2020 meltdown leaves Iowa Democrats on edge

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

After the botched caucuses and the party’s Election Day wipeout, the
state’s first-in-the-nation status is more precarious than ever.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/06/iowa-democrats-bad-year-442589

Aside from ousting Donald Trump from the White House, the story of the
2020 election has an unhappy ending for Democrats. They failed to win back
the Senate, nearly lost the House and fell short in statehouses all across
the country.

But from the botched caucuses in February to the party's wipeout on
Election Day, nowhere was more miserable this year for Democrats than in
Iowa. Long a focal point of the party's political universe, Democrats
there are now on the brink — their losses up and down the ballot in
November have made the state’s first-in-the-nation caucus status more
precarious than ever.

“There’s a lot of soul searching going on in Iowa right now,” said Sean
Bagniewski, chairman of the Polk County Democrats. “It looks pretty dire
for the next couple of years.”

The hits started early, with the caucuses, and are still coming a month
after the election. Earlier this week, state officials certified
Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ six-vote victory over Democrat Rita
Hart in the state’s open 2nd Congressional District — making it one of two
House seats that flipped to GOP control this year. If that excruciatingly
narrow result withstands a challenge from Hart, it will leave Democrats
with just one of Iowa’s four House seats.

That’s on top of Trump trouncing Joe Biden in the state, Democrats failing
to dislodge GOP Sen. Joni Ernst and Republicans expanding their majority
in the legislature. This month, the party is expected to release an audit
of the caucus fiasco, just as Democrats begin to look ahead to the
midterms and the presidential nominating calendar for 2024.

If it was only that Democrats in Iowa had a difficult caucus or suffered
down-ballot losses, it might not have been so bad. The party did poorly in
congressional and legislative races everywhere. But Iowa, because of its
coveted place ahead of all other states in the presidential nominating
process, had more on the line than any other state. And expectations in
Iowa were unusually high after Democrats flipped two House seats in 2018
and Democratic voter registration shot up ahead of the caucuses, briefly
surpassing Republicans for the first time in years. Biden appeared
competitive enough there early this summer that Trump aired defensive ads
in the state.

It would have been easier to forget the handling of the caucuses — where
an app failed, results were delayed and initial reports appeared to
contain errors — had Democrats taken out Ernst or had Biden turned Iowa
blue.

Instead, Biden lost the state by more than 8 percentage points, with Trump
carrying all but six of the state’s 99 counties — just as he did in 2016.
Ernst clobbered Theresa Greenfield by nearly 7 percentage points, freshman
Democrat Rep. Abby Finkenauer lost her bid for a second term and Rep.
Cindy Axne, the only successful Democratic House candidate, barely held
onto her seat.

“I’m tired of being a Democrat,” said Chris Adcock, chairwoman of
Democratic Party in southwest Iowa's Page County. “It’s just exhausting.”

Adcock, who ran unsuccessfully for a legislative seat, said she has
“eternal hope.” But “six [votes] for Miller-Meeks? Oh, that’s harsh. And
then Abby [Finkenauer] losing? Oh, my gosh, it’s heartbreaking.”

Even Republicans could hardly believe their good fortune. Jeff Kaufmann,
chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, said, “I never anticipated — I
truly didn’t — I never anticipated that we were going to have the night
that we did.”

Democrats placed blame for their failures in Iowa on a similar confluence
of factors that dragged them down in other states Trump won. The president
overwhelmed Biden in rural areas, where Republican turnout surpassed
expectations — and where Democrats failed to make inroads. Democrats were
hampered by their lack of door-knocking amid the coronavirus pandemic and
by ineffectual messaging on the economy.

The toll of the coronavirus and the impact of Trump’s trade policies on
Iowa’s agricultural economy didn’t hurt Republicans as much as Democrats
had hoped. Exit polls suggest Biden not only lost the rural vote in Iowa,
but also the suburbs. Because Iowa was never a core swing state, Biden did
not campaign heavily there.

