Iowa and National Democratic Chairs Sue Dvorsky and Debbie Wasserman Schultz/photo by John Deeth

It was another packed house for a Democratic event in Johnson County last night at an Iowa City fundraiser for 2nd District Congressman Dave Loebsack.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee drew a standing room only crowd.  The fundraiser was held at the home of Hy Joseph who still has Dean campaign posters on the wall from back in the day.

First up: IDP chair Sue Dvorsky shared stories of her travels around Iowa. Seems as if there are fired up Democrats coming out of the woodwork, showing up at events in parts of the state where everyone thought there weren’t any.

Senate District 18 could not be more important. Dems MUST retain the majority in the Iowa Senate.  The chair urged everyone to get involved, make time in busy schedules to volunteer for all of the campaigns and write letters. Click here to volunteer to help the Democratic candidate Liz Mathis

Senator Bob Dvorsky reminded everyone present to support and attend the JCDems Fall BBQ, their biggest fundraiser of the year, coming up next Saturday, October 8 @ JC fairgrounds. 

During the photo opp, we were standing next to DWS as she was introduced to Jean Lloyd Jones. They shared their experiences of having sponsored legislation in their respective state houses calling for gender balance on state boards and commissions. Iowa is the only state in the nation that requires it thanks to JLJ. Thanks to DWS, Florida has a similar law but stopped short of requiring it.

Dick Meyers, Jean Lloyd-Jones, DWS/photo by Trish Nelson

Now that we’ve seen DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz speak in person it is even more obvious why she was asked by the president to take the job.  She spoke at length. She was funny,  informative, and inspiring.

President Obama has been focused on job creation…we were bleeding 750,000 jobs a month at the end of the Bush administration before he was inaugurated.

President Obama has inherited the most problems at once that any president has inherited, probably since FDR and Abraham Lincoln…so we passed the recovery act…that helped short-circuit the decline and started to turn things around…now we’ve gone from bleeding those hundreds of thousands of jobs per month to 18 straight months of private sector job growth, 2.4 million private sector jobs. You’ve had a continuing incline of private sector job growth right in Iowa for this entire year and beyond that and we need to make sure that happens in the rest of the country and we need to make sure we pass the American Jobs Act that the president just introduced in the last two weeks (applause).

One would think that a bill that the president proposes that puts construction workers back to work, that keeps teachers in the classrooom, that ensures that our first responders can stay on the job, that gives people a payroll tax cut that would provide the middle class with $1500 annually in their pocket – one would think that that would be fully embraced. Almost every aspect of that bill has bipartisan concepts that have been proposed by people on both sides of the aisle.

It’s mind-boggling to me why the Republicans aren’t supporting it substantively because what do they oppose?  Do they oppose fixing bridges and building roads and putting construction workers back to work? Do they want to lay off teachers?  Do they think that we should make communities less safe by kicking police officers to the curb or letting houses burn down or emergency calls go unanswered or lengthen response times because firefighters and paramedics can’t get to the scene quickly enough because their hours were cut back or they lost their job?  How could they be opposed to $1500 in the pockets of middle class?  It’s baffling.

Well, I’ll tell you how they can be opposed to it.  They can be opposed to it because it actually might do something to improve the economy. And if that happens, they know what happens:  Barack Obama goes back to the White House.  Because they only care about one job:  His.  We care about American jobs.  We care about making it in America.  We care about creating policy that will put people back to work and make sure that we incentivize corporations to bring jobs back here from overseas and stop the manufacturing decline, which we’ve done.

We’ve had an increase in manufacturing for the first time in decades under Barack Obama’s leadership. We rescued the American auto industry thanks to Barack Obama’s courage to stare down the naysayers…his Republican opponents would all have let Detroit go bankrupt but thanks to Barack Obama’s courage we saved over a million jobs, some here in Iowa that are in the pipeline to make sure that we could continue to manufacture automobiles in the United States of America and now all three of those car companies are operating at a profit for the first time since 2004.  (applause).

We’ve got a long way to go.  We’re going to continue to fight hard..we are not taking anything for granted. This state is a battleground state and you are going to see us back here over and over again.  From the top of the ticket on down we are going to make sure that Republicans know that we are going to take it to them every single day from now until next November. We are not going to let up.

We’re going to work extremely hard and it is incredibly important that we stick together.

Probably everybody here isn’t 100% thrilled and could name a few things that you wish could have been different.  I do too.  The public option?  I voted for it three times.  No one wanted it more than me.  But the senate wouldn’t pass it. But I wasn’t going to just take my ball and go home, like some suggested, that we just not pass health care reform because it couldn’t be 100% our way. If we conduct ourselves in that manner, we’re just like them.

I was so proud to be involved in the campaign in 2008..there was nothing more important at that time…even though I was a Hillary supporter until the last day…til the very last day…I’m sure you remember..(laughter)…my friends and I were not on the same side on that one (more laughter). But I propelled myself through the 5 stages of grief in one day (laughter, applause) – and the next day I was on TV for Barack Obama (applause) and I know for sure that this is the  most important election of our lives, that the stakes could not be higher.

The reason I said yes to President Obama to take another full-time job is because I know that if I woke up the day after the election next year and not know that I had done everything I could to make sure that he was re-elected and that I helped voters make the right choice then I couldn’t live with myself on what the impact would be because it would resonate through decades. For my children and their children. Not on my watch. 2008 for all of us was historic. 2012 is personal.

2nd District Congressman Dave Loebsack/photo by Paul Deaton

Q & A:

During Q & A, DWS confirmed that the Dean 50-state strategy continues! Grassroots rule!

Drive for 25. Dems need 25 seats to take back the house. There are now 61 GOP seats that were won by either Barack Obama or John Kerry. 47 of them were won by both. 25 is entirely do-able. Iowans can help by electing Christie Vilsack, Dave Loebsack, Leonard Boswell and Bruce Braley.

Loebsack is being targeted by the GOP and the attack ads have already begun.  click here to volunteer or contribute to Dave Loebsack

Congressman Loebsack let the crowd know that the GOP are making a lame attempt to come after him on emergency disaster relief. He countered that he would take a backseat to no one on his commitment to disaster relief.

“I will put my record since 2008 on diaster relief – what happened in the 2nd District of Iowa – and all of Iowa –  I’ll put that record up against any member of Congress.”

DWS confirmed:

“Dave Loebsack held out to make sure that we wouldn’t adjourn without disaster relief, that we wouldn’t pass a budget until there was disaster relief. If there is anyone that should be called on the carpet for holding national disaster relief hostage, it is the Republicans.”

DWS with Trish Nelson and Paul Deaton, Blog for Iowa

The congressman noted that it’s no mystery what the Republicans are trying to do.

“We know what the Republicans want to do and we can go after that now. In 2010 we got our clocks cleaned because the tea partiers wrote tons of letters. We’ve gotta fight back on that, folks.”

Messaging:  

DWS: “Some ask, where is the president?  Where is his messaging? We used to have 5 TV channels. When the president spoke, everyone in the country heard him. No more. Now we have hundreds of channels, internet, social networks. He needs our help to be heard. Don’t just reply to the garbage that you get in your e-mail. Proactively send out positive messaging of your own.”

John Deeth also attended and blogged about the event.  You can check out his coverage and photos here.