Democrats had a pretty good Election Day a couple weeks ago in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the states Hillary Clinton’s campaign had characterized as a “Blue Wall” that would guarantee her the White House in 2016 but actually fell to Trump that year. Ever since, Democrats have been determined to win them back, which Joe Biden did in 2020. Democrats kept that winning streak alive this year. In Pennsylvania, Democrats convincingly won the statewide gubernatorial and United States senate elections and could potentially flipped control of the State House of Representatives. Voters re-elected Michigan’s Democratic governor in a landslide and put Democrats in charge of both houses of the state legislature. While Democrats didn’t win the senate election in Wisconsin (I bet Democrats wish they had drafted retiring House member Ron Kind to run in that race) they were able to retain the governor’s office in what is basically a 50-50 state.
Democrats did not fare as well in other states Donald Trump flipped in 2016, particularly Florida, Ohio, and Iowa. In 2016, it wasn’t necessarily surprising Florida and Ohio went from red to blue, as they had only favored Obama over Romney by 0.9% and 3.0% respectively (although the degree to which Ohio swung from Obama to Trump—11.1 points—was certainly shocking.) Since that time, Florida has turned much harder to the right while Ohio looks like it’s got a pronounced Republican lean. Democrats are dismayed to lose Florida and Ohio because they are big states that just a few years ago seemed like national bellwethers. Now they feel out of reach.
Yet it may be Iowa that’s left national Democrats most befuddled. I can also say, as a native of Iowa who follows a lot of Iowans on social media, what’s transpired there over the past ten years has broken the spirit of Iowa’s Democrats. This year, Republican Governor Kim Reynolds won re-election by 18.6%. Eighty-nine year old Republican Senator Chuck Grassley—whose margin of victory has actually been shrinking since topping out at 70% in 2004—still won by about 12 points. The lone Democrat in Iowa’s four-seat House delegation lost by less than 1%, but the other races weren’t all that competitive. Republicans hold close to a 2-1 margin in both houses of the state legislature. Furthermore, all but one of the statewide state government offices will be occupied by Republicans, and the Democrat leads the race for the one that isn’t by 0.23%, or roughly 2,600 votes out of close to 1.2 million votes cast. Of particular note was the race for Iowa Attorney General, where seventy-eight year old incumbent Tom Miller, who has occupied that office for all but four years since 1979, lost re-election by 1.8%. Miller normally wins with about 55% of the vote. Four years ago, Republicans didn’t even nominate someone to run against him. Miller’s loss is almost as surprising as if Iowa voters had decided to switch this
for this
When most Americans think of Iowa, I suspect the phrase “hotbed of liberalism” doesn’t immediately spring to mind. Given how rural (and non-New English) Iowa is (it’s around the 11-12th most rural state in the nation, with between 35-40% of its population living in rural areas) most people would probably assume its politics are dominated by Republicans. Having lived there for the first thirty-three years of my life, I’d also say Iowa temperamentally leans more conservative than liberal. But its recent political history tells a more mixed story.
Let’s look at Iowa’s presidential election results to begin with. In the 1980s, Iowa went for Ronald Reagan twice, but in 1988, in the wake of the farm crisis, not only was it one of only ten states plus the District of Columbia to vote for Michael Dukakis, but Dukakis’s 10-point margin of victory in Iowa was surpassed by only Rhode Island and D.C. (That’s right, Iowa was more liberal in ‘88 than Massachusetts, which was Dukakis’s home state.) Bill Clinton won the state twice in the 1990s, even cracking 50% in 1996 against farm state Republican Bob Dole. Iowa became more of a toss-up state in the 00s: Al Gore slipped by George W. Bush in 2000 by a little over 2,000 votes, but Bush beat John Kerry four years later by a little over 10,000 votes. Barack Obama trounced John McCain in 2008, winning by almost 10 points, and defeated Mitt Romney four years later by close to 6 points; in the weeks prior to both elections, pollsters moved Iowa off the list of toss-up states and into Obama’s column. In other words, from 1988 to 2012, Iowa basically leaned 0-10 points Democratic in presidential races. (We’ll get to Trump’s two victories in 2016 and 2020 a bit.)
