The hoopla surrounding Super Bowl spots — fueled by the reported $5.6 million that advertisers shelled out for the most expensive 30-second ads — fosters huge expectations, with the lingering question of whether the investment paid off.
Was there a commercial that people will still be talking about years from now, like Apple’s “1984” ad or Coke’s Mean Joe Greene commercial? Probably not, and the so-so ads outnumbered the clear winners and losers. Too many of this year’s advertisers seemed to confuse activity for achievement, as if being loud and colorful was enough.
Movie ads flexed their muscles, with in-game spots for the latest “Fast & Furious” movie, another “Minions,” Marvel’s “Black Widow” and the next James Bond film “No Time to Die.” The Super Bowl remains a prime showcase for films that really know how to blow stuff up.
Streaming services, however, also had a sizable footprint during the game, a tangible sign of the entertainment industry’s shifting priorities.
Hulu, for example, enlisted Tom Brady. Disney+ offered an arresting showcase for its upcoming series. Amazon pushed the drama “Hunters,” and Quibi sought to sell its short-video service, although frankly, it doesn’t feel like the catchphrase “I’ll be there in a Quibi” is going to catch on.
Setting aside the political ads for President Trump and Michael Bloomberg — how well those pitches worked is likely very much in the partisan eye of the beholder — here’s a series of snap judgments about who scored, who fumbled, and the wide swath of “Eh” in between.
Grading on the curve of Super Bowls past, it was a pretty good day overall for advertising agencies that earn their spurs based on these campaigns. Happily for football fans, it just wasn’t as good as the game and Kansas City’s come-from-behind victory.
WINNERS
Genesis: John Legend and Chrissy Teigen might be the only celebrity couple that could help sell products in an otherwise uninspired commercial, so more props for the casting than the creative, although the “sexiest man alive” reference was a nice touch.
Jeep: Bill Murray in a “Groundhog Day” spoof — reunited with co-stars like Stephen Tobolowsky — on Groundhog Day? The closest the day came to advertising perfection.
Amazon Alexa: An excellent ad — funny, shows off what the product can do, and what we couldn’t do without it — while incorporating Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi in an organic way. Plus, a timely Watergate wrinkle for good measure.
Google: This one gets major points for its ambition, with a man remembering his late wife. Deeply touching, it was like the opening sequence of the movie “Up” distilled into a commercial.
Hyundai Sonata: “Smaht pahk” — featuring a Boston-accented Chris Evans, John Krasinski and Rachel Dratch — made good use of its celebrities, proved genuinely funny and, not incidentally, demonstrated what looked like way-cool technology.
Doritos: The cowboy faceoff between Sam Elliott and Lil Nas X — using “Old Town Road” as a backdrop — might have ended in a draw, but it produced a winner for Doritos.
Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans: Jason Momoa revealing the 98-pound weakling underneath his skin in the comfort of his home was perhaps the best visual gag of the day.
Walmart: The massive retailer wove together scenes from familiar science-fiction films in a manner that piggybacked on all the movie ads we see during the Super Bowl.
Toyota: How roomy is the Highlander? Very cleverly, you can use it rescue people from perilous movie situations.
T-Mobile: Anthony Anderson’s real-life mom gets around — and calls him a lot — in an ad for the phone service’s 5G that mostly connected.
Microsoft: It’s always smart to tie into football in some way, but especially so in featuring Katie Sowers, the first woman to coach in the Super Bowl. Olay offered a similar message in its star-studded “Make space for women” ad, but the creative wasn’t quite as good.
LOSERS
Planters: After teasing plans to kill off mascot Mr. Peanut, Planters offered an odd fake-out by introducing a baby version while other corporate spokes-characters mourned. Ultimately, the legume gave his life in the service of a misguided campaign.
Snickers: It’s not clear what a giant Snickers bar would do to solve all the world’s ills, other than perhaps give it diabetes.
Sabra: Although the ad generated advance controversy because a conservative group was upset that drag queens were featured within it, the only real issue here was that the spot for hummus was messy, and worse, obnoxious.
Avocados From Mexico: “Why Molly Ringwald, exactly?” was only one of the questions this commercial left in its wake.
Mountain Dew: Bryan Cranston was a good choice for this “The Shining” spoof, but other than the closing image of mountain spilling out of the elevator, the whole thing was way too cute for its own good.
Michelob Ultra: Jimmy Fallon working out with John Cena felt awfully tired and un-hip.
NOTABLE AND NOT BAD, BUT….
Budweiser: The beer company offered one of its typical patriotic ads with a spot featuring “typical Americans,” but with the nation this divided, it’s harder than ever to deliver that “What unites us” message without evoking thoughts that undermine it.
Facebook: If ever a company might have benefited from a strong corporate image ad, it’s Facebook. A spot that told you ways different people use Facebook wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t that.
Bud Light Seltzer: A man’s inner voices fight a battle over drinking Bud Light Seltzer that looked a lot like a bit from an old Woody Allen movie. An amusing sight gag but a highly derivative idea.
Tide: Charlie Day had a stain on his shirt. Everything after that in a connected series of spots felt like a bit of a blur — including cameos by the Bud Light Knight and Wonder Woman — which were unexpected but not enough to redeem it.
P&G: The idea of celebrating a bunch of different brands an in interactive commercial was an interesting idea, but unless you’re a marketing student the experiment didn’t entirely work.
Sodastream: A funny punchline — that actually demonstrates what the product does — pays off this spot about finding water on Mars, with an appropriate cameo by Bill Nye the Science Guy. OK, but not a top-tier ad.
Pepsi: Using the Rolling Stones’ “Paint it Black” was a nifty touch, but a fairly standard image spot.
Squarespace: There was a “Fargo” vibe to the spot featuring Winona Ryder in Winona, Minnesota, which only half paid off the gag.
Reese’s Take 5: They pushed the notion of illustrating clichés a little too far with the final image, which bordered on crude.
Cheetos: A guy uses having cheesy fingers to get out of various unpleasant things — including changing a baby — using MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This.” Put this one just outside the “winners” column.
New York Life: There was something serious about life — and life insurance — going on there, but it was difficult to follow what it was.
Hard Rock: Michael Bay (“Transformers”) directed an action-packed ad in which Jennifer Lopez was joined by a number of other celebs. The spot was certainly busy and energetic, but lacked much point. Sort of like the average Michael Bay movie, only shorter.
A half century after winning their first, the Kansas City Chiefs have won Super Bowl LIV, defeating the San Francisco 49ers 31-20 at Hard Rock Stadium.
Mahomes, last year’s league MVP, is now a Super Bowl MVP. He has joined Ben Roethlisberger and Tom Brady as the only quarterbacks to hoist a Lombardi Trophy before their 25th birthday.
At 24 years and 138 days old on Sunday, Mahomes became the fifth-youngest quarterback to start in the Super Bowl. He’s also now the youngest player to win both an NFL MVP award and a Super Bowl title, surpassing Pro Football Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith (24 years, 233 days old on the last day of his MVP 1993 season).
Mahomes is the third African American quarterback to win a Super Bowl, joining Doug Williams (with Washington in Super Bowl XXII in 1988) and Russell Wilson (Seattle, Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014).
And it’s the first title for Andy Reid, 61, who up until Sunday night had been known as the best head coach to have never won a Super Bowl or NFL championship. This was his second Super Bowl appearance in his 21-year head coaching career.
Now, with career win No. 222, Reid is a champion. He broke the record for the most wins (including the playoffs) by a head coach before winning a Super Bowl or NFL championship, surpassing 2020 Pro Football Hall of Famer Bill Cowher’s 152 wins.
“Nobody deserves this trophy more than Andy Reid,” Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt said.
Mahomes magic
It wasn’t easy for the Chiefs. For the third straight game, Kansas City had to come from behind, trailing 20-10 heading into the fourth quarter. That was, in part, because Mahomes was pressured by the 49ers defensive front and was sacked four times.
With 5:23 left in the third quarter, Mahomes made his first big mistake, throwing his first career postseason interception, setting up a 49ers touchdown to make it 20-10. He was picked off again on Kansas City’s next possession, with a Mahomes throw going behind wide receiver Tyreek Hill and snared by Tarvarius Moore.
Mahomes’ 11 passing touchdowns without an interception was the most to start a playoff career in the Super Bowl era.
But as it got late, Mahomes got to work, with three straight touchdown drives in just over five minutes.
With 6:13 left, Mahomes found Travis Kelce in the endzone to cut it to 3. And with 2:44 remaining, Mahomes hit Damien Williams with a 5-yard pass for the go-ahead score. It was a play that would be reviewed, as it appeared Williams may have stepped out of bounds before the ball crossed the plane, but the call stood.
On that drive, Mahomes went 5-for-5 for 60 yards. For the night, Mahomes completed 26 of his 42 passes for 286 yards.
A breakaway touchdown run of 38 yards by Williams put the game away with 1:12 left.
The Chiefs were in their first Super Bowl in 50 years, with their previous title coming in Super Bowl IV.
The loss ends what had been a successful turnaround for the 49ers, who became the third team to reach the Super Bowl after winning four games or less the previous season, joining the 1999 St. Louis Rams (4-12 in 1998) and the 1988 Cincinnati Bengals (4-11 in 1987). In 2018, the 49ers limped to a 4-12 finish when quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo tore his ACL in the third game of the year.
This was the first Super Bowl as a head coach for San Francisco’s Kyle Shanahan, the 40-year-old son of two-time Super Bowl-winning coach Mike Shanahan. They are the only father-son duo to each appear in a Super Bowl as a head coach in NFL history.
