Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com The topic of abortion exploded in our news media this week. It had a short fuse. Historian Heather Cox Richardson summarized two national news events in her April 9 Letter from an American: Yesterday, former president Trump released a video celebrating state control over abortion; today, a judicial decision in Arizona illuminated just what such state control means. With the federal recognition of the constitutional right to abortion gone since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, old laws left on state books once again are becoming the law of the ..read more

Joe Biden In an interview with Missouri political activist Jess Piper, Iowa journalist Doug Burns captured this statement: “I specifically don’t talk about Biden because all he’s doing is delivering roads and that sort of thing, but they need to talk about who’s really impacting their life and that’s people in the Statehouse,” Jess Piper, the executive director of Blue Missouri and the host of the “Dirt Road Democrat” podcast, said in an interview with The Iowa Mercury. The Iowa Mercury Substack by Douglas Burns, March 31, 2024. What in the bleeding hell? Maintained roads, bridges, airports a ..read more

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com According to the website Wordsrated, the average American adult reads five books per year. 51.6 percent of Americans don’t finish a single book in a year. Therefore, I am pretty optimistic when I say we should be reading these eight female authors. Don’t get me wrong. Men can be fine writers. It’s just that these women are particularly relevant to this moment in history when authoritarianism is knocking at American’s door. Jane Mayer If you read only one book this year, make it Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Righ ..read more

Is today a once in a lifetime chance to remake the nation? I know one thing. Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin is right, Democrats need to dream big and get to work. What does that mean? Iowa Democrats cannot resign themselves to the idea Iowa is a red state, or that Republican control of state government is inevitable. Republicans are in charge now and they haven’t always been. They will unlikely always be. The dream for Democrats is to make substantial progress toward retaking control of our government, culminating with voting Governor Kim Reynolds out of office in 2026. While we are at it, we c ..read more

Image of 5th Century Bishop of Ireland. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to those who celebrate! It is hard to celebrate anything these days with all the Republican fear-mongering. In any case, Saint Patrick’s efforts to convert the Pagan Irish does not rank very highly in the life of this descendant of people who lived in North America since before the United States was a thing. Republicans cannot help themselves about the border and immigration. After President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address, Governor Kim Reynolds released a statement that included, “Three years of Joe Biden has led to an o ..read more

On Super Tuesday, March 5, the Iowa Democratic Party released the results of their mail-in presidential preference “caucus” that replaced first in the nation. Most news outlets did not recognize this was a thing to watch before it happened. After four attempts, Biden won Iowa, securing all 46 delegates to the national convention. I don’t recall him visiting the Hawkeye State to campaign this cycle. I’d wager he had already shaken many of the Democratic hands that marked the oval next to his name. At the public library used book sale last weekend I bought a copy of Pete Souza’s Obama: An Intim ..read more

Rural Polling Place The machinery of our politics has so many moving parts it is hard to keep up. Important things are pushed from sight just because so much attention is paid to the distractions of Republicans. Here are some items that merit our attention. Iowa Legislature Democrats in the legislature are doing a great job of communicating Democratic policy even if Republicans have been dominant. It seems easier to track Democrats and that is attributable to their improved messaging this year compared to previous ones. We are in the minority and Democratic legislators need our support to hold ..read more

Congressman Dave Loebsack Editor’s Note: I was cleaning up old email files and found this April 10, 2005 email from Dave Loebsack announcing to a small group he was exploring a run for the Congress. As we now know, Loebsack beat 30-year incumbent Jim Leach and served until Jan. 3, 2021. His analysis of the direction of the Republican Party seems spot on, not only for 2005, but from a perspective in 2024. It is presented without editing. I hope readers will be inspired to help Christina Bohannan re-take this seat in November. Recently, I sent a message to a number of listservs in the 2nd congre ..read more

Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.com There are two parts to turning the country around and both run through the ballot box. The first is voting: making sure we take care of ourselves by checking our registration and then voting in person, either early or on election day. Encourage everyone we know to do likewise. The second is changing the public narrative about life in Iowa and in the United States. We should not accept narratives being fed to us by media outlets, churches, interest groups, and political parties. Instead, we must develop new narratives that properly reflect how we live des ..read more

Iowa State Capitol Editor’s Note: This post was written by Mike Jacobsen who is an Iowa County Democrat. It is full of the kind of hope and common sense Democrats have in abundance. The post is published on Blog for Iowa with permission of the author. As the 2024 legislative session begins in Des Moines, I write to express my hopes, concerns and recommendations for our legislators to focus on as they get back to work on behalf of Iowans at the Capitol. Priority No. 1 — stop the culture war madness of marginalizing and vilifying some of our most hardworking, vulnerable, and at-risk friends and ..read more