BY ALL APPEARANCES, HUMILITY IS NOT THEIR STRONG SUIT: In small town Iowa, a humble model for Democratic politicians.
WEST POINT, Iowa — It takes less than five minutes of visiting with Ron Fedler to understand that family, public service, and community are the true treasures in his life.
“They are what mean the most to me — and, of course, my love and respect for country,” he says, sitting in his living room in this Lee County town, home to 966 people and the state’s largest sweet-corn festival.
In a state where corn is the driving commodity, having the largest festival is a pretty big deal.
It takes not much longer to understand that Ron Fedler should be a true treasure for the Democratic Party. His living room walls are a kaleidoscope of family photos. Large and small frames are filled with children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, all dotting the walls of the modest red-brick home he built himself. To the left of his easy chair is a framed black-and-white print of his parents and 11 of his 12 siblings: “My older brother had already left for Vietnam and missed the family photo.”
Across the room from his overstuffed lazy chair, an 11-by-14 framed color photo of former President John F. Kennedy sits atop a coffee table; it’s a copy of the iconic 1961 official photograph by Fabian Bachrach, showing Kennedy seated at his desk in the White House — frozen in that innocent moment at the start of “Camelot.” A moment of promise — before the Bay of Pigs, before the Cuban missile crisis, before his assassination.
“He is my hero; he will always be my hero,” Fedler says, smiling broadly.
Fedler is not one of those Democrats who fled his party in this last election to vote for President Trump; he thinks the commander-in-chief is off-putting, without promise, erratic. Yet, despite his misgivings, he understands, at least partially, why fellow Lee County Democrats voted for him.
“This goes beyond frustration and anger; it really does,” he explains. “Experts fundamentally misread the voters’ motives who went from happily supporting former President Barack Obama to equally happily supporting Trump on election night. They liked Obama, but many of his policies hurt them and their communities, and they wanted someone who they felt listened to them.”
Trump, he says, filled that void.
What concerns Fedler is that political reporters and his party still don’t recognize that “Trump’s support here is very strong.” In 2012, Lee County cast 9,428 votes for Obama and 6,787 for Republican Mitt Romney. Four years later the numbers nearly reversed, with 8,762 votes going to Trump and 6,195 to Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Trump carried every voting precinct in Lee, a county long dominated by Democratic registration, activism and elected officials and by unions.
Weird that so many people could become racist overnight. I mean, that has to be the explanation, since otherwise it would mean that the Obama years were a disastrous failure.
And as you can see from the photo, this guy is an Evil Old White Male, and as such it’s a miracle the Democrats even allow him to remain in their party.