In Iowa, it’s Sanders voters vs. everyone else
Real Dem divide: Is consensus still our goal?
ANKENY, Iowa — Flight attendant Jason Kueper is for Joe Biden because he’s so tired of having to separate all the seatmates who get into political arguments on his flights, and he thinks President Joe would lower the temperature: “He could literally bring the country back together. We’ve had enough reality TV.”
Amber Frazier, who has a son with special needs, is inflamed by the pleasure that the current president seems to take in making fun of people with disabilities. To her, the former vice president is the obvious analgesic: “Joe is not that kind of person. I want better for my kids, and he treats everyone with dignity.”
Amanda Linton is pro-Joe because his Violence Against Women Act “saved my life, so this is personal. For me, character matters.”
Joe Biden is running on bringing decency back — which did work for Jimmy Carter, in Iowa and beyond, postWatergate — so of course Biden supporters at Democratic campaign events were focused on that, too.
Kueper, Frazier and Linton met online and traveled here at their own expense from California, Missouri and Virginia to spend the week stumping for Biden ahead of Monday’s Democratic caucuses. Iowans in Biden’s corner repeatedly told me they, too, see character as the most important issue.
“The moment he’s sworn into office, the rest of the world will once again hold us in high esteem,” says Des Moines math consultant Larry Osthus. “I think he’s actually going to get the country to settle down and start treating each other better.”
“I look at him as the fixer,” says retired teacher Lori DeBoer. Not in the same sense as Michael Cohen or Rudy Giuliani, but someone who “can fix things and get character back. I just want normal! I want to turn on the TV and not say, ‘OH MY GOD!’ ”
Character is key
As has been noted a few thousand times, Democrats are seriously divided over whether normal is a good thing and whether we ought to settle down. But in a couple of days of interviews here, in conversations not just with Biden supporters but also fans of former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, they talked even more about character than they did about health care, the climate crisis or guns.
These Democrats are obviously different in background and presentation. Warren is so high-energy she seems to have been shot out of a cannon, doing a high kick alongside Jonathan Van Ness of “Queer Eye,” while low-key, polished-to-a-shine Buttigieg strikes me as someone whose childhood friends had to constantly hear from their parents, “Why can’t you be more like
Pete?”
Yet the yearnings of their voters are close cousins.
“I can tell she cares about all classes of people” and will fight for fairness, Jenness Asby, a professional photographer in Cedar Rapids, says of Warren. To Asby, it’s the senator’s “earnestness” that sets her apart.
“I want someone who can pass a civics test, a drug test and if I don’t watch the news, it’s not an existential threat,” says newly convinced Buttigieg supporter Matt Ehn, a handyman in Webster City who voted Republican before Donald Trump.
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ supporters, as you may have noticed, do not tend to talk like that. When they extol his personal qualities at all, it’s his consistency on policy or his energy in pushing for policy that they mention. For them, the proof of character is in the policy.
“Mostly, it’s his universal health care plan” that sold her on Sanders four years ago, says Kathy Josephson, an Albert City farmer in a “Talk Bernie to Me” sweatshirt.
Comity or lock on truth
The candidate whose character Bernie supporters are more likely to mention is Biden’s, and not in a good way. “He’s a Democratic version of Trump,” in the way he has changed his opinions over the years, says Josephson.
And she does question the righteousness of those who do not see Bernie as the next president. “The only ones he’s not going to win over,” she says, “are the ones who don’t care about their fellow man.”
Maybe the divide among Democrats isn’t so much between center and left or back to normal versus blow it up, as Trump supporters used to say. Maybe, and I say this as a mother proud of her fellow-man-loving son who is stumping for Bernie, the relevant divide is between those who still believe in consensus as a goal, passé as it is right now, versus those who think there’s no need for comity and compromise when you have a lock on the truth.
Melinda Henneberger, an editorial writer and columnist for The Kansas City Star, is a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors. WANT TO COMMENT? Have Your Say at letters@usatoday.com, @usatodayopinion on Twitter and facebook.com/usatodayopinion. Comments are edited for length and clarity. Content submitted to USA TODAY may appear in print, digital or other forms. For letters, include name, address and phone number. Letters may be mailed to 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, VA, 22108.