55 Comments

I worked the Iowa caucuses, for a liberal democrat, forty years ago, and from that experience was taught that Ronald Reagan was the epitome of pure evil, that he was set on destroying the world (and unions, but not necessarily in that order), that the "religious right" was a force for hatred and oppression, that all Iowans (other than democrats, of course) were knuckle dragging troglodytes, that young people who stayed in Iowa were dullards, and that "Joe Six-Pack" was the name given to any Iowan who hadn't attended college.

The Iowa I fell in love with turned out to be none of those things. But then democrats like Mr. Klein would arrive every four years and say nice things about the decent people of the state, and leave muttering expletives about how ignorant, fascist, racist and sexist we all were.

What has changed? Nothing, really. Except that, in eight short years it's gone from being a political sin to call people on the other side "deplorables" to a badge of courage to publicly proclaim them "rancid."

Trump is savaged for such name-calling. Why isn't Joe Klein?

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Hear, effing, Hear.

These are people wholly incapable of credibly asking themselves "Am I the asshole?"

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deletedJan 16
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Chuck Grassley is not my cup of tea, but he is a honest, reasonably principled conservative and I have no problem that star embracing fort these years. What is troubling is the support for a cretinous, utterly dishonest con man looking to take power by force by necessary. When the voters seem to be tuning out even the lines of Bob VanderPlaats, a corner has been turned. So, yes, it is fair to ask “what happened”?

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"Take power by force?" Trump?

I'm reminded of Stalin's question of his staff, when confronted by the opposition of the Church: "How many divisions does the Pope have?"

Trump has no "force" other than the legitimate opposition of those who still believe power resides in the people. It's getting to the point where it seems the enemies of "those" people are growing disturbingly comfortable contemplating the use of force.

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That seems like a bit of a dodge in response to the comment above, seizing on the part that is most iffy rather than the main point, which is that Trump is an unusually corrupt figure -- there's a mountain of documentary evidence to this effect -- and it does seem genuinely weird to many of us that voters would embrace him as a vehicle for fighting corruption or returning power to the people.

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Ok, seriously. Corrupt? The parties give us two choices. That itself might be corrupt. But, first, if you can say without giggling that Joe Biden is not corrupt when all of Washington has known about it for decades then your job here is done. Second, I hate being referred to as rancid.

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Joe, to be completely honest, I think too many Americans have been influenced by the MAGA disinformation and Trump’s con job! The indictments, convictions and ballot removals have turned him into a martyr, as Chris Christie has suggested! The gullibility factor in our country is through the roof!

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deletedJan 16·edited Jan 16
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😂😂😂 A sense of humor is a prerequisite for expressing our opinions! Take care!

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Jan 16·edited Jan 16

I am not sure I agree with your twisted, manipulative, NYT-style opinion.

Perhaps it is not Iowa that has changed for the worst.

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Oh, you’re as certain as you are wrong. I’m a moderate from PA, and I can state with confidence that history will not treat you and your MAGA cultists kindly.

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Then what's your take?

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The puzzle is that Iowa, as a state, seems to be doing just fine, 4% unemployment as of this morning. Still beautiful, still peaceful, still looking forward to seeing what the Lady Hawkeyes can do in March. So the fact that half the Republicans voted for someone whose campaign is centered on revenge and retribution has a lot of us scratching our heads. I can sort of understand anger in the Mahoning Valey - they have been struggling for 50 years now. The seething anger generated by many of the Trump voters in Iowa seems more manipulated by outside forces.

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Strange to call a group of tax-paying citizens venturing out in sub-zero conditions to peacefully cast their vote, openly and without rancor or intimidation, a threat to democracy, the actualization of a "gonzo-barbarity" by semi-primitives.

A few weeks ago I decided to give Joe Klein a chance to prove he was worth reading. That didn't take long.

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“All we are saying is “give sanity a chance” 🙂

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Hi, again Joe! I have loved your writing and the fact of your deep and long experience in service to our country - that is why I have subscribed to Sanity Clause. However, I believe you have developed a blind spot when it comes to Trump. You need to go back out to Iowa (when it gets warmer!) and talk with people in the midwest like you used to do about what they think is wrong with New York/California, 'elite' colleges, the current administration's directions and other things that are fueling Trump. It is not all MAGA... We have a farm nearby in western Wisconsin and I have listened over the past 20 years to pre-dawn breakfast conversations. They have shifted significantly. I know from counting voting noses at these breakfasts that this part of Wisconsin caused the swing to Trump in 2016. They don't like it when you fly over them on your way to California, calling then 'deplorables', and not respecting the hard work they do to put ethanol in your car, and food on your table. Go back to heaven (Iowa) and really talk with these people; Mark Halperin is...

