I’ve long been a pragmatic institutionalist — I am, after all, a public employee — willing to work within systems even knowing they are flawed, imperfect vessels for my values and ideals.
Failing to learn the lesson of my parents’ generation, I’ve considered myself a capital-d Democrat, and given my time and money to that cause, feeling the party was, at best, advancing things I care about or, at worst, practical harm reduction to staunch the punch-down politics of the MAGA-era Republican Party.
There are no moral victories in politics; you either wield power or you don’t. And while today begins an era of total, unified control in Washington, DC, and Des Moines, the Democratic Party seemingly hasn’t realized a need to change. Iowa Democrats have but a single defanged statewide elected and are virtually powerless in the both houses of the legislature. They have watched themselves lose ground cycle after cycle, yet still simply aspire to “make Iowa purple again.” This reads to me as a declaration of capitulation, a willingness to appease people who continue to come after us and our vulnerable neighbors — immigrants, the unhoused, transgender folks and anyone else they please — and a readiness to sell out the values and voters of Johnson County to appeal to conservative rural and suburban voters.
In Iowa and elsewhere, many Democrats are from districts where “Democrat” is a tarnished brand for college-educated elites who want to tax and regulate and tell you how to talk and take away your truck and your guns. There is something to be said for the practicality of running away from the broader Democratic brand and instead focusing on common-ground issues.
But closer to home is where political leadership increasingly matters. And here in Iowa City and Johnson County we elect Democrats. We send them to be grist in the GOP-supermajority legislature and to run our county (the Republican Party doesn’t even bother to run candidates) and our non-partisan city councils. And despite having nothing to lose but their own political aspirations, our elected leaders too often speak and govern from fear and either abandon their values or don’t share mine to begin with.
The list of disappointments is long, but I was recently brought the clarity I needed to change my voter registration, this morning of all mornings, by the public castigation of a candidate for Iowa City’s city council and his supporters for not unconditionally loving the United States of America. For putting his love of people over politics.
Instead of pulling together to protect the vulnerable in our community, we have repeatedly seen local Democrats be selfish, petty, rude, dismissive, derisive, bullies and purposefully obtuse, putting politics over people and unable to get out of their own collective way to make this a better, safer place for the people who live here.
There is place for compromise, but there is not a place to compromise our values.
