Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

T R E 4 5 O N

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

When we show up, we win.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

The lights are all blinking red.

No one could have predicted…

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Local Races Open Thread: Chuck Grassley Needs to Be Retired

Local Races Open Thread: Chuck Grassley Needs to Be Retired

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Commentor (and, IIRC, local voter) Nelle linked to this article:



Also… Chuck may have some other problems on his plate…

Reader Interactions

206Comments

  1. 1.

    SpaceUnit

    Well it’s within the margin of error, I suppose.  Then again it’s Iowa.

    Same voters are insisting Biden is too old.

  2. 2.

    kindness

    Meh.  I still am stewing that Maine voters thought Susan Collins was a wise choice.  But then again they elected LePage twice.  Something about being in a 90% white state makes people crazy they won’t always be the majority and they freak out and vote for these ‘Republicans’.

  3. 3.

    West of the Rockies

    What so-called Democrat wouldn’t want the Congressional 1/6 conspirators removed? What’s the argument against removal?

  4. 4.

    zhena gogolia

    Would love to see Chuck go down — on both counts. Lose the election and get indicted.

  5. 5.

    Baud

    Why didn’t his grandson run directly, rather than this scheme where Grassley gets reelected and then retires?

  10. 10.

    piratedan

    apologies for being a one note tenor on this.. but as more gets uncovered… it really looks like the biggest bleeping conspiracy of all time, US Congressman, US Senators, the sitting President, his staff, the Secret Service, certain elements of the military, members in select branches of government, narrative inputs real time from sympathetic media and even logistical assistance from the spouse of a Supreme Court Justice and shadowy religious money and machinations pulling the strings….

  11. 11.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Baud: haven’t looked it up but I wonder if its because of some ‘longest serving’ or ‘oldest’ senator record he’s trying to set? DiFi is aiming for something like that. Either that or he assumes incumbency is a net winner for his family over old age. I know it’s Iowa but Chuck is ripe for the picking if everything falls into place for the Dems.

  12. 12.

    RinaX

    IMO this race is about as winnable as the Mississippi and Kentucky races from last cycle.

  13. 13.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    James E Powell linked to this website, Race to WH who are making Senate and House forecasts. They were apparently very accurate in 2020. The odds they’re giving Grassely is 93.2% to Franken’s mere 6.8%…

    They’re giving Ron Johnson a 67.5% chance of winning, Vance a 67.9%.

    Apparently, Oregon’s governor race is a toss up, what’s up with that?:

    Republicans are hoping to take advantage of a midterm cycle and finally win the Oregon governorship for the first time since the 1980s. They nominated Christine Drazan, an experienced politician in Oregon politics who used to be the former Minority Leader for the State House. Fittingly perhaps, she’s running against her democratic counterpoint in the State House, Speaker Tina Kotek. Polling indicates an upset is possible, with third-party candidate Betsy Johnson acting as a potential spoiler.

    RacetotheWH launched in the 2020 election cycle, and our forecast was one of the nation’s most accurate. It called over 93% of races right, and was more accurate than all of its top competitors at predicting the final margin in close Senate races.

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @piratedan: it really looks like the biggest bleeping conspiracy of all time

    No offense, but I don’t believe in conspiracies of more than 2 people. And even at that, I have great doubts.

  15. 15.

    Martin

    @piratedan: Yeah, but kind of has to be. The whole point of checks and balances is that in order to accomplish something like this, you need to corrupt a lot of different parts of the system. From what I can tell we’ve got:

    • The WH, DOJ, presidential handlers
    • Congress and congressional staffers. Possibly elements of congressional police.
    • Governors and secretaries of state
    • State legislatures, state electors
    • Local election officials, sheriffs, and some others

    That’s the minimum you would need. They failed to get the VP. They failed to get state courts. They may have USSC (more likely than not, IMO).

    So yeah, if they didn’t have elements of so many layers, this never would have gotten remotely this far. A kind of survivors bias.

  17. 17.

    dr. bloor

    Is there any particularly rational reason to Go Big on Grassley’s opponent here, or is this one of those races that the D’s are going to throw a lot of $ at because they really, really, really want Chuckster to lose?

  18. 18.

    the pollyanna from hell

    My friend Dave promises to write an essay about a meme he picked up and rebuilt from Grist. Heatflation, Manchinflation are just as stupid and gimmicky as stagflation ever was, but if we push them hard they should be just as effective at skewing the conversation. I’ll drop it into a politics thread this week.

  20. 20.

    JaneE

    Well if Biden’s age is a problem, what about Grassley’s?

    And with food prices skyrocketing, why would we turn food into fuel?  Even if humans don’t eat it, chances are livestock would.

  21. 21.

    Mai Naem mobile

    Paul Gosar(KKK- AZ) has no Dem opponent.  Gosar does need to make it through the primary and it is a ruby red district but I can’t believe there is no dem opponent if he does it make through his primary. I guess the guy didn’t have enough signatures or whatever. This could have been a Roy Moore kind of seat pick up.

  23. 23.

    Martin

    @OzarkHillbilly: Oh, shit. Conspiracies of more than 2 people happen all the time. My kid pointed out that Santa Claus is a collective conspiracy of almost all adults in the US. We have known conspiracies around cigarettes causing cancer. We’ll find that on climate change soon. The current gas prices are a conspiracy among oil producers to take advantage of current prices to goose profits rather than expand production. So long as nobody jumps first to expand production, they all benefit. They don’t even need to communicate the scheme – the number of agents simply needs to be small enough that everyone can know the intents of the other parties and predict the outcome. It’s still a conspiracy.

  26. 26.

    the pollyanna from hell

    @the pollyanna from hell: ​
      Dave has not usually been a journalist in his checkered career, but if I wanted to think of him like that I would call him the former owner and manager of the defunct “Journal Graphics.”

  30. 30.

    Lulymay

    @SpaceUnit: The best one I heard from from a lady whose son had decided to move to Iowa.  She asked him outright: what the heck made you decide to  move there”

     

    His answer:  Oh, Mom, you know what I O W A stands for don’t you?  She replied: no what?  His response was” Idiots Out Walking Alone”…..

  32. 32.

    Martin

    Unrelated, I’m going to argue that the Uvalde response was not incompetence. Uvalde was the predictable result of expanding gun violence to such a degree that you encounter the true capabilities of a random group of responders.

    It’s one thing to expect a breaching action worthy of Seal Team Six when you have so few situations that you can always deploy Seal Team Six. But when you expect that kind of response from every school, you can’t expect exceptional responses. There’s 140,000 schools in the US. If you have a hostage situation at every one of them, you’re mostly going to get shitty responses because it’s untenable to maintain the necessary level of training and selection at that scale. You have no choice but to hire people of average capability and maintain average training. A single special forces soldier costs about $2M to select and train. Scarcity of use is kind of built into the sustainability of that system.

    The Peter principle applies to more than just individuals.

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Mai Naem mobile:  but I can’t believe there is no dem opponent if he does it make through his primary.

    In that district? I have no problem believing it. I mean, what’s not to like? Spend a year begging for money to finance a race you can’t possibly win, and all the while holding town halls in which you get savaged by assholes who don’t have even the slightest grip on reality, but hate you to your core because you have a (D) after your name, or even worse showing up to empty hall after empty hall because nobody fucking knows you exist???? All in pursuit of a contest you don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning?

    Well sign me up! s//

  38. 38.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Martin:

    Did none of these people consider the worst case scenario if it failed? If there was a civil war or some form of civil disorder that would result from them reinstalling Trump? What about the stock and bond markets and people’s entire life savings wrapped up in them, to say nothing of the wider economy?

  39. 39.

    Another Scott

    @dr. bloor: It’s hard to know. OpenSecrets has a decent rundown. We know that Grassley is going to have plenty of resources beyond cash. Candidates need enough money, and the winner usually spends the most, but it’s not clear that having $100M+ per candidate is necessary.

    BobbyBigWheel is a big fan of giving smart to state races where flipping or holding a legislature is critical. I think there’s enough money out there that we can do both (support important state races and stretch goals of picking Senate seats in red states). But we can’t forget the state races while chasing the stretch goals.

    Fundraising reports are generally a lagging indicator, also too, so we won’t know until months later whether we’ve given a candidate “too much”…

    Grassley is one of the worse partisan hacks in the Senate. It’s far past time for him to lose, but Iowa voters have to do the job.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  40. 40.

    Rose Weiss

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Kotek is a married lesbian. They’re emphasizing that in all the rural areas of Oregon – the state as a whole is very deep blue but there are a lot of rural counties like mine which are full of Trumpy Republicans.​

  41. 41.

    Gin & Tonic

    @schrodingers_cat: I am not a self-anointed progressive, nor am I Rose Twitter, but I’ve been on the Democrats’ age issue a lot. I do not want a whole list of octogenarians running the country. Look at Europe – most governments are people in their 40’s and 50’s, with some in their 30’s. That’s what I’d like to see here. And the fact that we are not developing and promoting people like that is a stain on the party.

  42. 42.

    piratedan

    @Mai Naem mobile: considering the speed at which events appear to be moving, a special election may be better for Dems anyway.  His district is full of small ranching towns that have fully bought into the narratives that the border is currently an ongoing Expendables movie and that our Border Security is fighting back the hordes with moxie and superior firepower alone, if only we could finish THE WALL, all of those problems with immigrants and illegal drugs would simply resolve themselves.

    As for Why Nancy Smash has not brought forth a floor vote to expel the members of Coup Club is beyond me…. perhaps because Coup Club is a damn sight bigger than we imagine and she might need some help from the DOJ and the US Marshalls office.  Unsure on if expulsion and indictments have different requirements and I also sit back and wonder if there’s anyone left in the GOP that believes that treason is actually a bridge too far and would vote to expel them, after all we’re on 18 months of the big lie, none of them have changed their tune this far.

     

    that’s extremely disturbing

  43. 43.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @OzarkHillbilly: they had a guy who didn’t get enough signatures so its not like they didn’t have somebody.  If Nancy Pelosi gets to be Speaker over 1 seat that will only be held by a Dem for two years I’ll take it.

  45. 45.

    Martin

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yeah. The issue is whether you can make is sufficiently profitable until you are found out, and if the consequences of getting caught are mild enough.

    Even good deeds get punished. We do them because the cost is worth it. Same calculation.

  47. 47.

    Geminid

    @Gin & Tonic: Democrats have a lot of younger politicians whose growth has not been stifled by the older people in top positions. I think this will be demonstrated after the fall election when the upcoming caucus of House Democrats meets to select their leadership in the next Congress.

  49. 49.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Soprano2: maybe they know more about Grassley’s involvement in 1/6 than we do??? Maybe the Dems own polling is reasonably  positive for a pick up. And a relatively cheap media market.