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I agree with you. check out my previous posts. But election deniers, and a weakness for authoritarianism, are several bridges too far. Thanks for your comment.

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I'm with you on the authoritarianism, but 'election deniers' is a separate category. Look no further than John Ellis's digest today quoting Agnusreid.org poll results that only 1/3 of Americans will 'accept' the election results. I stand by my earlier post: mistrust in institutions has engulfed the processes of democracy itself. 2/3 of America is not all MAGA. The same skepticism of politicians, the press, and election polls themselves extends to the large block of progressive voters who firmly still believe Trump stole the 2016 via collusion with Russia.

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Starting in 2000, the year of the hanging chads, the losers of closely-contested presidential elections have litigated. This is fair and why we have a judicial process. I agree with you, Joe, that the extremists in the MAGA world are dangerous, just like Dr. Gay and others like her are on the left. However, my group of Wisconsin farmers are not crazy or dangerous and do joke about being “deplorables”!! Keep writing, Joe!

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Joe, you sound like a cross between Statler and Waldorf and a hysterical deer in the headlights. What you cannot fathom is that the Dems have been too cute by half. Their connivance with the FBI and the Intelligence community in concocting the "Russia collusion" baloney and the Hunter laptop lies arguably has done more damage to the democratic process than any of Trump's antics. Add the lawfare assault of four largely concocted charges and it's understandable that Republicans flock to Trump. And I'm not a Trump voter. Just an interested observer eating my popcorn and watching the Dems and their supporters getting their just desserts.

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I have voted for Democrats my entire life. In 2020, I voted for Biden. Today Biden spends billions of taxpayer dollars to protect the borders of Ukraine and Israel while our own southern border is wide open. He supports discrimination against whites and Asians in the name of “equity”. He believes that people can actually change their biological sex. That men belong in women’s sports and locker rooms and that children should be sterilized to attain the unattainable. Is he mentally fit to be president?

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That's the list. Whether or not all of that is Biden, or society in general or what, I do believe you have summarized "the list". It's not wrong.

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I was hoping you would reassure us that the Iowa caucus goers were unrepresentative of Republicans as a whole. Or observe that both parties have become dominated by their wing nuts. Here in Minnesota the democratic-led state government has abandoned fiscal sanity. For example it has offered all Minnesotans a substantial--like 50% or more--rebate on the purchase of an electric bike. The Minneapolis city council is controlled by certifiable lunatics. Traditional Minnesota politics have been much like those of Iowa. I still think that reason would prevail if we had a different process for choosing presidential candidates, a process in which party elders or elites or senior elected office holders had more sway. We obviously have too much democracy.

BTY Arby's has the meats, not the meat.

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"We obviously have too much democracy."

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deletedJan 16
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If all the East Coast and West Coast journalists and media were killed off, would that change anything with the way Iowa Republicans support a guy like Trump? Is it only, and always, all about the condescension? I guess what I'm asking, do Iowans go to the polls and hold their nose, roll their eyes and say to each other: "well, I'll vote for this pig just this one time."? I cannot believe that the foremost criteria for their political position is simply the way Iowans perceive other people perceive them.

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If you were writing to persuade, you failed. If you were writing for your base on the left, you succeeded. If you think you initiating a debate, you closed it off at the outset. You had a lot of insults and labels which end the conversation. I listened to Iowans speak and articulate their reasons supporting their votes, concerns, and positions. They looked at the issues quite seriously, compared today under Biden with yesterday under Trump. Yesterday was better. And to get yesterday, they wanted a proven Trump. I wish more voters took their voting that conscientiously.

You made no comparisons with the national polls, no comment on his victory speech, no mention why on why Biden is failing to meet their needs.

If it is Trump vs Biden, I will vote for Biden.

Between Trump and Biden, I will go with Desantis.

I could give you more reasons, but it would be casting pearls among swine.

I have just started reading your free stuff only because of your association with John Ellis.

I will continue scanning your opinions to provide me a peek into the far left thinking.

Have a blessed day.

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We are all getting a little overly excited about the choices made by 56,000 Iowans out of 2 million enrolled voters. It is such a small sample as to be somewhat absurd. But, again, the question I think Joe was asking was not whether you like Biden or not, but why Iowan Republicans, understandably not under Biden’s spell, showed such favor to a candidate who seems to be a clear and present danger to the Republic. Haley, based on all the polls I have seen, gives the Rs a much better chance of winning in November. DeSantis worked the state harder and seemed more aligned with the cultural conservative agenda. Given Trump’s behavior -and refusal to dignify the voters by attending the debates- why was he so preferential to the other two?

