This is a key point when the GOP grumbles on about all this crazy student loan forgiveness. GOP talking points tell us is that truck drivers and welders are dumb and didn’t go to college. That somehow up to $20K loan forgiveness that can help 405K Iowans is a really bad idea.
It’s the us vs. them mentality - a new attempted end run or a sort of East Coast Elites trope that can’t work in this case. It can’t because it doesn’t matter where you live or your current job - student loan debt forgiveness is incredibly popular and absolutely helps people with or without a college degree.
I know people like me who couldn’t afford to finish college no matter how much I worked. I know farmers who went to college - um, Iowa State University. I know college graduates who wait tables and can’t make minimum payments the interest erases any hope of ever paying the thing off.
That somehow a society - a government - that placed such importance on college education mixed with predatory lending practices (including those that are still costing parents of students) and selling loan debt - doesn’t in fact owe us a rebate.
We were sold a bill of goods. We aren’t irresponsible borrowers. Reynolds is thinking of corporations, Donald Trump and her hoarding federal taxpayer dollars to act like she spun a kazillion dollar surplus out of thin air.
At a certain point the center can’t hold - the lies can’t coexist and last night Reynolds betrayed all the hyperbolic scaffolding the GOP has worked feverishly to construct. It may not cost her in the short term but it is a crack and one the Democrats must enthusiastically and appropriately exploit.
Moving on.
I wanted to say something nice about Kim Reynolds performance at last night’s debate. The best I can do is that she looks great in blue.
With a big lead in the latest polls my thought was Reynolds wouldn’t show up for the debate. With the release of two racist ads and the Des Moines Register backing DeJear I thought clearly her advisors would just tell her to sit it out and ride on to victory.
But she did show up. And while it may not cost her in the long run it exposed some people - for the first time I think - to how little she cares about being a leader and that she is mean just to be mean.
People have told me since last night - that meanness will appeal to the base. Sure. Some people do enjoy the Trumpian approach to being just a total jerk.
But there was a key difference here and I think Reynolds made a grave error if not for her political career perhaps for Iowa’s soul.
At the end of the hour the questions swung to abortion (I think that was a really bad way to end the conversation and allowed Reynolds a chance to further lies about people clubbing babies as they exit their mother’s womb).
I knew DeJear's mom died when she was just a kid. Eight years old and with a brand new baby sister, her mother died just three days after giving birth. This is the first time I heard DeJear connect the dots to reproductive healthcare and abortion care. And it was a poignant moment. For people who have lost a parent it resonates on a gut level.
Cynical people could view it as a ploy. To leverage humanity (oh, what a ploy!) and inject pesky real-life experiences into the conversations about abortion. But it felt different: DeJear hasn’t made such a profound connection between the death of her mother and the importance of people’s right to work with their doctors for their own choices.
It was almost like pulling teeth to get that out of her. And I respect that. And get it. I talk about my dead dad a lot - but I am a writer and really grumpy about my dad being dead. But I also am quite protective of what I share about him with people. For example I will never tell anyone what his very last words were to me. Those are precious. Those are mine - ours - me and dad’s.
One Twitter friend noted she didn’t know how DeJear’s mother passed until last night (and this person is tuned in to Iowa politics).
Anyway. It was disturbing and not just mean but frankly inhumane to watch Reynolds response. It was breathtaking in its cruelty and is Reynolds, the MAGA GOP in a nutshell.
Instead of taking a beat, Reynolds pounced. She bleated out the right wing lie of supporting abortion - yes friends - even after the birth of a child at DeJear.
Harranging DeJear suggesting that Democrats like DeJear would club a baby in the delivery room just like some monster would club a baby seal for its pelt (or hunt wolves from helicopters). It was difficult to watch and I hope that at some point in Reynolds life she has a realization that she need to make a heartfelt amends for that.
But DeJear took it - except to make really clear that Reynolds would not put words in her mouth about the fabled ubiquity of late term abortion and infant murder. It’s qanon cannon. And Reynolds does enjoy hanging out with qanon mama bears.
The rest was just ludicrous. Reynolds talking about her daughter who was a month early and how the democrats like Dejear would have murdered her daughter in the womb.
I think Kim just lost it at the end. Her eye rolls and looking down her nose at DeJear came to a boil. She had taken enough out of this Black woman talking about Iowa (because you know - no Black people live in Iowa let alone can claim Iowa as home) and being all smart, savvy and right.
Reynolds took the last 30 seconds or so to sputter out “woke” and “Biden” “99 COUNTIES!” and “tort” (oldie but a goodie) other terrifying right wing buzzwords. She managed to get that in under the wire.
But Reynolds didn’t just come off the rails at the end she reinforced the fact she is a one-trick-pony and it just didn’t work.
One can only hear so much glee over surplus as Iowa’s bridges crumble, hospitals close, and backfills come due. To listen to her talk teachers are giddy with all the low pay and extra work and that 100 student teachers was some kind of coup, that operating one pilot program for childcare made Iowa’s childcare desert into a lush oasis, and that if people want their kids to go to good schools they can use vouchers to (I think?) up and move (because sure, everyone can afford that, right?) to be closer to a school where they can use taxpayer dollars to send their child to Catholic or private schools.
It was a mess.
Reynolds tried to butt in when DeJear was talking about creating pre-k and working with public/private partnerships to expand daycare and to pay daycare workers more money (because they aren’t just glorified babysitters).
My dramatic reenactment of that moment:
DeJear: …..create enough new slots for all of Iowa’s kids…
Reynolds:….TAX AND SPEND DEMOCRATS!
DeJear: …no we will just use some of the surplus you are hoarding, anyway as I was saying
Reynolds: color drains from face.
<SCENE>
A note about eminent domain
This is a really big deal.
Reynolds seemed to either not know what the law is or lie about what the law is regarding use of eminent domain. Last session Bobby (he of the flip off all yalll! fame) Kaufmann was very vocal about protecting landowners rights and crafted a bill that would have protected Iowans from private companies wandering onto their land to survey and subsequently sieze property.
Then - toward the end of session - the bill was watered down to the point of being basically inaffectual. There is a quasi-moritorium on CO2 pipelines taking your land until March 2023 but that’s it - and the surveys by Summit (one of the pipelines) let alone ground breaking - aren’t even going to be done by then.
It’s symbolic. And some day someone needs to as the Iowa GOP and Reynolds why they backed off their seeming committment to property rights. I reckon it is the same reason they quashed local control (four legs good two legs bad).
DeJear on the other hand was clear - not just about the need for proper green technology that is tried and tested to be safe (note the grave rupture of a Summit pipeline in Mississippi in 2020 that poisoned land and water) - but when asked if she would, as Governor, pass a law (which isn’t how that works but we get the idea) that would ban eminent domain for private gain.
DeJear: “yes, sir.”
Period. End of discussion.
Reynolds: meh….not so much.
And here’s a few tweets I fired off this morning that kinda sum the rest of it up:
