Iowa Blog Roundup and District Happenings

By Sam Garchik and Other Folks

Denise O'Brien is having a party tonight! The potluck is in Atlantic, Iowa:

Please bring a covered dish, your own table service, drinks and lawn chairs and enjoy an evening of live music and fun!  Meat will be provided.  Camping on the farm will be available for those of you coming from out of town.

Harris/O'Brien Farm
59624 Chicago Rd.
Atlantic, IA
Friday June 30, 2006
6-10pm

DIRECTIONS TO THE FARM:  If you're coming on I-80 from the East or the West take exit 54.  Go 1 1/2 miles south of the interstate and turn left on Chicago Rd.  We are the first house on the left.   If you're coming from Atlantic take highway 173 (the Elk Horn Road) 3 1/2 miles north to Chicago Rd.  Turn right and we are the first house on the left.

Denise also got the EMILY's List endorsement. Information about Denise will be up on their web page soon. You can help her in the meantime by giving her a good car: The O'Brien Campaign for Secretary of Agriculture is looking for a fuel efficient vehicle to drive around Iowa for the next 4 months.  Please get in touch with us if you are interested in donating a vehicle to the campaign.
 
Ed Fallon's not gone yet. He sent out an interesting email. I want to print this in its entirety. I read this on my Feedblitz email, but it came to me from Gavin's Journal:

Dear Friends,

While the recent primary election didn't achieve the victory we'd hoped for, it has had significant political impact statewide. Here's an exchange among Kay Henderson, David Yepsen, Jeneane Beck, Mike Glover and Todd Dorman during the most recent edition of Iowa Press. This should give all of us encouragement to keep building our network of reform-minded Iowans.

One thing you can do is send this e-mail to your own lists, and recommend that others sign up for my weekly electronic updates. And be sure to share with them my promise never to inundate recipients with e-mail or sell my e-mail list. That's a promise I've kept for years, and one I continue to stand by. Thanks!

Ed Fallon

Excerpts from Iowa Press, June 23, 2006

Henderson: "Out of this race, I think I see that there is a potential in Iowa Democratic politics for a populist to be successful. Ed Fallon did incredibly well in that election. He had 38,000 people who turned out. And in a low turnout election, he would have been even more competitive. And I think you can argue that his people would have gone to the polls regardless of the type of election year it was. So I think that what it tells us is that Iowa is sort of right for a candidate, like a Paul Wellstone or maybe the former governor of Minnesota who was a wrestler, that if someone crafts a message in such a way, I think a candidate of that ilk could be successful."

Yepsen: "Jeneane, what about Ed Fallon? What do you think he did right? What did he do wrong? "

Beck: "Well, I think that his message -- I think the CIETC scandal would help an Ed Fallon because he doesn't take PAC money and he -- the time was right for him to look at the scandals that we've had in Washington with the corporate lobbyists and the CIETC scandal here in Iowa. For a candidate like that to come forward and say, 'You know, what, I don't play that game. I'm not influenced by money' -- and that's what he did well across the state and in debates in talking about that. To me that was his best argument."

Yepsen: "Mike, is the reason he did so well that the Democratic left is so very angry just about everything and Fallon became sort of the vessel for that anger?"

Glover: "That's part of it. That's part of it. But one of the things that went into Ed Fallon's relatively strong showing, 26 percent of the vote, was Ed Fallon grew as a candidate throughout the course of that campaign. And that's one of the things that -- one of the great challenges we face is to measure a candidate who is going to grow into the job. As he was in the race for governor, Fallon grew. He got more thoughtful. He got more focused. He got more -- you get better as a candidate. And as a result, he was able to attract that Democratic left that's alienated and angry. He also was able to attract a group of disaffected Republicans who are unhappy with that sort of rightward drift of the Republican Party and looking for somebody to voice their message. He actually can be a key figure in this fall election because the voters who turned out for Ed Fallon are voters that have to show up if Chet Culver is to have a chance for winning this election in the fall. Ed Fallon will be a very important person for Chet Culver come the fall election. And it will be interesting to see how he fits into that whole campaign." [emphasis mine]

Henderson: "One other point about Ed Fallon. I think when he was on the dais with Culver and Blouin at his side in debate situations, he came off looking pretty good because he didn't have consultants who said, 'In answer to this question, you give this answer.' I mean he looked normal. He looked human. There was a question; he actually answered it. So I think he came off in those settings where people were measuring the candidates against one another, I think he came off rather well."

