Exclusive Iowa Coverage: While A Country Burns

When Republicans voted 51 to 49 to deny witnesses in the Impeachment Trial of President Donald J. Trump, the people at the bar gasped, scrolled through their phones, and then turned to one another in disbelief.

“Fuck these people,” a man in a Pete Buttigieg shirt spit.

It was one more slap in the face. A blatant, brazen moment of partisan maneuvering after yet another John Bolton leak designed to sell books revealed that the Ukrainian shakedown conspiracy had been going on longer, and involved more of Trump’s confidants, than previously thought. It didn’t matter though. Lamar Alexander had already announced his plans to vote no despite the fact that he agreed Trump had committed crimes. Historical coward Marco Rubio added to the chorus, reasoning that Trump’s behavior had reached the level for impeachment, but not for removal of office.

“What the fucking fuck?” said the woman in the Warren t-shirt.

It was that kind of night. Democratic supporters were left speechless even as the Republican Party behaved as we all knew they would. A party that had begun as a fighting unit against fascistic, slave-holders had succumbed to minority politics, authoritarianism, and the kind of treasonous, sectarian, petty politics it had once opposed. After decades of white supremacist appeals, Republicans had jumped headfirst into the abyss and followed the trail of so many fascist movements before them. Faced with unwinnable democratic trends, they decided to cast off democracy altogether, alongside our institutions and basic human decency. Now, they’ve signed a blank check to a despot who’s already broken the law so many times our culture can’t even keep track.

Good luck, everyone.

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My conversations with Elizabeth Warren’s campaign have been fraught with pre-caucus anxieties. The impeachment trial has kept Warren away from Iowa during the week, leaving her fate in the hands of surrogates and organizers. There’s a looming concern that Warren has been competing with Bernie Sanders for the progressive support among the electorate and that Sanders, despite being stuck in DC, has a more experienced team left over from 2016. Despite all objections, it appears that Iowa is his to win, but Warren’s people believe she’s been making up ground.

“Her argument is simple,” a staffer told me. “She’s the fighter. Democrats want a fighter who can take the fight directly to Trump and the Republicans. They want somebody who can roll up their sleeves and get in the mud.”

Talking to supporters tonight, that seems right on. Their concerns are legion, including the crippling student debt crisis, an economy that is constructed to benefit the few at the expense of the many, a political system that is rigged for the wealthy and the powerful, and a country that is increasingly going off the rails.

“I support Warren because I want to believe we can get out of this spiral,” a single mother of two told me in Des Moines tonight. “After a day like today, you have to believe in something.”

It was another evening without Warren, who was tweeting through the night about failed and fated attempts by Democratic senators to return sanity to Congress. But it was all for naught. Mitch McConnell and Republican senators held all the cards in this battle, no matter how disastrous the consequences would be.

“It makes me sick to my stomach,” a support said as the event began. “To think about those people in power. To think about what they’ve done. To think about what they’ve allowed. It just makes me sick.”

A man was there with his two daughters, both sporting Warren stickers, both smiling as upbeat music played through the industrial space. I heard him talking to someone nearby. A neighbor. A fellow supporter. “What’re we supposed to do?” he said with a shrug. “Give up?”