Iowa Induces Queasiness

By ART CULLEN

Nearly a year ago, at the side of a snowy and windswept county road in north-west Iowa, I climbed the steps on to the “No Malarkey” campaign bus. Joe Biden rose to greet me. “Where have I been? In South Carolina, that’s where!”

We had seen all the candidates but him – Pete Buttigieg was practically a next-door neighbor. The week before, we had asked in a headline in our little country paper: “Where’s Joe?”

Donald Trump had been impeached and was being tried in the Senate. The Iowa caucuses were a few weeks off. Former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, agriculture secretary in the Obama administration, rode shotgun while Biden held forth for a half-hour on fighting climate change through regenerative farming practices.

“It all starts here. We can do anything if we put our minds to it,” Biden declared.

And it all ended here. The former vice-president held a parking lot rally in Des Moines on the Friday before election day, his final call in a state he had worked since 1988 on his route to the White House but never quite won.

When the February caucuses cleared, Biden was down in the pack. Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders were tied for first in a delayed result from a failed cellphone reporting app that may well have doomed Iowa’s half-century run as first-in-the-nation. Nevada is itching for pole position.

Iowa’s role was to winnow the field. Biden nearly was winnowed here and, a week later, in New Hampshire. Essentially, a half-dozen Democrats had their tickets punched out of Iowa from a field of 25. Mike Bloomberg had his own strategy, bypassing the first states with his bet on Super Tuesday. He could not bypass Elizabeth Warren, who ripped him to shreds in one of the final debates.

Biden had done his work in South Carolina.

There, Black voters rose up to have their say: No gambling on a lefty. They wanted Safe Joe to bring it home. Rep. Jim Clyburn, dean of South Carolina politics, touched Biden’s shoulder. That was that. Little did I know, that blustery day on the bus, how it would play out.

Iowa was in play after Trump won the state by nine percentage points in 2016. The 2018 midterms saw two women, Cindy Axne and Abby Finkenauer, defeat two incumbent Republican congressmen. Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican who did a brain meld with Trump in her first term, watched her popularity tank – from over 60% to underwater. Her Democratic challenger, Theresa Greenfield, held a lead in most polls through the campaign. But the final Iowa Poll from The Des Moines Register the weekend before the election called it right: Trump and Ernst were winning Iowa despite big financial advantages with Biden and Greenfield. Independents swung hard to the right over the last month, wanting to keep a GOP-controlled Senate as a check on “socialists” as they bet that Biden would win the White House and Nancy Pelosi would continue as Madam Speaker.

Trump beat Biden by 8.2 points, Ernst beat Greenfield by 6.6 points. US Rep. Finkenauer lost to state Rep. Ashley Hinson (R) by 2.6 points. At least Axne won re-election.

Next door, in Wisconsin, polls showed Biden had a healthy margin. Trump thought he could take Minnesota. Biden managed a win in Minnesota and eked it out in Wisconsin. It was grim for the president in Michigan. Trade wars and bluster didn’t work.

Despite the danger, people were lining up for early voting from north to south, masked up and resolute for what surely would be a record turnout.

We’re worn out from the countless cafe campaign appearances, and rancorous debates, and this damned pandemic, and the stream of lies from a corrupter in chief. A record number turned out for the primaries – in Storm Lake, young Latinos caucused for Sanders in droves. They protested in the park for Black Lives last summer, and the police knelt right along. On Labor Day there was a big boat parade for Trump. His flags fly along those blacktops where the Biden bus ran. We were in pandemic. California and Colorado burned.

We took note and voted. It all came down to a few states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Not Iowa, where it started.

It makes the stomach quiver to think that Iowa favored a lecherous, traitorous, lying, corrupt President bereft of empathy, and a senator who stood by him steadfast and true. Tax cuts, fewer regulations and wanting to “own the libs” turned out huge numbers of rural voters. More than $60 billion in ag subsidies over the past two years to cover for bungling trade wars and low prices helped keep the rural vote in the fold. It helps the cries of refugee children in border cages fade. Ernst was his apologist. Iowans bought it, which raises all sorts of depressing questions about what we purport to be our values.

It also raises questions about how the centers of power approach the places and people left behind and frustrated in Appalachian Ohio or western Iowa. Democrats simply can’t compete anymore in Rural America, and they have no clue what to do about it. They lack a cohesive vision that can give these places a path forward. Secure in the victory he so long sought, Biden now has to address those wide swaths of red that eluded him. Like Iowa. His rural losses threaten the unity Biden promises.

Art Cullen, managing editor of The Progressive Populist, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing as editor of his day job at The Storm Lake (Iowa) Times (stormlake.com). He is author of the book “Storm Lake: Change, Resilience, and Hope from America’s Heartland,” recently released in paperback. This appeared at TheGuardian.com.

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2020

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