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As a registered Democrat with substantial political experience, former Vice President Joe Biden is welcome to run for president. The question in my precinct is whether he can find enough supporters to achieve viability in the February 2020 precinct caucuses.

In 2008, Biden was not viable on his own, or when his supporters formed a coalition with Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson supporters. He dropped out of the race in January.

During that cycle, we had ample opportunity to meet members of the Biden clan.

I met Jill Biden in nearby Solon during a 2007 non-partisan, multiple candidate event held by the Solon Senior Advocates. She was campaigning for her husband. I met Beau Biden at Old Brick in Iowa City that cycle after he gave a speech. I finally met Joe in Cedar Rapids while he was serving as vice president after a 2010 campaign event for Chet Culver. Joe Biden stayed long after his speech and shook hands with anyone who cared to. His campaigns seemed about what is referred to as the “Biden clan.” Appearances in person, or through a surrogate, were part of the same energy. If you supported him, you became part of that energy, a de facto member of the Biden clan. Some viewed that as a positive.

I recently read Jill Biden’s memoir, Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself, which effectively lays out the meaning of the Biden clan. I didn’t know what to expect when I bought the book, just that I found her personable when I met her. What I found is a well-crafted narrative of a type of American family that when I was younger, I wanted to be part of. That type of family is now fading from our collective imagination. With Biden 3.0 the same energies emanate from their home in Delaware. They don’t seem that spell-binding today.

Evaluating Biden 3.0 involves specific queries.

Do you believe Joe Biden is a fake politician or is he genuine?

When I worked in transportation my supervisor was an active Republican who unexpectedly criticized Biden for his hair transplants. “He’s fake,” he said to me on several occasions, referring to the hair plugs and Biden’s vanity for getting them. That seemed a superficial analysis, even though he had encountered Biden at an airport and confirmed up close the hair looked bad. When I met Biden, I didn’t look at his hairline, but felt the warm handshake and attention he gave me. That’s similar to what other Democrats have mentioned when talking about Biden. I know few Democrats who doubt the genuine nature of Joe Biden’s personality. Nonetheless, it’s a question to answer. He’s the real deal.

Is Biden in it to win it?

On his third attempt to win the Democratic nomination for president, at age 76, life is too short to enter the race to make a point. There is no doubt Biden wants to win. National media reported on Biden clan deliberations about the 2020 opportunity. When he announced, national media gave him good coverage. Because of his near-universal name recognition among Democratic primary voters and caucus-goers, he is running a different type of campaign. Yesterday the Washington Post ran an article titled, “Joe Biden’s campaign of limited exposure: How long can he keep it up?” They summarized the campaign strategy as follows,

With near universal name recognition and high favorability ratings among Democrats, the former vice president does not need to introduce himself to voters like nearly every other candidate. And as the leader in early polls, he can attract media attention without splashy events.

Focused on fundraising instead of early state local events, Biden can appear above the fray. He’s been criticized for this approach, but if the focus is to win, it may be a solid strategy — maybe good enough to see him through Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, and if he wins there, through Super Tuesday.

What about Biden’s record in the U.S. Senate?

People criticize Biden’s work as Senate Judiciary Committee chair during President George H.W. Bush’s nomination of Clarence Thomas as associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The criticism is specifically of Biden’s handling of Anita Hill’s testimony. Such criticism seems justified from a 2019 perspective. What is forgotten is Biden was judiciary chair during President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork as an associate justice. The Bork nomination became famous for Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy’s floor speech within 45 minutes of the nomination, in which he said,

Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, and schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.

Biden did an effective job shepherding rejection of that nomination and should get appropriate credit. As much as the Bork nomination and Kennedy’s speech reflects our politics in 2019, I believe voters and caucus-goers must take Biden’s entire political history into consideration, including his vote for the Iraq War.

Is Joe Biden the same person who stepped on the stage with Barack Obama in Chicago’s Grant Park on Nov. 7, 2008 in front of an estimated million people?