Dorman: "There's a hunger among voters for candidates that seem genuine, and he fit that bill. Like Kay said, a lot of times the other candidates would look, you know, preprogrammed, kind of robotic. And he didn't look that way. He looked like he was answering questions honestly, and I think that built a lot of appeal to him."

And yes, I do read the JCR blog. They pointed me to this article about a new, scary group in Iowa. This is the group that dumped three Republican incumbents this spring. Beware! You may be able to fight them off with facts from Nussle and Flow. It's hard for a pimp out there, aint it, Jimmy?

District 1

Alta Price says:
I found this at DailyKos. It is long, but well worth reading, especially with the upcoming elections. The diarist discusses tactics used by the Republicans, and why the Democrats have trouble countering them. Running against Bush is not enough. Just this discussion is worth the read.

I really like the discussion on Republican "ideology". The basic idea is the conservatives have spent 40 years and millions (billions?) of dollars promoting their ideology of "government is bad" and we need "less government". This is nonsense, of course, but is accepted unthinkingly by the people. We need our own ideology to counter their ideology (the diarist also explains what an ideology is, and why we want to be ideologues!) http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/28/22312/3713

If you click on the links towards the end, you get more information about the ideology this diarist suggests, which is "cheap labor conservatives", as opposed to "big government liberals". I think it is pretty good, actually.

   Iowa Blog Roundup (and other things also)

It's been a very hectic week with the convention and all, but I wanted to bring you up to speed on a bunch of different issues and happenings.

Courtesy of The Left Coast of Iowa Blog, I posted Joyce Schulte's response to King's comments on Thomas. I encourage you all to read what she said, as she speaks for all of us.

Also, Chris at Political Forecast is doing a great job of keeping tabs on what's going on in this state. He pointed two things out to me that I want to pass on to you. The Eminem Domain issue keeps popping up, and it has the gov in a bind.

Wait, sorry. That's State 29. 

Seriously, Chris linked to this article in City Pages which tries to sum up all the arguments made by which rich and famous Iowans about eminent domain. I still can't figure out why the Johnson County state reps voted against the bill, which isn't to say I am accusing them of something. It's just to say I'm looking to find out why.  Chris also covered the Iowans for Sensible Priorities bloggers press conference. They had a good showing at the state convention as well, so look for them to get more traction in Iowa.

On the Trail of the Contender

Villsack was written up in the American Prospect, who teases the interview here. I got to hear the old guv talk 3 times in one day at the convention. I don't want to comment any further, and I still don't know if I am going to caucus for him, but $600,000 for Culver buys him some good will in this state.

We are starting to get a lot of event notices. It's hard to keep them all straight, and this is a statewide blog, so I'll mention these, and then encourage you all to check out our calendar:

District 1

Bill Gluba endorsed Braley, saying, "the fundamental principles and positions we share are more numerous than the few issues on which we disagree."  Also, DFQC is planning an Iraq War Forum on Tuesday, June 27. You can join the group and RSVP at DFA-Link.

District 2

Progressive Promise

I got this from the Progressive Caucus website in the House of Reps. We can modify it to make it more specific to Iowa. Later today, I'll post something I was working on for Alta and a possible Democracy for Iowa statewide group. Feel free to comment on that here as well.

It took me the longest time to figure out what to do with DFA-Link once I was there. The basic idea: Use the search tool by entering your zip code and looking for groups, events, campaigns, or people. Once you find a group, event, or campaign that interests you, sign yourself up. Once you find a person, you can send them a message through DFA-Link without ever knowing their email address or sharing yours. We’ll go through the details of how to use each of these functions in subsequent tutorials!

Finding an Event

By Alta Price

I wanted to get this up ASAP to use for the Iowa Democratic Party State Convention this weekend in Des Moines. I have not been able to come up with a plan to get DFAers attending the convention and/or those who live in Des Moines together this weekend. Friday night we don’t want to conflict with the Hall of Fame Dinner. Some of us aren’t even coming down until Saturday morning (e.g., me). Saturday we don’t know how long the convention will run. What’s an organizer to do?

At someone’s brilliant suggestion (Sue? Sorry, can’t remember who!), we finally decided to share cell phone numbers and plan on the fly as events unfold. I set up two separate events at DFA-Link – Meet DFAers in Des Moines Friday and Meet DFAers in Des Moines Saturday.