The rush highlights Iowa’s importance to the broader Democratic primary, and that the candidate who wins here on Monday night will enjoy a wealth of momentum heading into the New Hampshire primary next week.
Here’s how the top six candidates in Iowa are closing out their campaign in the state:
Biden
Keenly attuned to Democratic voters’ focus on electability, Biden spent his final sprint through Iowa playing up Republican attacks on him — showing voters that he’s already weathered the full force of Trump’s political machine, while his primary rivals have not.
In particular, he has played up Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst’s comments to reporters in Washington suggesting that Iowa Democratic caucusgoers might turn away from Biden after Republicans used President Donald Trump’s impeachment proceedings to attack Biden and his son Hunter.
“She kind of spilled the beans,” Biden told a crowd Friday morning in Burlington.
Then he asked the question Ernst had raised about Iowa Democrats: “Will they support Joe Biden at this point?” The crowd applauded and yelled “yeah!” “Seems so, right?” Biden said. “Seems so.”
Biden’s closing pitch is the same as the slogan on the side of his campaign bus: Restoring the soul of the nation.
“In Joe Biden’s America, the President’s tax returns won’t be a secret. Political self-interest will not be confused with the national interest. And no one — no one, not even the President of the United States — will be above the law,” Biden said Thursday morning in a speech in the Des Moines suburbs.
“I’m absolutely certain we can repair this country,” he said. “And we can repair our standing in the world. We can win the battle for the soul of America. The country’s ready.”
He rarely says his Democratic opponents’ names, but punctuated his stump speeches with clear jabs at his leading foes.
On Sunday in Dubuque, Biden said the next President “is going to have to face a nation that’s fundamentally divided, as well as a war in disarray. And with all due respect, there’s going to be no time for on-the-job training. You’d better know what you’re doing the first day.”
Minutes later, in a jab at Sanders and Warren, Biden brought up the axiom that talk is cheap. “In politics sometimes it’s very expensive,” he said. “Especially if you don’t tell people how you’re going to pay for what you want to do.”
Buttigieg
The former South Bend, Indiana, mayor is closing his campaign by highlighting his uniqueness as the youngest candidate in the race: It’s time to “open the door to a new generation of leadership.”
Buttigieg has highlighted the message throughout the closing days of his Iowa campaign, one where the 38-year-old former mayor — more than most candidates in the field — needs a strong showing to legitimize his run and prove some semblance of electability.
Buttigieg has repeatedly used a campaign riff to explain why his age — something some Democrats see as a fault — has historically been useful to his party. Buttigieg tells audience that, in the last 50 years of the Democratic Party, the presidential nominees who won were “new on the scene”; “was opening the door to a new generation”; and “who did not have an office in Washington, or if they did, hadn’t been there for very long.”
“We had better make sure we win this time because the country can’t take another term of this President,” Buttigieg said this week.
As part of the strategy, Buttigieg has begun taking on two of his older opponents — Biden and Sanders — by name, suggesting they do not fit that historic mold.
Buttigieg, in response to an ad where Biden’s campaign argues that now is “no time to take a risk,” told voters in Decorah that “history has shown us that the biggest risk we could take with a very important election coming up is to look to the same Washington playbook and recycle the same arguments.” And at an event in Anamosa, Buttigieg cast Sanders as too unmoving, arguing that the senator feels “you’re either for a revolution, or you got to be for the status quo, and there’s nothing in between.”
This reflects a new consensus inside the Buttigieg campaign, where the former mayor’s top strategist view Biden and Sanders as their most formidable opponents. The Buttigieg campaign, people with knowledge of their strategy say, will be satisfied with a top two finish or beating Biden in Iowa.
Buttigieg, to make that case, has focused intently on winning over what the mayor has called “future former Republicans,” people who may have voted for Trump in 2016 but as disaffected with the President and willing to give a Democrat a chance.
“I was hopeful that he was somebody different,” Anne Wahl, a 49-year-old former nuclear medical tech from Marshalltown, said of her vote for Trump in 2016. “You learn from everything. I look at it that this next time around let’s start with somebody who starts out very presidential and intelligent. Let’s start their first and go from there.”
The question for Buttigieg’s team is whether those Iowans will come out Monday night, allowing the former mayor to expand the electorate with voters eager to, as he says, usher in a “new generation” of leaders.
Klobuchar
Klobuchar’s closing message can be summed up with two words: “Grit” and “charm.”
Klobuchar, who turned her snowy announcement speech into a sign of her toughness, is closing with some of that same messaging in Iowa, hoping that the culturally similar Democrats in Iowa will be drawn to a senator selling herself as pragmatic and tough.
Klobuchar has peppered her final events with nods to her Minnesota upbringing, her grandfather who saved money in a coffee can and her ability to win over Republican voters. Her ads have also fixated on this message, touting the fact that she has visited all 99 Iowa counties and referred to her “Midwestern charisma” and “grit.”
Klobuchar has also turned up the heat on one of her opponents, Buttigieg, in the closing days of the campaign, faulting him as dismissing the importance of the impeachment trial.
“I don’t have the luxury to switch the channel and watch cartoons, as one of my opponents suggested,” she said on Friday after Buttigieg suggested the chaos in Washington has led some voters to turn off the news and watch cartoons. “I’m here. I’m hoping that the people see it as a plus and I’m going to do my job.”
One dynamic Klobuchar supporters are hoping plays out Monday is that Iowans, many of whom like Klobuchar, will be moved to back her because they want her to stay in the race beyond the Hawkeye State.
And there are signs that is impacting voters across the state, with numerous undecided voters telling CNN they were considering Klobuchar because they wanted her to get further than Iowa.
“In my precinct, I think Pete will probably win it,” said Barbara Wells, a Des Moines resident. “So if I can go over to Amy and make Amy viable, that would be really important to me because it keeps her in the race.”
Klobuchar has played this up in recent days, all but pleading with Iowans to send her on to New Hampshire and beyond.
“This person deserves a ticket out of Iowa,” she said this week, “to be able to go forward, and I am asking you to do that for me.”
Sanders
Sanders’ closing pitch to Iowa voters sounds a lot like what he’s been saying all along: Rich corporate and establishment interests are aligned against working people. But his campaign has the grassroots power to win — there and around the country — if they can drive as many people out to the caucuses as possible.
The emphasis on expanding the electorate has been a central theme of every Sanders speech since he arrived back in the state for this final push.
“What this campaign in Iowa is about and what it is about nationally is about voter turnout,” Sanders said in Cedar Rapids on Sunday. “It is reaching forth to our friends and neighbors who have in many instances given up on political process.”
Sanders has also sought to use a late round of pushback, including one from an outside group that spent nearly $700,000 to run an ad here questioning his electability and health, as fuel for his supporters.
Calling in to an Iowa City rally this week from Washington, where he and the other senator-candidates have been stuck serving as jurors in Trump’s impeachment trial, Sanders cast the uptick in attacks on his campaign as a sign of its strength.
“Right now there are people with a lot of money (and) they are sitting around trying to figure out how they can defeat us,” Sanders said. “But at the end of the day, the reason that we will win is that we have the people, and we have an unprecedently strong, grassroots movement in Iowa and around the country that tonight are knocking on thousands and thousands of doors.”
In a campaign ad that began running this week, Sanders highlighted those volunteers, along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; a young, diverse group of supporters; and the climate activists from the Sunrise Movement, who appear in turns as Sanders’ voice, from a rally in New York last year, delivers the message.
“Take a look around you and find someone you don’t know, maybe somebody doesn’t look kinda like you,” Sanders says, then asks: “Are you willing to fight for that person as much as you’re willing to fight for yourself?”
Warren
“Unite the Party.”
That was the message on posters at a Warren event in Urbandale on Saturday.
Warren is closing out her campaign in Iowa by pitching herself as the one candidate on the ticket with power to bring together warring factions inside the Democratic Party and beat Trump in November.
She made a similar case in three recent ads here that touted her ability to bring along voters who had backed Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Trump in 2016. Another spot highlighted her endorsement by the state’s largest newspaper, the Des Moines Register.
In an ad titled, “She Can Win,” a man who identifies himself as a former Trump voter says he will back Warren this year.
“The people that say that a woman can’t win, I say ‘nonsense.’ I believe a woman can beat Trump and I believe Elizabeth is that woman,” he says.
Another ad features three voters — each of whom backed different candidates in 2016 — attesting to Warren’s ability to forge a coalition.
“We can’t afford a fractured party in 2020,” a former Bernie supporter says.
The Clinton backer from 2016 adds: “In 2020, the person that can unite the party is Elizabeth Warren.”
And the erstwhile Trump voter delivers the closing message.
“If a former Trump supporter can be energized by Elizabeth Warren,” he says, “then Elizabeth Warren is doing something great for America.”
Yang
Yang, the entrepreneur and first-time candidate, spent his final events on the campaign trail in Iowa hammering home the same message that launched him to stardom: A call for a universal basic income.
Yang’s proposal to give every American $1,000 per month — which he calls a “freedom dividend” — has been the animating cause of his candidacy.
“We’re living in a country — there are 78% of us are living paycheck to paycheck. Almost half can’t afford an unexpected $500 bill. Too many Americans are being left behind in the 21st century economy,” Yang said Sunday morning on ABC. “We need to put the gains of this economy directly into our hands, into families’ hands around the country, through a dividend of $1,000 a month.”
Yang has sought to appeal to disaffected voters — from Sanders’ supporters to Republicans. At events, he’s asked those that voted for Trump to raise their hands — and then asked the crowd to applaud them for being there.
