It's Parade Season and Iowans are Talking
by Paul Deaton“We’ve canvassed our regulars and
there are things going on. It’s a midterm and there are families and
baseball games, vacations and church; lives to live. They will be with
us after Labor Day.”
A group of Iowans was standing around talking, waiting folks to muster for the parade. We were in Congressman Dave Loebsack’s home town of Mount Vernon and the county party brought their float in early to get a good spot in the lineup. The supporters would gather near there. As people arrived, they renewed relationships. Meanwhile a staffer’s car was decked out in Loebsack for Congress signs, and people donned campaign t-shirts. Behind us, tractors that hadn’t worked on the farm in a while queued up and what appeared to be farmers stood with arms crossed on their chests talking in the morning sunlight. It is a scene set in a hundred towns across the state each summer, and for many progressives, a time for informal discussion about things that matter in politics.
“How much are you paying for your campaign office?” she asked. I told her and said we had a good fund raising month in June, “the checks keep coming in. We have staffers and they are enthusiastic.” Despite the difficulty of finding a landlord who will rent to Democrats, and on a short lease, both of our spaces are modern and professional looking, even if they will soon begin to look like a college dorm room towards the end of second semester. Financially, the Iowa Democratic Party, the individual campaigns and the county parties seem adequately financed, at least from the parade marshaling area where we stood.
“Are you able to get enough volunteers?” she asked. “Well, not as many as we’d like,” I said. “We’ve canvassed our regulars and there are things going on. It’s a midterm and there are families and baseball games, vacations and church; lives to live. They will be with us after Labor Day.”
“What happened to all of the young people from the 2008 cycle?” he asked. “They went to the Renaissance Faire,” I answered, “and to summer internships, and overseas, and to a hundred things that young people do. It would be unrealistic to expect them to be in a constant campaign mode. The 2008 election is over, and they got involved and moved on. They may be back, or they might not. It’s what young people do.”
“What happens if Washington corrupts the congressman?” someone asked. “Then we vote him out,” I said. We talked about former Iowa Congressman Ed Mezvinsky, whose life started turning south after his first term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He divorced his wife of ten years after re-election to his
second term, lost his seat to Jim Leach in 1976 and in his post-congressional life was convicted on 31 counts of bank fraud, wire fraud and mail fraud and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. We decided Loebsack was no Mezvinsky and as long as he keeps coming home to the district on weekends, listening to his constituents and continues to be the person we elected in 2006, he would be okay.This led to a discussion of what some people want which is the impossible task of legislating by the “will of the people.” When we come from a diverse population, not everyone gets what they want in each vote. Sometimes, people who worked the hardest to elect a representative don’t get the vote they want. That’s representative politics and the Rolling Stones said it best, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes, you get what you need.”
We made no specific conclusions this azure-skied morning, as it was just plain folks talking to each other. The only exception is that we are not finished trying to protect what we have won and to get what we need. ~Paul
Deaton is a native Iowan living in rural Johnson County and weekend
editor of Blog for Iowa. E-mail Paul
Deaton
Blog For Iowa 