Between 1984 and 2014, Iowa sent a senator from both parties to Washington. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is an Iowa institution; in that time he won re-election with an average of 67.7% of the vote. But Democratic Senator Tom Harkin fared well over those thirty years also. Harkin defeated incumbent Senator Roger Jepsen with 55.5% of the vote in 1984 when Reagan won the state by about 7%. Harkin would then go on to win re-election in 1990 (54.5%), 1996 (51.8%), 2002 (54.2%), and 2008 (62.5%). Harkin’s levels of support never approached Grassley’s, but most of Harkin’s elections weren’t really close either.
Since the 1980s, Iowa’s House delegation has mostly consisted of Republicans. At best, Democrats could occasionally split the delegation with Republicans (1981-1985, 2007-2015). Most of the rest of the time, though, they’d only have 1-2 seats or even find themselves shut out for a term (1995-97). Yet as recently as the 2019-21, Democrats held three of Iowa’s four House seats.
Republicans have held the governor’s office in Iowa for 28 of the past 40 years, which is certainly a lot but may also reflect Iowa’s preference for either incumbents or the person of Republican Terry Branstad. Branstad won his first governor’s race in 1982 and, despite an electoral scare in 1986, went on to win three more gubernatorial races after that in convincing fashion. When he finally chose not to run for re-election in 1998, Democrat Tom Vilsack (currently serving as Secretary of Agriculture, a position he also held in the Obama administration) began a streak of Democratic victories that culminated in 2006 with Chet Culver’s 10-point triumph over Republican congressman Jim Nussle. Culver was ousted, however, in 2010 by the second coming of Terry Branstad, who won re-election in 2014 before setting the record for longest-serving governor in American history and then resigning to become Trump’s ambassador to China. Republican Kim Reynolds took over for him and has won re-election twice since.1
Since 1980, the parties have pretty much split control of the Iowa state legislature. Democrats controlled the State Senate for 13 out of 22 terms, while Republicans have controlled the State House of Representatives for 15 out of 22 terms. Add it all up and Republicans have had a majority in 23 chambers while Democrats have had the majority in 20 chambers.
When you take all this into account, it’s hard to conclude Iowa has favored one political party over another over the past forty-two years. If you pressed me on it, I’d say Iowa in that time has leaned Republican, but it’s not as though Democrats haven’t been competitive. At certain times and in certain instances, they’ve not only been able to match Republicans in political clout but have even been able to crush the GOP in a few elections. Still, when Democrats have won, their margins of victory usually haven’t been as large as Republican margins, which I think is telling. My sense has always been that Republicans have a sturdier, more reliable political base in the state while Democrats have to work harder to motivate a more fractious, dispersed, and less-engaged electorate to vote for their candidates (but that’s also my sense of the Democratic Party in general.) Yet Iowa Democrats have found ways to recover from losses, hold their own over the years, and go on offense from time to time.
It now seems as though those days may be gone, with Democrats suffering from a vicious case of whiplash as they experience a total reversal of fortune. The turning point appears to be the time between the 2012 and 2016 elections. In 2012, Barack Obama won Iowa by close to 6%, racking up wins in populous east central Iowa, the “driftless” region of northeast Iowa, the old industrial counties along the Mississippi River, and the area around Des Moines. Obama even managed to pull off a victory in Woodbury County, home of Sioux City, on the state’s western border in a region of the state that leans hard to the right.
The story was completely different in 2016. Trump won Iowa that year by about 9.5 points, the biggest swing for any Trump state that had voted for Obama. Trump’s margin of victory in Iowa was larger than his margin in Texas, and he was the first Republican to crack 50% of the vote since Reagan accomplished that in 1984. Clinton’s 41.7% was the lowest result for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1980. The former first lady only won six counties: Polk and Story in central Iowa, Linn and Johnson in east central Iowa, Black Hawk (home of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls metro area and the University of Northern Iowa) in northeast Iowa, and Scott (part of the bistate Quad Cities metro area and containing Iowa’s third largest city, Davenport) along the Mississippi River.