But he’s also tried to show he’s having the most fun of any candidate in the race. On Sunday morning, he hopped off a chair in Ames and then told a small crowd around him, “Let’s see Bernie Sanders do that!”
In a November Facebook post, Janah wrote, “Epithelioid sarcoma is a rare, strange beast. As it moves through my body I’m trying to understand what it could possibly teach me. My biggest lesson is awe: I’m awe-struck by the complexity of human biology, and equally by the almost mystical power of human connection and love flowing my way.”
Epithelioid sarcoma is a rare soft-tissue cancer often seen in young adults, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
“Epithelioid sarcoma accounts for less than one percent of all soft tissue sarcomas,” said Dr. Richard Pazdur, director of the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence.
In a statement last month, the agency announced it approved the first ever treatment option for the specific form of cancer.
Typically starts in extremities
In many cases, the cancer begins in soft tissue under extremities — usually fingers, hands or forearms. It typically starts off as a painless and often small bump.
“It usually starts out as a single growth, but multiple growths may occur by the time a person seeks medical help. Sometimes this sarcoma appears as ulcers that don’t heal, looking like open wounds over the growths,” the Mayo Clinic says.
But because of its often benign look in the early stages, it may take patients months to years before seeking treatment, according to a 2009 report in the Journal of Clinical and Aesthetic Dermatology.
“Because of its potential for aggressive behavior, clinicians must be aware of the presenting behavior of ES in order to avoid misdiagnosis. Unusual nodules, particularly on the distal extremity of young men, must be closely scrutinized if there is a suspicion of malignancy,” the report says.
And while the course of the cancer is many times unpredictable, according to the report, it is common for the tumors to metastasize and for the cancer to reoccur within one to two years after treatment.
“Recent authors report a metastatic rate approaching 50 percent,” it says. “As is true for most soft tissue sarcomas, the lungs are the principal site of metastatic disease. ES has also been documented to metastasize to lymph nodes, skin, scalp, brain, digestive tract, liver, kidneys and musculoskeletal system.”
Treatment options for epithelioid sarcoma include removing the cancer through surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, according to Mayo Clinic.
‘Champion for environmental sustainability and ending global poverty’
Janah founded three organizations — including artificial intelligence company Samasource, which employs nearly 3,000 people in Kenya, Uganda and India and creates data for companies that need to test artificial intelligence products such as self-driving cars.
Samasource called Janah a champion for environmental sustainability and ending global poverty.
“Her commitment to creating a better world was unparalleled. The ripple effects of her work will be felt for generations,” it said.
According to the company’s website, it is one of the largest employers in East Africa and has helped more than 50,000 people lift themselves out of poverty.
Janah was also the founder and CEO of LXMI, a fair-trade, organic skin care company, and Samaschool, a nonprofit organization that trains people in digital skills, according to Samasource.
She is survived by her husband and stepdaughter, the company said.
The high school in the Philadelphia metropolitan area on Saturday afternoon honored Bryant — who played four years there before heading to the NBA as an 18-year-old — before the game.
There was a 33-second moment of silence and a video tribute. The school also re-unveiled a framed version of Bryant’s No. 33 jersey, the uniform having recently been returned to the school after it was stolen. CNN affiliate WPVI reported in March that the replica jersey autographed by Bryant had been bought by a collector in China, who suspected it had been stolen and returned it.
Assistant Coach Doug Young, who played with Bryant at Lower Merion, told the crowd that the school was drawing solace by banding together as a family.
He talked about the joy brought to their games in the 1990s by Bryant’s family.
“When my teammates and I played for the Aces one of the things that we found our greatest joy in was looking up in the stands and seeing Kobe’s family smiling and cheering and being so loud and enthusiastic and supportive in the crowd. Cheering him on and cheering us on,” he said, according to video shot by CNN affiliate KYW.
He said it was an incredible example of positivity and unconditional love.
Lower Merion head coach Gregg Downer, who coached Bryant during the 1993-1996 seasons, told reporters after the game basketball was helping him heal.
“It’s been a long week but I’m gaining strength, feeling stronger. Today was therapeutic for me,” he said, according to KYW.
Bryant’s cousin John Cox and his family joined the coaches on the court for the jersey reveal. The video tribute ended with the names of the nine victims of the helicopter crash.
Lower Merion defeated Souderton High School 42-37 in overtime.
Droplets of holy water shone on the forehead of one of the most recognizable faces in sports as he made his way through the chapel before the early Mass last Sunday at the parish in Newport Beach, California.
Kobe Bryant, 41, an 18-time All Star who won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers, shook hands with Father Steve Sallot and asked about making his confirmation, a sacrament that would solidify his commitment to the Catholic Church.
It would have been hard to not notice one of the greatest basketball players of all time. But Bryant had always tried to pass as just another one of the faithful, often sitting in a rear pew so he didn’t distract from the solemn priority at hand.
That unforgettable day began with Bryant stopping for a moment of prayer and reflection. It would end in a violent crush of metal and flames.
After a glittering, straight-out-of-high-school 20-year NBA career, Bryant was often seen with Gianna — a talented young player — at basketball games. Convinced she too was bound for glory, he saw the second of his four daughters — along with Natalia, Bianka and Capri — with wife Vanessa Laine Bryant as heir to his greatness.
Last Sunday, Bryant was to coach Gianna’s Lady Mambas team against the Fresno Lady Heat at his Mamba Sports Academy in the northern Los Angeles suburb of Thousand Oaks. The Mamba Cup tournament had already begun, featuring boys’ and girls’ teams from third through eighth grades.
Gianna had her father’s competitive streak. An aspiring WNBA player, she often took issue with strangers’ suggestion that her dad and mom needed a son to uphold the Bryant legacy.
The day before the Fresno game, a basketball- and Kobe-obsessed 13-year-old named Brady Smigiel had played in the Mamba Cup with his twin brother, Beau. Beyond the court, the youngster had committed — at some point during tournament play — to securing a selfie with his idol.
But Gianna’s travel team had just lost its first Saturday game, 46-29. And Bryant’s signature hate-to-lose mentality was evident.
“Kobe was mad they lost,” Brady told his mother.
The NBA legend wouldn’t mug for Brady’s camera. But he raised his hand, balled up a fist and bumped knuckles — a young player’s dream come true.
The Lady Mambas won their second game that day. Afterward, their coach milled around off court. Brady got close. He flashed a broad grin, positioned his lens and — click — managed a blurry selfie with a towering Bryant in the background.
The all star-turned-prep coach again didn’t stop, Smigiel recalled. But he knew what Brady really wanted.
Bryant addressed her son: “We’ll get a better pic tomorrow.”
Hours later, Bryant was on Twitter, congratulating Lakers superstar LeBron James for passing him as the third highest scorer in NBA history with 33,655 points. Bryant had scored 33,643 points in his brilliant pro career.
“Continuing to move the game forward @KingJames,” he tweeted. “Much respect my brother.”
It was in Philadelphia, where Bryant was born on August 23, 1978, that James became the game’s third highest scorer.
On Instagram, Bryant posted a photo with James: “On to #2. Keep growing the game and charting the path for the next.”
But social media could not contain their adoration. These two men — pillars of their profession, cultural touchstones, with names already inked into history — had to talk.
“I literally just heard your voice Sunday morning before I left Philly to head back to LA,” LeBron wrote later on Instagram, referring to a congratulatory call from Bryant. “Didn’t think for one bit in a million years that would be the last conversation we’d have.”
That all came after a completely separate inquiry that did not, whatever the President claimed, totally exonerate the commander in chief concerning his interactions with a foreign actor in the 2016 election — which itself resulted in the criminal conviction or guilty pleas of multiple senior officials, including another former White House national security adviser.
If you grew up trusting in the permanence of the American experiment in government and bought into the “shining city on a hill” idea for the American form of democracy, it is time to freak out.
It’s not that a President, impeached for inviting foreign influence into the US election, has a pretty good chance of winning reelection. It’s that, while there are plenty of Republican lawmakers who might privately admit that using taxpayer dollars to pressure a foreign government to do political favors is wrong, they seem unwilling or unable to call Trump to account publicly, and have instead ceded their power, undermining the system of checks and balances that has kept us going.
Late Friday, we were again reminded that we will keep learning details about the decision to withhold $400 million in aid from Ukraine, thanks to a court filing in which the Justice Department confirmed it’s withholding two dozen emails related to Trump’s role. Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, his potential political rival, have been at the center of the President’s impeachment trial. Trump has repeatedly made unfounded and false claims to allege that the Bidens acted improperly in Ukraine.
There are still some holding out hope that some Republicans will change their minds and vote to remove Trump on Wednesday. That is about as plausible as earlier scenarios where Trump was somehow squeezed out of the nomination at the 2016 Republican National Convention, or defeated by the rebel votes of so-called faithless electors, or somehow prevented from taking the oath of office.
But, strictly speaking, it won’t necessarily be “the people” who choose the next President. It will be the Electoral College, a layer the founders put between the people and the presidency, which has evolved to give some Americans more voice than others.
It’s very likely the person who gets the most votes in November will not become President — which is what happened in 2016. That awkward feature of a republic such as the United States has happened twice in the past twenty years. It could very easily happen again, given how unpopular Trump is in major population centers and how strong his support is in rural America, where voters have outsize power.
There are a handful of contested states and no matter who wins, about half the people will be frustrated.
Where’s the release valve?
It’s a similar situation in the Senate, where the system meant to sew the country together is tearing at the seams. Deep blue California has the fifth-largest economy in the world and 40 million residents, but it gets the same number of votes as red Wyoming, which has marginally more residents than Fresno.
