There’s also a Democratic governor in the red state of Iowa, whose name escapes me at the moment.<\/a> (A joke, because the article is written by Tom Vilsack hisownself, which means that Vilsack conciously\u00c2\u00a0positions himself as a “red state governor”.\u00c2\u00a0 He either should know better, or is a highly cynical operator.)<\/p>\nAnd there are several other examples you can find for yourownself.<\/p>\n
Iowa voted for the Democratic presidential candidate since 1988 to 2000, narrowly voting for Gore in 2000 and narrowly voting for Bush in 2004.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the more liberal Democrats, Tom Harkin, heralds from the state.<\/p>\n
In 2002, there was a news story posted at something like abcnews.com.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It contained\u00c2\u00a0a sentence that stated that Iowa was won by George W Bush.\u00c2\u00a0 This was false.\u00c2\u00a0 It was changed, sans correction notice, to a reflect that Al Gore narrowly won the state.<\/p>\n
In our popular imagination, there are three regions of the nation that are blue.\u00c2\u00a0 The northeast.\u00c2\u00a0 The Pacific Coast.\u00c2\u00a0 And, less stated than\u00c2\u00a0the regions marked as being up against the oceans,\u00c2\u00a0this group of states\u00c2\u00a0which collectively at least are up in the\u00c2\u00a0middle of the nation\u00c2\u00a0against the Canadian border.\u00c2\u00a0 Iowa has been part of that congregation, and has been not part of that congregation.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Iowa is part of the “Snow Belt”, something that at its low ebb in terms of Democratic voting faded to Minnesota in 1984, Iowa tied in thereafter but it\u00c2\u00a0fell off in 2004.<\/p>\n
As an aside, in\u00c2\u00a02000 we also had the island of New Mexico floating there as “Blue State”.<\/p>\n
So, in the popular imagination, Iowa is “red”.\u00c2\u00a0 I am not entirely sure how the politics of Iowa plays out.\u00c2\u00a0 I assume that broadly speaking it works as it does everywhere, which is that the cities and college towns vote heavily for the Democratic candidates and the country-side votes for the Republican candidates.\u00c2\u00a0 Beyond this I figure there are several hitches, and Labor plays a bigger role than in most states –\u00c2\u00a0Iowa is part of the “Rust Belt”, I think.<\/p>\n
Iowa\u00c2\u00a0has a conservative Republican Senator, a liberal Democratic Senator, a “Centrist” Democratic Governor, and a five cycle record of voting for the Democratic presidential candidate.<\/p>\n
So why is Iowa red?\u00c2\u00a0 Iowa is red because it grows a lot of corn.\u00c2\u00a0 Not so much as neigboring Nebraska, mind you, but it grows corn nonetheless.\u00c2\u00a0 They also, I presume, eat a lot of beef.\u00c2\u00a0 Ergo, Iowans are the alt of the Earth.\u00c2\u00a0 Red is heartland (get it? Heart?\u00c2\u00a0 Red?) , and Blue is the Ocean (get it?\u00c2\u00a0 Blue?\u00c2\u00a0 Bunch of elitists sipping late on the beach).\u00c2\u00a0 Iowa cannot possibly be blue.<\/p>\n
Is the color coding ditchable?\u00c2\u00a0 I think it was the invention of David Brooks, but it falls ashunder because Iowa keeps being referred to as “red” when the election that forced the terms into existence had Iowa as “blue”.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe we can change the color scheme next time out.\u00c2\u00a0 I want green and yellow.\u00c2\u00a0 I have a theory that seeing different colors on the electoral map will reshape our conciousness in subtle yet profound ways.\u00c2\u00a0 An experiment: next time you want to use the terms “red state” and “blue state”, use instead “yellow state” and “green state” and see how it works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday, in a news story about Iowa governor Tom Vilsak’s announcement that he is running for president, I heard Iowa referred to as a “red state”.\u00c2\u00a0 Indeed, a google search reveals that Iowa is designated “red state”, and Tom Vilsack’s popularity in “red state” Iowa works to his advantage. Time Magazine: Vilsack will run as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}