In 2016, the swingiest county in the nation was in Iowa. If you count three counties over along the Minnesota border from the Mississippi River, you will find Howard County, a rural area of about 9,500 people that was the childhood home of agronomist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug. In 2012, 59.6% of Howard County’s voters supported Barack Obama. Four years later, 57.3% of its voters backed Donald Trump, a 16.9 point swing. If you stretch that out just a little further from 2008 (when Obama won the county with 62.2% of the vote) to 2020 (when Trump won it with 63.1%) you’ll find an astonishing 25.3 point swing over just twelve years time.
Iowa’s overall swing toward Republicans isn’t as dramatic as Howard County’s swing, but for many Democrats it feels that way. After the 2022 elections, Iowa will not be sending a single Democrat to Washington as part of its congressional delegation. Republican Governor Kim Reynolds—whose callous handling of the pandemic tanked her approval ratings in 2020 and earned her the nickname “Covid Kim”—cruised to re-election. Republicans also enjoy the largest advantages in the State Senate since the early 1970s and in the State House of Representatives since the mid-1990s. With polarization and the urban-rural divide calcifying our national politics, it’s becoming increasingly hard for Democrats in Iowa to envision a way back to power.
Adding insult to injury is that the apparent catalyst for this transformation—Donald Trump—is just about the most un-Iowan politician imaginable. The most successful politicians in Iowa over the past forty years—Branstad, Grassley, Harkin, Vilsack—range in style from folksy to bland. (Harkin could wind up a crowd, but no one would have ever considered him a firebrand.) For the most part, Iowa’s members of Congress keep a low profile and an even keel. They don’t come close to matching Trump’s crass pomposity, which runs counter to the notion in Iowa that local leaders ought to be calm, competent, and self-effacing. Sure, former representative Steve King’s racism and xenophobia played to the basest instincts of his supporters and foreshadowed the rise of Trump, and there has always been a strain of conservative outrage in the state that politicians could tap into, but most Iowans would have looked skeptically upon local politicians as bombastic, overbearing, crude, and “un-nice” as Trump. Yet this big city real estate developer, reality TV star, serial fabulist, tabloid fixture, and unabashed self-promoter appears to have transformed Iowan politics.
Why did that happen? How did a state that was a fixture of Obama’s electoral coalition or at worst a toss-up state go full MAGA?
I must admit that despite growing up in Iowa, I have never had a good feel for Iowa politics. When I moved out to Maryland, it was fairly easy to apprehend how Maryland politics worked with its different loci of Democratic power. Iowa, unlike its neighboring Midwestern states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Missouri, doesn’t really have that. There is a general east-west divide to the state that manages to transcend the urban-rural divide. Everyone knows the most liberal part of the state is the People’s Republic of Iowa City, while the most conservative is the Dutch Theocracy of Northwestern Iowa. But beyond that, Iowa’s politics aren’t obviously cleaved by overt economic, demographic, or regional differences, which has made the way Trump has polarized the state all that more striking.
Some might argue Trump’s appeal to older and rural voters would be particularly potent in a state as rural and aged as Iowa. In truth, though, Iowa is actually a pretty average state when it comes to the age of its residents, and like most states, I suspect it’s actually become more urban over the past decade. Also, that aged, rural state still delivered Barack Obama pretty big victories in 2008 and 2012. Others argue Iowa’s shift to the right can be explained by the “brain drain” that has resulted in young college-educated Iowans leaving the state. Yet I remember that being a concern back when I was in high school in the 1990s; the brain drain is not an issue that suddenly manifested itself in Iowa a few years ago. And again, the decades-long brain drain doesn’t really explain Obama’s recent in-state dominance. In other words, that big swing from left to right that occurred between 2012 and 2016 can’t be explained by demographic phenomena that have been decades in the making.