Fresno and Wyoming put together are nowhere close to the population of Puerto Rico, an island full of Americans who can’t even vote for President unless they move to a US state.
The country has grown in such a way that racial and socioeconomic divides will continue to get worse. There is no release valve for the contents under pressure at the top of the US government, concentrated in the Senate.
Retreat into corners
CNN senior political analyst Ronald Brownstein wrote this week about how red and blue America, represented by two sets of states, do battle in the Senate rather than find common ground. Read the whole thing here.
He wrote:
Today, the vast majority of senators from the President’s party are elected by states that also voted for him — increasing the pressure on them to stand with him — while virtually all senators from the other party were sent by states that voted against the President, increasing the pressure to oppose him. Of the 53 Republican senators judging Trump, 51 were elected in states that backed him in the 2016 election.
These electoral pressures have contributed to remaking the Senate into the rigid, combative institution on display this week — one in which the leadership exerts more control than in earlier generations, individual members are expected to display a level of party-line loyalty reminiscent of parliamentary systems in Europe and there is little leeway for the bipartisan deal-making that was the hallmark of great senators from Kentucky’s Henry Clay in the 19th century to Kansas’ Bob Dole and Massachusetts’ Edward M. Kennedy in the late 20th.
No room for dissent
We saw some reasons why that’s changed in the wake of Friday’s Senate vote against calling witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial. Mitt Romney, the Utah senator and sometime Trump critic who was one of two Republicans to vote in favor of hearing witnesses at Trump’s trial has been “not invited” to CPAC, the annual conference of conservatives, after stepping out of the GOP lane.
Granted, Romney did attempt to sabotage Trump’s campaign back in 2016. He has tried to maintain some independence as a senator. Other critics — Sens. Jeff Flake and Bob Corker — were chased out of office. Michigan Rep. Justin Amash was chased from the party before he voted to impeach Trump in the House.
Turned by the other side
Cowed, bullied or simply out for their own self-preservation as politicians, it should be concerning that honest dissent is not tolerated. Others have been flipped, sometimes in mystifying ways. Sen. Lindsey Graham used to be best friends with John McCain and was just as opposed to Trump’s presidency as Romney in 2016. He compared a Trump presidency to death. Now, however, he has turned himself into a Trump-supporting warrior in the Senate. Trump didn’t change. Graham changed.
The few Republican lawmakers who, finally, during his impeachment and justifying their intention to acquit him, criticized Trump’s behavior with regard to Ukraine, said the people should get to choose their president.
“The question then is not whether the President did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, the retiring Tennessee Republican in a thoughtful and carefully worded statement about his vote. “I believe that the Constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election that begins in Iowa on Monday.”
On Saturday, NBC released a clip from a “Meet the Press” interview in which Alexander seemed to walk that back, too. “I think he shouldn’t have done it. I think it was wrong. Inappropriate was the way I’d say — improper, crossing the line.”
Future Presidents will use the power Trump has seized
The Democratic primary is turning into a referendum about the fundamental question — should the left mimic the tactics of the right, or is there a middle any more?
Sen. Elizabeth Warren has said she would do away with the filibuster in the Senate to enact her policies. More recently, Sen. Bernie Sanders has said he will use executive authority — much like Trump — to end-run around Capitol Hill. He’d look at declaring a climate change a national emergency, potentially allowing the US to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada and could order his Justice Department to effectively legalize marijuana, according to a Washington Post report.
The American system depends on compromise
You might agree with any or all of Warren or Sanders — or Trump’s — policies, but the whole essence of the system is compromise. No one gets everything they want but also no one gets nothing they want. But now it is zero sum all the time and make sure you kick your opponent on the way whenever you can.
Compromise is not supposed to be paralysis, but paralysis is the only thing lawmakers seem capable of.
After Democrats passed the 2009 health care law, they were unable to fine-tune it because Republicans were so bent on repeal. Now it lurches, a zombie system the President is trying to smother without offering a replacement.
The 2017 tax law is making US debt spin out of control, but Republicans, who once complained about skyrocketing deficits, aren’t likely to do anything about it while Trump is in control. They’ll find the gospel of balanced budgets the second a Democratic president suggests a social program — whether it’s “Medicare for All” or the Green New Deal or something more limited.
The rigidity of the system and the difficulty of changing it is an advantage meant to keep power diffuse. But the paralysis of Congress has Trump grabbing more and more power for the White House. He’s essentially been given carte blanche to ignore Congress — to build his wall, to hold up foreign aid — by a Senate where the Republican majority is afraid to criticize him.
No good answers
Amending the Constitution, last achieved two decades ago, would take such a long time and require such a level of agreement that nobody talks seriously about it. Democrats have proposed electoral reforms after their candidates lost the White House with more votes. But Republican Senate majorities will not willingly hand over power.
The House of Representatives is supposed to be the closest piece of government to voters, but the number of lawmakers, set and immovable, has exploded to more than 700,000 per member of Congress in most states. Many other countries have far more lawmakers each representing far fewer people.
Government will do nothing about these problems because it is stuck on attack mode and geared, always, toward the next election, which starts Monday in Iowa.
Hamburg, Iowa: The impact of the climate crisis on the 2020 election
In the days that followed the flood, life in Hamburg, Iowa, was measured by what was not: No city hall, no church, no electricity, not a single business open. Ten days without running water, the mayor counted. Twenty. One hundred and twenty.
It began last year in the middle of March, in the middle of America, in a town of about 1,000 tucked an hour south of Omaha at Iowa’s southwestern-most edge. “The Cornerstone” of the state, is how Hamburg’s welcome sign puts it. Home to some of the most fertile farmland in the nation, the area owed the unprecedented richness of its soil to the fact that it was situated in the flood plain of the country’s longest river, the Missouri.
The floods came after a particularly furious “bomb cyclone” — “a monster,” one meteorologist told the Omaha World-Herald at the time. It’s a type of extreme storm that has always existed, but that scientists say is only growing more intense and more devastating because of the climate crisis. For months, Hamburg would remain underwater. Only after half a year did the flood waters finally begin to leave, revealing signs that a kind of normalcy might be within reach.
The school’s gym had been emptied of donations. City Hall was open again. The town’s ATM was back in operation; you could finally order a beer again at the Blue Moon or pick up donuts and pizza at Casey’s General Store.
A few people had packed up and left, but the majority of the town appeared determined to try and overcome the devastation. And behind the scenes, their volunteer mayor, who had been working on less than four hours of sleep a night for months, was searching, along with her staff, for solutions that would make staying possible. Nearly half the homes in town had taken on water, but in her office sat a letter from the Federal Emergency Management Agency saying the majority of the families that had sought assistance “had not suffered enough damage” to receive help.
Floodwaters surround homes and a grain elevator in Hamburg, March 2019. Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Hamburg’s recovery has coincided with the start of the 2020 presidential campaign. While the country puzzles through anxieties surrounding the direction of our democracy, as candidates board buses and hold town halls and speak to the big issues, everyone is asking a variation of the same question: In what vision shall we make ourselves? In Hamburg, it’s been nearly impossible for residents to go a single day without being forced to formulate their own personal answers.
This very profound grassroots remaking of a community has felt a largely private process, one the town seems to be navigating in relative isolation, far from what’s happening in the larger political world. There was a flush of attention at first, at the height of the immediate crisis. National media outlets came to town. Members of Congress — both Republican and Democratic — held meetings and field hearings where they said nothing like this should ever happen to towns like Hamburg again. But as the waters receded, so did the attention, even as candidates and their supporters have fanned out across what can seem like every inch of Iowa’s 99 counties.
A lone political sign in residential Hamburg, January 2020. Rachel Mummey for CNN
In Hamburg, Iowa’s imminent presidential caucus has been all but invisible. There are conspicuously few campaign signs, save for those related to a recent local election. A recent drive up and down every one of the city’s residential streets revealed exactly three lawn signs: two for former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and one for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who won the Democratic caucus for surrounding Fremont County in 2016. “People love Bernie around here,” the town’s volunteer mayor, Cathy Crain, told me.
Bernie Sanders finished first in Fremont County, where Hamburg is located, while Hillary Clinton received more Iowa delegates overall.
Sanders won
Clinton won
Tie
Donald Trump carried the county in the 2016 general election, but people aren’t talking about him or his impeachment trial, either. It’s not that they are disinterested. It’s that just trying to see if the town can survive the flood has turned attention inward. “This is the size of our world right now — the 700 acres that comprise this town,” Crain said. “That’s where all our focus is at. I could not tell you what is happening outside our borders right now.”
Source: Iowa Secretary of State
Crain says national politicians don’t usually make their way down to Hamburg for one reason — “We’re small and we’re poor.” The President didn’t come when it flooded, though Vice President Mike Pence did tour the remnants of Pacific Junction, about 33 miles away. And despite the vast field of Democratic presidential candidates investing so much time in Iowa, Hamburg never became a major destination.
Only two have visited — Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard — and they both came immediately after the flood. The first to arrive was Inslee, whose short-lived campaign was focused on the threat posed by the climate crisis. He came in April, about a month after the flood, and used it as an opportunity to talk about global warming. And while some folks in town were grateful for the attention, others weren’t sure what to do with it. It wasn’t as if they were ignorant of the idea — they were the ones with whole sections of their town still sitting under more than 10 feet of water, and besides, some argued, farmers know better than most the slightest changes in weather over time.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, whose short-lived presidential campaign was focused on climate change, visited Hamburg in April 2019. Charlie Neibergall/AP
It just struck some people as maybe a little too soon, campaigning at a time of sorrow. While there were people still reeling that they’d lost their homes of 40 years. Or that young family who’d cashed in all their savings to buy their dream home, so they wouldn’t be locked into a mortgage, and had only taken possession days before the flood destroyed it.