  51. 51.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud:

    Why didn’t his grandson run directly, rather than this scheme where Grassley gets reelected and then retires?

    I think the desire to die in office is stronger than mere mortals normies can understand. I find this nugget from a story about the post-redistricting scramble in the NYS state party depressingly plausible

    Regardless, Maloney — who allies say has noted with admiration the funeral that sitting members of Congress receive compared to retired members — then took to Twitter to accuse Nadler of just being another man trying to elbow out a woman from power.

    I always thought Bobby Byrd voted for Alito so he could have a full-on Senate funeral

  53. 53.

    oldgold

    Franken is from Sioux County. The ruby red Dutch area in NW Iowa.

    Republicans normally pile up huge margins in these Dutch Counties. Ernst got roughly 85% of the vote in 2020.

    If Franken’s ties to the area can hold Assley to 60%, he has a real shot.

  56. 56.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Baud: i think she will too and I hope to god its not Steny Hoyer who gets the job. He’s worthless and does not read the room.

  57. 57.

    Mike in NC

    Insurrectionist Grassley should spend the last decade of his rotten life behind bars.

  59. 59.

    Ken

    @Baud: What’s the deal with Santa Claus? Is he ok?

    He’s gone to a farm upstate, where he can run and play with the other anthropomorphic personifications.

  61. 61.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Lulymay:

    In the seventies and eighties when I lived in Iowa it was a pretty Democratic state.

    There was senator Tom Harkin, a Democratic governor or two and some democratic Representatives.

    The religious right moved in and took over and now it’s just absolutely crazy

  62. 62.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Mai Naem mobile: One guy. Who couldn’t even get the signatures. Look, I’m just asking for people to look at the reality of the situations. Who in their right minds would volunteer to run against Jason Smith in Misery’s 8th district knowing that it will cost at a minimum a year of their life during which they will be inflicted with the indignities of begging for money, constant insults, ignored and forgotten and quite probably death threats, and the only possible reward they will ever get is a pat on their back and an “Attaboy/girl.” We’ll call you,

    Yeah. I could have spent that time in my garden. Or with my grandchildren. Or with my wife. Or playing twiddly winks.

    The truth is, it is really hard to recruit candidates in these kind of districts. Most people have lives. And they want to live them.

  64. 64.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @OzarkHillbilly: thank you, it drives me crazy when people say “WE NEED TO RUN CANDIDATES IN EVERY RACE!” and “WE JUST NEED BETTER CANDIDATES!”. As if there’s a candidate store, and Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Debbie Wasserman Schultz are just shopping in the wrong aisles, or forgot their lists.

  65. 65.

    SpaceUnit

    @oldgold:

    Somebody’s cranky.  State of Iowa:

    Population 3.19 million.  Republican  governor.  Republican Lieutenant governor.  Two Republican senators.  Three Republican congresspersons.  One Democratic congressperson.

    Red state.

  66. 66.

    Geminid

    @Gin & Tonic: The next ranking leaders after the top three of Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn are Katherine Clark, Assistant Speaker; Hakeem Jeffries, Caucus Chairman; and Pete Aguilar, Assistant Caucus Chairman. The caucus elections will probably be contested, but I expect Jeffries will end up trading places with Clark to be number 1 as Speaker or Minority Leader, and Aguilar to be number 3.

    Right now Hakem Jeffries of Brooklyn is 51 years old, Clark from Massachusetts is 59, and Aguilar from California is 42.

  68. 68.

    oldgold

    @Ladyraxterinok: Obama carried Iowa in 2008 and 2012.

    The real problem is the State Democratic Party is worse than horrible. Exhibit A would be their performance running the 2020 caucus.

  70. 70.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    You describe well the reality of running in ruby-red districts. Theoretically, 50-states, every district is a great goal, but most people don’t understand what a godawful slog it is to be that sacrificial candidate. Kudos to those folks who are willing to risk a chunk of their lives doing it.

  71. 71.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Ladyraxterinok: the water. The lack of water.  I don’t know.  Apparently the new thing is “Water truthers.” You can’t make this shit up. The Colorado River compact was renegotiated  recently and Arizona lost the amount of water they get. Add that to huge population growth and drought and you get the urban areas  taking some mild water saving measures.  Well, MAGATs think its all made up. There’s just unlimited water in the fucking desert. Ofcourse Kari Lake is saying she’s going to look for new sources of water. No doubt in the oceanfront property she’s trying to sell in Arizona with TFG.

  75. 75.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @oldgold:

    What about the RacetotheWH link I posted above that said the odds of Grassely winning is 93.2% to Franken’s mere 6.8%?

  76. 76.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa: Kudos to those folks who are willing to risk a chunk of their lives doing it.

    Yes, indeed.

    I wouldn’t. I’d rather spend my time in my garden. Or with my grandchildren. Or with my wife. Or playing twiddly winks. Things that might actually make a difference.

  77. 77.

    Scout211

    @O. Felix Culpa: Well, I got a text message a few days ago from “The Democrats” asking me to run for office in the [my tiny rural town] area. All I had to do was apply by clicking the link. It sure sounded easy to to me.

    True story. However I didn’t click the link.

  80. 80.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Seriously. I’ve done grassroots work. It is no small thing *just* to get the necessary signatures to get on the ballot, much less to mount a credible campaign. Folks seem to think that all we need is for Barbara Eden to cross her arms and blink her eyes, and “It is done, master.” Alas, the Democratic Party has no genie in a bottle at any level. It’s a lot of fucking work and money.

