2016

Last night was a very bad night for the Iowa Democratic Party and the future of our state. Iowa was engulfed in a red tidal wave that wiped out the party’s majority in the Iowa Senate, handing full control of state government over to the Republicans. The legislative session will be a frightening one, and many Democrats…

It could take years for Iowa Democrats to recover from the utter shellacking they took on Tuesday night, when a total realignment in voting trends struck the state hard. Some rural and blue collar counties that went for Barack Obama in 2012 saw swings to Donald Trump by as much as 30 points. Democrats lost…

Governor Terry Branstad and legislative Republicans will wield full control over the executive and legislative branches of Iowa government come next January. Democrats lost their majority in the Iowa Senate, which they’ve held since 2006, as early returns showed Senators Mike Gronstal, Chris Brase and Brian Schoenjahn losing their reelection efforts. That bumps Democrats down…

Here we go! Election night approaches, and we’ll start getting a sense of who has won and lost in Iowa starting at 9:00 PM when polls close. Here’s a handful of things that I think will be important for Iowa politics watchers to keep their eye on tonight. If you want to follow me live, I’ll…

Voters streamed into auditor’s offices across Iowa on Monday, getting their vote in one day before Election Day arrived. Long lines were seen in Polk, Black Hawk, Johnson, Linn and Scott counties. Voters who still had their absentee ballots hopefully brought them into auditor’s offices or planned on taking them to the polls – sending…

As the final countdown begins for the close of polls in Iowa, thousands of volunteers are spread out across the state knocking on doors, collecting absentee ballots and dragging every last person they can get to the polls. A big part of Democrats’ GOTV efforts come from organized labor, and AFSCME is providing a good…

Are we done yet? The closer we’ve gotten to the election, the longer every day seems to drag on, so who knows how today will feel. At this point, everyone is emotionally exhausted, from the candidates to the campaign staff to the volunteers to the voters. I’ve been trying to think of some interesting way…

Republicans have to lie because they are still touting the same policies that doomed the Bush administration … tax cuts for the rich (trickle down), cutting social security and medicare, denial of the science of global warming, more boots on the ground in the Middle East, less regulation of Wall Street, raising the minimum wage,…

I cast my first vote for president in 1960. Or at least I think it was 1960. Before my Donald Trump friends do the math and conclude I was trying to rig an election as a 10-year-old, let me confess that my “vote” came in the middle school’s mock election. Kids were excited to take…