Tag: politics

BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP, Iowa — This headline in this morning’s Boston Globe says it well, “Clinton and Trump are now the presumptive nominees. Get used to it.”

Author James Pindell attributes the appellation to math.

“They have accumulated more delegates than any other candidates in their parties for the national conventions,” he wrote. “Both won three of four early contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. Not a single candidate with those win records has ever lost his or her party’s nomination in modern presidential political history.”

Presumptive. Get used to it. Got it.

While few saw Trump coming a year ago, people have been saying Hillary Clinton was the likely Democratic nominee for president since before she announced on April 12, 2015. They were right then and now.

The nominating process set up by Democrats after the debacle of 1968 is working. It fielded a group of candidates, winnowed the field, and is moving rapidly toward nominating Clinton. Clinton needs 2,383 delegates to the July 25 national convention to win. After last night she has 1,001 to Bernie Sanders’ 371. With the remaining delegates, Sanders needs to do much better than Clinton. But for the details of how the race plays out, as Pindell indicated, it is over.

In Iowa the Super Tuesday result means as soon as Sanders bows out, needed revenue from the Clinton campaign can begin to flow to the Iowa Democratic Party. My quote of Iowa politico Jerry Crawford from last year bears repeating.

“In all the races I’ve been involved with of various kinds it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,” Crawford said on Iowa Press. “Iowa, the Iowa Democratic Party, our ticket in this state desperately needs the general election assets that Hillary Clinton will bring as our party’s standard bearer. That’s the way we recover from what was a very, very tough 2014 election.”

As I wrote at the time, the coordinated campaign should be blown up and re-invented. It’s money that holds us back. Democrats are damned if we raise it and damned if we don’t.

One of the successes of the Iowa Republican Party since Jeff Kaufmann took the reins has been generating cash for operations. Democrats in a donor poor state still rely on the presidential candidate, and partly because of it, the race has focused disproportionately on electing the president. As my own data crunching during the 2012 race affirms, a winning president doesn’t have enough coat tails to carry all of the down ticket races in Iowa. If he did, my state house candidate would have won his race. This is a basic problem with Iowa Democratic politics: not enough money and too much focus on the presidential horse race. A corollary is not bringing enough new people into the party.

People suggest retaining the new people Bernie Sanders recruited to his campaign is important, and it is.

At the same time, each electorate is different and there is no expectation everyone who voted or caucused for Sanders in the primary will continue to be involved in a general election campaign for Hillary. The idea we should “do things” to retain them is ridiculous and counter productive. The narrative of momentum and a linear procession from announcement to primary to election is a bankrupt one. People will make their general election decision based on information available to them as election day approaches.

The power of politics has more to do with what people we know are doing. To the extent the power and influence of national media can be mitigated, voters will make a sound decision. However, media continues to shape opinions to the extent Republicans I know are trying to accommodate a Trump vote despite his demagoguery. It’s the media that puts them in this situation.

As the case of Trump indicates, elections no longer are about logic and reasonableness. To elect a candidate we each must work to influence people in our circles. As we march to the finish of another presidential election it is important to remember we have a sphere of influence… and to pay no attention to that man behind the curtain pulling the levers.

This week, former Iowa Secretary of Agriculture and former Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge said she is considering a run in the June 7 primary to be the Democratic candidate to challenge incumbent U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley. The filing period begins Monday and ends March 18.

If Judge enters the race, that would make four contenders, each of whom I know better than most politicians. Based on many conversations with all four, I plan to vote for Rob Hogg, a current state senator, author and climate advocate.

Tom Fiegen, a bankruptcy attorney, is running in the primary. Like fellow candidate Bob Krause, a former military officer and defense contractor, Fiegen challenged Roxanne Conlin in the 2010 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, placing third of three candidates with 6,357 votes. Krause was ahead of Fiegen with 8,728 votes. Both lost to Conlin, the clear leader who garnered 52,715 votes that election.

Six years later Fiegen and Krause are running again. Fiegen has become a Sanders Democrat, hitching his wagon to the revolution Bernie Sanders asserts is needed. Bob Krause is, well, Bob Krause, a man with an irresistible urge to run for office, not unlike Saul Bellow’s character Henderson the Rain King, with a personal quality “that manifests itself as an inner voice crying out I want, I want, I want.” I like them both, but as I said, will be voting for Hogg. Judge should stay out of the race unless she has something new to offer.