  83. 83.

    dr. bloor

    @Another Scott:

    I mean, I guess?  But Grassley’s 47% is in all likelihood his hard floor–his constituents know exactly who he is, since they’ve had eleventeen decades to watch him do his magic, and they’re just fine with it.  I don’t think we’re occupying the specific universe where those undecideds break 19:1 for the challenger.

  85. 85.

    Scout211

    @oldgold: Yeah, it seems like all my left leaning friends and both my sisters and I left the state and never returned. It was like a blue exodus. I left for good when I started grad school.

    I grew up in the southeast Iowa area.

  86. 86.

    Geminid

    @oldgold: Iowa elected three of four Democratic Representatives in 2018. It reverted back to 3-1 Republicans in 2020. So it’s kind of swingy.

  88. 88.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Scout211:

    Heh. Throw your hat in the ring and then the real fun begins. :)

    I’m NOT suggesting people shouldn’t run for office. I’ve supported first-time candidates for positions like school board member, county commissioner, and US Congress who won! But you need to count the cost. Your time will not be your own, even (especially) after you win.

  89. 89.

    Almost Retired

    When I was a teenager in Iowa, the state had two excellent Democratic Senators- Clark and Culver.  Only to be replaced by Grassley – who migrated from amiable doofus to force for evil over the years – and a long-forgotten and epically stupid guy named Roger Jepson, who was sort of the Ron Johnson of the disco/punk era.

    Iowa really has taken a sharp turn to the right in recent years, but I attribute that in part to an acceleration of the long-standing brain drain and the collapse of small towns, demographically and economically.  My Facebook “Friends” in my small hometown worry a great deal more about High School trans athletes and gay-themed library books than they do about healthcare and infrastructure projects that could mitigate the decline.  I guess they aspire to be Kansas.

    I left my car running and fully packed with my belongings during the graduation ceremony so I could immediately hop in after I got my diploma and drive off to California.

  90. 90.

    Nelle

    @SpaceUnit: When we moved here in 2019, 3 out of 4 Congressional reps were Democrats.  Now it is one D and she’s fighting for her life in a newly drawn district that dilutes D’s.

    Because I’m the D get out the vote leader (turf leader) in my neighborhood of approximately 125 households, I know that on my side of my street, five houses in a row have registered D’s and across the street, five out of six are registered D’s.  In 2020, 100% of registered D’s voted (probably early voted just to get me off their doorstep!  We got weekly printouts of who had submitted absentee votes, so I could focus on who hadn’t voted yet).  Last week, we had a special election for school board and the sane one beat the Trumpian one (I  hosted a meet and greet for him).  We are working hard here.  And what I do is miniscule compared to so many.

    I’m not that fond of Iowa; we moved here for important familial reasons.  But throughout my many moves, it’s ways been important to do something for my community.  And the pandemic had me stuck on my front porch a lot.  So I got to know neighbors as they walked by.  And this became my focus, at least politically.

    I’m too old to be cynical anymore.  Anyway, cynicism is boring.

  91. 91.

    Bill Arnold

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    What about the RacetotheWH link I posted above that said the odds of Grassely winning is 93.2% to Franken’s mere 6.8%?

    If evidence surfaces that Grassley was directly involved in a Jan 6 subplot to overturn a Biden win (massive win in the popular vote), that could have if the full plot succeed, ignited a civil war, the odds might shift. For example.
    (I have not looked at the forecast methodology used at https://www.racetothewh.com/senate/rating )

  92. 92.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @O. Felix Culpa: I’ve lived out here for 20+ years. I’ve seen a whole lot of DEM candidates come thru and everyone of them got trounced. The last one came to the DEM meeting and the homeless was her big issue. Mind you, homelessness is a problem out here, but if you don’t want to lock them up or ship them off to Washington state or Oregon… You are dead in the water.

  94. 94.

    Almost Retired

    @Nelle:  IIRC you are in Des Moines?  Definitely a bright spot and a better place than it was 40 years ago when I left.

  95. 95.

    David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch

    There’s an old saying: Washington is Hollywood for ugly people

    They get to go to all the fancy parties, the fancy country clubs, to nerd prom. Lobbyists fly them around in private jets.

    They get to go on tee vee where they’re treated like royalty; pretty 20-something reporters fawn over them in the hallways.

    And to top it off, they barely show up to work, leaving the lifting to their staffs.

    No wonder they never want to leave the stage – it’s money for nothing and the chicks escorts for free.

  96. 96.

    Nelle

    @Almost Retired: Ur Andale.  We also have Wichita (my hometown) in common, if I remember rightly.

    I’ve lived in Kansas, Nebraska, Washington state, Alaska, Maryland, DC, Illinois, Iowa and New Zealand.  I married a guy who refused to change data for politicians so we ended up moving a lot when push came to shove.

  97. 97.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @zhena gogolia:

    Howard dean has a lot to answer for

    You mean lobbying for MKE? (kidding, I get you, and I agree. Unfortunately that wasn’t the last snappy slogan that got confused for deep insight)

  100. 100.

    SpaceUnit

    @Nelle:

    I’m very grateful for the work you are doing.

    I’ve lived in red states before, and I know the frustrations can take a toll.

  101. 101.