“Our campaign with Biden was like we were playing a football game without
a quarterback,” said Dave Nagle, a former congressman and Iowa Democratic
Party chair. “We were running without air cover, we were running a poor
Senate campaign … It was the perfect storm for the kind of disaster that
we got.”

Democrats might have expected it. Even before the caucus debacle, there
were signs that all was not right in Iowa. Trump’s impeachment hearings
pulled three of the top five presidential candidates out of the state in
the final run-up to the caucuses. The highly anticipated Des Moines
Register/CNN/Mediacom poll was canceled at the last minute due a surveying
error. And once Biden won the nomination — thanks to later-voting South
Carolina and Super Tuesday — his anemic fourth-place finish in Iowa made
the state seem less significant than ever and shined a spotlight on its
lack of diversity.

The road back to relevance is going to be a slog, with deep ramifications
for a national party that is laboring to regain a durable foothold in the
Midwest. Following the election, Mark Smith, the current state party
chairman — who stepped in after his predecessor, Troy Price, resigned
following the caucuses — announced he will not seek re-election. Though a
handful of Democrats have already signaled their intent to run for the
post, some of the most high-profile Democrats in the state, including J.D.
Scholten and Deidre DeJear, had been recruited for the position but told
colleagues they will not run — something both Scholten and DeJear
confirmed.

It’s a thankless job. Few Democrats expect the state’s fortunes to improve
in the midterm elections, when the president’s party traditionally faces
headwinds. And as in other states, the party is riven with internal
conflict — what one prominent Democrat called a “psychiatric ward right
now in terms of the battle between progressives … and the moderates.”

The audit report that the party plans to release on the caucuses isn’t
likely to help, instead tearing open old wounds — and presenting a new
platform for out-of-state critics of Iowa’s prominent role. The report is
expected to cast a wide net of blame for the vote-counting meltdown,
according to multiple Democrats, likely heightening tension between Iowa
Democrats and Democratic National Committee officials who feuded over the
caucuses earlier this year.

William Owen, a DNC member from Tennessee, said this week that Iowa
Democrats “have lost their credibility and should no longer be taken
seriously,” calling for the party to move from a caucus to a primary
system.

“I would imagine it’s going to generate a wave of bad stories about the
caucuses,” said Jeff Link, a Democratic strategist in Iowa. “Iowa’s not in
a great spot.”

It is possible that if Biden seeks re-election in 2024, the likely lack of
a competitive primary will reduce pressure on Democrats to remake the
calendar. In addition, the expected departure of DNC Chair Tom Perez, who
has been highly critical of caucuses, is viewed by Iowa Democrats as an
opening to maintaining them in some form.

Kaufmann, an ally of Democrats in the parties’ effort to keep the state’s
caucuses, said, “Do I think we’re going to keep [the caucuses]? Yes, I do.
Do I think it’s going to be a bigger battle than I hoped? Yes, I do.”

Kaufmann said he still considers Iowa a swing state — an important
political center for both parties. But for Democrats, that’s a harder
argument to make than it was even a month ago.

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, a former secretary of Agriculture in the
Obama administration, said in an email that “it is always darkest before
the dawn.” DeJear said she's seen diverse groups of Democrats in the state
"coming together" more after the election than ever before — with a "huge
task ahead," but one she said is "very possible to accomplish."

Scott Brennan, an Iowa DNC member and a former state party chairman, said
that while the November results were “depressing here,” it was similar to
“so many places nationally, where we thought we were going to pick up all
these seats, and none of it rang true.”

Still, Brennan said, “2020 is forgettable for a lot of reasons. Politics
didn’t make it any better.”
--
"LOCKDOWN", left-wing COVID fearmongering. 95% of COVID infections
recover with no after effects.

No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.

Donald J. Trump, cheated out of a second term by fraudulent "mail-in"
ballots. Report voter fraud: ***@mail.house.gov

Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.

President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed
dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.