The discussion about a replacement for the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court of the United States has generated anti-Grassley sentiment. The general election campaign should be heated. It will be almost impossible for Grassley to avoid addressing his obstruction in this because Republicans have put the Senate Judiciary Committee he chairs front and center, saying they won’t even consider an Obama nominee.

It will take more than moral outrage to defeat Chuck Grassley in the general election. Grassley has a token primary opponent who will likely be vanquished. I don’t see much outrage directed toward Grassley in society beyond social media. Without that the race is an open question. Whether Democrats can get beyond commenting on blogs and in social media to organize is unknown at this time. I am hopeful — some, tempered with realism.

Filing closes at 5 p.m. on March 18 when the primary races will be defined. Until then, there will not be a lot of action, just work — sustaining a life in a turbulent world.

Last night I attended a local food exhibition at Montgomery Hall on the Johnson County Fairgrounds, hosted by the county supervisors. Lots of people I know were there, including some mentioned in my last post.

It was an hour to catch up, caesura after the intense final week of working on turnout and planning for our Iowa Democratic caucus.

The caucuses produced a maelstrom of social media commentary in both parties. Because the Democratic caucus was a statistical tie, all kinds of claims are being made. My thoughts on this tempest in a teapot is it’s over and the state party has certified the results.

Since all of the people who led the more than 1,600 caucuses reported their delegate counts to the party, it would be easy to count them again and compare them with what candidate precinct captains reported to their respective campaigns. There’s no reason not to. In my case, I listened while our caucus chair phoned in his results and they match mine. The Sanders and O’Malley precinct captains were offered the same opportunity. At the same time, it was not a straw poll or election that can be audited. There was no voting even if some in the corporate media want to characterize it as such.

I am neutral about whether Iowa is first in the nation or not. There is plenty of good work to do outside politics if we aren’t. Nothing lasts forever, including Iowa’s first in the nation status.

George McGovern did Iowa a great service after the 1968 Democratic convention when he led the effort to revise a broken nominating process. Back then, presidential candidates were decided in smoke-filled rooms. How could we forget Chicago Mayor Richard Daily’s suppression of protesters outside the convention? That was the year Harold Hughes ran for president and I’ve discussed the convention with someone who was with Hughes in Chicago. The nominating process was controlled less by votes and more by aging white men behind the scenes. Eventual nominee Hubert Humphrey was the last of the old-style nominees, and McGovern’s work produced a superior process.

I don’t think the Iowa caucuses are broken, as some have asserted. Johnson County Supervisor Rod Sullivan suggested people don’t understand the process, and I agree. As a precinct leader for Hillary Clinton, I must have explained parts of the caucus math and delegate process to people in our corner a dozen times. They still didn’t get it. The tactics of caucuses require a bit of arcane preparation and execution, as I described previously. Most important to party building is getting the turnout and having the conversation.

The close result between Clinton and Sanders this cycle, combined with consistently great Democratic turnouts in 2008 and this year highlight a need for the Iowa Democratic Party to fix its outdated process. Caucus yes, but continue to make the process more accessible and less byzantine.

Party leaders should focus on party building. That means continuing to bring people into the Democratic party, a purpose the caucuses are serving well. It also means developing funding streams less reliant upon the presidential nominee and grounded in the people in Iowa. The latter is tough to do in this donor poor state, and tough to do with the rise of the paid political class of organizers, consultants, advertising agencies, data crunchers and logisticians wanting compensation.

Can volunteers drive the election of a president, federal offices and governor? I’m not sure if that is a nostalgic filter on life, taking the current reality out of focus, or a real possibility. In any case, I continue to believe the coordinated campaign, in which presidential resources come to Iowa to prop up the donor poor Democratic party should be blown up.

I know change is possible and needed. I also know I’m not the only one in the party that thinks so.

Iowa Democrats did their job at the Feb. 1 first in the nation political caucuses.

The field was winnowed from six candidates (Chafee, Clinton, Lessig, O’Malley, Sanders and Webb) to two (Clinton and Sanders), giving Hillary Clinton a narrow, historic victory.

Our precinct played a role, and not an insignificant one, in producing that victory.

Hillary Clinton was the first woman to win the Iowa caucus — another glass ceiling broken. The caucus results are close. How close? It’s a matter of a couple of delegates with all but one of the state’s 1,683 precincts reporting, according to the Iowa Democratic Party. It is unclear whether the Sanders campaign will request a recount, but I doubt it. There are bigger fish to fry.

Iowa also played a role in setting which issues would be front and center in the 2016 presidential election. Even the anti-billionaire money in politics candidate Bernie Sanders gave an unintended nod to billionaire Tom Steyer’s advocacy to put climate action on the front burner of the contest. While issues aren’t the same as the horse race, they matter and Iowa matters in defining them.

The caucuses will be analyzed in great detail in the next 48 hours, so I have only a couple of things to add.

I begin with the lesson learned while attending the Democracy for America training in elections: winning an election is getting 50 percent of the vote plus one. The DFA method puts what happened in our precinct into higher relief, as through planning and competent execution of the tactical plan, our team for Hillary turned out more voters than expected, and provided Martin O’Malley his only delegate from Johnson County, and one of the few he got in the state. By giving O’Malley a delegate, it was taken from the Bernie Sanders group, giving Clinton a 2-1 victory over Sanders in Big Grove precinct. In a tight race, that one delegate mattered.

Here are the numbers.

Big Grove turned out 165 voters this cycle. We turned out 92 people for Clinton, the same number Obama had in 2008. In 2008, there were 75 Clinton supporters, a tie with John Edwards, and Clinton won the second delegate that year with a coin toss. For perspective, we turned out 242 during the six-way race Obama won in 2008. Our turnout last night was 69.2 percent of 2008’s record. Clinton had 56 percent of people at the caucus last night compared to 38 percent for Obama in 2008.

At the first alignment I reported these numbers to the Clinton campaign:

Clinton – 92
Sanders – 57
O’Malley – 10
Uncommitted – 6

This count would split the delegates two for Clinton and two for Sanders, with O’Malley not being viable. At the second alignment we sent our negotiating team to talk to O’Malley, with the Sanders representatives standing next to ours.

To get a third delegate we had one option. We needed to take people from Sanders and they were holding firm except for three people who moved to O’Malley. I did the analysis, ratified it with our team, and determined that by giving O’Malley 12 people their team would be viable and the delegate would come from Sanders.

I explained our proposal to the Clinton group and it was easy to get 12 volunteers to go to the O’Malley camp, since they understood the logic, if not the byzantine methodology. We executed the tactic, producing the following report to the Clinton campaign.

Clinton – 80
Sanders – 56
O’Malley – 25
Uncommitted – 0

Standing next to my neighbor and caucus chair, he phoned in two delegates for Clinton, one for O’Malley and one for Sanders to the state party system. This was our fourth presidential caucus working together and we were the last to leave the Middle School.

I haven’t digested everything that happened last night, although I was proud of the effort team Hillary put forward in our precinct. We ended up door knocking our entire precinct on Sunday, and that last minute extra effort had to have made a difference in turnout and the final result.

From here, let the pundits, bloggers and news reporters tell their story. The 2016 Iowa caucuses are in the books, and it is up to the remaining 49 states to decide who our Democratic nominee will be.

Whoever that is, I’ll feel comfortable going back to this year’s caucus attendees to ask for help in the general election campaign. No unity party needed here.

There is plenty of time to think about things when door knocking a rural precinct. Houses are spread out, and typically there is a long walk from the road to the dwelling. Sometimes you can’t even find where people live on a farmstead, or the family moved away.

I had a finger wave and waved back.One couple stopped to ask me what I was doing at a friend’s house. Society is palpable even if there aren’t many people around. Politics here is more about the county than the president.

One woman saw me coming from the street  and said to the elderly man sitting on the front porch, “tell him you can’t hear.” Turned out I’d bought straw from this farm several years ago and we had more in common than expected. We had a good chat although I never got to speak to my target, the octogenarian mother inside. “We’re not caucusers,” one said. They dislike the party business part of the caucus and would likely vote in a primary if there were one.

Everyone has made up their mind on this walk list. I’m glad I went out. What I thought about most is how personal politics was to most of the people I met today. It’s like fresh cut firewood one person was burning in an open pit, the smell permeating my clothing and getting into my lungs. It would be a mistake to say we aren’t all connected. And that’s a hope we should share for getting through these turbulent times.