    Tony G

    Grassley would be a horrible SOB even if he were 25 years old — but, 88 years old — Jesus.  One of the many major problems with our political “system” is the fact that there are too many living fossils who should have retired decades ago.  Joe Biden — too damn old.  Bernie Sanders — — too damn old.  Nancy Pelosi — — too damn old.  Sanders is an example of someone who I largely agree with in terms of policy, but he’s as old as Bob Dylan.  Too many people get addicted to the power and perks of Washington and won’t give it up until it’s clawed from their cold, dead hands.  One of the many things that are broken in our system.

  102. 102.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Almost Retired: NPR did a story on a library in Iowa just this morning, and they didn’t even get to Teh Gay in Vinton, half way between Cedar Rapids and Waterloo

    RASCOE: What books were the subjects of complaints under your tenure? And, like, what were people complaining about when it came to the books?

    MCMAHON: There were five books that we had complaints. They were not formal complaints. They never went through our reconsideration process. One of them was “Joey” by Jill Biden, “Superheroes” by – the Kamala Harris book, “Sometimes People March,” which is a wonderful children’s book about different ways people will march, whether it’s marching in a band or marching down the street for an idea. […]

    That we were not being fair to President Trump because we didn’t have books that were equal, which there aren’t children’s books necessarily written. And that in the marching book, there was a lack of marches such as pro-life.

  103. 103.

    Almost Retired

    @zhena gogolia: you spelled it correctly, and I didn’t.  He only served one term and was unseated by Peter Strzok.  (Actually Tom Harkin). :)

  104. 104.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I hear you. I grew up in a red area that is now even redder. To run there would feel like (be) an exercise in futility. I wonder if you need a sizable Black population plus organizing chops to build towards flipping from red to blue, as in Georgia. Not sure how to make it happen in the 90% white areas, apart from a VERY long, slow march through local elections upwards.

    ETA: Political talent helps too, but I note that Pete Buttigieg has moved to Michigan from Indiana, presumably because it’s a more favorable environment for him to run in. He’s got tremendous talent, but not even Pete is prepared to take on the challenge of running for higher office as a Dem in Indiana.

  106. 106.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Kinda surprised Melanie, with the ghostly help of Kellyanne, never cranked out a children’s book about how a child neglected by rich and neglectful sociopath parents can grow up to predatory game show host with a talent for grifting mouth-breathers and racists.

  111. 111.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Martin:

    Do you believe it’s inevitable? I hope it’s not and will work to make sure it isn’t. Sometimes, though, I do wonder why I bother saving for retirement if the GOP are just going to break everything. Oh well, I guess I don’t have a choice

  113. 113.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Clinton was 46 when he was elected and was considered something of a wunderkind. Obama was 47 and one of teh reasons he ran for POTUS IIRC was he didn’t want to hang around the Senate waiting for seniority. Newt Gingrich was 52 when he became Speaker (of course I looked it up) and was considered an insurgent. That seniority thing is tricky to get around, I imagine.

  114. 114.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Soprano2:

    What really infuriates me is the fact that the Greens are even willing to accept this help. They have to know the GOP is NOT doing it for their benefit

    @Rose Weiss:

    Gross, but I guess I’m not surprised at this point

  115. 115.

    Martin

    @Mai Naem mobile: There’s a theory that part of the plot was to drive Pence from the building leaving Grassley as the President Pro Tempore to do the deed, which would have required Grassley be in on the plot.

    A lot of that is caught up in the timing of the GA special election which didn’t grant Dems the majority until Jan 5. So Grassley remained the President of the Senate while Pence was absent rather than having it shift to Leahy. I don’t think McConnell was deliberate in maintaining it that way toward the commission of a plot, but only Schumer could really speak to that. Surely he had demanded that Dems be handed leadership and would know McConnells response.

    I’ll admit it doesn’t seem Grassley’s speed to be in on something like this, but who the fuck knows any more. They’ve been so tolerant of criminality within their party that painting them all as criminals hardly seems like a step too far.

  116. 116.

    oldgold

    The unusual thing about Iowa, as opposed to much of the nation, is that the economy is booming. Corn is bouncing between $7 and $8 per bushel.

    Brain drain? Hell the smart children stayed on the farm. Their financial  statements and 12 weeks of work a year prove it. 

  129. 129.

    cmorenc

    @Rose Weiss:

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Kotek is a married lesbian. They’re emphasizing that in all the rural areas of Oregon – the state as a whole is very deep blue but there are a lot of rural counties like mine which are full of Trumpy Republicans.​

    Oregon is politically like a tootsie pop overlaid on a large rectanglar baking sheet, with the Portland metro area the oval “pop” hanging off the thin stick of the Willamette Valley down to Eugene, and just a sprinkling of rancid flour on the rest of the baking sheet.  Oregon is only solidly blue because the electoral mass of the tootsie pop is substantially greater than the rancid sprinkles of flour elsewhere over the far larger area of the baking sheet.

  131. 131.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: The 7th District is the same way, although we’re slowly getting more diverse. Whichever Republican wins the primary will get 60% of the vote at least.

  133. 133.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @OzarkHillbilly:  sorry i should have said its being renegotiated currently and AZ would lose water under the current compact and it will undoubtedly under a new compact. The governor(a RW GOP but not MAGAt) signed into law some water legislation and that has the MAGATs all up in arms because they refuse to believe that there’s a drought and a water problem.

  134. 134.

    oldgold

    @Baud: So, under your theory the high inflation rate and predictions of recession should help Democrats this November?

  136. 136.

    Another Scott

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Happy Birthday!

