DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Iowa Democrats are looking for the prescription that will help them emerge from their withered condition, after dominating just a decade ago.
After sending progressive Tom Harkin to the Senate for 30 years and twice delivering the state for Barack Obama, Democrats are powerless in the House, Senate and statehouse, and remain stunned by President Donald Trump’s solid Iowa victory last year.
While it’s a familiar scenario across the upper Midwest, the pressure on Iowa Democrats to recoup the working-class voters who marched with Trump is more intense: They’re charged with setting the tone in a little more than two years for the party’s presidential nomination.
Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan has ideas for Iowa, his own state and elsewhere. He is among three rising House Democrats – including Illinois’ Cheri Bustos and Seth Moulton of Massachusetts – in Des Moines on Saturday for a Democratic fundraiser, capping a summer of early activity in the presidential proving ground by more than 10 would-be White House prospects.
“I think it starts with letting these working-class people know that we see them, we hear them and we know what they are going through, and we have a plan,” Ryan, from blue-collar Warren, Ohio, told The Associated Press on Saturday.