As recently as 2012, Iowa was basically a Democratic state that occasionally voted Republican. The political legacy of former Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin was still a very big deal. Three of Iowa’s five congressmen were Democrats. Iowa had a very socially conservative Republican tradition, but it also had a strong left-wing populist Democratic tradition.
By the time the dust settled in November 2012, Iowa had voted for Barack Obama twice. It had a majority-Democratic state Senate. Although it has had a Republican governor for the last 12 years, that could have been a fluke — the result of a very unpopular Democratic incumbent losing in 2010 to a well-known and popular Republican former governor. And at least at the beginning, the 2014 Senate race between Republican Joni Ernst and Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley was considered a barn-burner. Indeed, Ernst’s runaway win was a huge surprise, considered by most to be an upset.
Since 2016, that has all changed. And I’ll admit, I certainly didn’t see it coming. I was shocked when Hillary Clinton abruptly canceled campaign events and withdrew resources from Iowa late in the game in fall 2016. I was even more shocked by the magnitude of her loss there — nearly 10 points.
In the time since, Democrats have been shut out of most meaningful statewide elections in Iowa. With the exception of two statewide offices that have been held by the same two Democrats since I was a child, they have only one recent win (for state auditor). This year, Republicans may run the table on statewide offices. They are, at any rate, likely to win all four of the state’s congressional seats while easily retaining full control of the governorship and the state legislature.
This, I think, goes further than anything else to explain why the Democratic National Committee is about to throw away Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential nominating contest the first chance they get. Iowans just aren’t good enough for them — but they’ll wait until after the next election to let them know.
The official argument for this change, of course, is that Iowa is 90% white, so it no longer looks like the Democratic Party. Sorry, you’re just too white to get the first shot at choosing our party nominee.
But then, it was Iowa caucusgoers who chose Barack Obama, the first black president, over two formidable white opponents. And it did so at a time when Obama was still the underdog.
Obama had not led in a single poll of Democratic voters nationwide when Iowans caucused for him. Consider the role Iowa played in influencing other states: Of the 14 polls taken of South Carolina between Oct. 1 and the Jan. 3, 2008. Iowa caucuses, Obama led Clinton in just two of them and tied her in one other. But after Obama won Iowa, she sank like a stone. In other words, if “diverse” South Carolina had gone first, Barack Obama might never have been president.
Unless you subscribe to the completely baseless tenet of critical race theory that white people are inherently and incurably racist, Iowa’s whiteness should be no obstacle to its going first just for the sake of tradition — and perhaps just for the sake of not kicking in the teeth a swing state’s electorate and an entire race of people who cannot do anything about their skin color.
But now that Iowa is less swingy, Democrats seem less worried about this. The Democratic Party has chosen to write off Iowa — to discriminate against its Democratic voters on the basis of their race.
The real problem here is that Iowans shifted away from the Democratic Party — or rather, the party has shifted away from them. They’re angry. But they’re also afraid, which is why they are postponing their official decision until after the November election, of course.
