Let's add Iowa to the list of Senate toss-ups

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The Republican Party offers America an embarrassment of embarrassments. 

But even among that lot, which has turned starving kids, torching our health care system, and blowing the advances that made us the world’s leader in almost everything, the stench of Joni Ernst reeks out.

Her U-turn on Pete Hegseth, a credibly accused sexual predator who has opposed women serving in combat, neatly undermined what had been her only two admirable stances as a member of the Senate: championing the role of women as she fought sexual assault in the military. 

In six months after last November’s election, when America became a pageant of clown cowardice, she deserves the clown crown.

But could Ernst lose?

I can’t pretend to know anything much about Iowa politics—the slow demise of the caucuses as the proving ground for presidential candidates has left me with what I gather from the excellent Bleeding Heartland.

BH’s Laura Belin dug deep into Joni Ernst’s gaffe to point out how Iowa’s junior Senator, except for her possibly fatal error of connecting her vote to death, is sticking with the poll-tested lies about the Trump regime’s singular and perhaps only bill of any vast consequence to conclude:

The Ernst gaffe will surely appear in many 2026 campaign ads. But Democrats shouldn’t neglect to address the premeditated, poll-tested lies that Republicans will use to defend a cruel and harmful vote.

We cannot underestimate how prepared Trump and MAGA are to sell this atrocity that stands out in American history as the greatest theft of the poor on behalf of the rich, at least of this century, possibly ever, as Mike Konczal notes.

That’s why Anat Shenker-Osorio has repeatedly made the case that the framing of the MAGA Murder Budget is our best hope for breaking the people and thus Congress out of any sense of normalcy.

Joni Ernst went ahead and made Anat’s case, admitting that you cannot make the case that this bill doesn’t promise death.

After the Senator followed that up with a mocking Christian Nationalist dog whistle filmed in an appropriate location, Anat noted:

Anat Shenker-Osorio on Substack

Joni Ernst taking selfies in a cemetery just to prove my claim that MAGA Murder Budget is perhaps not pointed enough.

SubstackSubstack

So let’s focus on Iowa!

Ernst first won in 2014, a very good year for Republicans.

This election set us on the path to our current nightmare by giving them the Senate and the ability to unconstitutionally deny President Obama the right to fill Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat. She won primarily by focusing on her opponent’s gaffe, calling Iowa’s senior Senator “a farmer who never went to law school” (derogatory).

Trump has helped turn Iowa nearly blood red after Obama won it twice. So Ernst wasn’t going to lose in 2020. 

Her previous wins have firmly established her in the Cook Report’s Solid R category. The Hill just put out a list of “Senate rankings: The 5 seats most likely to flip” and didn’t even mention Ernst, post-gaffe.

Pre-gaffe, some polling from Data for Progress made the case that Iowa is gettable for Democrats because Ernst is less popular than both Grassley and Trump. And it pumped up the case for Democrat Nathan Sand, whom I discovered by Googling all this. Could Sand, or any Democrat, win? 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But surrendering Iowa is not an option 

Yes, the two most “gettable” seats for Democrats are Maine and North Carolina, states Democrats have won or stayed close in this century, unlike Texas, which is also on the list. The Lone Star State’s Senate seat has been competitive exactly once this century, in Trump’s last first midterm. And the GOP could nominate a genuinely criminal loon in Ken Paxton. So the top three make sense.

Next, we’ve got Ohio, which only Sherrod Brown knows if it is competitive or not. If he runs, we have a chance; if not, probably not.

That leaves? Not much else.

Trump’s terribleness and the GOP’s want to nominate losable freaks can change the math. However, any scenario that leaves out winning Iowa must include surrendering the US Senate, possibly for the foreseeable future. As dim as it is, it’s our brightest hope. And Josh Marshall has made the case that it’s brighter than many assume.

Either way, it’s about death

It’s the MAGA Murder Budget because they’re killing the poor to fluff the rich. Ernst didn’t say that exactly, but she invited, nay, demanded us to make that case.

If we can’t win in Iowa, we can use the coffin Ernst opened to help win everywhere else.

Show them how it's done, Reverend Barber.

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