Tag: politics

Our county-wide newspaper reported more than 900 people turned out to see and hear U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) speak at the Iowa Memorial Union in Iowa City Wednesday night. Harris is running for president.

She is one of roughly two dozen presidential hopefuls courting Democrats in the run up to the 2020 Iowa precinct caucuses, which are first in the nation among presidential preference polling. In Iowa we don’t call it voting because we don’t want New Hampshire, which has a law requiring them to hold the first in the nation primary election, to get mad. According to the Des Moines Register, there have been about 300 candidate events like Harris’ this election cycle.

Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to be in the Hawkeye State today, visiting the emblematic disaster wrought by government policy in the form of extreme weather and severe flooding made worse by global warming. Pence and his boss are also running for president and today’s disaster walk also serves as a campaign stop, that’s how base our politics has become.

I’m more interested in Democrats.

Iowa has not dealt with political hugster in chief, Joe Biden, who leads Democrats in the recent Monmouth University poll of 350 prospective caucus-goers.

I don’t see the support for Biden. While his 27 percent puts him in front of this murder of crows, it may be a ceiling, subject to being overtaken as the field consolidates. I also don’t believe my cohort wants someone our age as president. That polling calls were split 50-50, landline – mobile, favors a certain kind of sixty- or seventy-something. The kind that likes what is familiar whether Biden or Sanders. But what do I know? I didn’t ask 350 people and am limited by Dunbar’s Number. If curious about the horse race or this poll, click the image above.

Local elected officials seem to be chasing the presidential candidate selfie with gusto. A few electeds have declared for a single candidate, most have not. The sensible plan is to wait until another 300 candidate visits to Iowa have passed and decide by end of summer. Declaring too early can prove to be problematic, especially if the chosen one drops out early. If Iowa is to remain first in the nation, multiple candidate selfies make things seem welcoming and unbiased during the early days of the campaign.

I don’t feel a need to chase candidates to meet with or hear them in person. I understand how video services on the internet work and for the most part, adequate candidate video becomes available after key events. My personal interaction with candidates is important to personal story-telling. I’d like one or two more encounters to add to my repertory of hearing Julián Castro speak bathed in the light of mobile phones during a power outage (click here for my post on the Castro visit). Deciding by Labor Day allows plenty of time to work in my precinct for a chosen candidate. My current post about the Iowa caucuses can be found here.

All this candidate chasing is fine, but the main prize in 2020 will be the U.S. Senate seat currently held by our junior senator, Joni Ernst. According to news reports, she has $2.8 million campaign cash on hand for the election. Democrats haven’t picked a candidate to challenge Ernst and aren’t expected to finalize a decision until after the 2020 summer primary. We’re starting the race with shackles binding our ankles, but that doesn’t mean we can’t pull an upset. Regaining control of the U.S. Senate is essential to hopes of implementing a Democratic agenda in the federal government under a Democratic president.

When I look at the 24 candidates identified in the Monmouth University poll there are only a few about which I’m interested in hearing more. In no particular order, they are Castro, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Jay Inslee. The ten with less than one percent support in the poll should read the writing on the wall and gracefully make their way to the exits. As for me, I’ll be seeking opportunities to post about the campaign as I attend more events, midst a life of staying active in society. Staying active is about a lot more than politics.

On Saturday the Iowa Democratic Party Central Committee addressed the complaint national media and other states have had about an opaqueness of our first in the nation precinct caucuses.

“This year we proposed the most significant changes to the Iowa Caucuses since 1972,” according to the IDP website. “We are confident that these proposed changes will make the Iowa Caucuses the most accessible, transparent, and successful caucuses ever.”

It looks like the state party will release raw support tallies (i.e. not votes) for the first time since Iowa rose to prominence in the wake of the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The Chicago convention brought us Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, the last nominee to emerge from a smoke-filled room.

My friend from the 2007-2008 John Edwards campaign David Redlawsk wrote the book (with others) on the Iowa Caucuses, Why Iowa? People don’t always buy the authors’ answers. I land with my friend and fellow Democrat John Deeth who settled for 10 percent and accepted the IDP changes.

As an Iowan more active than most in Democratic politics, I acknowledge the decreasing significance of what we do in the presidential horse race. While we get to see a number of presidential hopefuls, and garner media attention in the run up to caucus night, the early presidential nominating process includes not only the four early states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — but Super Tuesday (this time on March 3, 2020) when a number of states and U.S. territories hold their presidential primaries. The idea that Iowa would winnow the field of presidential hopefuls is less true than it was because of this.

Clearly there are more than two or three tickets out of Iowa this cycle as smart candidates are already campaigning in California, Texas, and other Super Tuesday states. If viable, they will continue at least that far. It is an easy prediction that the nomination will be winnowed down to two after Super Tuesday, and this year, maybe even to The One.

It’s also true that winning Iowa alone is not enough. John Edwards put almost all the chips on the table to win Iowa and when he came in second in delegate count, he had to scramble to cover South Carolina and Nevada with organizers. Whatever the tallies in the four early states, whatever number spinning takes place, a rationale for continuing has to be credible even with new momentum toward Super Tuesday.

