Eight lessons of election week 2020 in Iowa

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Bill Brauch is a former Iowa Democratic Party State Central Committee member and Third District Central Committee chair.

Election week 2020 felt like an anti-gravity bungee jump for Iowa Democrats. We went from the depths of despair on election night, suffering losses we never expected, to huge relief — euphoria even — on Saturday when it was clear Joe Biden had won the presidency. That our next vice president will be a woman of African and Indian descent added to the joy of knowing that Donald Trump’s occupation of the White House will soon come to an end.

But there is no question Iowa Democrats are hurting. We lost statehouse seats we should have won. We did poorly in the U.S. Senate and presidential races. We lost one — maybe two — U.S. House seats. (We were not alone in this. Democrats even lost seats in states Biden won!)

Iowa Democrats wonder what it will take to win again statewide. Some things are clear: we remain strong in Iowa’s larger cities and continue to show strength in suburbs, though we fell short of our success there in 2018. We’ve known for years that we have to do better in rural Iowa but struggle to find a way to accomplish it.

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