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Did I just read an editorial from NYT or WaPo? Maybe Iowa and people in many other states are fed up with the Biden BS and how his policies have destroyed both red and blue states

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DeSantis and Haley are, in my opinion, as off-putting as Trump. Haley is a warmonger little different from Joe Biden or George W. Bush. DeSantis in an effort to go to Trump's right, made a devil's pact with the antivaxxers.

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Joe, Joe, Joe. Once again, I can't help but feel that even the most well intentioned and apparently introspective of establishment journalists like yourself continue to ignore the biggest political story since the civil war: Half to two-thirds of Americans have completely lost faith in Society's major Institutions. Confusingly, from the standpoint of easy analysis, that lost trust in discredited institutions is not uniformly distributed, but depending on your orientation, Americans no longer trust the Church, Elected officials, The Courts, Academia, or the Press. The political shocker for me in 2016 was not that Trump beat Hillary, it was that Sanders nearly beat Hillary. Without Party Superdelegates, Sanders, a card carrying anti-establishment socialist, would've been the Democratic party candidate. That the Dems had a tighter reign on their electoral processes than the Reps helped camouflage the breadth of disenfranchisement felt by literally a majority of Americans. Because Trump is such a technicolor catastrophe of a person, candidate and 'influencer,' observers such as yourself have fixated on Trump while neglecting the vast societal disillusionment that Trump embodies. I don't believe the Iowans you visited have been suddenly transformed into raging lunatics as if they've been bitten by Vampire von Trump. I suspect they haven't changed much at all. What has changed is the distance between themselves and an increasingly oblivious economic and ideological elite leadership class, whether elected, academic or business, pursuing agendas at odds with the values, economic interests, and ultimately wishes of a dis-empowered majority. But nobody, yourself, frames it that way, it's reliably all about Orange Man...

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deletedJan 17
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On this we agree. There is a mistrust and pessimism that did not exist in, say, 1980 when, in much of the country and certainly in the cities, things were a whole lot worse (except for the music, that’s a whole other rant). And, for the most part, I don’t think the institutions have changed all that much , they always had fundamental flaws. What we have now are outrage machines, on both the left and right, dialing up the fury and fear of its viewers and listeners. Agitation sells. The extremes feed off one another and have gotten to the point where the nation is getting strained indeed. Calling out both sides for their excesses - and defying what the reasonable middle ought to be - is the order of the day.

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Gonzo-barbarity, lack of perspective/context, lack of gratitude - all part of the dogs that Trumpism have let loose. Correct. Iowa was restrained by modesty and propriety seemingly until recently. So was New England. New England still has some. But even here, drivers are more aggressive. These are gross generalizations - Iowans are not bad people, but their public facing behavior had gotten way worse, as the lessons of charity grow dimmer watching Trump and encouraged by him.

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It’s not just Iowa that’s gone mad, it’s half of the whole country, if you believe the polls that show Trump leading Biden. And I saw a poll a few days ago that showed half of all voters agree with Trump’s statement that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country. That’s not Republican voters, that’s all voters. Yeah, Biden is old and prices are high, but people are really prepared to vote for a man who tried to overturn the last election, and raves like a lunatic on Truth Social every day? If that’s the case, I fear it’s already too late for America.

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Roman Catholic. And that wasn’t “pontificating” about anything, anymore than you pontificated in your post. Trump has not ever exhibited Christian ideals, so it’s a head scratcher that some Christians support him.

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Joe: there are two reasons for what you observe. First is evangelism. That's the coin of the realm for MAGA world and rural voters. Evangelicals are in many ways a foundation to the country. However, it is clear that they can be easily led astray. They've put their 'faith' in a leader that has zero interest in Christianity, evangelism, or the principles that have guided these religions for generations. He knows nothing about Christ; he has not a drop of faith in his body or his make-up; he's never pondered what it means to live like Christ. Why do they turn to him? Because they're subjected to a well-funded and ubiquitous propaganda machine that spits out 24/7 the threat that 'liberals' are coming for their babies, their homes, their churches, their guns, their morals and their country. That's how you get to Trump.

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So what denomination do you belong to, and when was the last time you went to church? I ask because you have just pontificated about Christianity, and I would like to know what your sectarian standpoint might be.

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