I don’t think there’s really an alternate theory of Joni Ernst not running for IA-SEN reelection to “she was gonna lose”
Replies
The alternative is that being a Senator sort of sucks even if you are a hack, and she can probably go sit on a the board of some shitty crypto company and get paid more for doing less.
aug 31, 2025, 8:07 am • 32 0 • view
I visit Capitol Hill regularly and am not getting the vibe that they’re thrilled to be there.
aug 31, 2025, 3:24 pm • 2 0 • view
Nah, big ag will have her covered.
sep 1, 2025, 2:26 am • 0 0 • view
I hope she becomes a sad crypto cougar
aug 31, 2025, 8:13 am • 12 0 • view
being a member of congress is amazing, it’s cruise control. you have franking privileges and you go on trips. it rocks. my grandmother loved it. it’s phenomenal.
aug 31, 2025, 8:11 am • 6 0 • view
Pay sucks though and you get booed by people in public. And having to campaign every 6 years seems unpleasant compared to making 7 or 8 figures annually without anyone caring about you
aug 31, 2025, 8:14 am • 3 0 • view
The pay is a 93rd percentile top wage earner last i checked $175k a year, more for leadership
aug 31, 2025, 8:34 am • 1 0 • view
That's not very much for someone like her lol
aug 31, 2025, 8:37 am • 4 0 • view
For at least 160 million Americans it would be a raise, for most of those, a life altering raise Almost 40 million of us live on less than a quarter of that pay
aug 31, 2025, 8:44 am • 0 0 • view
Okay, but she's not most people. She will 100% make more than her current salary at her next job and it won't be close. Senators are underpaid IMO but that's a separate and unpopular conversation.
aug 31, 2025, 8:45 am • 4 0 • view
Underpaid? Ridiculous is soften unpopular, true Their pay should be tied to the median wage and adjusted annually
aug 31, 2025, 8:54 am • 0 0 • view
Plus per diem.
aug 31, 2025, 2:24 pm • 1 0 • view
most seats are easy wins. she’s dipping because she fucked up majorly and went full nihilist at a town hall. most politicians have poise. she didn’t.
aug 31, 2025, 8:15 am • 1 0 • view
Eh shes not retiring cause of one bad townhall. Republicans say shit like that daily lol
aug 31, 2025, 8:16 am • 2 0 • view
i have some family in iowa. i’ve chatted with them. it absolutely wrecked her shit.
aug 31, 2025, 8:18 am • 1 0 • view
iowa is solidly red at this point but it also has a weird defiant streak that goes back a long time, they didn’t appreciate their senator telling them to go get fucked.
aug 31, 2025, 8:23 am • 1 0 • view
She had a really bad debate back in 2020 where ppl were making fun of her for not knowing basic farm stuff and thinking it was gonna move ppl. She ended up winning by 6 points and massively overperforming the polling. Politicians don't retire because of a bad town hall answer.
aug 31, 2025, 8:28 am • 1 0 • view
it’s not one thing, the environment is bad *and* she alienated a substantially non zero number of voters. porque los dos
aug 31, 2025, 8:30 am • 4 0 • view
Plus the sex stuff
aug 31, 2025, 12:20 pm • 1 0 • view
bad town hall + bad general environment + personal corruption does not a winning combo make. iowa is probably getting trump econ fallout a little more than everyone else right now b/c he fucked up the pork and soybean markets.
aug 31, 2025, 8:42 am • 3 0 • view
Ya no one *has to* get booed by their constituents she did this to herself because she's just a bad person.
aug 31, 2025, 8:16 am • 0 0 • view
The polling was actually bad for her in 2020, and she ended up winning fairly comfortably. I don't think she's given hope she can win. I just think the fun of being a Senator is outweighed by the bad for her (which includes having to keep fighting for a senate seat instead of coasting)
aug 31, 2025, 8:20 am • 2 0 • view
Also probably easier to bang military lobbyists if you become a military lobbyist.
aug 31, 2025, 8:27 am • 2 0 • view
aug 31, 2025, 8:28 am • 4 0 • view
I bet the creepy old farmer guys all think she's attractive and that's really the only reason they keep voting for her
aug 31, 2025, 8:30 am • 0 0 • view
these people don’t hang on until they are 95 years old because it sucks
aug 31, 2025, 8:13 am • 10 0 • view
Depends on whether a person cares about power/"being in the room where it happens" more than other stuff. I think she'd have stuck around if Romney was president tho
aug 31, 2025, 8:15 am • 4 0 • view
she wouldn’t have said everybody dies if romney was president because romney would have left all health infrastructure alone. he was a technocrat.
aug 31, 2025, 8:17 am • 4 0 • view
Some people never understand when it's time to go home, every member of Congress over the age of 70 need to retire. Instead they are trying to recreate their youth.
aug 31, 2025, 5:47 pm • 0 0 • view
Because of the usual line about "spend more time with their family" I looked at the 'personal life' section of her Wikipedia page: she isn't rich, she's divorced, and her (alleged) romantic relationships are with aides and lobbyists, presumably she'd have fewer opportunities for that out of office.