At the Blue Moon Bar and Grill on a Thursday night in late January, patrons joked about knowing which tables would be caucusing with the Republicans and which would be caucusing with the Democrats — but that only got you so far in understanding what people believed. The normal, simplified language of politics didn’t encompass the complexities and contradictions that the townsfolk were used to working through together, even more so now since the flood had shown them what it could be like to be unified around a common purpose, regardless of whether they agreed with each other or not.
The young pastor of the local Methodist church, Luke Fillmore, told me that he had witnessed “a willingness to sit inside conflict and uncertainty, to exhibit a certain patience with each other, so that you can move beyond surface disagreements.” He has watched people realize, he said, “that some things are so good and so holy and so right, there are differences worth putting down.”
A flood-ravaged house sits waiting to be bulldozed. Rachel Mummey for CNN
Other people I spoke to echoed that theme. They talked about how living through the flood was without a doubt one of the most traumatic experiences they had ever known, but again and again people told me that they also felt an overwhelming sense of wonder during those days too — when all the normal rules were suspended and everyone just did whatever needed to be done, whatever was right for each other.
Like the school superintendent keeping the school open for relief efforts, even when it was suggested by someone from the state that it was illegal to operate the school without working sprinklers — when the town was without water. The superintendent said, fine, have someone come shut us down, but until then, the doors stay open. That same school is set to play host to the Republican caucuses in town, while the Democrats are expected to meet in Sidney, 15 miles away.
As terrible as the flood was, it had shown them the best version of what their town could be, and had made them all the more committed to its survival. But the flood had also revealed how vulnerable they truly were, exposed a new tenuousness to their situation. For all they’d lost, they now stood to lose even more — not just their property and their surroundings, but this newfound sense of community.
Which is why, while the rest of the country has started 2020 focused on headlines about war and impeachment and disease outbreaks, the big news in Hamburg was a January announcement from Col. John Hudson, the Omaha District commander for the US Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the levees along the Missouri River. “We have been working nonstop since last spring to restore the levee system,” he said. “To date, we have closed the majority of the inlet breaches and we will be working throughout the winter months to close the remaining breaches.” But then he added: “Even with the tremendous strides in restoring over 350 miles of levees, an elevated risk still remains.”
The flooding drowned fields and pastures, leaving land unfarmable. Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images
As residents of the low-lying region of southwest Iowa affectionately known as “The River Bottom,” or “The Bottom” for short, Hamburg’s citizens had always accepted that their tenancy came with the peril of possible inundation. Bracketed between two rivers and encircled by an intricate system of levees, they had long understood floods to be the price they paid to live on some of the richest farmland in the state.
Hamburg, in the southwest corner of Iowa, is situated between the Missouri and Nishnabotna Rivers.
A system of levees surrounding the town regulates the water levels of the nearby rivers.
In March 2019, the combination of an extreme weather event, elevated snowpack and a torrent of water released from a dam hundreds of miles upriver left most of Hamburg underwater.
Residents took shelter in the town’s school, the only public building that remained on dry land.
People counted the years by the number of floods they’d lived through, their own watery epochs, and they’d even developed their own internal threat warning system: the old flagpole that stood like a roundabout in the middle of Main Street. On one side, dry ground. On the other, certain water. Even during the town’s worst flood on record — back in 1952 — the water had only managed to lap at the flagpole’s edge.
The flagpole in the middle of town has long served as an communal measuring stick for floods. Rachel Mummey for CNN
So when the residents of Hamburg awoke one morning last March and registered a sudden, unanticipated spiking of the river level lines on the Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service’s daily graph, those in the lowest part of town began their stacking, mentally preparing for the inevitable cleanup to follow. Everyone else trusted the words of the old-timers who had lived through several floods, like the man who told anyone who would listen: “I’m telling you, it won’t go beyond the flagpole. And if it does, I’ll drink every damn drop.”
Typically, the river that had always threatened the town was the Nishnabotna, a smaller tributary that ran to the community’s east. This time, though, the danger would come from what had once seemed an unthinkable source, the Missouri River, more than seven miles to the west. A freak spring storm — the “bomb cyclone” — unleashed a hard rain onto land further north already covered in record snowfall.
The combined runoff sent an unprecedented volume of water surging into the Missouri’s tributaries, rivers frozen solid after fierce cold. Ice broke away in blocks, coursed forward like battering rams. And everything raced into the Missouri, ultimately collecting at the reservoir behind the Gavin’s Point Dam at the border between South Dakota and Nebraska. That particular reservoir was not designed to hold that much water, according to the Corps.
KETV
Fearing greater catastrophe if that dam was lost, the Corps, which is charged with the management of the 2,341-mile-long length of river that runs from Montana to Missouri, ordered the dam’s spillways opened — unleashing a torrent of criticism over their priorities as to who is spared and who suffers. Because when the spillways opened, 10,000 cubic feet of water per second began to bear down on dozens of river basin communities stretching from South Dakota to Missouri, including Hamburg.
The water broke through the levees in 50 places, by the Corps’ count, surging over the levees’ tops and then washing them out from underneath. As the water traveled toward Hamburg, it “took on tremendous velocity,” says Crain. “Think of a rollercoaster.”
The town realized it was facing something unprecedented. A crew of 75 volunteers, began to shovel sand as fast as they could, erecting an eight-block-long emergency barrier not far from the flagpole using materials people were more accustomed to seeing in the context of fortified military outposts. But it wasn’t long before the water had forced its way through this last resort and rushed up Main Street.
Just a few blocks from the flagpole, at the senior housing complex, affectionately known by everyone in town as “Wrinkle City,” residents woke just before dawn with volunteer fire crews banging at their doors. They had only 15 minutes to grab whatever they could. Most were carried out in their nightclothes. They left behind prescriptions, billfolds, family photos, hearing aids.
The river swallowed two-thirds of the city. In the low-lying part of town, its water lapped at rooflines. Propane tanks, refrigerators, bales of cornstalks weighing more than a ton bobbed past. One man reported seeing a convenience-store cooler full of beer.
A local farmer, surveying the immediate devastation by helicopter, spotted a small berm of land jutting up from the middle of what now could be mistaken for tidelands, the helicopter’s blades churning the deep water into whitecaps. On the tiny island stood both deer and coyote. And everyone made their way to the school — the only public building on dry land.
James W. Nenneman
Even before the disaster, Hamburg’s superintendent, Mike Wells, had been trying to radically re-imagine the town’s combined K-8 school. In the five years since he was hired to take over the district, Wells had secured grants to install professional woodworking equipment, a screen-printing machine, an embroidery machine, a 3-D printer, industrial sewing machines, welding equipment, a laser cutter and a hydroponic greenhouse. Every Friday, all the students, even the kindergartners, spend the day learning a specific trade.
“Our goal is to teach our students how to be doers,” Wells told me. “If you are a doer, you will always be successful, whatever path you choose in life. No one cares in the end whether you can study in such a way as to get a perfect score on a standardized test. They care that you know how to solve life’s problems, how to get things done.”
Elementary students learn to build a house during class
One of his first efforts as superintendent was to introduce a working farm at the school — sheep and pigs and chickens and geese and goats graze in a pasture situated between the school playground and one of the town’s main arterial roads. The students are responsible for all aspects of the animals’ lives. They deliver eggs from the chickens to homebound seniors; they butcher the pigs, donating the meat to the local food bank.
As we spoke, a group ranging from fourth to eighth graders were shingling roofs. “Be careful with those knives,” Wells called out. “I suppose we can always put your fingers on ice, but I’d rather not get to that point.” Another group was trying to repair a spot in the fence where one of the most prolific escape artists among the goats had tried to test for weakness and accidentally gotten its head stuck. Occasionally, Wells interrupted with a quick demonstration — “notch the shingle like this” — but otherwise left them alone.
“We don’t baby them,” he told me. “They don’t need babying. We show them how to do it, but we don’t fix it for them.” The picket fence that encircles the farm, in fact, took the students close to three months of trial and error to build before they realized how to account for variations in elevation.
It made sense then, in the spirit of nurturing a school full of doers, that Wells would throw open the school’s doors during the flood, and that he would also make the students a key part of the town’s recovery.
Classes continued as normal, even as their gym turned into a donation center, as classrooms became headquarters for city officials. The mayor worked out of the home economics room, while the students cooked meals around her and comforted the seniors from Wrinkle City who spent their first few days after the flood on cots in the gym.
As the town continued to go without water, Wells sent students door to door to collect laundry, then to a church in a nearby town to run loads through the industrial washer and dryer, which the kids returned to their owners in pressed and folded bundles.
The school gym turned into a donation center in the weeks after the flood. Courtesy Cathy Crain
Wells himself had grown up “among mostly poor folks” in Alabama and Mississippi; his mother worked as a maid. So when the flood came, he personally hunted down donated trailers for displaced families, then offered his own yard to those who did not have anywhere to park. But the numbers were stark: All told, 100 acres had been wiped off the town’s map — deemed uninhabitable. The river waters swept through more than 73 houses that would have to be condemned and destroyed 40 apartment units.
