Looking ahead in Iowa

As the seemingly endless Democratic primary begins to yield results tonight, anxious people need to remember that which candidate emerges on top, both in Iowa and beyond, is not the only deciding factor in who will win the 2020 election. Polling consistently finds that nearly 50 percent of us want Donald Trump gone. In order for Trump to win against these numbers, he has to win ALL the small sliver of persuadable voters in exactly the right swing states. Any of the top candidates has a plausible shot at preventing that if we can unite and do the work.

The primary is a tussle over what should be our positive priorities for the next four years and beyond. These disputes are important. They have revealed that many of us are ready for some radical changes. But the general election in November will be a referendum on Donald Trump who was never ready for anything but cruelty and larceny.

And millions of activists, many newcomers to electoral politics, are gearing up to prevent Trump's re-election and achieve much more. Doubt this? Explore the story of these Iowa activists who have organized themselves over the last three years. They are looking way beyond today's primary.

“We are not going to stop until Republicans don’t even want to run candidates here,” said [Mary] McAdams, 54, a molecular geneticist turned singer-songwriter with a fondness for alliterative phrases. “We are going to make this place too blue to bother.”

... Even as Iowa Democrats focus on their first-in-the-nation presidential nominating contest on Monday, with many still undecided and anguishing over their choice, activists are trying not to lose sight of a longer-term political goal: staging a political takeover.

.... On this night, McAdams’s “Ankeny Army” was composed of those relative newcomers. Here was Kelsie Goodman, a 35-year-old high school assistant principal who had returned home because “there were so many more options in this area than there had been before.” She was proud to be from a state that was the first in the Midwest to legalize same-sex marriage, a place that helped to springboard the candidacy of the first black president. But as her state was slowly diversifying, she had become concerned that Trump was empowering voters who resented those very distinctions.

Next to her was Amy Tagliareni, a 49-year-old administrator of a small nonprofit and a mother of a middle-schooler. She had moved to the state in 2008 but had never voted in a primary until 2018. She voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election but felt she needed to become more active because so many middle-class white women like her had voted Republican or chosen not to vote at all.

The two women were representative of the people who were fueling the activism in Ankeny: young professionals and mothers with older children. They were horrified most by what they saw as the Trump administration’s poor treatment of the vulnerable — separating immigrant families, restricting food stamps, banning refugees — and were desperate to post some wins. So they decided to play hard. ...

[McAdams's] crusade started with a desire to remove Trump, but it was also about herself. After the great unsettling of 2016, she realized she hadn’t taken stock of her neighborhood, which had grown so much that she could hardly recognize it. ... She asked volunteers to knock on doors. If they did not want to knock on doors, she asked them to make phone calls. If they did not feel comfortable making phone calls, they could write postcards. If not postcards, she’d ask volunteers to drive so others could knock on doors.

As they set out to find registered Democrats, McAdams saw an Ankeny beyond its stereotype. There were trailer parks, and residents there said they couldn’t afford rising rents. Middle-class-looking homes had sunken ceilings and no hot water inside.

They drove through neighborhoods of Bosnian refugees and met black and South Asian families who had moved for better jobs. Even as the city’s median income continued to rise, the suburbs had become more diverse and more stratified.

“We just never noticed it because we were too damn busy,” McAdams said. ...

“We are a family now,” McAdams said. “And I’ve got more best friends and sisters and brothers than I did three years ago. I’d be damned if I lost contact with them after 2018. Nothing is stopping us now because we are a family, and Donald Trump is still president.”

It's not likely that this cluster of energy can turn all of Iowa blue in this cycle. They are building for a longer future. But as David Atkins explains

... The boring reality is that a realignment is taking shape in which the exurban professional class and white working class increasingly vote for their prejudices over their economics but are declining in numbers ... [E]ducated suburbanites, young people and people of color rapidly align with the Democratic Party, on behalf of both moderate and leftist candidates depending in large part on the district.

There are a lot of reasons why the United States was vulnerable to electing an unfit, dictatorial narcissist. The capitulation of Republican elites to unconstrained greed and fear was one reason. But too many economically comfortable, mostly white, citizens also had become complacent in the dream of a democracy that was making itself better, if gradually. Trump was a terrible shock. These suburban activists -- the majority seem to be women -- aren't stopping. They are a vital slice of the Democratic coalition and their work is a good part of why we can win in November.