The Democratic National Committee did the first funnel for us already by requiring participants in the first summer debate to secure at least 65,000 unique donors of any dollar amount. Some may grumble about money in politics or “insiders” controlling who’s viable and not, however, number of donations is a fair and transparent measure of viability. I gave small donations to eight candidates I’d like to see on the debate stage. I don’t know if any of them will be my final choice on caucus night.

The 2008 caucus, the closest to level of participation we might see in 2020, was a nightmare from my perspective. The room wasn’t big enough and I chose to both be a precinct captain for John Edwards and help my friend Bob run the event. Doing both proved to be impossible. We had only about 260 attendees.

We put the Edwards group in the hallway, partly because we had so many infirm and elderly in wheel chairs, but also because there wasn’t enough room in the main room to count. I had to count attendees multiple times, which got everyone mad at me, with accusations that my true purpose was to recruit more people for the Edwards camp. In the end, after the final alignment, Obama had 85 people, and Clinton and Edwards split the rest equally, requiring a coin toss to see who got an extra delegate. (Hillary won the coin toss). Once delegate assignments to the county convention were finished, the mass exodus left Bob and me struggling to fill our precinct’s allocated committee positions.

The Iowa caucuses in presidential years are not as much about organizing the party. There is a legitimate issue with finding enough rooms to adequately accommodate caucus-goers, so it would be great if people caucused virtually instead of showing up to name their candidate, then go home without further ado. To say the actual caucus helps organize the party is inaccurate, it doesn’t. If there wasn’t a shortage of people interested in training to run a caucus, I’d participate virtually and let go the reins.

Iowa retained first in the nation status this year partly because IDP was forced to listen and make the caucuses more inclusive and transparent. Having done that, we have an avalanche of presidential hopefuls arriving in the state. My main goal is to keep focus on what I believe is the prize (the contest for U.S. Senator) and avoid getting trampled by the donkey stampede. In my favor is experience, which will hopefully prevent me from picking unnecessary fights.

Our county Democratic party held it’s odd-numbered year meeting last night.

We had little choice in the matter as the call came from state Democratic party chair Troy Price:

The Iowa Democratic Party calls upon each County Party to hold an Odd-Numbered Year Meeting, often called “Off-Year Caucus,” within the first quarter of the year of 2019.

The purpose of the Odd-Numbered Year Meeting is to nominate committee persons to fill precinct vacancies, to discuss priorities regarding platform resolutions, and to begin precinct-level planning for the remaining year.

This call is in accordance with the Iowa Democratic Party Constitution, Article II, Section 4 and has been issued by me as the Chair and approved by the State Central Committee.

All Odd-Numbered Year Meetings must be held by March 31, Price added, continuing the excessive use of capital letters. Bold type is mine.

Former State Senator Bob Dvorsky chaired our meeting. The chair and everyone who was a committee person was re-nominated and elected for another term. Our liberal central committee is mostly about fund raising, volunteer recruitment, and servicing the policy peccadilloes of central committee members. Thanks to the experience and efficiency of our chair, tedium, while present, was kept to a minimum.

State Representative Mary Mascher reported on the recently finished “funnel week” at the state house. There was good, bad and ugly. With Republicans in charge, there was more than enough bad and ugly to go around. As Mascher said, “Republicans took the fun out of funnel.”

There were legitimate victories for everyone in clearing bills from committees. Particularly important was HF608 which would create a uniform process in Iowa for determining which absentee ballots sent via U.S. Postal Service would be counted. Also important was a bill working toward a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights to felons once they paid their debt to society. Contrary to what we can read on social media, it is possible for Democrats and Republicans in the legislature to work together on common goals, and they do. Wish they would do more of it on key issues where we disagree.

Toward the end of the meeting, county chair Chris Taylor kicked off a discussion of deterioration of Democratic presence in rural areas. I piggy-backed onto his comments as did half a dozen others who represent rural communities on the central committee. I had previously explained the challenge Democrats have in rural precincts and quoted some of those election results in my short speech. Results of the recent special election of County Supervisor Royceann Porter place the rural-urban divide in sharp contrast.

It’s not that party officials don’t want to slow or stop the deterioration of support from rural voters, they do. County auditor Travis Weipert asked me after the meeting what could be done about the problem. Answers are hard to come by but it boils down to inclusiveness.

Part of the problem is an often-repeated narrative about electoral margins for which party officials pat themselves on the back. The narrative is a false one in the sense that if Johnson County and it’s margins were removed from statewide results in recent elections, those results would not change. The narrative does little to improve inclusiveness in the county and should be abandoned.

The county party should create a positive, welcoming environment for people who aren’t as involved in politics as central committee members are. Almost all Iowans spend some fraction of their time on politics and the rest of it avoiding the p-word. Democrats should hold signature events — the fall barbecue, the hall of fame induction — while realizing they have little impact on rank and file members of the community. When it gets to caucus day next February, regardless of the outcome, every Democrat should feel like their time was well spent trying to make a difference. As a first time caucus-goer told the group in 2018, “we have to do something.”

If I could recruit a replacement on the central committee, I would. I fill the seat because no one at our caucus would take the job. I’ll continue to recruit someone, all the while knowing it’s possible to flip the precinct from giving Trump a win in 2016 back to a place that elected Obama twice. It will take work and everyone being included. Staying in touch with the urban Democrats is part of that, although not a big one. The odd year caucus puts that in relief.