Sunday, June 12, 2022

Hello, Iowa! Your gerontocracy exhibit, Charles Grassley, is a career politician who long ago overstayed his welcome

 

If re-elected in November, Charles Grassley will be 95 if he completes his 7th term in the U.S. Senate.

Top headline:  The Guardian, 10/6/2018
Bottom headlineDes Moines Register, 6/10/2022

"Sitting under the same glass bell jar", Jessica Taylor spouts the conventional wisdom, "stewing in [her] own sour air". 

"Even if people might be ready to move on from Chuck Grassley … I just have a very hard time, in this type of environment and year, seeing that they would vote for somebody else who's a Democrat,” said Jessica Taylor, the Senate and governors editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “The ‘D’ next to your name is what can doom you in Iowa.” 
Iowa Republicans are similarly confident in Grassley’s chances, though some privately acknowledge that Franken could be a tougher matchup for him than Finkenauer would have been.
 

9/24/2022 update starts here

62 years and counting



The Iowa GOP has no bench
His decision is a victory for national Republicans who have made it clear they wanted Grassley — who has repeatedly been reelected by double-digit margins — to run for an eighth term. A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll released this week showed him leading Democratic challenger Abby Finkenauer by 18 percentage points, 55% to 37%, in an early test of the race.


7/21/2021 update starts here

Grassley, who has held elected office since the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, hasn't publicly declared if he will run for an eighth term in the U.S. Senate. That general election would still be about 16 months away, but his decision has captivated the political world. The decision comes far later than in previous years; he announced in 2013 he would seek reelection in 2016.

Original 5/15/2021 post, "GET ME REWRITE:  The despicable, decrepit Charles Grassley praises Governor Kim Reynolds for Iowa's heartless withdrawal from federal pandemic unemployment program", starts here.

Headline from KPVI, 5/12/2020

If Grassley even understands the need for access to child care throughout his state, he gives us no indication ot it.  He just spouts the usual GOP anti-worker talking points.
"Wherever you went in Iowa, you found 'Help wanted' signs," Grassley said of his travels to 13 counties last week while Congress was recessed. "There's a major problem out there. They can't get workers. ... And I don't want to in any way insinuate that people don't want to work, but when they make more money not working than if they were working, and they want to enhance their economic viability, what would you expect them to do?"

Democratics understand.
Democrats and labor groups have criticized Reynolds' decisions as an uncaring political stunt that will make it more difficult for Iowans to stay housed, clothed and fed and to care for their children as the pandemic stretches on.

And so do Iowa's working parents with young children.

"Everybody, collectively, has been hanging on by a thread for at least a year," said Laing, 36. "Not knowing what's around the corner. Not knowing what that final thing is that breaks that thread and sends us into a spiral that we can't get out of."
"My thread," she continued. "That may be the one that breaks it."

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