Commies in the cornfields?

Henry Wallace was our leading capitalist and socialist

Henry Wallace was no Red, he liked the green too much.

Dad wore polished black wing tips and a blue suit 24/7. He went to the Elks Lodge every day and to Mass every Sunday. He did not spit on the sidewalk. He helped to defeat Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito. He swore by the New Deal and JFK. He was a federal crop insurance agent.

I guess that made him a socialist by today’s standards.

FDR and Harry Hopkins of Sioux City, that notorious progressive hotbed, cooked up Social Security in the commie closet. Give Em Hell Harry Truman tried for universal health care in 1945. It got shot down as socialism but paved the way for LBJ to deliver Medicare and Medicaid. LBJ was a socialist from Texas who made a fortune.

Tom Harkin is for universal health care and breaking up consolidated power. He and the late Sen. Paul Wellstone were in the fight for the common good. FDR’s Vice President Henry Wallace would fit right in with the Democratic Socialists of America. He founded Pioneer HiBred and its line of seed corn. He was an eminent capitalist. An Iowa Stater. He thought everyone deserves food.

It goes by way of saying that this is nothing new.

John Birchers were hyperventilating over communism infiltrating Iowa during the late 1950s and 1960s. They took over some school boards and ran Robert Dilley for governor against Harold Hughes in 1964. Iowans favored whiskey at the bar and a statewide system of community colleges. Dilley tallied nearly 8,000 votes, well behind Republican Evan Hultman.

Today, you could label Chris Jones a Democratic socialist in his run for secretary of agriculture against incumbent Republican Mike Naig. Jones attracts big crowds who hunger for change. Jones made clear to me that he has not declared himself among the Democratic Socialists of America. It is hard to imagine him hanging out with New York Mayor Mamdani.

“But I have been invoking the name of Paul Wellstone at my events and saying I’m from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, and using the ‘we all do better when we all do better’ rhetoric of Wellstone,” Jones said.

“When we all have medical care, we all do better.

“When we all have robust public education, we all do better.

“And when we all have clean water, we all do better,” he said.

Gimme more of that.

Rob Sand does not pander to lefties. We have not heard him cry out to the spirit of Wellstone. Sand is, as our reporter Tom Foley observed, a “radical centrist.” Sand says the two-party system locks out real debate. He is running as a change agent against the political system, not necessarily the corporate structure of things. Sand is campaigning for better health care access, public education and clean water. He is not criticizing corn ethanol or unbridled livestock confinements as Jones does. There are important distinctions but each demands change. Each does well by it.

Republican Congresswoman Ashley Hinson will claim that Democrat Josh Turek is too risky for Iowa in their race for US Senate. She is a Trumper, for his tariffs and endless war that undermine farm income and drive up costs. She says the problem is Washington — Hinson is Washington.

Voters are rejecting the status quo, as they did when they elected Trump in 2016. Now, Trump and Hinson represent the status quo. Turek is the alternative. AOC has not come calling. Turek is trying to hide any tie to senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York. Turek runs to the right of Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, she of Cargill patronage. It might be the right tone: not Trump and not a whacko. Turek is the underdog rolling uphill in a wheelchair. You naturally want to cheer him on, unless someone finds that he carries pictures of Chairman Mao around Council Bluffs.

Peggy Flanagan won a Senate nomination in Minnesota last week by saying that ICE needs to be ripped up and stitched back together right. She opposes shooting citizens dead for protesting. As a Native American, she urges a pathway to citizenship for immigrants. That’s just common sense.

Next door in Wisconsin, Francesca Hong went too far in calling for ICE and prisons to be abolished along with Thanksgiving. Democratic voters selected the progressive chief executive of Milwaukee over her to face a Trump election denier.

People want change that lets them afford seeing the doctor. Iowans want clean water — over 80% in the polls. This state is worried sick over climbing cancer rates. Rural communities are desperate to protect their schools. To the extent that Sand, Turek and Jones represent change, voters will respond.

Labels are smokescreens designed by the propaganda machine to fool us. No commies are on the ballot. They’re plain old Democrats like my dad. He fought for freedom.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. His latest book, Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest: Notes from the Edge of the World, is available from Ice Cube Press. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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