[BeamMeUpScotty]

After the botched caucuses and the party’s Election Day wipeout, the
state’s first-in-the-nation status is more precarious than ever.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/06/iowa-democrats-bad-year-442589
Aside from ousting Donald Trump from the White House, the story of the
2020 election has an unhappy ending for Democrats. They failed to win back
the Senate, nearly lost the House and fell short in statehouses all across
the country.
But from the botched caucuses in February to the party's wipeout on
Election Day, nowhere was more miserable this year for Democrats than in
Iowa. Long a focal point of the party's political universe, Democrats
there are now on the brink — their losses up and down the ballot in
November have made the state’s first-in-the-nation caucus status more
precarious than ever.
“There’s a lot of soul searching going on in Iowa right now,” said Sean
Bagniewski, chairman of the Polk County Democrats. “It looks pretty dire
for the next couple of years.”
The hits started early, with the caucuses, and are still coming a month
after the election. Earlier this week, state officials certified
Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ six-vote victory over Democrat Rita
Hart in the state’s open 2nd Congressional District — making it one of two
House seats that flipped to GOP control this year. If that excruciatingly
narrow result withstands a challenge from Hart, it will leave Democrats
with just one of Iowa’s four House seats.
That’s on top of Trump trouncing Joe Biden in the state, Democrats failing
to dislodge GOP Sen. Joni Ernst and Republicans expanding their majority
in the legislature. This month, the party is expected to release an audit
of the caucus fiasco, just as Democrats begin to look ahead to the
midterms and the presidential nominating calendar for 2024.
If it was only that Democrats in Iowa had a difficult caucus or suffered
down-ballot losses, it might not have been so bad. The party did poorly in
congressional and legislative races everywhere. But Iowa, because of its
coveted place ahead of all other states in the presidential nominating
process, had more on the line than any other state. And expectations in
Iowa were unusually high after Democrats flipped two House seats in 2018
and Democratic voter registration shot up ahead of the caucuses, briefly
surpassing Republicans for the first time in years. Biden appeared
competitive enough there early this summer that Trump aired defensive ads
in the state.
It would have been easier to forget the handling of the caucuses — where
an app failed, results were delayed and initial reports appeared to
contain errors — had Democrats taken out Ernst or had Biden turned Iowa
blue.
Instead, Biden lost the state by more than 8 percentage points, with Trump
carrying all but six of the state’s 99 counties — just as he did in 2016.
Ernst clobbered Theresa Greenfield by nearly 7 percentage points, freshman
Democrat Rep. Abby Finkenauer lost her bid for a second term and Rep.
Cindy Axne, the only successful Democratic House candidate, barely held
onto her seat.
“I’m tired of being a Democrat,” said Chris Adcock, chairwoman of
Democratic Party in southwest Iowa's Page County. “It’s just exhausting.”
Adcock, who ran unsuccessfully for a legislative seat, said she has
“eternal hope.” But “six [votes] for Miller-Meeks? Oh, that’s harsh. And
then Abby [Finkenauer] losing? Oh, my gosh, it’s heartbreaking.”
Even Republicans could hardly believe their good fortune. Jeff Kaufmann,
chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, said, “I never anticipated — I
truly didn’t — I never anticipated that we were going to have the night
that we did.”
Democrats placed blame for their failures in Iowa on a similar confluence
of factors that dragged them down in other states Trump won. The president
overwhelmed Biden in rural areas, where Republican turnout surpassed
expectations — and where Democrats failed to make inroads. Democrats were
hampered by their lack of door-knocking amid the coronavirus pandemic and
by ineffectual messaging on the economy.
The toll of the coronavirus and the impact of Trump’s trade policies on
Iowa’s agricultural economy didn’t hurt Republicans as much as Democrats
had hoped. Exit polls suggest Biden not only lost the rural vote in Iowa,
but also the suburbs. Because Iowa was never a core swing state, Biden did
not campaign heavily there.
“Our campaign with Biden was like we were playing a football game without