I don’t know. I hope not. He’s gotten older, has eight years of the Obama administration on his resume, and hasn’t spent much time in his third campaign to be president defining policy. He stands out in Iowa for those things.

He hasn’t been a part of the campaign grind we see played out in local media hardly at all. While Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and others have 50 or more organizers on the ground in Iowa, Biden 3.0 appears to be banking on his prior work to gain him the viability he couldn’t find in 2008.

It is fair to ask the question Jill Filipovic did in a May 17 New York Times op-ed, “Does anyone actually want Joe Biden to be President?” It is equally fair to feel badly about asking it after coming into contact with the Biden clan’s energy over so many years.

I like Joe Biden. I don’t like him for president. If he’s nominated, I’ll support him, like I would any of the 24 potential nominees. That’s a feeling many in my political circle of friends have expressed. It will override the tit for tat niggling over candidates when it comes to the general election. At least I hope it does.

The president is said to be considering pardons for convicted war criminals as we go into the Memorial Day weekend.

Jamelle Bouie names some of the criminals under consideration in a New York Times article.

Last year, a federal jury in Washington convicted Nicholas Slatten, a former security contractor, of first-degree murder for his role in killing one of 14 Iraqi civilians who died in 2007 in a shooting that also injured more than a dozen others. Matthew Golsteyn, an Army Green Beret, was charged late last year with the murder of an unarmed Afghan man during a 2010 deployment. Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who served in Iraq, was reported to authorities by his own men, who witnessed him “stabbing a defenseless teenage captive to death,” “picking off a school-age girl and an old man from a sniper’s roost” and “indiscriminately spraying neighborhoods with rockets and machine-gun fire.”

It is the president’s prerogative to grant pardons. What does it say about our country that he picked these men?

It says nothing positive on a day set aside to recognize those who gave their lives for our country.

On Wednesday, May 22, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds line-item vetoed HF 615, the justice system appropriations bill, to remove sections 24 and 28 pertaining to the role of the attorney general.

The law would have “required the approval of the Governor, Executive Council, or Legislature to prosecute any action or proceeding, including signing onto or authoring amicus briefs or letters of support, in any court or tribunal other than an Iowa state court,” according to the press release.

While she vetoed that part of the bill, Reynolds said the law had brought Attorney General Tom Miller into discussions about their respective roles. In the transmittal letter accompanying the bill, Reynolds wrote,

As a result of the Legislature’s leadership on this issue, Attorney General Miller and I have had the opportunity to engage in a thoughtful discussion about the appropriate balance of authority between the Governor and the Attorney General with respect to Iowa’s involvement in litigation. And ultimately, Attorney General Miller agreed to my proposal to adjust our litigation practices in a manner that I believe addresses my core concerns without amending Iowa’s current statutes.

Attorney General Tom Miller said his agreement with the governor was made in good faith,

This agreement allows my office to continue to protect Iowans through consumer enforcement actions, which are primarily filed in Iowa courts. It also allows me to express my opinion on matters affecting Iowans before federal agencies and Congress.

Republicans got the leash out but avoided collaring the popular Miller.

In part, the ability to reasonably negotiate differences between state-wide elected officials is part of what makes Iowa different from nearby states like Wisconsin and Kansas. We look at them and say to ourselves as Iowans, “Dear God! Let’s not be like them.” That Reynolds and Miller were even able to discuss and negotiate a better solution to Republican dislike of his activities is something. It is also something else.

While Miller, first elected in 1978, is the longest serving attorney general in the United States, he will eventually retire or die in office. That he is a Democrat is less important to his longevity than the way he looks after the interests of Iowans. When Miller’s seat becomes an open race to replace him, electing a Democrat is not assured. If anything, the office of attorney general will lean in the direction of state government’s majority party.