It is likely Trump found new voters to head to the polls for him. Republican turnout increased from 682,379 for McCain in 2008 and 730,617 for Romney in 2012 to 800,983 for Trump in 2016 and a record-setting 897,672 for Trump in 2020. While overall turnout was down in 2016 (around 72%) it jumped to 78.6% four years later. Trump had to bring a new cadre of voters to the polls. But what’s also noticeable in that time is the decline in support for Democratic candidates: From 828,940 for Obama in 2008 and 822,940 for Obama in 2012 to only 653,669 for Clinton in 2016 and 759,061 for Biden in 2020. It’s that shift between 2012 and 2016—when overall turnout in Iowa dropped by only about 20,000 votes—that stands out. Democrats shed 168,875 votes while Republicans gained 70,366. Democrats improved their total by over 100,000 votes in 2020, but Biden still couldn’t come close to Obama’s 2008 peak.
So what happened? To begin with, look toward Trump’s ability to win over white working class voters. Trump’s brand of populism proved potent with these voters in Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. That might seem like an odd fit for an agricultural state like Iowa, but Iowa is actually a pretty industrialized state. It ranks in the top ten nationally in manufacturing output and in the top five in terms of manufacturing jobs per capita. These industries aren’t just located in Iowa’s largest urban areas but in the many small cities and towns scattered throughout Iowa, particularly in the eastern half of the state.
In Iowa, white working class voters have typically been swing voters. Democrats like Tom Harkin and Tom Vilsack built credibility with them by focusing on pocketbook issues and matters of economic security. When Republicans have done well, they have won over working class voters with appeals to personal economic responsibility and preserving the traditional social order. Crucially, however, if either Democrats or Republicans want to be successful among white working class voters in Iowa, they have to combine the economic appeal with a cultural appeal. They have to appreciate and recognize that there is a moral dimension to working hard to support one’s family; that multiple generations have often toiled in local working class settings and found ways to not only get by but prosper; that when times are tough, people turn to their extended families and close-knit communities for support; that social stability and self-discipline can minimize economic risk; that hard work often entails sacrifice and putting up with less-than-ideal working conditions (i.e., long hours, low pay, monotonous tasks, rude bosses, physical exhaustion, etc.); and that personal success and reward is often delayed and modest.
Interestingly, I suspect Trump’s brand of populism—which was infused with this sort of cultural economic appeal—upset the sort of playbook both Democrats and Republicans had been using to win in Iowa. Following Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012, Democrats probably believed they had discovered a winning formula in Iowa built around a progressive message. That progressive message—one focused on social justice and systemic change—appealed to the young voters Obama turned out, the state’s growing urban population, and the party’s activists, but it had limited appeal among working class voters who likely regarded it as either too socially disruptive or unfocused on their local economic concerns. While the Republican coalition was well-situated to take advantage of this by blending the cultural conservatism of the state’s Christian conservative activists with the economic conservatism championed by the pro-business/pro-ag wing of the GOP that controlled the state party, Republican politicians could all-too-easily come across as uppity Chamber of Commerce/church council types practicing a form of respectability politics.
Both parties in Iowa either took working class white voters for granted or failed to appeal to them on their terms. Democrats assumed they were either losing their votes or that they would come around by simply checking their self-interest. Republicans, who probably realized working class whites were drifting their way, just assumed they would join the GOP club without realizing how many working class whites felt out of place culturally in a party dominated by Iowa’s economic elites. That this was happening in retrospect isn’t all that surprising: It’s easy in the unpretentious state of Iowa for people to overlook class distinctions that often boil beneath the surface of public life.
In other words, both parties invited working class whites along for the ride without asking their passengers where they might want to go. But it was Trump who actually promised to put them in the driver’s seat. It’s strange that the person who won them over was an ostentatious NYC billionaire rather than a kindler, gentler populist like former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, but Trump’s promise to speak for them rather than simply get around to them if they had the time probably won the day.
There are a few other factors that account for Iowa’s massive swing to the right, however. Hillary Clinton provided a good foil for a candidate who feasted on people’s disdain for Washington elites. Also, Iowa’s urban areas aren’t large enough to build up a corps of college-educated voters of both the liberal and Trump-skeptical conservative varieties to counter Trump’s strength in the countryside. Many establishment-type Republicans—think small-town small-business owners or middle- to upper-class farmers—probably found it fairly easy to get on board with Trump even if they preferred more down-to-earth Grassley-style politicians.
