State Representative Aime Wichtendahl represents Iowa House district 80.
In the lead up to the 2025 election the consultant class decided to release a 58-page document called deciding ‘Deciding to Win’ a supposed blueprint for how Democrats could win in 2026.
The report was authored by a trio of consultants—David Axelrod, James Carville, and David Plouffe—a group of politicos who haven’t been successful since Avengers was new on DVD.
The document focused on a prescriptive policy agenda for the 2026 elections: emphasize some kitchen table issues, like minimum wage or prescription drugs, and focus less on “some identity and cultural issues.”
Which is consultant-speak for chuck trans people under the bus…just a little bit. After all, they still need the queer community to be uninspired enough to still pull the lever for their “lesser of two evils” candidates ad infinitum.
And really? They needed a million dollars to publish a white paper suggesting that maybe, just maybe the economy isn’t working for the overwhelming majority of Americans. At a time when two-thirds of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, inflation eats that up at checkout counter, and health, rent, and education costs continue to spiral out of control.
Weren’t these the same consultants who talked Kamala Harris down off a platform of economic populism to suggest that maybe some billionaires aren’t so bad?
So, I have a better idea for electoral success: Fire the consultants.
The 2025 elections disproved their play-it-safe strategy. Virginia Republicans spent millions of dollars running anti-trans ads to back their gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears and they failed. Miserably.
Because here’s the thing: the GOP believes anti-trans issues are their “get out of jail free card.” They believe they can key jingle culture war bait and anti-trans legislation and that voters will forget that Republicans can get away with supporting unpopular legislation like the Big Bankrupting Bill that Congress approved in July, which enriched their billionaire donors at the expense of literally everyone else.
You already see it happening in Iowa. In his video introducing his campaign for governor, Randy Feenstra hit not one, but two anti-trans talking points hoping that voters will forget that he hasn’t done a single in person town hall, goes out of his way to not answer questions about eminent domain, or that he actively looks the other way as everything the Trump Administration does from tariffs, immigration raids, to bailing out Argentina is crushing Iowa’s agricultural economy.
When I ran for the Iowa House in 2024, I was told I should only target certain groups of voters and only talk about specific issues and trust that it would work.
I threw that advice in the trash.
Because I’m going to talk to the people of my district. I’m going to talk to voters about the issues they care about, and I am always going to be open and transparent about who I am.
Through it all, I still showed up and fought for the trans community against each anti-trans bill the GOP pushed in the 2024 legislative session.
And I heard the whispers from the consultant class: “It’s great that Aime is running but there’s no way she can that she can win because she’s trans. We need someone safer to hold that seat.” Forgetting that I had in fact won three elections to the Hiawatha City Council.
And it wasn’t just me who threw conventional wisdom on its ear in 2024.
In Montana, Democrats successfully turned the GOP’s weird and gross obsession with transpeople and turned it around on Republicans. Democrats won ten state House seats and broke the Republican supermajority.
Here’s one thing that is obvious to everyone but the consultant class: Voters don’t want focus-tested candidates with poll-tested messages.
Voters value authenticity. Voters want to know what you’re going to do for them. They are more likely to give you a chance—even if they disagree with you—compared to candidates who just pander, and they have no time for politicians who won’t stand for anything.
So, for 2026 give me candidates who:
- Are rough around the edges
- Will knock doors and talk to voters who haven’t been engaged in decades
- Speak truth to power
- Aren’t afraid to stand against a broken system that has repeated failed the American people, and
- understand that “liberty and justice for all” isn’t optional.
2026 is going to be a change election. Democrats can win—but only if they stop listening to the consultants.
6 Comments
Run On Democrat Issues
Looking to the 2026 midterms, there will likely be a favorable election environment for Democrats . . . but still an uphill fight in what was a +13% Trump state a year ago.
That’s a lot of ground to makeup.
To have a chance to win statewide and flip a couple congressional races next November, three things should be happening right now. The state party and individual campaigns should be actively recruiting new voters. Also, a strong effort must be focused to identify Democrats to run in every contest up and down the ballot. Democrats must narrow the margins in red rural areas throughout the state.
There also must be an aggressive plan to win the votes of disaffected Republicans and independents that have traditionally leaned Republican. This includes voters who work directly in – or are impacted by – the farm economy. Also, women, seniors and young voters.
Regarding issues, I’d emphasize a declining economy hurting working class Iowans; the uncertainty of access to health insurance; the wrecking of agricultural markets by careless Republican policies (yet again!); no urgency to address the polluting of Iowa waterways; and stunning Republican government overreach while turning a blind eye to Trump’s flagrant corruption.
Republicans at both the federal and state level are seemingly daring voters to stop them as they pursue their increasingly divisive, reckless and sometimes cruel agenda.
Democrats should campaign on Democrat issues, not Republican ones. Explain how Republican policies clearly don’t help Iowans AND offer a new way forward. Voters need to know how Democrats plan to begin making their lives better. This includes protecting the civil rights of all Americans. Keep Republicans on the defensive on their weakest issue – the economy. Always pivot back to the GOP’s failing economic performance.
This strategy would also help prevent a Republican super majority in the state legislature.
This is one guy’s thoughts – who is not a consultant – for Democrats to have a shot at making some critically needed gains in the 2026 midterm elections.
