The Biden administration is racking up major accomplishments in its first months of occupying the White House. While their record so far seemingly gives them strong footing for 2022, "a fearsome wall of mistrust, and a broad willingness among Republicans to believe the worst about them" stands in the way, according to The New Yorker's Peter Slevin.
This hurdle is especially prevalent in the state of Iowa, where Donald Trump beat Joe Biden by eight points. As Slevin points out, the message from Republicans in the state was repetitive, relentless, thin on facts and policy detail.
"The fundamental attack was straightforward: Democrats were socialists a heart, and would raise taxes, expand government, and extinguish individual freedom. Biden, meanwhile, was portrayed as corrupt and, at age seventy-seven, as barely able to complete a coherent sentence," Slevin writes.
After doing some digging to find out what went wrong for Democrats in Iowa, Slevin says the lesson to be learned is clear: "facts matter little when the opposition chooses demonization over debate and pivotal groups of voters stick to what they think they know."
Speaking to The New Yorker, the former executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party, Norm Sterzenbach, said that the way to combat this problem is to talk with voters face to face and show that "I'm not Washington, I'm not a socialist, I'm not going to defund the police department, I'm not going to end farming."
After their victories in Iowa, Republicans are marching into the midterm election cycle "with their narrative intact, their media champions in place, and Trump barking from the sidelines," writes Slevin. Longtime newsman and co-owner of the Carroll Times Herald, Douglas Burns, agrees that the hurdles head for Democrats are substantial.
"Unless you live here, I don't think you can appreciate the level of rural white grievance," Burns said. "We think that you can win people over with the issues. I'm not sure that you can."
Read the full article over at The New Yorker.
