What Kim Reynolds and Brenna Bird could learn from Kamala Harris
Respecting the rule of law is an Iowa value
I still remember it well. I was covering the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in 2016, and delegates inside the hall were chanting, “lock her up, lock her up, lock her up.”
The “her,” of course, was Hillary Clinton, and it didn’t matter that Clinton had not been convicted, or even charged with a crime. The mob wanted its pound of flesh, and “lock her up” was a staple of Donald Trump’s political rallies.
I understand how partisan crowds in an election year can get worked into a frenzy, but what stunned me most at the convention was how Michael Flynn, a top Trump ally and GOP leader, joined in from the stage and egged on the chant. “That’s right, lock her up,” he said.
Flynn wasn’t the only one, of course. Despite what he claimed in his rambling news conference on Thursday, Trump himself also encouraged the “lock her up” chants a number of times. (And when he became president, Trump then pushed the Justice Department to investigate Clinton.)
Contrast that response with how Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, reacted this week to supporters who chanted, “lock him up, lock him up” at rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan, an apparent reference to the 34 felony convictions against the former president reached by a New York jury in May.
The Washington Post reports that, when the “lock him up” chants went up Wednesday, Harris tried to defuse the moment, saying, “we’re gonna let the courts handle that.”
As the Post pointed out, Democrats want Americans to know about Trump’s felony convictions, but they also don’t want to appear to be politicizing Trump’s legal problems.
Trump and the MAGA faithful want Americans to believe the multiple criminal indictments against him are not because of his behavior but about politics. And, in fact, the Trump camp has pointed to the chants to argue Trump is the victim of a political vendetta.
But how Democratic crowds behave is far less important than how party leaders react to that behavior. And I think Harris got it right for trying to tamp down the cries of “lock him up” and making clear the legal system, not politicians, will decide how to deal with his case.
As readers of this newsletter know, I have been worried for quite a while now about how politicians, especially in Iowa, treat our system of checks and balances, including the courts.
I also worry how the courts, especially the US Supreme Court, have unduly empowered politicians who share their ideology. A month ago, the US Supreme Court issued a startling opinion—not based on the text of the Constitution or US history—that nonetheless immunizes the president from criminal prosecution for a wide range of conduct while in office. And it did so at Trump’s request. No other president has sought such broad-based protection.
In an article this month in the New York Review of Books, the historian Sean Wilenz of Princeton, called it a nearly unprecedented intrusion into presidential politics and compared the decision to the high court’s opinion in the infamous Dred Scott case of 1857.
Just as the Supreme Court majority back then sought to suppress the newly founded Republican Party’s antislavery program and permanently enshrine slavery into American law, Wilenz writes, the court in Trump’s case has sought to shield him from prosecution while acting to “secure radical changes in American law friendly to MAGA authoritarianism.”
There is ample reason for Americans to worry about the direction of the US Supreme Court. But for the near term, I suspect there is little the average citizen can do to alter the court’s makeup or change its direction.
Even with a Democratic victory in the presidential race this fall, the court’s conservative majority likely will remain in place for quite a while. The court’s majority also isn’t likely to pay heed to sinking public confidence resulting from the ethical lapses of some of the justices and the increasing belief their decisions are motivated by ideology, not fairness.
But in Iowa, there is reason for hope.
In this state, it is elected politicians who are the most responsible for undermining the rule of law. And we can do something about that.
Take Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird. She has used her office to launch serial court challenges to politicize the law and build her MAGA brand. At no time was this more obvious than in May when Bird traveled to New York for Trump’s trial on charges of illegally falsifying business records in order to cover up the Stormy Daniels affair.
Without even waiting for the jury to reach a verdict, Bird declared Trump the victim.
Then, when the jury did find the prosecution had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump had, indeed, committed 34 felonies, she and other top Republicans in the state sent the message that the verdict was immaterial. They didn’t say Trump was innocent. None of them said that. But as Gov. Kim Reynolds said, the question of guilt or innocence did not matter.
“The only verdict that matters is the one at the ballot box in November where the American people will elect President Trump again,” the governor said.
That is not the Iowa I know. It is not the Iowa where I grew up. We have a history in this state of respecting juries and the rule of law, even if our current governor and attorney general do not.
Reynolds, Bird and other Republican leaders in this state—just as Michael Flynn did in 2016—jettisoned their judgment in order to play to the demands of the crowd. Instead of advancing the rule of law, they placed a higher priority on advancing their party’s politics and their careers.
The passions of the crowd often cannot be controlled by political leaders. I get that. But those leaders can control their own responses.
Harris demonstrated the right instincts this week by simply saying: “We’re gonna let the courts handle that.”
In Iowa, we should demand the same wisdom from our state’s leaders.
Iowans know there is a place for politics, but that place isn’t in the American courtroom. We also know the judgment of juries is relevant, and the rule of law should not be ignored. And we know that, while the ballot box is important, it decidedly is not “the only verdict that matters.”
I am approaching the two-year anniversary of Along the Mississippi, and it has invigorated me and given my long career in Iowa journalism a new life. If you value this work, please consider upgrading your subscription to paid. Contributions help to make this newsletter possible. Thanks for your consideration.
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Great Letter Ed--this article should be in EVERY Newspaper in Iowa---Including the Q_C Times.
Bird and Reynolds are not working for Iowans they are only working for the Corrupt GOP.
It is a disgrace to our political system that the Republicans could nominate such a despicable person as Donald Trump to be their Presidential candidate. Honest Abe Lincoln must be spinning in his grave to have dishonest Trump leading the Party he helped start.