    I remember thinking that my 25th birthday was pretty bad.  “Between 1/4 and 1/3 of my life is over!  And I’m still in school!!11ONE”  Little did I know…

    ;-)

    Hang in there.  You have many, many exciting adventures ahead.  Keep pushing forward.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  139. 139.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: These are the people who have no idea what it’s like to live in a state like MO. I can’t cut all Republicans out of my life because that’s at least half of the people I work with!

  142. 142.

    BlueGuitarist

    @Nelle:

    Awesome that you are the a turf leader.

    “The most important job I ever had was Precinct Captain,” — Harry Truman

  143. 143.

    Geminid

    @Baud: I still wonder where the Larouche people went when the old man died. I remember how not long after I saw a Green Party candidate in Virginia whose policy proposals reminded me of Larouche’s. This may have just been a coincidence. But those people must have gone somewhere.

  145. 145.

    piratedan

    @Gvg: think you’re referencing the Senate, which would be on Shumer, provided anyone starts naming Senators to Coup Club (which could easily include Cruz, Blackburn, Grassley, Hawley, Paul, McConnell, Scott, Ernst, Johnson, Rubio and Graham but I don’t recall any senators being named.  Still, I believe that you’re right that Nancy would need more than a simple majority in the House, but I did state that I was unsure of the process, as I wasn’t paying attention when the censured King.

  146. 146.

    cain

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I think a lot of what the previous governor has done has pissed off some of the people because of the COVID thing.ca

    That said, I think the Roe vs Wade decision has crystalized things here. Things get close until Portland weighs in and it puts them over the edge. The cities are growing and it will continue to vote blue.

  147. 147.

    Barbara

    @Martin: ​ For all his apparent highmindedness Grassley has always struck me as corruptible in the sense that if Republicans promised some kind of political bauble for one of his scions he would play ball.

  148. 148.

    Another Scott

    @Geminid: He died in 2019.  It wasn’t that long ago.

    MoJo (from 2018):

    [Roger] Stone’s recent association with LaRouche is consistent with his decades-long evolution from a mainstream GOP operative to an advocate and ally of the conspiratorial and political fringe. Stone is reportedly being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is examining his possible interactions during the 2016 campaign with WikiLeaks ahead of its releases of emails stolen by Russian government hackers. (Mueller himself is no stranger to LaRouche; he was a key player in the 1980s investigation that sent LaRouche to jail.) Despite all the scrutiny over Stone’s role in the 2016 campaign, his alignment with a political group that the Heritage Foundation once described as a “strange asset for the KGB’s disinformation effort” remains a little-examined aspect of his recent activities.

    Also under-examined has been a tantalizing clue about possible ties between LaRouche’s organization and Moscow. Buried in Christopher Steele’s dossier on Trump’s possible links to Russia was an August 2016 report with this allegation: A “Kremlin official involved in US relations” had claimed that Russia facilitated a LaRouche delegation’s trip to Moscow, offering members of LaRouche’s group assistance and enlisting them in an effort to disseminate “compromising information” as part of the Kremlin’s 2016 influence campaign. A lawyer with ties to both Stone and LaRouche’s network has claimed that he introduced Stone to a key LaRouche aide in early 2016, as Trump began to secure the Republican nomination.

    While Stone’s interactions with the LaRouche crowd may at first blush seem bizarre, Stone himself has long been a conspiracy theorist. In 2014, he published a book claiming that Lyndon B. Johnson was behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And in recent years, he has forged a political alliance with Alex Jones, the chieftain of Infowars who has peddled noxious conspiracy theories, including the claim that the 2012 Newtown massacre was a hoax.

    I think there’s your answer.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  151. 151.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @piratedan:

    Still, I believe that you’re right that Nancy would need more than a simple majority in the House,

    2/3 for expulsion, simple majority for censure of removal from committees, I believe.

  152. 152.

    Bill Arnold

    @Gvg:

    it takes a lot more than 51 votes to expel. She can’t. Doesn’t have the votes.

    The voters have the votes, though. This is a role of the Jan 6 commission; to let 2022 midterms voters know that some Republican incumbents are Enemies of the USA, that their claims to be “patriot”s are lies.

  153. 153.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Soprano2: I forget their name, but there is a North Carolina Democratic group that was warning a couple weeks ago about the Green Party’s effort to get a Senate candidate on the November ballot. The good news was that the Greens were using- or being used by- the same outfit that furnished petitions for several Michigan Republicans that were thrown out for fraud.

    The North Carolina Democrats also cited the state Green Party’s FEC filing that showed they had $8,000 in the bank as of March 31, so someone else definitely was paying to put their spoiler on the ballot.

  154. 154.

    oldgold

    I don’t think people here understand why Iowans vote for Grassley. It is not his ideology.

    They vote for the very conservative Grassley for the same reason they voted for the very liberal Tom Harkin.

    The reason: Come Hell or high water, they both delivered, big time, on protecting farm income.

  156. 156.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Martin: what i remember about Grassley is his  actions during the ACA debates. Grassley plays this nice grandpa game but he’s a shark underneath. Orrin Hatch had the same game except his was specifically for judicial stuff.

  157. 157.

    Soprano2

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Happy birthday! You may not believe it now, but there can be a lot of good stuff ahead of you. When I was 27 I was single in a job I hated. The next year I left that job and met the man I married (almost 32 years now). You never know what’s around the corner, although I know that’s easy for me to say.

  158. 158.

    Bill Arnold

    @oldgold:

    The reason: Come Hell or high water, they both delivered, big time, on protecting farm income.