Students picked up on the fact that finding the money, let alone land, to build new houses was going to take a frustratingly long time. With all the building skills they’d learned, could they help build a house for someone who lost theirs, they wanted to know? Wells said they could, and he would help them make it happen. He found someone across from the school willing to donate land, as well as local contractors who agreed to take care of the foundation, the plumbing, electricity and drywall. He and the kids would do the rest. The house would essentially be a gift, its price and repayment terms set at a level that someone on a modest income could afford. He imagined the students ultimately developing a small subdivision, both learning laboratory and rural development project.
Superintendent Mike Wells challenges his students to learn by implementing real-world educational opportunities. Rachel Mummey for CNN
Wells’ construction project is still just a dream. So is his plan to bring a high school back to Hamburg, with a curriculum that would offer trade certification. Yet the idea of planning for growth in a town recovering from a flood wasn’t crazy, even though many of the smaller railroad towns along the freeway north of Hamburg had already given up, their exits blocked, homes abandoned, muddy toys left scattered in boggy yards.
Unlike so many other rural areas that have been shedding residents for years, Hamburg’s population before the flood had been holding surprisingly steady. The richness of the surrounding agricultural area ensured an unusual number of good-paying jobs, with a popcorn plant, a grain elevator operation, an Australian-owned oats-milling company and a big John Deere dealership — all within Hamburg’s city limits.
The town of Hamburg continues to rebuild after unprecedented flooding. Rachel Mummey for CNN
There’s also a good hospital in town — increasingly rare in rural communities across the country — that employs more than 100 people. And Wells’ experiment in a hands-on, skills-based education — the rural equivalent of private Waldorf schools that many elite urban parents endure waitlists and spend thousands of dollars for their children to attend — has drawn families to the town.
But the sheer scale of the flood — and the very real concern it could happen again — threatens all that. Iowa’s school funding is based on enrollment, and Wells’ efforts depend on keeping students — and will fail if families leave. The fall enrollment report showed 27 students had left — a 12% drop. “If we don’t bring in new students, or if we can’t get the housing to hold on to those who were already here,” Wells told me in October, “I’m really scared all this will be over. Without those things in place, I just don’t see how it’s sustainable.”
For days, no one left the town. There was one working road that could carry them away, if they’d chosen to take it, let it deliver them to any of the nearby towns where there was running water and electricity, showers and toilets and grocery stores and laundromats. But no one wanted to go. “No one wanted to leave each other,” the mayor told me. “The river was still so high. There was a feeling of what else could happen, and we wanted to be there to help one other.”
Julian Quinones/CNN
She wouldn’t set foot outside the city limits for nearly a month, by her own estimation. Before the flood, she had already decided: she would not seek reelection. She had served in the volunteer position for the past 12 years, and she was tired, ready for someone else to take over, even as the town kept returning her to the mayor’s seat. “The first time I was elected, I ran,” Crain told me. “The rest of the time I’ve been a write-in.”
A Hamburg native who left after her high school graduation, Crain returned home in 1999 at age 50 after a successful career at the Chicago marketing and communications firm Frankel & Co, where she’d been a senior vice president and oversaw some of the firm’s most important accounts, including McDonald’s.
Crain tends to downplay that part of her history whenever someone brings it up. “I sure don’t miss wearing panty hose,” she’ll say, and laugh, but if you catch her in a more reflective moment, she puts it this way: “What those years taught me was that it was useless to worry about doing things simply to earn people’s praise, as if one big accomplishment was enough. They’d say, great, you gave us the Happy Meal, OK fine, but what have you got for us today? It was all about the work, always the work, doing the best possible job, every time, trusting the purity of that process.”
Volunteer Mayor Cathy Crain works from City Hall on a snow day. Mayor Crain comes to work every day with her dogs Tess and Sophie. Rachel Mummey for CNN
But in the wake of the flood, watching the people of her town trickle into the school, Crain realized she couldn’t step down. There was Bill Lamb, the former chief of the fire department and town barber, who had cut the hair of generations of residents and lost not only his shop on Main Street, but also the home he shared for 37 years with his wife, Barb. There were Kate and Daniel Stockstell, whose wedding Crain had just attended a few weeks before, who had not even had time to unbox many of their gifts when they were forced to flee their ranch house on the other side of the town square. And there was Patsy Kamman who with her husband ran the local service station, now underwater, along with their home, and who, when asked how she would cope, said simply, “I can make do.”
Crain knew everyone’s stories, everyone’s needs, could document each of their losses. “Sometimes I think the difference between life in a city and life in a small town like this is the difference between wide and deep,” she told me. “In cities, it’s all about experiencing as much as you can, going wide. Here, it’s about knowing one small place as deeply as you can.”
And because her knowledge of the town’s suffering was so intimate, so personal, it also intensified her anger over what she says was a preventable disaster. “None of this,” Crain says, motioning to the devastation surrounding her. “None of it had to happen.”
Back in 2011, when the town had been threatened once before by potential flooding from the Missouri, Hamburg sought emergency permission from the Corps to quickly add eight feet to the existing levee that protected their town. Working for eight straight days, and assisted by local farmers under their hire, the Corps managed to throw up an effective barrier just in time. In the end, it held back the waters of the Missouri for 120 days and kept the town dry.
Hamburg’s farmers helped rebuild the dirt levees around the town. Rachel Mummey for CNN
Afterward, everyone wanted to see the additional height on the levee remain. But, says Matt Krajewski, the readiness branch chief for the Corps’ Omaha District, “it was always meant to be temporary.” The Corps didn’t want people depending on construction that was thrown up in less than ideal circumstances and did not meet their regulations. By law, after an emergency is over, all makeshift measures have to come down. To leave the temporary levee up would risk the town’s status under Federal Levee Protection. “And we wanted to stay in. When you are in big trouble they are the only ones to save you,” says Crain.
There is another way: If a local entity wants to raise a levee beyond its approved height, it can assume all the costs for the addition to be built, according to the Corps’ approved specifications. But that meant the town would have to take down all the dirt they had thrown on the levee, and then they would need to find their own funding source — to the tune of several million dollars — if they wanted to raise it beyond its existing height as insurance for the future.
What Crain — and many of the townspeople — heard: “This is what it looks like to be living inside a Catch-22.” Hadn’t the temporary levee held for 120 days? Wasn’t that a sign of the soundness of its construction? Wasn’t there some way to make an exception? Crain says she called politicians and that officials from the Omaha branch of the Corps even pleaded Hamburg’s case to Washington. But they couldn’t get an exception, and no one offered funding. The town tried to attract money to raise the height of the levee on its own, including releasing a YouTube video where townspeople sang and danced in the hope that it might bring attention to their fight. But all their fundraising efforts fell short, and they were left to live with the lowered levee and all the unease and frustration that brought.
In 2011, they’d had eight days to prepare. “We really thought if it happened again, we’d have time to get the Corps to raise the levee again,” says Crain. But when the Missouri came again in 2019, they had less than 48 hours. There wasn’t even time to request temporary emergency additions to the levee.
This is the mayor’s plan to save Hamburg
In the hours immediately following the 2019 flood, as soon as she was reassured that, beyond their very real psychological trauma, everyone was physically safe, Crain and the city clerk, Sheryl Owen, began to make a checklist of what would need to be done not only to help the town recover in the short term, but to secure its foreseeable future. Most important in Crain’s mind was that she could look everyone in town in the eye and swear to them that the levee would be raised so that they would not be afraid to keep their business in town, to keep their families here. If people did not feel immediately reassured, she knew people would leave in panic and the town would be finished.
“I make a distinction between a flood and a disaster. This was a disaster. People here know how to rebuild after floods. But another disaster like this last one would truly mean end of us,” Crain told me. “People could not go through this again.”
There was reason to be fearful: The Corps reported in January that the snowpack in Montana and the Dakotas was already greater than it had been a year earlier — and for the towns along the Missouri, which would absorb the potential runoff, this mattered more than the local weather patterns. People didn’t make conversation about Hamburg’s weather anymore. They talked to each other about the forecasts in Montana.
Cathy Crain has mapped out a recovery plan that is still being created and implemented. Rachel Mummey for CNN
And it’s possible that future years could be even worse. According to the National Climate Assessment, released in 2018, the Missouri River Basin — an area already prone to extremes in both droughts and floods — could see the frequency of two-day heavy rain events increase 50% by 2050. Some have suggested that, given the prospect of increasing volatility in the weather and the potential for subsequent disasters, maybe it’s time for those in flood prone-communities, like Hamburg, to move. “Move to higher ground” is even a policy plank for one candidate, Andrew Yang.
Evidence of that prescription is plain along the path of the flood. Pacific Junction, where Pence visited, is nearly a ghost town, the majority of its houses still empty. But Crain was determined not to see that happen to Hamburg. After the flood, she had stopped sleeping and could barely keep her eyes open for all the crying she had been doing in the mornings on her way to work where no one could see — just her two dogs riding shotgun in the gold SUV that had been dubbed “The Flood Car.”
“People who don’t know me might underestimate me because they think I’m just this little fat old lady from a town nobody’s heard of,” she says now. “But when I worked for Frankel, I always had a bag packed. If there was a client anywhere who was angry, they’d put me on a plane to deal with it. Basically, I was the prize-fighter that they could throw in the ring to absorb the punches. Then you’d give me a few squirts of water, and I’d go in and take some more. Eventually, they tired out, I left, and by the time we came back to them, they were happy with us again.”
Volunteer Mayor Cathy Crain points out the proposed new levee to be built around Hamburg. Rachel Mummey for CNN
She took her case to the governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, a Republican. Crain came back with $6.3 million in state funds that the town could use to raise the levee itself, and another $940,000 the town could use to help subsidize buyouts. “That surprised me,” Crain said. “That it would be the state of Iowa that would save us. We’re a relatively small and poor state. I always thought with disasters, it was the federal government that offered all the relief. Turns out we saved ourselves.”