Stuff is getting real as we enter the last days before the first in the nation Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1.

The Democratic race has been somewhat dull and uninspiring. Set aside the hubris-imbued early drop-outs (Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb), those in the race, Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders, bring little we don’t already know to the political discussion.

Although there are differences between the candidates, the 2016 election is about one thing: retaining a Democrat in the office of president. Err… two things… funding the Democratic campaign effort with cash in donor poor states like Iowa being the other. People tend to forget the latter because by and large few engage in party work other than during the final days before elections.

The good news is recent analysis showing Iowa is expected to retain four congressional seats after the 2020 census. The other news is our races for congress will continue to be competitive. With three of four seats being held by Republicans, 2016 will be pivotal in determining whether Democrats can retain the second district and maybe pick up first and third if the planets align, we recognize the opportunity, and execute upon it. Democratic chances to pick up a seat or two diminish outside the presidential election years. We will have to work smart and hard to keep what we have and maybe add one or two Democratic congress members in 2016.

The U.S. Senate? Unless incumbent candidate Chuck Grassley does something radically different for him, he holds the upper hand before the November general election. A well financed insurgent campaign could end his too long run. State Senator Rob Hogg offers the best hope for doing that among the three current contenders in the June 7 Democratic primary. Retreads Bob Krause and Tom Fiegen are also running with little change since they were last defeated in their primary with Democrat Roxanne Conlin. Fiegen has gone all in trying to grab the coattails of Bernie Sanders. Whether that will work, whether more detailed positions than appear on his website, especially his position regarding a woman’s right to choose, would gain traction among voters in the general election is an open question.

Eight days from the Iowa Caucus, the Democratic presidential race is too close to call.

This is a season of pollsters, and clouds have risen above the two leading Democratic candidates for president. Like with our warming planet, the political atmosphere absorbs more moisture because it is warmer, and when turbulence and precipitation come, it may be a gully-washer, clearing the field.

I don’t want to be dismissive of O’Malley, but what else is there to do? The gent has no chance of winning the Democratic nomination for president. I expect him to drop out on or before Super Tuesday. Prove me wrong on that, maybe say a prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe for a miracle.

Hillary Clinton’s main challenge is whether or not voters find her trustworthy. Along with that is the unspoken (at least in public) issue of her female gender.

As the Des Moines Register pointed out in yesterday’s endorsement of Clinton, “no other candidate can match the depth or breadth of her knowledge and experience.” This harkens back to September when I decided to support Clinton for president, in part because of her knowledge and experience. Along with her global advocacy for women and children, and the potential to appoint multiple Supreme Court Justices, my decision was practical: pick the candidate with the best qualifications for the job. As others have pointed out, the practical vs. idealistic discussion is one voters are having. Based on people I talk with, the number of realists and idealists seems about even today.

We won’t hear so much about the fact Clinton is female, but opposition to a female president runs deep, not only near where I live, but across Iowa and the country. Expect this to come up during the general election, but whispering has already begun.

As far as being trustworthy, WYSIWYG with Clinton. She is unlike the Republican field in the Greek Drama politics has become in the corporate and social media. She wears a complex wardrobe of masks asserting her policy positions. If one looks behind the masks, at her core she is a Democrat, and likely a better pick than her husband was back in 1992.

What about Bernie Sanders? When I met him at a Johnson County Democrats event in 2014 I liked everything I heard. The Des Moines Register endorsement of Hillary Clinton lays out the case against Sanders — the unanswered question of how he might gain traction for his policy ideas in the stalemated political partner that is the U.S. Congress. He has had no answers to this criticism other than the need for a political revolution.

Like with Clinton, a whisper campaign about Sanders has begun, and can be expected to increase should he win the Democratic nomination. There are two things: “he’s a socialist,” and “he’s a Jew.”

Sanders describes himself as a “Democratic socialist,” but expect this to get morphed into “socialist” or the more disparaging “communist” in the general election. This is less whisper campaign than a reflection of Sanders unwillingness to embrace conventional politics. I believe we can weather the storm on this one should Sanders be the nominee. I’d like it more if he signed up for the Democratic party other than as its potential nominee, but elections are about compromise. I’ll let go of that one.

