August Recap: Some Dems drop, but Republicans jump in

I had limited expectations for this blog when I started.

What I didn’t figure was that four years from the last election, I am a much more social animal.

I have covered some unique things in my blog that might not be captured in the same way. That’s pretty awesome.

I have long joked not to look here for insight but I have stumbled into really relevant stuff here.

That said, I am generally interested in the ephemeral since I know I can’t compete with other sources by being the definite story (nor would I want to).

Anyway, it’s the end of August now and where do things stand.

There was an early temptation to write about everything and I was overwhelmed. With so many candidates, every day is a news day.

If I could change one thing, I missed an opportunity to talk about the spring flooding. No discussion of this election cycle is complete without mentioning it.

I was in the Omaha area in March. Levees failed from the so called ‘bomb cyclone’ storm and snow melting. I won’t forget what I saw for some time.


 
Credit: Omaha World-Herald


Jay Inslee, Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand were the first candidates to get to Iowa and tour affected areas (Mike Pence also made one of the first visits).The debate raged in Congress, in what might have been a nonissue- Dems were reluctant to approve Iowa/Nebraska money while leaving Puerto Rico behind.

The GOP jumped on that as the Dems weren't wanting to approve money for the Midwest, as Booker, Warren, Sanders and Gillibrand voted no on a Relief Bill (which was unfair to Puerto Rico, in their view.)

In Inslee's tour of some really Red counties, he was met with skepticism.  Rising Republican star Jack Whitver took to tv calling the candidates trips to the state as Photo Ops.

As eastern Iowa was hit a bit later, Beto O'Rourke made his trip to Davenport in May. At this point, Elizabeth Warren and others were weighing in, and it was apparent no candidate could get away without a focus on the environment.

The race has changed, of course, since Spring. The one thing I wished I had wrote was when I created a post on the second debate and I forgot to mention Inslee’s glasses.

 

A friend made comparison to Clark Kent. I thought it was a really unique thought. Others must have noticed it as it went viral, to the point, Inslee integrated it into his campaign donor emails. Again, I would have liked to have captured that particular thought in print first.  Oh well.

I saw Inslee back in June and though I could not foresee a path to the White House, I was still shocked. Inslee looks out of central casting as “the rival candidate” in some tv show.

However, he did position himself as the climate candidate before anyone else, and this has turned out to be a climate election.

The Register tracked all questions asked at campaign events and ran a story which showed that climate change was among the top issues along with Education and HealthCare Reform (they buried the lede, which was Biden wasn’t taking crowd questions).

First, I believe two things. 1) I think you can’t draw perfect conclusions from this project (as fun as it is). Activists go to these things and tend to be way more verbal and 2) while I am downplaying the results, I can say I have talked to enough average voter Dems to know it is a very important topic.  Top three? Yeah, probably so.
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Inslee seemingly had the blessing of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, so it was curious to see what could have resulted from that. (One of these days maybe someone could explain to Conservatives that AOC would be a brief mention in the back of People Magazine if it wasn’t for them talking about her constantly)

Of course, Eric Swallwell has dropped (a candidate I mentioned at times) but now, Seth Moulton has also.  I was wrong when I thought (after hearing on local Conservative Radio in March) he was going to pop, as well as former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper.

In theory, Gov Hickenlooper was supposed to be the “cool” candidate. He toured in a RV, he loved jam bands, and he almost exclusively had campaign events at Brew-Pubs.



I guess it is just proof that you can’t just come up with a formula.

We have seen in the last 20 years, older-aged candidates like Bernie Sanders, Ron Paul, and Mike Gravel (Gravel’s non-campaign Campaign is another 2020 occurrence that deserves mention in the history books, though it looks to have also ended, by the way.) grab the youth vote. In retrospect, you can just create "authenticity"  It doesn't work that way.

Hickenlooper rode the full week of RAGBRAI, and despite a 2015 article that said riders aren't going to stop for a candidate, and a history including Howard Dean, Tim Kaine, John Edwards, Bruce Babbit, Gary Johnson and gubernatorial candidate Fred Hubbel all riding, with no measurable effect at the polls; he did it anyway.

 I asked a couple of RAGRBAI riders if they ran into him (surely catching him sight of him, since he was on-stage with Big Head Todd and the Monsters at a post-ride concert).

They had not.

Hickenlooper saw pressure to run for Senate where it looked like the seat could be flipped; and it was too much.

Surprisingly, with so many dropping, one candidate has been added- the unlikely candidacy of Ben Glieb.

 

Glieb, a comedian, is likely best known as former host of Game Show Network's Idiotest. (Not that GSN doesn't have some intelligent employees like Ben Stein, the path usually goes from the White House to GSN, not vice versa).

He apparently has been running for a couple of months, but things got really real this past week, and all of a sudden, fellow Dems are asking me what I think of him.

One of his talking points has been that he doesn't think Medicare for All is realistic.  He made an August trip to Iowa, and appeared on the weekly must-watch local Sunday morning political show The Insiders.

Besides doing a quick Bernie impression, Glieb may have a point- in that his answer is to improve the ACA and he thinks that the Dems pursuing more Progressive (read: Socialist) solutions - will lead to a dead end road.

Now, whether he can get that point across in a primary where we have seen John Delaney and John Hickenlooper booed by party faithful for saying similar things.

Glieb is serious, and well spoken, even if seemingly more moderate Dems are being pushed away.  He would be an unlikely candidate though certainly we know not to count anyone out.

Touring Iowa, Glieb also attended the local AFL-CIO event where labor leaders said they were not going to let any Dem take their endorsement for granted. That said, it was still odd, to see him treated like say, Michael Bennet, interviewed on the issues.

Glieb may not be the only comedian running for President. Sam Seder made waves earlier when he said he would run as a Libertarian, and even won a poll of registered Libertarian Party members, though it is hard to say if they confused the name with the similarly sounding Ben Leder, or if there were other reasons that impacted the voting.

That's important, because Seder while is running as a Libertarian, he claims to be doing so as a mockery of The Party.

Seder is recognizable from the glory days of liberal radio, Air America, where he cohosted with Janeane Garofolo, then hosted his own show and has since appeared on MSNBC as a commentator, and on comedies like Bob's Burgers and Sex in the City.  He podcasts and maintains The Majority Report online.

His humor is that of which one might expect from a liberal point of view.



Still, the biggest news might be on the Republican side of things. 

First, William Weld used the Iowa State Fair Soapbox to make his visit trip to the state.  Weld avoided the Republican Party tent (probably wise) and suggested on the Soapbox that his "friends in Congress" were about to abandon Trump. He took a few heckles and said we would look back at this administration as a 'bad dream'. 

That was followed by the announcement of Joe Walsh. Walsh (not the Eagles guitarist) spent the earliest part of this decade like Trump, as a demagogue who blasted President Obama (calling Obama "a Muslim").  Famously, he said if Trump didn't win the election, he'd grab his musket.  I would never have guessed that Walsh would turn into a very compelling (dare I say, Presidential) figure, 
whose Twitter feed has become a must read.

What was once fiery rhetoric like the 2016 tweet below, has been replaced by nuanced talk.

 

Walsh has been walking back some of his most outrageous statements, and could be a serious contender to Trump. 

Despite the GOP chairman Jeff Kaufmann shouting down voices of dissent, the 2020 Iowa Republican primary will be a confidence test for Trump with all of the votes being counted. 

Weld and Walsh may have another opponent in former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford.  Sanford is headed to Iowa, but not before a gaffe in which he confused the Hawkeye State for the Buckeye State in one of his tweets. 
 

 As long as he does not ask where the Potatoes are, he should be ok.

I started this post by talking about the blog, so I will end it that way.  I tend to try and keep my blog for the masses as much as possible.  My next post will be back to some of the more fun and weird stops on the caucus route, that are my usual stock in trade.