What’s the Matter With Iowa?

Such credibility issues aside, it seems that Democrats want to dump Des Moines as the once-every-four-years center of the political universe for other reasons. Elena Schneider of Politico reports on a meeting this week of a Democratic National Committee group reviewing the order of party presidential contests:

It’s unclear just how much will change. But there is at least one clear preference from many Democratic leaders, both outside and inside these party deliberations: that Iowa be scrapped from its coveted first slot.

…Iowa, a predominantly white state that’s trending increasingly Republican, does not fit well into the criteria set out by the DNC, which aimed to prioritize racially, economically and geographically diverse states that are competitive in general elections.

American voters don’t seem to be clamoring for another race-based decision. But even if the Democratic Party wants to continue its obsession with identity politics, the Iowa electorate certainly appears to represent more diversity than the man who is set to run for re-election as the party’s standard bearer. And even though he’s 80 and there’s a 58-year-old black woman with years of experience as a state attorney general, U.S. senator and vice president of the United States, Democrats still don’t seem willing to give her a shot at the top job. Talk about a glass ceiling.

As for the charge that Iowa has become too Republican in its recent voting patterns, this seems like an argument for Democrats to stick with the traditional schedule. If their goal is to choose a candidate who can create a winning bipartisan coalition, an atmospheric pull toward the political center might be helpful.

Speaking of Iowa Republicans, they seem determined to thwart the Democrats’ Des Moines downgrade. Natasha Korecki of NBC recently reported:

Iowa’s Republican Party chair wants to make it as difficult as possible for national Democrats to dethrone his state from its early perch in the presidential primary season, even if it means moving the state’s caucuses up by several months.

Iowa GOP Chair Jeff Kaufmann, who also heads the national GOP committee that oversees its presidential schedule, wants both parties in his state to hold their caucuses on the same day, even though there’s no rule that mandates they do so…

“This is the Democrats that are pulling this crap and I’m telling you right now, they don’t want to play chicken with me. This is pure, progressive, power politics,” Kaufmann told NBC News Friday…

“If, for some reason, California and New York dictate policy for the entire DNC and they give the middle finger to Iowa and the Midwest — if that happens, we will be first,” Kaufmann said. “I’ll move this thing to Halloween if that’s what it takes.”

American voters also don’t seem to be clamoring for an even longer presidential campaign season. Starting on Halloween, more than a year before the general election, might be truly frightening for television viewers feeling like they’ve just seen enough political ads to last a lifetime. But Mr. Kaufmann sounds like he means business, so perhaps Democrats will consider leaving the schedule alone.

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Speaking of Exploring Options Not Named Biden
As Ed Morrissey at Hot Air illuminates, the realization that the midterm results have entrenched

Joe Biden

as the leading Democratic presidential candidate for 2024 is producing very mixed feelings on the left. Just because establishment Democrats are lining up behind the president doesn’t mean that voters will. The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake writes:

… we’re still dealing with a situation in which half of Democrats, at most, want a president of their own party to run again, which is very unusual. And more voters who will select the party’s 2024 nominee consistently say someone else would do better.

It’s worth asking just how much people view the election as an affirmation of Biden versus a repudiation of certain elements in the Republican Party. Democrats did as well as they did, after all, not because voters liked Biden, but because those who disapproved of him only “somewhat” still tilted toward the blue side — rather remarkably. Perhaps Biden gets credit for not turning himself into a lightning rod that took his party off the table for those voters, or perhaps he benefited from a choice election in which the alternative allowed itself to be the issue.

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China and Covid
One can never be too paranoid about Marxists claiming that public health and safety require extreme lockdowns and other limits on individual liberty. The Journal’s Rachel Liang and Brian Spegele report from Beijing:

Police fanned out across China’s big cities Tuesday in an effort to prevent fresh protests, as security services harnessed the country’s pervasive surveillance system to hunt down participants in mass demonstrations calling for an end to strict Covid curbs and criticizing national leaders…

Wang Shengsheng, a lawyer providing legal support to protesters from Beijing, Shanghai and other cities, said she is in touch with at least 15 people who have been summoned by local police. Protesters told her that they had received calls from police officers who said they knew their whereabouts during protests and asked them to come in for questioning. She said she suspected police were using data from mobile phones and social-media accounts to track down protesters.

Under Mr. Xi, China has expanded its ability to track the movements and activities of its citizens. While this didn’t stop the protests from breaking out, China’s security apparatus has begun to lean on it to prevent them from spreading. Besides hundreds of millions of cameras, some equipped with facial-recognition software, that line city streets, the police also can access detailed mobile phone and social-media data that shows people’s locations at a given time. The government has enhanced these capabilities over the past two years as part of contact-tracing efforts to control the spread of the virus.

“These technologies, which were supposed to facilitate anti-Covid efforts, turned into shackles being put on us,” Ms. Wang said.

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Hong Kong Hero
Speaking of communist tyranny, the Journal’s William McGurn writes about the courageous publisher Jimmy Lai, who faces a sham trial orchestrated by the Beijing dictatorship:

… he is in prison and at peace with his not-guilty plea. It’s his persecutors who are insecure and fearful. Does anyone believe Hong Kong and China will emerge from this trial with more credibility? Or will it only increase the chances that Jimmy wins a Nobel Peace Prize—not unlike Liu Xiaobo, another champion of Chinese freedom awarded the prize in 2010 while in prison.

To get by under communism, a man must say one thing in private and something else in public. So it was in the Soviet Union, where Natan Sharansky was arrested and falsely accused of treason in 1977. “If my aim is physical survival,” he told an interviewer in 2013 about his experience in jail, “then the KGB will defeat me.” He aimed instead to live as a free person—which meant never, ever assenting to the lie.

By insisting on his innocence, Jimmy Lai knows he has surrendered any hope for leniency. But he is showing that a man can live as a free person, even in a Chinese prison, as long as he refuses to lie. Hong Kong’s Communist-backed authorities have yet to realize that he’s no longer really on trial. They are.

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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”

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(Teresa Vozzo helps compile Best of the Web. Thanks to Thomas Stewart.)

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