But it also needs to be said that Trump’s xenophobia and racism probably had something to do with Trump’s success in Iowa as well. Iowa is not a very diverse state, which one would assume should reduce the salience of race-baiting as a political strategy. Yet having grown up in Iowa, I know how easy it is for Iowans to get riled up over issues like immigration and “welfare” (which Iowans associate with both poor “undeserving” whites and Blacks.)
The factor that exacerbates this issue in Iowa is its insularity. While Iowa is very connected to the outside world via its agricultural industry, there is also a strong sense in-state that Iowa is walled-off from the world around it. I remember when the pandemic broke out that some Iowans I knew assumed the virus just wouldn’t reach the state, or, if it did, that its impact would be minimal. Momentous events like that don’t happen in Iowa but are confined to the coasts and big cities.
Iowans like their insularity. Farmers regard themselves as independent and self-sufficient. The residents of rural communities like how small and remote they are and take pride in the way they maintain and support their local schools, churches, and businesses. People feel bound to one another in towns of this size. And let me be clear: There’s nothing necessarily wrong with feeling that way or preferring that sort of lifestyle. But I’d also argue that, as a consequence, Iowans are perhaps more skeptical than others of intrusion, which they believe could upset a community’s status quo. Immigration, Chinese imports, the drug trade, Washington mandates: These are all things that threaten to intrude on Iowa, and there is often a racial or ethnic undertone that accompanies these threats. Iowa is not unique among states in this regard, but I’d argue that by 2016, Iowa was one of the few blue states in the country where this sort of appeal could actually tip it from Democratic to Republican if made explicit.
Six years later, and given how polarization has frozen the nation’s politics, I’m not sure how Democrats regain a competitive foothold in Iowa. It would be one thing if voters had swung from Democrats to Republicans on economic concerns alone, but the way those economic issues are tied up in matters of culture—which makes them matters of identity—makes it that much harder for Democrats to win those voters back. One good thing for Democrats is that voters don’t seem particularly enamored with Republican politicians like Kim Reynolds, Joni Ernst, or even Chuck Grassley, who just a month before winning re-election in a landslide was found to be in a surprisingly competitive race with his Democratic opponent. The obvious model for a rebuild is Pennsylvania, where Democrat John Fetterman just won a Senate seat with direct economic and cultural appeals to working class voters. Yet Iowa doesn’t start with a mass of votes in places like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Additionally, when a Democrat like Tom Miller falls in Iowa, it suggests Republicans are starting with a floor of about 50% of the vote. Iowa Democrats have come back from similar deficits in the recent past, but in our day and age, a comeback just may not be in the cards.
Signals and Noise
One thing I noticed about Trump’s announcement speech that John Harris of Politico also alludes to in this article: Trump was sullen and annoyed, almost bothered that he has to campaign for a job he feels he is called and destined to hold. He’s not an entertainer anymore, or a political wrecking ball. He’s on a mission from God and mad about it. Scary because if he does win, he now understands how to wield the power of the office.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special prosecutor to oversee the federal government’s investigations of Donald Trump. This is presumably what Trump wanted by declaring so early, as it will likely slow down the investigations and perhaps prompt the special prosecutor to step gingerly around a declared presidential candidate. But I can also see this backfiring horribly against Trump if the prosecutor’s final reports are delayed to the point that the decision to act on the prosecutor’s recommendations becomes a campaign issue. That could turn the question of whether or not the president ought to enforce the law impartially into a major factor in the 2024 election. (For example, what if Biden and Garland order the prosecutor not to publish their report until after the election to avoid the appearance that the legal system is interfering in the political process, leaving the decision to potentially prosecute Trump up to the winner of the election? That’s almost definitely a no-win situation for Trump; his willingness to let the Justice Department follow through on the prosecutor’s undisclosed recommendations would dog him on the campaign trail.)
