get Michael Franken over the finish line.
The Des Moines Register announced the first installment of their annual pre-election Iowa Poll will be released at 6 p.m. on Saturday. The poll is by Selzer & Co., and is usually an accurate predictor of the results of the general election. They will begin with online release of the polling results for the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Republican Chuck Grassley and Democrat Mike Franken. Grassley is expected to lead in the poll. The question is by how much.
Hands down, the main issue among voters this cycle is the economy. Yesterday’s Consumer Price Index reported year-over-year the index rose by 8.2 percent, which number is typically used as the rate of inflation. President Joe Biden said in a statement, “Today’s report shows some progress in the fight against higher prices, even as we have more work to do. Inflation over the last three months has averaged 2 percent, at an annualized rate. That’s down from 11 percent in the prior quarter.”
Because of a higher CPI, Social Security benefits recipients will get an 8.7 percent increase in 2023. This takes the sting out of inflation for pensioners, which in Iowa are 17.7 percent of the population according to the 2020 U.S. Census.
The unknown this cycle is how overturning Roe vs Wade in the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision will impact the election. There are reports of more women registering to vote, and they are expected to turn out. How they will vote is another question, except that Iowans will be Iowans with an expectation new voters will follow their party. That is, unless Dobbs changed their minds.
I’m not sure yet don’t believe women will discuss reproductive rights honestly with an anonymous pollster. The issue will be a jump ball in Iowa and elsewhere. Getting church-goers to register to vote and support anti-abortion candidates was a key characteristic of the 2016 Iowa elections when Senator Ted Cruz won the Republican caucus and Donald Trump won the state by significant margins in both 2016 and 2020. More women registering to vote could mean more support for a statewide abortion ban.
The Democratic ground game is not going as well as I had hoped. The state party eliminated the coordinated campaign this cycle and as a result campaigns are reaching out to me individually because I have been active in the past. In the last 72 hours, there have been many distinct requests to volunteer in multiple ways. I can only work on one campaign at a time.
I’m a precinct captain and that carries some unique requirements as well. In a coordinated campaign Democrats would all pull in a single direction, as much as we ever do. That’s not what’s going on now with campaigns competing for a limited pool of experienced canvassers.
A caller on Thursday asked me to join in door knocking this coming Saturday in North Liberty. I asked how they were approaching my precinct and the other eight rural precincts in House District 91. They had no answer. That leads me to use what information I have to canvass my own precinct apart from the county party effort. In the end, what happens close to home matters as much as the broader statewide and national results. I hope to stanch the changeover to being a solidly Republican precinct. The 2022 midterms may be my last chance.
Before the big poll I don’t see how Democrats will win any statewide races. At the same time, I’m hopeful Mike Franken will win as U.S. Senator. The Iowa Poll will show the way. I’m also hoping to elect a few Democrats locally, the ones who have the wherewithal to find enough no-preference and Republican voters to vote for them and overcome the Republican advantage. I’m not sure the Iowa Poll is relevant to that. I’ll be clicking on the link to the poll shortly after it is posted.
The election will be here before we know it and voters are forming into camps. I encourage anyone eligible to vote to do so. We should participate in our country’s governance because we can.
What I can’t abide is the money in politics. It is like the wind yet what you hear is the sound of money changing hands as the wealthy try to buy the election.
Christina Bohannan is getting hammered by false ads paid for by a group called Congressional Leadership Fund Super PAC which is approved by Republican leadership in the Congress. They reported more than $109 million income this election cycle and spent more than $774,000 against Bohannan thus far, according to OpenSecrets.org. They are only one PAC.
What makes this Super PAC despicable is dark money groups, that don’t have to disclose donors, raise funds then contribute to this Super PAC that does. One might call it dark money laundering except they don’t come clean.
Super PACs shouldn’t be able to feed lies into our political discourse with impunity. A vote for Democrat Christina Bohannan for Congress is a vote for sensible campaign contribution reform, a vote for hard-working Iowans’ values.
~Published online in the Newton Daily News on Oct. 11, 2022
At the Oct. 6 U.S. Senate debate, each candidate had their points. Incumbent Chuck Grassley explained his daily work schedule when Congress is in session and said he would bring more of the same if reelected. Retired Navy Admiral Michael Franken brought youth, experience, and new ideas. Fans of each candidate had to find something to like.
I had more than a dozen conversations with Franken on every topic I could think of, beginning with his run in the 2020 Democratic primary. He is what he says he is. He has thoughtful, informed proposals to address many of today’s political, social, and foreign affairs problems. The smear tactics of dark money in our politics wash right off him. It is likely because he was an effective leader at the highest level of the U.S. military.
It was surprising that overturning Roe vs. Wade became an issue this election cycle. If you oppose government intervention between a woman and her doctor, and support reproductive freedom, Franken is your candidate.
I’m voting for Michael Franken Nov. 8. I hope you will too.
~ Submitted as a letter to the editor of the Des Moines Register.
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