Could Someone Unseat Sen. Chuck Grassley After 36 Goddamn Years and a Million Batshit Tweets?

Grassley hasn’t missed a Senate vote since 1993, and he’s known for responding to every letter, email, and phone call he receives. He’s helped to pass several Farm Bills and been a fierce advocate for adjusting the federal farm payment program to support small farms, making him popular with conservative Iowa farmers. He has a history of challenging executive agencies and advocating for transparency in government. In 1992, he wrote the production tax credit that jump-started wind energy in Iowa. Today, the Hawkeye State is the third-largest producer of wind energy in the country.

But perhaps even more importantly, Grassley has a reputation for being authentic. “He’s got a folksy charm to him,” Peterson said, “He’s a relatively easy guy to like.” Before this year, Grassley was known outside the state of Iowa mainly for his endearingly incoherent—and sometimes accidental—tweets, sent from an account he runs himself.

The first part of that passage makes sense: Grassley generally does his job! He’s accessible to his constituents. But that Twitter account as part of his “folksy charm”? Please look at how this man tweets:

Those are normal, workday tweets, the ones that rely on a mixture of abbreviations so ridiculous and acronyms so arcane that nobody could possibly understand them.

Then there are the tweets that Grassley busts out when something exciting happens:

And then there are the ones when he gets spicy about the press, as he did just days ago:

That one triggered lots of jokes from reporters, who are definitely super elite. Me especially.

Patty Judge, meanwhile, supports raising the minimum wage, helping lower college costs, pushing through gun control measures, and, best of all, has committed to serving no more than two terms if she’s elected. Judge told The Globe Gazette (politely) that Grassley has spent a lot of time in office, but that maybe not all of it has been as productive as it could’ve been:

She said Grassley attends many functions and is noted for traveling to all 99 Iowa counties every year.“This is not about how many ribbons you’ve cut. This isn’t pie in the sky. This is about bread-and-butter issues and I would welcome the chance to debate him on the issues,” Judge said.

Asked if Grassley’s age was a factor, she said, “No, not at all. But serving 36 years in the Senate is an issue. That’s too long. I favor term limits and I will commit today to serving no more than two terms if I’m elected.”

The takeaway here is that probably no one should serve for 42 years. No one should, like Strom Thurmond, serve for so long that by the end they’re widely believed to be senile and essentially being carried into votes by their staff. But especially, nobody should tweet like this: