Extend the map

I was wondering over the weekend if Joni Ernst was going to draw a serious challenger after I-Don’t-Care-If-Poor-People-Die-Ghazi, and that didn’t take long:

After Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) told a town hall audience, “We all are going to die,” when responding to constituents’ concerns about Medicaid cuts, Democratic state Rep. J.D. Scholten — who has been publicly flirting with a run against the GOP incumbent — decided to launch his campaign.

“I just felt, you know, I have to do this,” Scholten told POLITICO in an interview ahead of his announcement, which will be made official later Monday. “Now’s the time, and rather than being perfect with everything, I just feel like you got to do it.”

Ernst’s remarks, he said, “disrespected” Iowans.

“We’re taking them off [Medicaid], so billionaires can have a second yacht, so they can have a bigger tax break,” Scholten said. “We have a system that’s geared towards and favors billionaires and huge multinational corporations, and that’s not working for most of Iowa.”

Scholten, a 45-year-old pitcher for the Sioux City Explorers, is no stranger to running in deep-red areas. In 2018, he came within a few points of defeating embattled GOP Rep. Steve King. In 2020, he sought a rematch against King, but ultimately faced Randy Feenstra in the general election, which Scholten lost by more than 20 points.

Obviously, beating Ernst is a longshot. But if the Democrats are going to retake the Senate they’re going to need a couple wins that fall between “major upset” and “miracle.” If there’s no John McCain to save them from their worst impulses this time, taking Medicaid from upwards of 10 million people to partially pay for upper-class tax cuts in an inflationary economy is the kind of thing that could produce a wave where this is possible. Dems need to find the best candidates they can for as many races as they can.