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so i had some time to think about my state's (Iowa!) elections yesterday and I'm less mad than I was (although I'm still very mad). The Good: 1). Our Congressional Caucus switching from 3-1 Republicans to 3-1 Democrats is very good! And on top of that, I think all four of the Democratic candidates were really good politicians and very good selections for their area. Finkenauer and Axne on the surface look very similar (democratic women running for US congress for the first time against boring white business guys) but the way they went about their campaigns were very much tailored to their areas and should be a model for not just future Iowa races, but future races in the midwest more generally. Finkenauer leaned very heavily on her union credentials and really ran up the score with those people (who might have been closer to voting R than other democratic-leaning groups), and Cindy Axne carried the suburbs that were so important to lots of new D faces all across the country. Loebsack had the safest race (for once) and did his usual "appeal to people who miss their Poli-Sci professor" crowd and Chris Peters (who is a good candidate and could have won in a different district) wasn't ever really a challenge. And of course Scholten didn't win, but much like Beto O'Rourke in Texas, he took a bright red district and brought Democrats within 5 points, and did it by being genuine and truly caring about the people and the farmers in particular in his district, and not just focusing on how terrible his opponent was, but also talking about what could be done to help everyone in his district. Also like Beto, he had an outstanding ground game and travelled all over that district from Ames to Sioux City, from Onawa to Spencer. Again a very important message to send about winning elections in the future: You Can't Fake Showing Up. 2). Iowa isn't terribly sexist these days! 50% of our congresspeople and our governor are women, which shows that women have a good deal of political power in Iowa (even if Kim Reynolds is terrible!) 3). we uh... we won the State Auditor race? And kept the incumbent Treasurer and Attorney General? Sand winning was the only even mild surprise there so there's not much to gather from other victories because there weren't a whole lot, which leads me into... The Bad: 1). Fred Hubbell. If you take the number of vote that the four democratic congressional candidates got this year, and subtracted the number of votes Hubbell got, there is a difference of 88,777. Considering he lost by around 30,000, this is a huge, awful, terrible fuckup and something that we need to very closely analyze if we're gonna try again in four years. Iowa Starting Line (the premiere political left blog in the state) did a really good breakdown of the numbers, and came up with a list of possible reasons for this: quote:*Voters wanted a check on Trump, but thought Iowa was generally on the right track. The one on this list that I think makes the most sense is that first one. It's hard to do too much reading into ad slates, and I don't think voters were necessarily explicitly looking to vote for women (just that they didn't reject the idea when women were running), but when it comes down to it, the economy is good in Iowa and Republicans are reaping the results of that. The exception to that rule is the ag sector, which is being completely hosed up right now, but the blame for that seems to have fallen definitively on Trump's shoulders. This of course means that the next four years are going to be filled with the continued hollowing out of our education budget and our healthcare facilities, because 2). Republicans maintain a clean sweep of state government. They have control over the governor's mansion and both sides of the Iowa Congress, which lends credence to the "Iowans like their state's current direction, just not the country's" theory. This is likely to be 2 more years of disaster, with even more claim of a mandate because Reynolds is no longer an un-elected governor. I'm really not happy about this, and I really really hope they don't try to enact the death penalty again because I will drive to Des Moines and stand outside Kim Reynolds' house with signs until she gives that poo poo up. 3). That loving Nazi got elected. It was a long shot, of course, but it was still very disappointing to see him win once more. On the bright side, I'm pretty convinced that he's either going to retire before having to run again or get primaried by someone that doesn't force Chuck and Kim and Joni to say nice things about a white supremacist just because he's on their side. Also, JD Scholten will run again somewhere. I dunno when, but he ran too good a race to not pop his head up again. Let him and Beto run the DCCC IMO. So what should we take from this? No more rich white guys. Between Blum and Hubbell both losing, rich white business guys really had a bad day, and I've come to the conclusion that it's very hard to drum up any sympathy for a rich business guy in Iowa. There is an extremely important senate race coming up in 2020, and we have a lot of potential candidates, but we're going to need to find candidates that really connect with Iowans. I think a few of the Dems that ran in the primary might pop up again (Cathy Glasson and Ross Wilburn, come on down!) and obviously Scholten is going to have his name bandied about, and Finkenauer will be a year over the age limit in 2021 as well. I have a lot of faith in our back bench, even if none of them really came through the Iowa State Congress aside from Finkenauer. Just as long as Nate Boulton and Fred Hubbell stay the gently caress away.
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Nov 8, 2018 03:17
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 16:25 |
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