Bill Bumgarner Thu 13 Nov 8:56 AM
Not so fast
Representative Wichtendahl, with all due respect, you are simplifying this matter like a Republican. Therefore, you are missing the point. Let’s clarify.
The recommendation of the consultants to whom you refer is pretty simple: “Let’s get people elected by focusing on “kitchen table” issues. Period. “Let’s not raise the ire of the crazies, let’s not give them straw men to tear down. We must focus on the economy, specifically inflation, and the artificial inflation of the price of goods and services based on TACO tariffs, let’s focus on the quality of our public schools, and let’s get food prices down.”
This, as opposed to, “Let’s focus on gay rights, trans- rights, Black and Brown rights, macrobiotic restaurant funding, protecting the bog turtle,” and on and on. The reason to not focus on those things, according to the consultants, is that all we do when we focus on the as-yet-still controversial issues — during a general election — is that any one of those controversial issues is enough for the opportunists in the GOP to derail our candidates.
In 2020, much focus was given to the “Green New Deal.” There was no document with that title. The title was more like a course definition. It was a conversation starter; “Let’s look into environmental matters and see if we can find something to bring to the campaign — if we find anything.”
Yet, the Republicans had a field day with it, talking about business concerns, and most Democrats didn’t know that it really wasn’t a “thing,” but that didn’t stop them from losing focus on the most important thing: getting good Democrats’ butts in those legislative seats.
Trans- folks are not being thrown under the bus. They’re just not going to be the center of the conversation, because we lose too many moderate voters when we make them, or the environment, or books promoting reality (as opposed to Betty 50s’ mom’s Hollywood reality). Said somewhat differently, we lose when we prioritize matters that are out of the mainstream over kitchen table stuff.
And, in this time in America, kitchen table stuff is the unifier: people need the ACA, and they need enough money to keep their homes.
Keep in mind, too, that “our” candidates do believe in our more out-of-mainstream issues. We have to get them in office, so that they can pursue some of those. But if we do this litmus test thing, we continue to lose.
According to the consultants.
I think you’re hard-pressed to deny the big picture the consultants see. In fact, you see it.
In 2016, folks thought it might be a fun time to run a Socialist in the Democratic Presidential election. The result split the party, and justified the 30 years Republicans spent destroying Hillary Clinton’s reputation, and we got Trump. It was a bad idea, but it was popular among the minority of Democrats, and few Independents.
We didn’t win.
We can’t afford to FAFO again. According to the consultants you criticize. Personally, I have lived long enough and have been involved in politics long enough, to agree with them.
Bill from White Plains Thu 13 Nov 12:09 PM
hmm no mention of Rob Sand's anti-trans position?
no major Dem has ever run on “identity” issues as their central platform , for god-sake AOC of all people ran on the Green New Deal (which became Build Back Better and was tanked by “moderate” corporate Dems) which is all about “kitchen table” issues.
https://www.ocasiocortez.com/green-new-deal
dirkiniowacity Thu 13 Nov 12:53 PM
Words have meaning
I apologize to Bleeding Heartland for double-dipping. I don’t usually do that and, I don’t like to because for me, comments are not a forum for dialogue. But this point, small as it may seem, is a reflection of a bigger issue of which we should dispose immediately.
Bill Bumgarner, please resist the temptation to use the term, “Democrat,” to describe what are matters that derive from the Democratic Party. That isn’t very clear so let me just explain the problem, so that what I just wrote makes more sense.
Throughout the Biden Administration, the GOP began using the term, “Democrat,” as a pejorative adjective. Marjorie Taylor Greene, our erstwhile nemesis, now for some unknown reasons (to me, anyhow) our hero in the Republican Party, used it a lot. “The Democrat Party,” “the Democrat” this and that.
Ours is the Democratic Party. Our policies are Democratic policies.
By adopting and committing to writing the GOP term for these things, you adopt the demeaning terms, and the diminution of our vision, that have no place in a reasonable discussion about who we are and what we are doing. Why? Because we’re too lazy to add a syllable that completes our name?
This has to stop.
We are who we are and we — and our policies — are better than the gas bags from the other side choose to describe us.
Bill from White Plains Thu 13 Nov 3:25 PM
gee Bill
for a guy who dropped the Democratic from Democratic Socialist in yer attack on Bernie and his supporters you have chosen an interesting horse to climb up so high on….
dirkiniowacity Thu 13 Nov 9:43 PM
It's interesting to see "protecting the bog turtle" mentioned as part of this discussion.
The (critically-endangered) bog turtle is not found west of Pennsylvania, so I think we are very safe from that issue in Iowa. And I do take the point about focusing on kitchen-table issues.
One irony about people needing “enough money to keep their homes” is that fast-rising home-insurance costs are a significant part of that problem. And insurance companies, unlike the Republican Party, know that climate change is real. They are pulling out of many states, knowing that the storms, wildfires, and flooding will keep getting worse. And some states that offer public home insurance of last resort are finding out that instead of only covering a few homeowners, as originally planned, they are covering hundreds of thousands at huge financial risk. As I recall, Iowa has a last-resort insurance program.
I am willing to accept the evidence that in many cases, the environment should not be talked about in order for Democratic candidates to win elections. So be it. As for the long-term future of a nation unable/unwilling to face basic planetary realities, I hope that little problem is being worked on.
PrairieFan Fri 14 Nov 2:53 PM