aug 31, 2025, 7:35 am • 38 0 • view
Hopefully she's sad and lonely forever until she dies unvisited in a bad nursing home 🥰
aug 31, 2025, 4:13 pm • 0 0 • view
She's the DC pump
aug 31, 2025, 11:22 am • 1 0 • view
She's still got her hogs.
aug 31, 2025, 7:38 am • 12 0 • view
Yes but they’ve been castrated
aug 31, 2025, 3:22 pm • 8 0 • view
Thom Tillis too
aug 31, 2025, 1:43 pm • 2 0 • view
It's super obvious I didn't even realize we were discouring an alternative. "Everyone dies" was the single most evil and stupid thing you could even say about the cuts you voted for. And given the +22 swing, it was obvious she was screwed.
aug 31, 2025, 8:47 am • 21 0 • view
"Banged enough defense contractors and ready to settle down"
aug 31, 2025, 1:35 pm • 2 0 • view
I think maybe Trump told her he wouldn't support her after she hesitated on Hegseth.
aug 31, 2025, 7:54 am • 0 0 • view
People keep saying it but he's not really supporting primary challenges anymore, except for Massie and Cassidy. He even wanted Kemp and Sununu to run despite past conflicts with them. Wouldn't be shocked if he endorses Cornyn eventually. It does look like he somewhat learned his lesson after 2022.
aug 31, 2025, 8:01 am • 0 0 • view
Trump never "learns his lesson".
aug 31, 2025, 8:03 am • 0 0 • view
It's only really Georgia gov race where he is going with insane MAGA over more normal choices in a competitive seat. Arizona kinda too if we count double endorsement.
aug 31, 2025, 8:06 am • 0 0 • view
So it turns out voters generally don't get enthusiastic about having a representative who doesn't care if they live or die? What a twist! Someone should really write that down.
aug 31, 2025, 11:56 am • 2 0 • view
How much campaign money she get to keep?
sep 1, 2025, 1:05 am • 0 0 • view
In theory, it's liberating for Koch wing to not have to worry about a primary challenge duringthe Trump era, but I've seen enough elected Rs continues to bend the knee after announcing retirement that yeah, she was going to lose.
aug 31, 2025, 1:32 pm • 0 0 • view
I think anyone who runs will lose. The citizens may have realized the error of their ways.
aug 31, 2025, 3:40 pm • 0 0 • view
Iowa farmers didn’t learn from Trump’s 2018 tariffs and bailouts. I have serious doubt that they’ve connected the dots this time.
aug 31, 2025, 4:09 pm • 3 0 • view
They’re not getting bailed out this time.
aug 31, 2025, 4:17 pm • 1 0 • view
That remains to be seen—Trump has already made noises about doing it.
aug 31, 2025, 4:53 pm • 1 0 • view
The Congress voted on bailouts last time.
aug 31, 2025, 4:57 pm • 0 0 • view
And? You don’t think they will this time?
aug 31, 2025, 5:12 pm • 0 0 • view
No, I don’t think that is likely at all.
aug 31, 2025, 5:14 pm • 0 0 • view
They’re doggedly following instructions from Trump, not exercising their power as a separate branch.
aug 31, 2025, 5:13 pm • 2 1 • view
Badly apparently, too.
aug 31, 2025, 7:52 pm • 0 0 • view
My theory is you can’t have this hairstyle AND be a total asshole to everyone around you and still get elected
aug 31, 2025, 7:43 am • 8 0 • view
If you want to go around looking like Mallory Archer, you need to actually BE Mallory Archer.
aug 31, 2025, 11:22 am • 13 0 • view
aug 31, 2025, 12:56 pm • 1 0 • view
No elections so no need to run again
aug 31, 2025, 4:28 pm • 1 0 • view
Maybe she’s dying of something, like terminal lack of empathy maybe.
aug 31, 2025, 11:48 am • 0 0 • view
We're all gonna die is not the best campaign slogan. Joni's hubris was enshrined with her absolute arrogance.
aug 31, 2025, 10:41 am • 7 0 • view
It’s “she was gonna lose,” plus “I’m so in the tank for Trump and fascism that rather than help the resisters by running and losing, I want to help Trump fascists win with a different candidate.”
aug 31, 2025, 12:27 pm • 5 0 • view
The primary?
aug 31, 2025, 7:56 am • 0 0 • view
Selzer put out a poll that she was behind her potential democratic challenger. Specials in iowa have been especially bad. Natives are restless and a lot of trumps policies hurt farm states.
aug 31, 2025, 10:40 am • 2 0 • view
Everybody Loses Joni…
aug 31, 2025, 12:45 pm • 0 0 • view
They must have run some fun internal polls.
aug 31, 2025, 6:02 pm • 0 0 • view
Said this downthread, but do not think people outside of corn and soybean country understand how bad the impact of the tariffs are economically and how it materially changes the landscape politically. Don't know if they lose, but do think it's a much tougher environment for a GOP candidate in 2026
aug 31, 2025, 10:51 am • 1 0 • view
That’s OK. All political careers are gonna die
aug 31, 2025, 2:05 pm • 2 0 • view
Maybe I'm beating a dead horse, but this seems like it really underscores the futility of voting for Hegseth's confirmation in the hopes of...avoiding Trump's ire? Staying in office? Or whatever.
aug 31, 2025, 7:36 am • 29 0 • view
To be frank he threw Cohen to the wolves and Cohen skipped entire birthday parties for his kids and major life events for himself and them to please Trump, and he was thrown to the garbage in less than month. That's a big enough tell to know you can't actually appease him and be safe.
aug 31, 2025, 8:45 am • 4 0 • view
I think that episode and every one like it was probably bullshit excusemaking
aug 31, 2025, 1:17 pm • 0 0 • view
it depends a little bit on whether you think she was going to lose a primary or she was going to lose the GE I guess?
aug 31, 2025, 7:37 am • 31 0 • view
Her Wikipedia page says she is (or was recently) flat broke, so she may badly need to maintain her access to the sorts of sinecures available to someone like her: corporate boards, university gigs from lectures to presidencies, etc. An angry GOP could presumably blackball her from most of that.
aug 31, 2025, 7:39 am • 26 0 • view
How do you end up broke in Congress? All that graft and she still can’t make ends meet? Yikes.
aug 31, 2025, 12:00 pm • 2 0 • view
The pay isn't amazing, and any advantageous investments from connections and insider information - which obviously do happen - require bad ethics (I assume she's got that covered) and starting capital (maybe she didn't have a lot?). Also roughly around that time she'd gone through a messy divorce.
aug 31, 2025, 12:07 pm • 7 0 • view
The Iowa GOP is not exactly a hotbed of clever, intelligent, or enterprising people. Our governor is pretty corrupt but she is also not really smart enough to have gotten that rich off of it. Ernst is very much of a piece.
sep 1, 2025, 2:25 am • 0 0 • view
That’s my point. For someone with a proven record of having pretty much no ethical standards at all, being broke af is so fucking funny! 🤣
aug 31, 2025, 12:11 pm • 8 0 • view
…voting for Hegseth was the only way she was going to get a post-Senate gig worth enough.
sep 1, 2025, 1:24 am • 3 0 • view
Does it? If you are in a state where you can't win the GE while licking Trump's balls, and you can't win the primary without, you're sorta fucked either way, right? An odd conflict here is that the one constancy in Trump's political career is that voters appreciate his perceived authenticity.
aug 31, 2025, 7:52 am • 0 0 • view
You'd think other politicians would learn it's better to be themselves than to try to strategize about which ball to lick when.
aug 31, 2025, 7:52 am • 0 0 • view
She may not have realized at that time what a bad election environment it was fixing up to be for her.
aug 31, 2025, 8:03 am • 1 0 • view
@piperformissouri.bsky.social has pointed out that many of these GOP incumbents have never had to debate, never had to come up with responses to opposition. So they have nothing at all to offer.
aug 31, 2025, 2:32 pm • 4 0 • view
Back to her obsession with real Hog Balls, after discovering that MAGA doesn’t really have any.
aug 31, 2025, 4:18 pm • 0 0 • view
"being a not very senior senator isn't any fun right now" "Prospects of becoming SecDef reached zero" But Iowa does seem like the most likely dark horse state right now given the local climate.
aug 31, 2025, 9:12 pm • 2 0 • view
I mean we have kind of a lot of reports of her having some fun with it
aug 31, 2025, 9:13 pm • 5 0 • view
It's time for her to move to Florida and be an as*hat there.
aug 31, 2025, 8:09 am • 3 0 • view
I bet she’s replaced by somebody even worse.
aug 31, 2025, 8:29 am • 9 0 • view
Yup
aug 31, 2025, 10:30 am • 1 0 • view
Yup Senator Steve King is more likely than a Democratic Senator from Iowa.
aug 31, 2025, 2:06 pm • 3 0 • view
Nah, King is done. His only somewhat less repugnant replacement is reportedly angling for the seat, though.
sep 1, 2025, 2:28 am • 2 0 • view
🤮🤮🤮
aug 31, 2025, 3:31 pm • 2 0 • view
Are the dems going to run? Finally? They should be running in EVERY SINGLE RACE!!
aug 31, 2025, 5:47 pm • 0 0 • view
I knew that was the trajectory after the rumors started last week she was thinking of running for governor instead. Then selzer put out that poll showing her behind her potential democratic challenger and another bad special in IA for the GOP and she tapped out. The internals were probably bad.
aug 31, 2025, 10:43 am • 6 0 • view
Yeah, but I bet it is “she was gonna lose to an even more far right fascist.” Democrats shouldn’t get too excited. Make sure we’re going to win the races we need first.
aug 31, 2025, 2:05 pm • 3 0 • view
She'd die at the polls!
aug 31, 2025, 11:49 am • 1 0 • view
Funny how when you tell your constituents that they are going to die and you won't lift a finger to help, they tend not to be excited to vote for you.
aug 31, 2025, 8:03 pm • 3 0 • view