Peter Baker of the New York Times argues that appointing a special prosecutor to avoid the appearance of political bias is doomed to fail as Trump will still insist until the cows come home that the investigation is politically motivated.
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to defund the special prosecutor. Wait until House Republicans hold the debt ceiling hostage over this and crash the economy to protect Donald Trump.
According to The Guardian, FOX News owner Rupert Murdoch has informed Donald Trump his media empire will not be backing the ex-president’s 2024 presidential run. (This is no different from 2016; we’ll see how long this lasts.)
“The question is: who is the current leader of the Republican Party? Oh, I know who it is: Ron DeSantis. Ron DeSantis is the leader of the Republican Party, whether he wants to be or not.”—Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
Mike Pence seems like he wants to run for president, but in the few news stories I’ve read about him, he seems to have a problem: While he is frank about his views on abortion, nearly every answer he gives about Trump is an obvious dodge. It is not unusual for politicians to respond to questions this way, but Pence is so bad at it that he comes across as a guy who can’t have honest conversations about serious topics. Q: “Would you support Donald Trump if he ran for president again?” Pence A: “The Trump-Pence administration accomplished a lot.” Q: “But if he won the nomination, would you support him?” A: “There are many Republicans qualified to serve as president.” Q: “But what about your former boss, Donald Trump: Is he qualified?” A:
Further reading: “Mike Pence Refuses to Connect the Dots” by Tim Alberta for The Atlantic.
More Mike Pence: He said he won’t testify to the 1/6 committee because it would set a “terrible precedent for the Congress to summon a vice president of the United States to speak about deliberations that took place at the White House.” Which, OK, I see the point, but speaking of “terrible precedents,” wasn’t 1/6 a terrible precedent? Couldn’t Pence say, “In ordinary circumstances, no, I wouldn’t testify because it would set a terrible precedent for the Congress to summon a vice president of the United States to speak about deliberations that took place at the White House. But I’ll make an exception for when the president incites an insurrection in an attempt to disrupt the peaceful and democratic transfer of power. Also: I wasn’t at the White House on 1/6, so I’m happy to answer your questions about what I experienced that day as the occupant of the office of vice president, which I have had no problem sharing with others in my recently published book.”
Republicans have narrowly won control of the House. Kevin McCarthy won a House Republican caucus vote to become the new Speaker of the House, but it remains to be seen if there are a handful of Republican members of Congress intent on denying him the post on the House floor (it would only take 4-5 members of Congress voting against him to sink his run, and two have already declared they won’t vote for him.) Nancy Pelosi has decided to step down from her leadership role, which will likely make New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries the House’s new Democratic leader. Mitch McConnell remains Senate Minority Leader, but about 20% of his caucus voted for Florida Sen. Rick Scott.
Democrat Katie Hobbs has defeated Republican Kari Lake in Arizona’s gubernatorial election. Lake ran as an ardent election denier and she has refused to concede. (Trump backs her on that.) Lake’s her performance on the stump suggested to a lot of people that the former newscaster was the natural heir to Donald Trump. She can always run for another political office, but if this in the end of the political road for Lake, the country should feel very fortunate.
Tim Miller at The Bulwark writes about how voters saved democracy in the midterms.
Studies have found that the excess death rate from COVID—that is, the number of people who died from the disease after the introduction of vaccines—is 76% higher among Republicans than the excess death rate among Democrats. This is probably because Republican politicians and conservative media figures often questioned the efficacy of vaccines, leading those listening to them to forego shots. But as Jonathan Last at The Bulwark points out, that difference in death rates may have been decisive in a number of close elections this fall and may have even determined control of the Senate.
According to Philip Wallach of the Washington Post, in House races decided by 15 points or less, Trump-endorsed candidates underperformed the baseline expectation by 5%. Those who weren’t endorsed by Trump overperformed the baseline expectation by about 2.2%.
Christian Vanderbrouk at The Bulwark wonders how much of Republicans’ midterm letdown is Trump’s fault vs. how much of it falls on the state of the Republican Party.
One decisive factor in the outcome of the midterms: Those who had somewhat negative views of the economy did not swing as hard for Republicans as those with very negative views of the economy. Perhaps a sign that disappointed Democrats did not stay home but turned up to vote for their party’s candidates. Or that an issue like democracy or abortion weighed more on the minds of these voters than the economy.
Voters elected Republican governors in Nevada, New Hampshire, and Georgia, but each state’s voters also preferred Democratic senate candidates. Yet a study by Politico found ticket-splitting actually fell to an all-time low in 2022.
Democrats want to raise the debt limit during the next few weeks’ lame duck session. But Republicans won’t help them pass it in the House, and it looks like Joe Manchin (him again) probably isn’t on board with it in the Senate. I’d like Manchin to explain to me why he has faith the new Republican House majority will vote to lift it next year.
An interesting dynamic taking shape following the Republican takeover of the House (and presuming Biden runs for re-election): The government will be investigating both presidential candidates. It’s likely federal and state investigations of Trump will continue, while the Republican House will hold Benghazi-like hearings on anything they want to pin on Biden. The Republican House will probably even investigate the investigations into Trump.
Meanwhile, expect legislative gridlock for the next two years, with deadlines compelling what passes as governance. McCarthy will be lucky to wrangle his narrow Republican majority into doing anything productive.
Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been devastated by recent Russian attacks and the country may not have the parts necessary for repairs, which could lead to a brutal winter and difficulties managing the logistics of the war effort.
Twitter is apparently on a death watch. My query: What will last longer, Twitter since Elon Musk purchased it or this head of lettuce?
Vincent’s Picks: “The English”
At the beginning of the new six-part Amazon Prime/BBC western miniseries The English, we are told American Indians since the arrival of the Puritans have referred to all Europeans as “the English.” It’s an inversion of the way many white Americans have blurred the distinctions between the many peoples and nations who have inhabited this continent for centuries. Cherokee, Seminole, Lakota, Comanche: As different as they were, they all lived on land white people craved. American Indians wanted these English trespassers to leave them alone and go home. “The English” wanted American Indians off the land; eventually, they’d even fight their fellow English over stakes of property. In this clash of civilizations, everyone becomes an Englishman; that is, someone others in that same space just don’t want around.
Enter into this story Lady Cornelia Locke (Emily Blunt), an Englishwoman who has journeyed to the American West in 1890 to exact revenge on a man whom she blames for the death of her son. On her way to Wyoming, she finds a Pawnee man named Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer) strung up outside a hotel in Kansas. The viewer has met Whipp before: He is a recently retired Army scout on his way to Nebraska intent on claiming a piece of land he as a veteran is entitled to by virtue of the Homestead Act. Everyone he encounters tells him there’s no way the government or local settlers will let him have it despite his years of service during the Indian wars (a source of guilt for him) but Whipp—who seems to sense that’s true—is determined to test that theory.
Locke is appalled by the treatment of Whipp at the hands of the hotel’s owner (Ciaran Hinds). This lands her in a horrifying situation, but she ends up being rescued by Whipp. Locke regards their chance encounter as destiny, and Whipp reluctantly agrees to accompany her on her journey until their paths diverge. Blunt and Spencer are wonderful together, with Blunt’s weary, soft-spoken Locke able to break through the hardened, stoic shell Spencer has built around Whipp. They are both on a mission to get what they believe they deserve, with Whipp tired of the violence and ugliness he’s been surrounded by for years and Locke finding herself immersed in it for (almost) the first time in her life. But what really binds these two together isn’t their longing for revenge or desert, but the humanity they find in one another, a trait in very short supply on the open prairie.