Seven months after the flood there were handouts resting on a table in the community room of the Hamburg United Methodist Church. They were titled Community Reactions: Phases of Disaster. After one has felt the initial impact of the event, the handout says, there will be what is called the heroic phase — “there is altruism” — followed by a period of intense community bonding — “optimism exists… numerous opportunities are available… to establish and build rapport… and build relationships.”
It was one of the most profound takeaways that many of the flood’s survivors spoke of, weeks later. As terrifying and overwhelming as the initial days had been, there was also a sense of elation and wonder at how everyone simply did what was needed, helped each other without question and took all obstacles out of each other’s way.
It was as if the normal rules of the world — those that placed barriers between people, that caused rifts and frustrations — had been suspended, and people could act purely according to what was right. “The ultimate expression of how to be there for each other as people,” was how the pastor of the church described it.
Just shy of 30, still trying to finish seminary, with a pregnant wife and 2-year-old daughter, Luke Fillmore had only been serving as pastor for nine months when the flood came. And yet, because of recent deaths and reassignments at the other churches, he was also, by default, one of the most senior religious figures in town.
Recognizing that he was someone the town was looking to for guidance, Fillmore threw himself into providing stability and leadership. Early on, he and his congregation decided that they would make it their mission to help anyone in town who needed it, no questions asked. For months, they kept a running list of what people needed and each weekend, assisted by Fillmore’s contacts from other congregations, they have worked their way through every request: six men to drywall a house; three people to power wash an apartment’s basement bathrooms of the mud that daubs every surface; six people to help load debris for the dump. No one in need is turned away.
Pastor Luke Fillmore continues trying to provide support for community members in Hamburg and the surrounding areas. Rachel Mummey for CNN
In many ways, Fillmore said, he believes that the flood allowed the community to see how it might remake itself to be there for every one of its members. Several times, he paused to collect himself as we spoke, saying he had never seen anything like it — “the good and the grace” as he put it, that people had shown each other — and he did not think he had articulated to his congregation enough how tenderly and how fiercely they cared for each other. And how much that taught him. “It is my understanding,” he told me, “that this is all the grace of God.”
Last fall, on All Saints Day, he spoke to his congregation about how they were inside a moment where “time and space get a little wonky” as their thoughts turned to all those who had come before them. “As we think of all the sacrifices they have made for us, it’s not that hard to imagine sacrificing for others, is it,” he said. He did not reference the flood directly, but everyone knew he was speaking of it as he reminded them that to think of all those who come before us is also to think of the legacy we leave to all those who come after us.
“We have seen, to share that light, that grace with each other — there’s nothing on Earth we can’t do,” said Fillmore, who studied linguistics as an undergraduate and once imagined that he would become a translator, before he had his calling.
“You have been fathers and mothers to each other, all of you. Friends, you have done well. Maybe no one has said that to you over all these weeks. But I am saying it now: You have done well. And now I’ll have you turn to person next to you. Please look them in the eye and tell them they have done well. Tell them: Good job.”
As people mumbled the words to each other, there were tears.
And in that moment they felt again what it was like to see each other purely in relation to one another, and it was all still close and vivid enough that it might inspire not just a restoration of what was, but, as the pastor hoped, radical solutions “for what could be.”
But how long could it last? According to the handout on the table in the church: After community cohesion comes disillusionment.
As fall turned to winter, the water finally retreated enough to reveal the fields that had been hidden underneath, leaving thick deposits of sand that called to mind desolate moonscapes. Much of that land, held in families for generations, would likely be unfarmable now, the cost of trying to remove all that sand too prohibitive. On other acreages, willows and weeds grew thick in place of corn.
The river had carved deep channels in the earth and traced the fissures in the community. Marriages spoiling under all that water. Those who turned to drink. Another taken to his bed. Calls to the hotline specifically for farmers contemplating suicide.
To stay busy and make money, to stay sane and keep their employees on payroll, many of the farmers whose fields were flooded went to work for the Corps, using their equipment and even some of the sand and clay excavated from their now-fallow land to help rebuild the levee system around the Missouri.
It was a near constant procession of farm equipment, rolling well into the night as they hurried to finish the work before the worst of the ice and snow hit.
There were other things that rankled, emerging frustrations as it felt more and more like the experiment in communal democracy forged in the days of flood was bogged down by the old, familiar institutional structures that they had temporarily delighted in suspending.
The plan for the house built by the school students had hit a snag, and its foundation remained unpoured. Despite loving the idea, the city planning commission had been unable to approve the submitted building plans because the house would be too close to its neighbor. As the chief architect of the school’s philosophy to empower do-ers, it was hard for Wells to accept any delays.
They were doing this for all the right reasons. Didn’t the city desperately need more housing? This was a win-win. Couldn’t they issue a variance? The answer: No. And then Wells came up with one last idea: visit the owner of the neighboring lot to see if maybe after Wells explained the students’ vision, the homeowner might donate some of his land to create the needed buffer. There was no guarantee it would work, but he also couldn’t let it go until he was certain he’d exhausted every option.
Meanwhile, Crain and Owen had managed to secure state money that would allow the city to purchase abandoned homes in the flood plain, raze them, and resell the lots. Through the state, she also connected residents to a program that made new modular homes affordable to qualified buyers. The first house purchased under the program was bought by Kate and Daniel Stockstell, the newlyweds, and it arrived at the beginning of December.
It said something about how much the town was desperate to see something finally added rather than taken away, neighbors lined dozens deep along the block surrounding the lot to watch the crane release the two-bedroom, two-bathroom home onto its foundation — not before accidentally grazing it against one of the trees on the property.
Crain tapped state funds to help businesses in the parts of the Main Street that could be rebuilt and she learned that the city would be eligible for a portion of a $96 million pot of federal economic development funds that would be distributed between several flood ravaged counties in Iowa. She hoped some of that money could be used toward a subdivision. The city had also been in talks with a developer who was interested in building a hotel and a bar and grill on Main Street, next to City Hall.
But after the initial intensity that defined those early days of the flood, the tireless work toward helping each other that was visible, measurable — in sandbags filled, in animals rescued, in emergency housing secured, in the way the donations in the gymnasium piled up on tables and shelves, filling every corner — some people had not yet adjusted to this phase, where so much remained abstract, bureaucratic, largely invisible. Every day, Crain and Owen searched for new grants, working Crain’s Rolodex, which had gotten quite thick over her 12 years in office. All the while, for all these efforts, they still faced the biggest unresolved issue that could topple it all: The river itself.
The town had found the money that would let them raise the levee to the Corps specifications, as well as to buy land and dirt from a farmer. But the weather was still not cooperating, and water still sat on either side of the levee where the work needed to be done. Even more urgent was the fact that construction couldn’t move ahead under freezing conditions, raising the possibility that it wouldn’t get done before spring brings the chance of floods all over again.
That looms over everything. At the Blue Moon, a contractor named Brad Yost approached Crain and joked that people were still “sleeping in their waders at night until that levee goes up.” He and his wife Roxie had just put the finishing touches on their own dream home when the water came last year, and they’d decided to start over. Now they were close to replacing what had been destroyed.
“You’re not afraid, are you?” Roxie Yost asked Crain. It was 304 days out from the flood, with two months to go before the spring melt.
“I am,” Crain replied.
“Don’t say that,” Roxie responded. “Now you’re making me scared.”
Dirt pushed up to add to the rebuild of the Ditch 6 Levees outside of Hamburg. Rachel Mummey for CNN
Against this backdrop of uncertainty, the residents of Hamburg are trying to go on with the rhythms of normal life. One December weekend began with a funeral, the slow cortege winding its way to the town graveyard, at the top of a steep hillside, where there is no water, only sky. But the next day there would two weddings — both young local couples in their twenties who have chosen to make their lives in the town where they are from, where their families are from. One ceremony was at the United Trinity Church — and officiated by Crain’s brother — while the other was officiated at the Methodist church by Fillmore.
The two congregations were still worshipping together, as they had in the early days of the flood, as the members of the UTC slowly rebuilt their damaged church with their own hands. One Sunday in December, Fillmore addressed the combined congregations, and he chose to speak about debt.
He’d been reading about John Wesley. “And I kind of like this dude,” Fillmore said. Wesley made it his mission, Fillmore said, to pay the debts of those in his day trapped in debtors’ prison. Imagine what that would look like today, Fillmore challenged them. What if people trapped in medical debt suddenly got a call from their local church? Or someone with student loans? Maybe it’s not even financial debt specifically, Fillmore went on. “What if we started building houses? What if we started bringing back people who left because of the flood? What if we gave people places to live?”
‘What if we give people places to live?’ pastor asks town
In January, a group of community members, inspired by Fillmore’s words, gathered at the Methodist Church to make real plans. Could they buy distressed properties and rehabilitate them? Or should they take on new construction for low-income buyers? How could they serve the neediest residents, especially those who needed rental properties, someone asked. Framed in the window behind them was the still-empty senior housing complex. What if they bought the property as a nonprofit, and brought it back as affordable housing?
Everyone agreed and they began to divide up tasks to prepare a pitch. In the coming days, some people assembled in this room would likely attend the Republican caucuses and others would attend the Democratic caucuses, but in this moment they were in perfect agreement on the solution.