If these links do not take you to the appropriate event pages, you can find them yourself now that you have a DFA-Link account (see previous blog post). Use the search tool and your zip code. If your zip code doesn’t do it, use this one – 50309 (zip code of Convention Center). Once you find the event, read the details (ignore the times and places – I had to put something in but these will change), and RSVP. Once you RSVP, the host can contact you through DFA-Link messaging (look for DFA-Link messages in your email inbox).

If you don’t want to go the DFA-Link route, but want to get together, just email me with your contact information and whether you are interested in Friday or Saturday or both. I will share your information with the Friday host (since I won’t be there on Friday).

We want to have a “formal” statewide Democracy for Iowa meeting sometime in September. But we’d also like to meet more informally at events like this. Maybe we can use DFA-Link more effectively to link up!

Alta Price altaprice@yahoo.com

  Planning a Quad Cities Iraq War Forum

By Alta Price, DFA-Quad Cities, DFA-Link Host, altaprice@yahoo.com

Thanks, Sam, for bringing our Iraq War Forum to the attention of Blog for Iowa readers! We had a great planning meeting last night and want to tell you about this Democracy for America national action, and what we are doing about it in the Quad Cities.

Democracy for America (DFA) has come up with some great ideas for local groups all around the country (world?) to participate in more or less at the same time. The January 2005 Meetup was a framing workshop based on the George Lakoff DVD, How Democrats and Progressives Can Win,  sent free of charge to DFA Meetup hosts around the country, together with directions for the workshop. We had 55 people come out for that Meetup, even with a snow storm that closed the schools that day. My personal favorite was the April 2005 action to save Social Security - the “constituent visits” to the local offices of Senator Grassley and Representatives Nussle and Evans. Can you imagine the impact of 12 constituents showing up at a Congressperson’s local office at noon on a Thursday to share their Social Security stories – and demand Social Security not be privatized? The best part was the training DFA provided for exactly how to arrange and carry out the visits. (I have the instructions saved on my computer for future use – in fact, the Creative Leaders forum of Progressive Action for the Common Good intends to train issue forum facilitators to organize their own visits to members of Congress.)

This summer local DFA groups around the country, with support from the national office, are holding Iraq War Forums. You can read the rationale behind this action and see the materials available for planning your own event on this DFA website. Suffice it to say, judging by the excitement in the Quad Cities around this action, and the non-DFAers (new-DFAers?) showing up to help, this will be another DFA action to remember!

We started discussing our Iraq War Forum at last Thursday’s Linkup. (Translation: Linkup replaces the old Democracy for America “Meetup” and is a local Democracy for America group’s regular monthly meeting, usually held the first Wednesday of the month, but one day later in the Quad Cities.)

First we chose a date and location. DFA wants these done in the summer, so we figured by Labor Day. Progressive Action for the Common Good has us all so busy, we meet ourselves coming and going. PACG has big events in July, September, and October – leaving August up for grabs. So we snapped up the morning of Saturday, August 26. By last night’s meeting we had secured a location for that date, the Kahl Education Center in downtown Davenport. So it’s a go!

Second we chose topics to be covered. There is so much to discuss, but we want the event to only last three hours in order to make it more manageable to plan and to allow busy people to attend. We want our Iraq War Forum to be relevant to our area. We want to draw upon the expertise of the Iowa Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, who hosted a wonderful full day conference in March on the Medical Consequences of War. In the end we decided on the following three topics:

1) What are the mental health needs of our returning veterans, and is our area prepared to meet them?

2) What is the economic impact of the war in Iraq on our community?

3) Now that we are in Iraq, what are our options for getting out?

Now we are working on securing speakers and co-sponsors for the event. Soon we will be sending out press releases and advertising our Iraq War Forum to the community. If you live in the Quad Cities and want to help, please contact me – or go to DFA-Link and sign up here for our next planning meeting on June 27!

We encourage other local groups – whether DFA related or not – to host their own Iraq War Forums (click here for planning materials ). It could be as simple as one speaker for one evening. People are looking for answers and action – and you can help them find both. Please feel free to contact me with questions or for help finding resources.

Alta Price
DFA-Quad Cities, DFA-Link Hostaltaprice@yahoo.com