The time and effort you put into boosting your candidate was not wasted.

Ed Fallon‘s take on the second round of Democratic presidential debates. -promoted by Laura Belin

Bold Iowa likes to give out prizes. (See Climate Hall of Fame Awards.) While we heard some encouraging remarks about the climate emergency during this week’s debate, three moments stand out as worthy of recognition. I’ll simply call them the Wrong, Wronger, and Wrongest Awards.

Ira Lacher: “For many Americans who only experience candidates through email appeals or in prepackaged videos, the debates provided an opportunity to see them as people.” -promoted by Laura Belin

Now that the first Democratic presidential debates have come and gone, what have we learned?

Forgetting and ignoring what the national media have said, here’s what I learned from my own and others’ observations from two nights of debate-watching parties.

Like many Democrats around the country, I tuned in to both MSNBC debates, featuring 20 of the presidential candidates. If you missed them, you can find the transcripts on the Washington Posts’s site (first night and and second night). My thoughts:

Nineteen presidential candidates had five minutes each to make their case to more than 1,000 activists at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Hall of Fame event in Cedar Rapids on June 9. Most offered at least one really good applause line. Teams of reporters from the Des Moines Register and Iowa Starting Line pulled together some of the memorable parts of each speech here and here.

I decided to focus on how the candidates spoke about health care and women’s ability to access abortion for a couple of reasons. First, while the candidates highlighted a wide range of problems and proposals, almost all of them addressed those topics in some way.

Second, this post represents my gesture toward what media critic Jay Rosen has called the “citizens agenda” approach to covering campaigns. Although I lack survey data to know for sure what Iowa Democrats want the presidential contenders to be talking about, I believe health care and reproductive rights are among the most salient for caucus-goers, because:

Barbara Leach, president of My Rural America Action Fund, is a former Iowa farm owner and manager. -promoted by Laura Belin

Much is frightfully wrong in rural America, and 80 percent of Iowa’s counties are right in the thick of it. An unsold crop awaits sale. Sales await the repair of President Donald Trump’s broken trade agreements. Bankers await payments. The flood compounds the troubles.

These troubles affect our economy, consumer food prices, and contribute to the kind of international unrest that is driven by hunger and too often results in military action.

The upcoming Heartland Rural Forum scheduled for March 30 in Storm Lake offers Iowans the chance to kick off a national debate about what could be done to support our fragile family farm economy and our nation’s agricultural sector. Five Democratic presidential candidates (maybe more?) will attend, and there is much for them to talk about.

A little more than a year before Iowa Democrats will start the process of selecting a challenger to face President Donald Trump, Selzer & Co has polled likely Democratic caucus-goers for the Des Moines Register, CNN, and Mediacom. Brianne Pfannenstiel wrote up the key findings from the survey of 455 Iowans “who say they will definitely or probably participate in the 2020 Democratic caucuses.”

The toplines were not surprising, but I was baffled by some of the choices on which candidates to include.

Rarely does a presidential candidate focus a stump speech on an out-of-the box idea. But in his first appearance before a large Iowa audience on August 10, Andrew Yang devoted much of his time to the “Freedom Dividend,” a proposal unlike anything I’ve heard on the caucus trail.

After the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding in Clear Lake, Yang spoke to Bleeding Heartland about how the U.S. could pay for a nationwide universal basic income plan. He also explained how he envisions selling the idea to voters who have heard politicians denigrate “hand-outs” and welfare for decades.

With less than three weeks remaining before the June 5 primary, many Democrats (including myself) are still undecided in the primary to represent Iowa’s third Congressional district. All three candidates left standing in the once-crowded field have raised enough money to run strong, district-wide campaigns.

This post focuses on how Cindy Axne, Pete D’Alessandro, and Eddie Mauro have presented themselves in stump speeches, direct mail, and television commercials aimed at Democratic voters.

Many thanks to Stefanie Running for covering this event and taking wonderful pictures. -promoted by desmoinesdem

The Day

Zeus must lean left because the weather was on the side of the Polk County Democrats (Zeus is also the god of weather in addition to his head god position in Greek Mythology). An almost imperceptible breeze, with mild temps and few clouds made for a pleasant day sitting in the sun and listening to hopefuls for governor or Congress rally the crowd with their vision for the future.

First-person accounts from campaign or Democratic events are always welcome at Bleeding Heartland. -promoted by desmoinesdem

On Saturday, I was able to bring several of my fellow Luther College Democrats members to the first annual Polk County Democratic Party Steak Fry, a resurrection of the famed Harkin Steak Fry.

As a college student who has only been in Iowa since just before the 2016 Iowa caucuses, I was really looking forward to the Polk County Steak Fry. I had heard from my Iowa friends about how awesome the Harkin Steak Fries used to be, so I had high expectations going into Saturday. And those expectations were most definitely exceeded.