    Thanks. (That’s a convincing explanation.)

  161. 161.

    Amir Khalid

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Did your Founding Fathers envisage people having decades-long careers in Congress, creating an entrenched political class in the capital, or were they expecting Representatives and Senators to serve only a term or two before going back to their respective home states?

  162. 162.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    NBC News@NBCNews. 5h

    The Jan. 6 committee expects to receive erased Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, by Tuesday and will present testimony from new witnesses during Thursday’s public hearing.

    Being pretty helpless with technology myself, I wondered if those message would fall under the heading of “the web is forever”.

  163. 163.

    Geminid

    @Another Scott: Hmm. If the Larouche people migrated to the Green Party it would have been some years before he died, then. I wouldn’t put it past them though. His political movement was at a dead end already and they had the cohesiveness (and also the money I think) to take over a small party like the Greens. I just rememember “Gail for Rail” running under the Green Party label and checking out her platform and seeing ideas I thought I’d seen in Larouche literature. They were based in Northern Virginia, too, and that place is full of shady characters!

    And Jill Stein always struck me as an agent for somebody or some cult or both. Gave me the heebee-jeebees!

  166. 166.

    BlueGuitarist

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Consider the Iowa Race to the WH odds of D win and ratings in context:

    PA 63% Toss up (!)

    WI 33% Tilt R

    OH 32% Tilt R

    NC 24% Lean R

    FL 12% Likely R

    IA 7% Likely R

    The rest of the Republican held seats are safe R. In other words, Iowa is not “Safe Republican.”

    It also matters who/what else is on the ballot.

    Iowa Ds lost a US House seat in 2020 by 6 votes out of about 400,000 cast; in one of the overlapping races downballot another losing D candidate got 49.9% of the vote.

    There are winnable races for Iowa House, Iowa Senate, and US House; coattails from a strong effort at the top of the ticket will help; reverse-coattails from down-ballot candidates will also help.

    @Another Scott

  167. 167.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Amir Khalid: I don’t know, but I imagine the noble model of Cincinattus/Washington loomed large. And between contemporary medical care/issues and what I take to be a general belief that port, claret and beef were health food (not for the first time, I reflect that I was born in the wrong century), I don’t know how much thought they gave it, though Franklin was I believe a constant presence (and sometimes inconvenient PITA) in politics almost to his 89 YO end. God bless him.

  168. 168.

    Miss Bee

    @oldgold: I’m an Iowan by birth and by address.  Please explain what’s purple about Iowa now. One congressperson (Cindy Axne) is all I can see.

  170. 170.

    trollhattan

    Those Iowa farmers could switch from corn to wheat and help resolve the global shor….who am I kidding?

  172. 172.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @Geminid: … Jill Stein always struck me as an agent for somebody…

    Gee, who could that be?

    Pretty sure it’s Putin.

    It’s no secret, what with that dinner in Russia where she sat at Putin’s table with Flynn, etc.

  173. 173.

    Geminid

    @Amir Khalid: I’m not sure they ever talked about this question. Back then politicians came out of the upper and upper middle classes and those people did not make politics a career. This did not take long to change, though.

  174. 174.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @cain:

    Hopefully you’re right : )

    @Anyway:

    @BlueGuitarist:

    Thanks and I did. Spent time with family

    @frosty:

    Thanks! It’s a real pleasure to comment at this joint

    @Soprano2:

    Thanks! And you’re right. I just have to keep a positive attitude

    @raven:

    Heh. I have the same thoughts on younger coworkers of mine

  175. 175.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @trollhattan: ​  I wasn’t looking for lumber. My friend and I got lost looking of the house of the Aussie, Kiwi, and South African bar waitresses that we were supposed to sleep at. We found it an hour or so later.* It had been the weekend of the town’s summer festival, and it was one my more legendary birthday weekend.​
     

    ETA: We had couch space at the girls’ place. It wasn’t some weird Penthouse letters situation.

  176. 176.

    Miss Bee

    @oldgold: I’m an Iowan by birth and by address.  Please explain what’s purple about Iowa now. One congressperson (Cindy Axne) is all I can see.

     

     

     

    @oldgold:

  177. 177.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Geminid: ​
     The Greens in this country are all stooges for the GQp and Big Fossil fuel. They’re utterly worthless.

  178. 178.

    oldgold

    The state Democratic party is a shambles.  It cost us in 2020.

    In 2018, 3 of the 4 people elected to the House from Iowa were Democrats. In 2000, one of these, despite the state party sabotaging her at every turn, only lost by 6 damn votes.

  179. 179.

    Geminid

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Yeah, but she could have gotten there by way of the Larouche cult. That was a sneaky bunch that seems to have vanished into thin air.

    Stein ran for President in 2012 first, and that may have been a dry run. Both the Greens and the Libertarians got far more votes in 2016 than they did before or after.

  180. 180.

    oldgold

    @trollhattan: Iowa was initially a wheat state. If you look at the state seal, it features wheat rather than corn.

    It turned out Iowa was too wet for wheat to grow well.

  181. 181.

    SpaceUnit

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Exactly.  I’ve always assumed that the bigs in the Green Party know exactly what they’re doing.

    They’re pied pipers leading the young and idealistic off into the wilderness.

  183. 183.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Back after dinner and running some errands: It matters because there are few to no legacy politicians, so it stands to reason that most current Ukrainian leaders are young. There was no ladder to climb until 1991.

