Iowa Politics with Jeff Stein -- Thu. Aug. 06, 2026

Run Better Candidates.

I'm Jeff Stein with today's Iowa Politics Report.

There's been a lot of angst lately, particularly among Democrats nationally about the number of socialists who are winning primaries and general elections.

They say it's going to ruin the party, that it's not their party anymore and so on.

And there are plenty of Republicans in Iowa who are quietly bemoaning candidates in this state with the letter R by their names.

Well, there's a pretty easy solution to all of this.

Run better candidates and run better campaigns.

Since no one is asserting that there is fraud in those primary election results, it means the winning candidates are the ones preferred by voters.

So either run better candidates if you don't like the choices or run better campaigns if you don't like the outcome.

Let's face it, regardless of the party, primaries are when the most die-hard individuals turn out.

That often means folks to the extreme in each party.

That's why you have voters in the middle dissatisfied with the general election choices and why they tend to swing back and forth between D's and R's.

But now the discontent is within parties about their own primaries.

And for that, they have only themselves to blame.

Either they're not doing their jobs, or they have misread the feelings of the voters.

Given the lack of activity in Washington these days, it's not hard to imagine that the pros in power are misreading what voters want.

Things that pull highest as being important to voters are left to the side, while pet projects and vendettas are pursued.

And that's on both sides.

So, those are your candidates.

If you don't like it, do better.

And that's the Iowa Politics Report for Thursday, August 6th on Twitter, Instagram, Gitter, Threads, and Truth Social at Iowa Politics.

I'm Jeff Stein on News Talk 1540, KXEL.