Just a short drive up the road from the church, two lambs capered in the school farmyard. The students had been there for their birth. There was to have been a third lamb, but it died, stillborn. “Even that was a powerful lesson,” Wells said, as we watched the students break ice from the water buckets and shake food at the babies and compete to see who could take them in their arms. Behind us, in the woodshop, a group of students raised hammers to nails, framing the walls of the house that they hoped one day they could still build.
Credits
Editing: Allison Hoffman and Kaeti Hinck
Supervising video producer: Jacque Smith
Photo editor: Brett Roegiers
Digital design and development: Curt Merrill, Allie Schmitz and Ivory Sherman
Joe Biden’s campaign distributed talking points to surrogates ahead of the Iowa caucuses this week that signal a campaign concerned about spinning a recent spat with Bernie Sanders as the former vice president defending himself and not attacking the Vermont senator.
The 20-page document, which was provided to CNN, was sent ahead of an influx of Biden surrogates headed to Iowa this weekend, days ahead of the state’s critical caucuses. The guide includes details on all of Biden’s policy positions but leads with key questions that surrogates could be confronted with, including former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, impeachment and the tense back-and-forth between Biden and Sanders over Social Security.
The Biden campaign declined to comment on the content of the talking points.
The guide argues that Biden “didn’t go negative on Bernie” and was just “responding to attacks on his record.”
“The truth is – Bernie and his allies have viciously distorted Joe’s record on Social Security in robocalls, digital ads, and email blasts,” the talking points argue. “Fact checkers called his attack false. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called it a flat-out lie.”
They add:
“Joe’s campaign is correcting the record to clarify his position on Social Security, not attacking Bernie. It’s is making clear what Joe has committed: as president, he’ll not only protect and defend Social Security, but boost benefits for the most vulnerable.”
Biden and Sanders, ahead of the caucuses, have been in a heated back-and-forth that began with their positions on Social Security but devolved into Biden questioning Sanders’ allegiance to the Democratic Party, an accusation he later walked back.
Biden’s campaign is also seeking to downplay the growing operation that Bloomberg has built in key Super Tuesday states that will vote on March 3.
“Mike Bloomberg has spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars on ads alone, and Joe Biden is still in the lead, nationally and in Super Tuesday states,” the document reads. “After the first four states vote, Joe will have demonstrated that he has the broadest, most diverse coalition, and that he’s the strongest candidate to beat Donald Trump.”
The talking points also directed surrogates on how to talk about Biden’s son, Hunter, and the possibility of him testifying before the Senate impeachment trial. That possibility is now moot given Republicans won a vote in the Senate on Friday to have no witnesses during the trial.
The year was 1963. Biden, then a student at the University of Delaware, had come to Washington to visit friends when he decided to stop by the US Capitol. As Biden tells it, he parked his car in front of the Capitol and walked up the steps. A rare Saturday session had ended, and the Senate chamber was empty with the lights still on.
“There were no signs then,” he recalled in his 2009 farewell address to the Senate, one prominent telling of this bit of Biden lore. “I just walked in.”
Not quite understanding the feeling that overtook him, Biden bounded up to the dais and sat down in the presiding officer’s chair.
“I was awestruck,” he said. “Literally awestruck.”
It wasn’t long before the young Biden was noticed.
“A Capitol policeman picks me up and spins me around, and he said, ‘What are you doing?’ ” Biden recounted as his colleagues laughed. “And after a few moments, he realized I was just a dumbstruck kid and didn’t arrest me or anything.”
Whether or not the story is true — only Biden knows that — it says something about the man, and in particular the central role the Senate has played throughout his life.
Just a decade after getting caught in that chair as a college student, Biden became one of the youngest people ever elected to the Senate. Over the next 45 years, a period stretching over more than half his life, the chamber of the US Senate served as the backdrop for all of Biden’s triumphs and tragedies.
Now, as Biden attempts a third act in his political life, and reaches for what would be a crowning political achievement, the Senate has once again become the setting for a family tragedy of sorts.
Ever since President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani began publicly spreading unfounded allegations of corruption against them last year, Biden and his son Hunter have been in the sights of the President’s political operation. While Trump’s focus on Biden may reflect some inner fear that Biden could be the biggest threat to his reelection, it has also forced the former vice president to address uncomfortable questions while on the trail, as well as drawn public attention to Hunter Biden’s embarrassing personal troubles.
As the trial moved to the Senate, Biden’s name has echoed throughout the chamber again, as he and his son have been dragged into the proceedings and tagged by Republicans with allegations of corruption. There was even a push from some in the GOP to call Hunter Biden as a witness.
Trump and his allies have repeatedly made unfounded and false claims to allege that the Bidens acted corruptly in Ukraine.
Now that the trial is winding down, there is a real question about whether Trump’s gambit to drag down a top opponent was worth it. For Trump, who will likely be acquitted, he can run against Democrats in the fall for leading a “witch hunt” against him. Biden, on other hand, has struggled to absorb the attacks and respond effectively.
For an institution that was the backdrop of so much of Biden’s ups and downs, there’s a certain irony that the Senate and its ongoing trial would be an obstacle to his bid for the White House.
“I think he’s not surprised,” said Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor and a longtime Biden friend, who said he had spoken to Biden a few days before the trial began. “I think he was a little discouraged.”
A young senator
Within months of his election at age 29, before he had even been sworn in, Biden was widowed when his wife and infant daughter died in a car crash. His two sons grew up among his Senate colleagues, often accompanying him to the Senate floor. Biden forged his political career in the halls of the Senate, carving out a role for himself as a deal-making moderate, a law-and-order liberal and powerful committee chair.
Biden launched two unsuccessful bids for the White House from the Senate, the first in 1987. Beset by accusations of plagiarism, he withdrew that September. A few months later, he nearly died from two brain aneurysms while he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Twenty years on, when Biden finally left for his second act as vice president under Barack Obama, he still presided over the Senate, remaining a fixture on Capitol Hill throughout his two terms.
“The United States Senate has been my life,” Biden said in his 2009 address. “Except for the title ‘father,’ there is no title, including ‘vice president,’ that I am more proud to wear than that of United States senator.”
Sen. Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat who served with Biden and considers him a close friend for more than 40 years, acknowledged the difficulties the trial is causing for Biden, personally and politically.
“In our business you have to have a pretty thick skin, but this is probably about as tough as it gets,” Carper told reporters in the Capitol this week.
His allies say they don’t doubt Biden is handling the centrality of his family in the impeachment proceedings well.
“I know him very well, so I know the character, I know the mettle that’s in the spine, and that makes a difference,” said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who added that she has not been in touch with Biden since the trial began.
Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, who now occupies Biden’s seat, downplayed the idea that the former vice president’s relationship with the Senate might be damaged by his treatment in the trial.
“He has decades of positive memories to draw upon, of moments of genuine progress, of great compromises, of meaningful bipartisanship,” Coons told CNN.
A different kind of Senate
Today’s Senate is different from the one Biden left in 2009. Just a third of the current membership served alongside him. Old institutionalists, such as the former Republican senator from Maine William Cohen, complain that the rough-and-tumble partisanship of the House of Representatives has now infected the upper chamber. (Nearly half of the current 100 senators are former House members.)
“There was a sense that, in the Senate, it was a club. You had to get along because you’ve got to live with these people,” said Cohen, who went on to serve as secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton. “That’s gone now. It’s like the House.”
But for Republicans, even those who served alongside Biden, there’s little recognition that some sort of collegiality should be extended to Biden in the midst of a heady, partisan impeachment saga.
Take Sen. Lindsey Graham, who in a 2015 interview with the Huffington Post became choked up when talking about his friendship with Biden and sharing the pain of the death of Biden’s elder son, Beau, earlier that year.
“If you can’t admire Joe Biden as a person, then it’s probably you’ve got a problem,” the South Carolina Republican said. “He is as good a man as God ever created.”
But this week, as the debate over witnesses was just heating up, Graham insisted Republicans would need to call Hunter Biden to testify.
“I want to know is there a reasonable belief by the President that the Bidens are involved in corrupt behavior,” Graham told reporters Monday.
Rendell, who is supporting his longtime friend in the Democratic primary, said Republicans like Graham know better about their former colleague’s character.
“I think it’s frustrating and a little bit heartbreaking to hear these Republicans say this stuff just to save their own skin,” the former governor said.
There’s also the added pain, Rendell said, of having Hunter Biden, who Joe Biden refers to as his “surviving son” and who faces a number of personal problems, at the center of the trial.
“To see what happened to your first son and see this happen to your second son, it’s just awful,” Rendell said.
Taking a punch
While Biden’s name is a fixture in the debates taking place on the Senate floor during the impeachment trial, he has remained hundreds of miles away. Recently, the 77-year-old has been campaigning in Iowa, trying to push his advantage before Monday’s caucuses since three of his top rivals have been stuck at their Senate desks in Washington.
At stop after stop on his final bus tour through Iowa, Biden has argued that attacks from Trump and his allies have made him stronger and have demonstrated that he can take incoming fire if he’s the Democratic nominee.
“As much as he’s trying to destroy me and my family — I hope I’ve demonstrated I can take a punch. And if I’m our nominee, he’s going to understand what punches mean,” Biden said in Cedar Falls on Monday.
He has told the reporters covering his campaign, “Keep asking me, ‘You know, they just brought up your son Hunter, and they’re doing this and they’re doing that and the other thing.’ “
“Well, guess what?” Biden said. “I don’t hold grudges because presidents can’t hold grudges. Presidents have to be fighters, but they also have to be healers. They have to be healers.”
CNN’s Arlette Saenz and Eric Bradner contributed to this story.