a quarterback,” said Dave Nagle, a former congressman and Iowa Democratic
Party chair. “We were running without air cover, we were running a poor
Senate campaign … It was the perfect storm for the kind of disaster that
we got.”
Democrats might have expected it. Even before the caucus debacle, there
were signs that all was not right in Iowa. Trump’s impeachment hearings
pulled three of the top five presidential candidates out of the state in
the final run-up to the caucuses. The highly anticipated Des Moines
Register/CNN/Mediacom poll was canceled at the last minute due a surveying
error. And once Biden won the nomination — thanks to later-voting South
Carolina and Super Tuesday — his anemic fourth-place finish in Iowa made
the state seem less significant than ever and shined a spotlight on its
lack of diversity.
The road back to relevance is going to be a slog, with deep ramifications
for a national party that is laboring to regain a durable foothold in the
Midwest. Following the election, Mark Smith, the current state party
chairman — who stepped in after his predecessor, Troy Price, resigned
following the caucuses — announced he will not seek re-election. Though a
handful of Democrats have already signaled their intent to run for the
post, some of the most high-profile Democrats in the state, including J.D.
Scholten and Deidre DeJear, had been recruited for the position but told
colleagues they will not run — something both Scholten and DeJear
confirmed.
It’s a thankless job. Few Democrats expect the state’s fortunes to improve
in the midterm elections, when the president’s party traditionally faces
headwinds. And as in other states, the party is riven with internal
conflict — what one prominent Democrat called a “psychiatric ward right
now in terms of the battle between progressives … and the moderates.”
The audit report that the party plans to release on the caucuses isn’t
likely to help, instead tearing open old wounds — and presenting a new
platform for out-of-state critics of Iowa’s prominent role. The report is
expected to cast a wide net of blame for the vote-counting meltdown,
according to multiple Democrats, likely heightening tension between Iowa
Democrats and Democratic National Committee officials who feuded over the
caucuses earlier this year.
William Owen, a DNC member from Tennessee, said this week that Iowa
Democrats “have lost their credibility and should no longer be taken
seriously,” calling for the party to move from a caucus to a primary
system.
“I would imagine it’s going to generate a wave of bad stories about the
caucuses,” said Jeff Link, a Democratic strategist in Iowa. “Iowa’s not in
a great spot.”
It is possible that if Biden seeks re-election in 2024, the likely lack of
a competitive primary will reduce pressure on Democrats to remake the
calendar. In addition, the expected departure of DNC Chair Tom Perez, who
has been highly critical of caucuses, is viewed by Iowa Democrats as an
opening to maintaining them in some form.
Kaufmann, an ally of Democrats in the parties’ effort to keep the state’s
caucuses, said, “Do I think we’re going to keep [the caucuses]? Yes, I do.
Do I think it’s going to be a bigger battle than I hoped? Yes, I do.”
Kaufmann said he still considers Iowa a swing state — an important
political center for both parties. But for Democrats, that’s a harder
argument to make than it was even a month ago.
Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, a former secretary of Agriculture in the
Obama administration, said in an email that “it is always darkest before
the dawn.” DeJear said she's seen diverse groups of Democrats in the state
"coming together" more after the election than ever before — with a "huge
task ahead," but one she said is "very possible to accomplish."
Scott Brennan, an Iowa DNC member and a former state party chairman, said
that while the November results were “depressing here,” it was similar to
“so many places nationally, where we thought we were going to pick up all
these seats, and none of it rang true.”
Still, Brennan said, “2020 is forgettable for a lot of reasons. Politics
didn’t make it any better.”

2022 is going to be landslide losses for Democrats in all States even NY
and California. Local elections are going to see Democrats lose due to
all their failures.

[Dutch]

Post by BeamMeUpScotty
2022 is going to be landslide losses for Democrats in all States even NY
and California.  Local elections are going to see Democrats lose due to
all their failures.

You dreamed that I take it.