There are one-offs like Democratic Auditor Rob Sand, who won statewide election despite Republican dominance in other offices. If Reynolds has the same longevity as Terry Branstad, Democrats holding statewide office may well be sanded off in the woodshed of Republican re-making of the state. By vetoing sections of the HF 615 pertaining to the attorney general, Reynolds is playing the long game in politics, looking after her own interests as much as settling an immediate political dispute.

We live in an open society and Republicans have been working to shape it according to their image. In many ways they have been successful. The longer it is before Democrats win a majority in the legislature and re-take the governor’s office the more permanently Republican initiatives penetrate our culture and become the background against which we live our lives. Democrats failed to stop Republicans in 2018. 2020 remains our last best hope to do so. Flipping the Iowa House of Representatives to Democratic is both doable and a primary goal for Democrats this cycle.

A veil of reasonable envelopes the judiciary budget bill and the settlement between Reynolds and Miller. One hopes the outcome is indeed reasonable, and not the vapid dealings of a Republican party looking out for their own long-term self-interest.

JOHNSON COUNTY, Iowa — If I ranked Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana in the third tier of presidential candidates, why did I attend his town hall meeting five miles west of the Herbert Hoover birthplace in West Branch?

In a field of two dozen Democratic candidates one voter’s personal choice of a candidate is not as important as supporting the eventual nominee. What matters more in Iowa is the senate and congressional races because without a Democratic majority in both chambers of the legislature any Democratic president won’t get much done.

I went to learn about the electorate and who is active this cycle to better serve my campaign work for whoever are the Democratic nominees for Second District congressperson and U.S. Senate. The good news is a lot of people I’d never seen before were in the crowd of several hundred. Everyone was glad to be there despite the body heat in the over-crowded room.

The attraction people have to Buttigieg is palpable. We’re looking for something different and in some ways Mayor Pete is that. He’s young, living in his home town, a Rhodes scholar, a military veteran, goes to church, and is well known in the Democratic party. That’s part of the allure.

He’s also a good orator and handles audience questions with due consideration and aplomb. As I mentioned in my review of his memoir, “he illuminates the example of South Bend and what’s possible in creating a more sustainable life in urban centers.”

Emblematic of today’s town hall meeting was the five panel mural of a bull hanging over the stage, combined with the penetrating aroma of freshly smoked meat and barbecue sauce. If a person enjoyed barbecue one might stick around for dinner service. It had me asking, “where’s the beef?”

It was a pretty skinny cow. Pete Buttigieg has skilled elocution. His ideas are not very deep. He touted newly released policy pages on his website and said his policy roll out was as good as any of his competitors. I’ve never heard any of the women who are presidential candidates refer to others as “competitors.” I suppose we might give that male-ism a pass, but Hillary taught us we are stronger together. The caucus process doesn’t have to be similar to a sports event. A lot more is at stake than the horse race, even if it does generate clicks and serve egos.

The only news out of the town hall meeting was Buttigieg embraced the Citizens Climate Lobby position of adopting a Carbon Fee and Dividend. No matter how dire the environment gets, a president Buttigieg will need a house majority and a filibuster-proof senate majority for a fee and dividend bill to pass. Look at the ability Senator Mitch McConnell developed to block progress when he was minority leader during Obama’s first term.

The real action at the town hall meeting happened outside the main stage and venue. People in line talked about expectations, others thanked a friend for inviting them, families rushed to their vehicles to make the day’s next event. The strength of those relationships is what gives Democrats hope. That combined with what we hope will be an ability to pull together.

I’m glad I had a chance to attend today’s event. In Iowa we don’t know how lucky we are to have a presidential candidate within 15 miles of our home. Based on today, my faith is strong that Democrats will pick an excellent candidate to face off with the incumbent president. I believe we will soon find the wind at our backs lifting our sails toward a better tomorrow. The idea and a lot of hard work will get us there.

~ For conventional coverage of the event read James Q. Lynch here. To view video of the entire event, Robin Kash of Neighborhood Network News posted it here.