DAVENPORT, Iowa — The old conventional wisdom among Republicans in the Iowa Senate race is that Rep. Bruce Braley, the Democrat running against Republican Joni Ernst, had a serious doofus problem — he couldn’t stop putting his foot in his mouth and, despite four terms in the House of Representatives, had trouble presenting himself as a plausible contender for the United States Senate.
The new conventional wisdom, after Saturday night’s debate at St. Ambrose University here in Davenport, is that Braley is a savvy trial lawyer whose courtroom skills make him a formidable debate opponent. And indeed, Braley matched or outshone Ernst on topic after topic in tonight’s one-hour faceoff. Ernst had her moments, but there’s no doubt Braley recovered nicely after a poor performance in the pair’s first debate two weeks ago.
Ernst’s problems began with virtually the first question. Does she really want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, as Democrats accuse her of doing? Ernst didn’t fully answer, but seemed to suggest the answer is yes. “I…grew up on a southwest Iowa farm drinking well water,” she said. “I do believe that our states know best how to protect their national resources.”
“The Clean Water Act is a good one,” Ernst continued, “but unfortunately, over the course of time, the EPA has overreached.” There is no doubt that’s true — the EPA apparently wants dominion over every puddle on every farm in America — but a compelling example of EPA overreach does not necessarily make the case for state-based national environmental policy. And yet that is what Ernst appeared to suggest. “The states can do that by working together,” she said.
None of that is to say Braley did a good job; he spent his time slickly trying to explain away his flip-flop on the Keystone pipeline. But Ernst was definitely not in control of the question.
Next came Obamacare. A query from a viewer said he had received health coverage through the Affordable Care Act. To Ernst, he asked, “Have you given any thought to how individuals in my situation won’t lose coverage, should repeal occur?”
Ernst called Obamacare a “job killer” in Iowa that is “taking personal health decisions out of our hands and placing them with nameless, faceless bureaucrats in Washington, DC.” That is to some degree true, but what about the guy’s question? It was a reasonable concern; millions of people are now receiving subsidies to purchase health insurance. If Republicans repeal Obamacare, what happens to them?
The exchange was a vivid illustration of how Republicans have to think through their position on repealing Obamacare to include a transition from the situation that exists today — with exchanges and subsidies up and running — to a newer, hopefully better Republican-authored plan. How will that happen? Ernst offered the viewer nothing.
Next came Social Security. Ernst made a perfectly reasonable case for raising the eligibility age for younger Americans. Then Braley was asked about his proposal to raise the cap for Social Security taxes above today’s $117,000 annual income limit. “Won’t that be a drag on the economy?” the questioner asked.
Yes, it will, but of course Braley did not want to say that. So he first tried to deflect the question with a joke about the Orioles-Royals game, before offering an exceedingly feeble defense of raising the cap. But a moment later, when Ernst was asked whether she, too, would consider raising the cap, she said, “That is an option, and we need to sit down and discuss that, in a bipartisan manner.” Ernst gave away whatever advantage she held.
Ernst did not do much better on questions about gun control, and later, a softball about whether she supports coddling companies that send American jobs overseas.
All in all, things were not going Ernst’s way until she got an opportunity to point out the now-famous moment in which Braley, at a January fundraiser in Texas, dissed Iowa’s respected Republican Sen. Charles Grassley as a rube farmer who wouldn’t be up to chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee. “You poked fun at Sen. Grassley for being just a farmer,” Ernst said to Braley.
For the first time all night, the crowd erupted in applause. Braley wisely saw his only course was to retreat immediately. “You know that I apologized to Sen. Grassley right away,” he said to Ernst.
The candidates took a brief break about 40 minutes into the one-hour session. During the break, I asked Craig Robinson, founder of the Iowa Republican blog, what he thought. “Braley’s a completely different candidate than he was in the first debate,” Robinson told me. “A lot stronger.”
Indeed, he was.
Things got better for Ernst in the final 20 minutes of the debate. A veteran, she was stronger on questions of national defense and dealing with ISIS. She gave a passable answer on immigration, but failed to score when Braley offered the oft-ridiculed argument that passing comprehensive immigration reform would somehow have stopped the surge of young migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Then Ernst added that she would not vote to rescind President Obama’s DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, program. “That is where we agree,” she told Braley.
A significant part of the debate was taken up with a back-and-forth over the millions of dollars in outside money fueling many of the ads Iowans see about the race. Braley attacked the Koch brothers and linked them to Ernst. Ernst attacked Tom Steyer and linked him to Braley. While some analyses suggested the outside money argument was, in fact, the theme of this debate, the greater news was surely Braley’s recovery after the first showdown.
Just hours before the debate, the Des Moines Register released the results of a new poll that showed Ernst leading Braley by just one point, 47 percent to 46 percent. In the last Register poll, on September 30, Ernst led by six, and the paper declared, “The ground under Bruce Braley has shifted.” Now, apparently, it has shifted back. It’s fair to say that everyone, or nearly everyone, observing the race thinks it is a very, very close contest. Saturday’s debate probably made it even closer.