The frontier of The English is a cutthroat state of nature roamed by opportunists who do not hold human life in high regard, chief among them a savage entrepreneur played by Rafe Spall who sees in America the chance to rise above his station in life. Everyone is prepared to do whatever they must to survive, and selfish intent quickly devolves into depravity. (The English can be bloody and gory, but the spectacle of violence is largely kept off-screen. This is a good choice, as it keeps the show from exploiting the violence it aims to condemn without shirking the responsibility to show its ugly consequences.) Civilization is barely present here: The hotel in the first episode stands alone on the plains, a house rises over a hill as it is pulled by a horse, an American Indian settlement is razed and burnt to the ground, and the town of Hoxem is barely more than empty plots of land and a general store with a sheriff’s office in its back, its walls made of sheets of fabric. The countryside is full of bushwhackers and their abettors, whose economic model is eat or be eaten. People come on nice, but soon reveal themselves as killers. It is implied this is what laissez faire America does to people.
There are a great many secrets The English conceals over its run time, which certainly keeps the viewer engaged, but its plot structure feels cobbled together. The middle episodes in particular seem like they contain needless digressions, and we are introduced and return to characters who seem very peripheral to the action, or at least connected to the story by many links in a chain. Some characters, like the frightening Black Eyed Mog (Nichola McAuliffe), don’t get the screen time they deserve (although, admittedly, Mog isn’t central to the story at all, but you won’t forget her) while others, like Valerie Pachner’s Martha, get arcs that don’t come into focus until the final episode. A major (yet vestigial) character with unexplored connections to one of the main characters dies off-screen. The tension in some moments of peril, such as a meeting between Whipp and a Cheyenne bandit named Kills on Water (William Belleau), deflates by the time it is resolved. While the story meanders to keep its secrets hid, the final episode does ultimately bring it all together, although you may wonder if Locke and Whipp’s journey ends the way it has to.
Beyond that, however, there are three major reasons to savor The English. The first is the beautiful cinematography, with Spain filling in for the American Midwest. (My only gripe in this regard: Rein in the lens flare.) Combine the European setting with writing and direction by Englishman Hugo Blick and what you end up with is a spaghetti western vibe, a kind of cockeyed yet well-crafted take on a classic American genre. Secondly, the writing is superb, with exchanges the actors can absolutely chew up and numerous memorable lines. For example:
Whipp: Well, at least you can ride.
Locke: And shoot.
Whipp: Big difference between shooting a pig and a man.
Locke: Especially when the pig hasn’t done me any harm.
But the real reason to watch is the tender emotional arc of Whipp and Locke’s relationship. Blunt and Spencer handle their characters’ interactions with care and delicacy. You can see how they understand one another’s hurt and hopes, try to transcend one another’s pain, steer each other away from harm and their darker impulses, and stand by one another in awful predicaments. Even when the plot seems to stray away from the central action, what we’re ultimately interested in is how these two people in an unforgiving land support one another on their quests for justice and peace of mind while clinging to the chance that gentler natures may some day prevail.
Exit Music: “Not the Only One” by Bonnie Raitt (1991, Luck of the Draw)
I don’t know if this is a deal or not in other states—my PoliSci 101 lesson plans remind me incumbents almost always win re-election—but it just seems to me Iowans really have a thing for incumbents. Grassley and Harkin both defeated incumbents to win seats in the Senate in 1980 and 1984 respectively, but Iowans have not voted out a sitting senator since. In that same period of time, the only sitting governor they’ve defeated was Chet Culver in 2010. If you don’t count incumbents getting drawn together into new districts to face off against each other, only six incumbent House members have been defeated for re-election since 1980, with four of those instances happening in the past three election cycles (Smith [D] 94; Leach [R] 06; Blum [R] 18; Young [R] 18; Finkenauer [D] 20; and Axne [D] 22). One other incumbent—white supremacist Steve King (R)—was defeated in a primary in 2020.) In presidential elections, Iowans have repudiated the incumbent only twice since 1980: In 1980 (voting for Reagan over Carter like practically every other state that year) and then again in 1992 (although they hadn’t voted for George H.W. Bush in 1988 to begin with.) Fun Fact: The longest-tenured NCAA football coach is…the University of Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz, who has held his job for 23 consecutive seasons. That’s a few months longer than Terry Branstad’s tenure as Iowa’s governor, but still a long way from Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller’s 40 years and Chuck Grassley’s 42 years and counting.