What has been written about less than I am hearing is American antisemitism that has been problematic since the nation’s inception. Wikipedia characterizes the current issue as follows:

An ABC News report in 2007 recounted that about six percent of Americans reported some feelings of prejudice against Jews. According to surveys by the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitism is rejected by clear majorities of Americans, with 64 percent of them lauding Jews’ cultural contributions to the nation in 2011, but a minority holding hateful views of Jews remain, with 19 percent of Americans supporting the antisemitic canard that Jews co-control Wall Street in 2011.

Wall Street and campaign finance reform have already become a topic among Democrats, and is expected to remain through the November election. Canard or no, if 19 percent believe Jews co-control Wall Street, the question is what percentage is in play regarding a specific vote for president. Antisemitism is real, and may be a factor if Sanders is the nominee. I’m already hearing talk about it.

As recent polls have indicated, Sanders, like Clinton, is electable against a Republican opponent. What those of us who can remember know is the margin of victory will be close in the 2016 presidential race. If the Anti-Defamation League’s analysis is accurate, Sander’s religion may come into play enough to swing the election. For me, it’s not an issue in the caucus, but then politically active Iowans are more open minded than in other states, especially in the electorate for the general election. Democrats are already talking about Sanders’ religion as a liability.

I’ve been fighting the good fight for Hillary Clinton and will until the tally is made at our caucus. I’ll support the Democratic candidate nominated July 25 in Philadelphia. Some questions will be answered Feb. 1 and eight days out which ones they are is obscured by noise in the corporate and social media.

BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP, Iowa — The ambient temperature dipped below zero degrees overnight, signaling the arrival of the polar vortex. Soon it will be time to prune the apple trees — most likely next weekend.

I worked a door knocking shift for the Hillary Clinton campaign on Saturday. While a lot of people weren’t home, those who were are ready for the 2016 general election campaign.

It was unanimous the Democratic party must work together to elect the person nominated for president at the Democratic National Convention the week of July 25, 2016.

At three weeks until the Feb. 1 Iowa political caucuses the tenor of this year’s build up has been much different from past cycles.

One person professed to be in throes of existential questions about the future of our country. He was an outlier. Everyone else was confident about for whom they would caucus and why. My targeted walk list identified Hillary supporters and some Bernie leaners. To a person they recognized a need to prevent Republicans from winning the White House. I invited Hillary supporters to seek me out at the caucus, and encouraged the rest to participate and then unify behind our candidate for the fall campaign. It was a much easier sell than in previous cycles.

My interactions with campaign staff and volunteers for the three remaining Democratic campaigns has been professional at a much higher level than in previous cycles. Partly there is a professional class of political consultants, activists, fund raisers, corporate media correspondents, bloggers and supporters that has matured. These folks have stepped up their game with systematization of the process of identifying and building supporter networks. The rest of the change is that with money in politics, each of the campaigns has effectively reached out to voters, and mostly in a professional manner which is the result of specific training. This cycle’s presidential primary campaign has been like the roll out of a new project by a giant corporation, and that includes the Bernie Sanders campaign which eschews corporate influence. The end result has been a modern democratization of national politics.

With the increased use and maturity of social media in politics, I’m finding commonalities between people that no one specifically engineered or engendered but will influence the fall campaign and the next presidency. Much of what I’m seeing is good news for Democrats, and better news for our country.

I told the outlier he’d better stick with the Democrats if he wants any of his priorities to get worked on in Washington. He smiled at the prospect of that.

When our family lived in Indiana, the 1988 Democratic nominee for president was mostly decided when our May 3 primary arrived. Michael Dukakis had been dominating previous primary contests and was expected to get the nod for president. He did.

If I voted in that primary (don’t remember) it was a harbinger of what I felt on election day, basically what the f*ck? It seemed futile to vote for a candidate I hadn’t supported and didn’t like. At the same time, living in a Democratic county, I wasn’t about to pull the lever for a Republican. George H. W. Bush trounced Dukakis 426 – 111 in the electoral college, winning Indiana and 39 other states.

