Charles Bruner is a former Democratic Iowa legislator (1978-1990), was the founding director of Iowa Child and Family Policy Center (1990-2015, now Common Good Iowa), and is national director of the InCK Marks Initiative’s Child Health Equity Leadership Group.

Despite media reports and some Democratic hand-wringing to the contrary, Iowa Democrats really are united both in the values they hold and how public policy must advance those values. Moreover, these values are aligned with voters’ values and the policies have broad voter support. They stand in sharp distinction to those Republicans are advancing, both nationally and in Iowa.

Simply put, Iowa and national Democrats believe government must play a positive role in ensuring broadly shared and sustainable prosperity for the nation’s residents and their families.

The slide below enumerates the values that underpin this role for government and lead to a set of policy actions.

This slide is similar to the preamble to the Iowa Democratic Party Platform adopted at the 2024 state convention, and is reflected in the planks of that platform, as well as in the national party platform and the tenets the Harris-Walz campaign. People may not have heard it expressed this way during the 2024 campaign—and certainly not in any depth in the campaign media—but it is there.

Those values lead to a set of policy proposals, outlined in the slide below. Both in Iowa and nationally, Democratic leaders have proposed policies in virtually all of these areas.

Polls consistently show that voters broadly support these policies. In terms of these values and the policies to advance them, Democrats are aligned with the vast majority of voters and stand in sharp contrast to the policies advanced by elected Republicans.

However, Democrats and their consultants typically have neither stressed these values nor asserted the positive role government needs to play to advance them. Campaigns have focused upon raising increasing amounts of money to use for media and messaging designed to energize the base or scare undecided voters with negative messages. Both parties do this, but the messages are not party neutral—they run counter to the very values that Democrats and voters hold about government.

Moreover, media alone is unlikely to produce the types of deliberative discussions and relational campaigning that engage voters around their own values and the policies needed to support them.

To do so means getting back to the grassroots and fostering dialogue, in town meetings and neighborhood coffees and public forums. It means drawing upon local leaders to speak out and educate others: co-workers, peers, friends, and neighbors. It means talking with those who now distrust government and politicians and campaigning. We all have a role to play in sharing what we believe beyond the already committed.

In short, we need to start with a vision that speaks to what government can do for and with us. That is also the best way to mobilize the public and generate the will to enact policies that will realize our values and goals.