    ETA: As for Macron, he’s better than the alternative, but that’s not saying much. Youthful leadership is not in and of itself a virtue or a guarantee of quality.

  184. 184.

    oldgold

    Either Iowa or Illinois.  Most folks do not realize it, but Illinois is one hell of an agricultural state. The soils in western Illinois are the best in the world.

    Most fields are rotated annually. Corn eats nitrogen. Soybeans are a legume that puts nitrogen in the soil.

  185. 185.

    Chris Johnson

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): This always frustrates me. Civil war doesn’t help anybody, and doesn’t help the Republicans. The whole point of disrupting America, staging a Trump coup, and provoking civil war, is that it’s orchestrated by Russia and is for the purpose of weakening or destroying America. That’s the WHOLE point.

    Hence, don’t respect people advocating for it, whatever side they claim to be on, and mistrust people insisting civil war is inevitable and/or desirable. It’s simply a trap.

  192. 192.

    Splitting Image

    @Geminid:

    Iowa elected three of four Democratic Representatives in 2018. It reverted back to 3-1 Republicans in 2020. So it’s kind of swingy.

    Nate Silver analyzed Iowa back in 2008, before he became an idiot, and concluded that the state was a swing state in the sense that it had roughly even numbers of Democrats and Republicans, but it was also among the most unelastic states in the country, in the sense that there were almost no swing voters. The state had two large solid blocks who voted party line or not at all, so elections in Iowa depended entirely on motivation and turnout.

    I think that in hindsight this was exactly right. Obama had a terrific turnout operation and won Iowa by 10 points in 2008, but there was a strong reaction against him after he won and the Republicans got a sudden influx of new voters who were previously indifferent non-voters or were reliably Republican when they bothered to vote at all.

    Now these people are reliable Republican voters every time out. The state isn’t ruby red; it’s only gone from a 50-50 split to something like 47-53, but there are so few swing voters that those extra few votes the Democrats need to win are really hard to come by.

  193. 193.

    Kelly

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Betsy Johnson acting as a potential spoiler

    Betsy Johnson is bankrolled by Nike billionaire Phil Knight and some other wealthy Republicans. Oregon has no campaign finance limits so big money has some leverage. Kotek and Johnson both support abortion rights which otherwise would sink Republican Drazen. Johnson has been the rightmost Dem state legislator forever. She’d like to be Oregon’s Joe Manchin but the D’s have large majority. Her legislative career is  undistinguished, yapping against bills the rest of the D’s passed whether she liked them or not. Her campaign is an obvious split the vote rat fucking operation. Kinda hoping Johnson’s out and proud NRA support is enough to sink her.

  194. 194.

    Rose Weiss

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Wow, a big Happy Birthday to you! I was not so politically aware at your age. I went to marches at crisis points but I had no understanding of the nuts and bolts of the democratic process. congratulations on being ahead of many of your peers.

  198. 198.

    StringOnAStick

    @Kelly: Thank you for that explanation.  I’m not seeing many political signs right now other one for Johnson in the ranchettes east of Sisters and tRump 2024 near Sweet Home today.  I didn’t know Johnson was an NRA stooge

  200. 200.

    ian

    @Martin:

     We have known conspiracies around cigarettes causing cancer.

    I am trying to think of a charitable assumption regarding your statement.  Certainly you must mean conspiracies about cigarettes *not* causing cancer?

    I guarantee you, cigarettes do in fact cause cancer.

  201. 201.

    Martin

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: The govt should be employing proper device management, and the description of what happened here suggests they are.

    This isn’t ‘the web is forever’ because technically the texts aren’t ‘the web’ (quibble) but these are government communications which are *always* archived, at least, legally they need to always be archived.

    I mean, every time I see one of these stories I think I was seriously underpaid because I employed VASTLY better document retention policies in my shitty .edu job than the fucking Secret Service does. They didn’t appreciate how good I was at my job.

  203. 203.

    satby

    @O. Felix Culpa: Michigan is a slightly better environment for an aspiring Democrat than Indiana, but only slightly unless you’re strong in the area around Detroit. Western and northern MI is as bad as Indiana. (Having now lives in both, I would say slightly worse, tbh). The Buttigiegs moved to Traverse City because of the twins, Chasten’s family (especially his mom) can help with them. I mean, the assumption that they moved for his future political aspirations to a place almost as bad politically for him doesn’t make as much sense as people think.

  204. 204.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby:

    Thanks. Your point that proximity to Chasten’s family is the primary motive for their move to Michigan is well-taken. I agree that Michigan is not a blue haven, but they did manage to elect Gretchen Whitmer. Hopefully they’ll reelect her too! I can’t imagine Indiana electing a Dem governor in the foreseeable future, so MI is a somewhat more favorable political environment. Also agreed that the political landscape in western and northern MI is bad, bad, bad. :)

  205. 205.

    Anne Laurie

    @satby: I mean, the assumption that they moved for his future political aspirations to a place almost as bad politically for him doesn’t make as much sense as people think.

    Not to bad-mouth South Bend, but… were I part of a gay couple with young kids, I’d choose Michigan’s fierce female governor / attorney general over the Republicans in Indiana.

    Also (as I said earlier), an advantage to being “other” in the town where Chasten grew up is that — I’m making broad assumptions from my time in the Midwest — it’s harder to demonize someone whose mom taught your sixth-grade class, or who went to the same summer camp as your cousins all through grade school.  He’s said he was never completely happy in the closet there, but familiarity *is* its own form of protection.

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