In Iowa we hold the first presidential nominating event — the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses. I like the early attention, but less so each cycle. The 2016 contest has been about whether or not to ratify Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee. She has not wavered in her effort or in polls conducted in Iowa, making this the most lackluster Iowa caucus cycle I can remember. Clinton is not inevitable, but her campaign’s strategy, tactics and discipline make it hard for her to lose in Iowa. The campaign is trudging its way to a caucus win, with the saving grace being the large number of young, energetic and enthusiastic people helping organize the effort.

A professional class of political consultants, activists, fund raisers, corporate media correspondents, bloggers and supporters has evolved. At each announcement of a new supporter, there is a discussion of whether that person is a significant “get” for the campaign. The rise of this new class of operatives, many deriving a living from politics, has been because of unlimited money in politics. Money feeds the professional political class which is inflicting the body politic like a cancer. The Democratic process has become about winning elections.

Elections matter, but like the professional political class feeding on our Democracy, a sole focus on elections is problematic for our long term political health.

U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan mentioned the Democratic focus on elections in his Dec. 3 Confident America speech.

“Maybe the way to win the debate is to play identity politics, never mind ideas,” Ryan said. “Maybe what you do is slice and dice the electorate: Demonize. Polarize. Turn out your voters. Hope the rest stay home.”

While Ryan is supporting a conservative agenda with this speech, and Democrats I know focus on governing as much as elections, what he said describes exactly what Republicans are doing in Iowa more than Democrats.

What I miss most about Iowa politics is the chance to build the community where I live. It has been difficult to do so in campaigns with which I have associated since 2004. The hindrance has been the data analysis method of targeting caucus-goers or voters, and the necessary exclusion it breeds. The Iowa Democratic Party is not about community building in a geographic sense. It is about building coalitions of whoever will join together with us to win elections. To say I despise it is an understatement.

Whatever issues I may have with the Democratic Party, they are not the reason Iowa should ditch the caucuses. It’s because candidates roaming free-range around the state has served only slight useful purpose. It has been harmful to the Iowa that elected candidates like Harold Hughes and Robert Ray.

There is an economic benefit of having 20+ candidates campaigning in Iowa, but less than one thinks. Brianne Pfannenstiel posted an article at the Des Moines Register recapping candidate spending this cycle.

“Despite Iowa’s outsize influence in the nation’s presidential nominating process, political spending is still funneled primarily to coastal states, which house major political consulting and advertising firms,” Pfannenstiel wrote. “Iowa accounts for just three percent of the $153.3 million that presidential campaigns have spent so far this cycle, filings with the Federal Election Commission show.”

The amount is much less if one removes fees and salaries paid to members of the Iowa professional political class. The Iowa caucuses are not about economic impact, as facts in the article demonstrate.

For the most part, the Iowa caucuses are about party building. If you think having as many as 20 non-presidents wandering every restaurant, gas station, gymnasium and legion hall isn’t having an impact on what Iowans believe about politics, think again.

There is little chance President Santorum will undo the Obama legacy because there is zero chance of him being president. What he, Mike Huckabee and others polling less than five percent do is build the culture of party politics in a corrupting manner. It reinforces what people already get from mass media. Minority and fringe views are depicted in media as being acceptable as media corrupts.

Candidates seek supporters to build their respective campaigns. There are few better examples of the deleterious effect of this than this headline and story by Jill Colvin and Bill Barrow of Associated Press, “Trump backers baffled by criticism of his Muslim proposal.”

When we open the state to all political comers, candidates who still poll in the asterisk range have been given serious coverage in corporate news outlets and blog posts alike. There is no sacred responsibility to cover the presidential aspirations of candidates like Lindsey Graham, Carly Fiorina, Lincoln Chafee or Jim Gilmore. That they travel Iowa is to our detriment. Attention given them is time we could focus more productively.

While I grumbled about my choices in 1988, I knew I was a Democrat and that gave me standing in my community. What is heard today is a plethora of weird views with serious and flaky mixed together in a jumble. Politics is like Chex mix gone wrong. Activists and advocates say we should ask “serious questions” of candidates, but there is little use of asking any question of most of these candidates. After all, we are not on a fact-finding mission to fill our grocery cart.

The benefit of holding the first in the nation caucus is much less than we think. More than that, it is corrupting Iowa in a way that has yielded us more conservative elected officials including Governor Terry Branstad, Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, and Representative Steve King. That’s not the Iowa I want to see, and rethinking our role in presidential politics is important to making a change.