Massachusetts (2004) and Connecticut (2208) legalized same sex marriage before Iowa. But same sex marriage has been legal in Iowa since April, 2009, before blue states like Vermont, New York, Rhode Island, Washington, Maryland, California… And polling in favor of marriage equality in Iowa is very high. Iowa is also a leader in renewable energy and generates more electricity from wind power than any other state. As of 2020, wind energy accounted for 42% of Iowa's electricity generation. Iowa has been a leader in Telehealth and in expanding mental health services into rural areas. These are all progressive policies.
After Reagan, Iowa went pretty blue. It was a time when the white working class saw Democrats as a viable solution to their problems. In 1988 Dukakis beat George HW Bush by over 10 points, taking 78 of the state’s 99 counties. Iowa was one of only 10 states that voted for Dukakis. In 1992 and 1996 Clinton won Iowa, as did Al Gore in 2000, albeit narrowly. In 2008 and 2012 Obama won the state. After 2 cycles of Obama, voters there had had enough of the Democrats corporatism and the state gave Trump a 10 point win over Hillary in 2016 and a nearly as big a win over Biden in 2020. The state was looking very solidly red by then. Hillary won just 6 counties and Biden won the same 6.
Today Iowa has a Republican governor and 2 Republican U.S. senators. In 2022 Iowans elected Republicans to be Attorney General, Secretary of State, Secretary of Agriculture and Treasurer. Statewide only one Democrat, Rob Sand, hung on as Auditor and just barely.
All 4 congressional districts are also held by Republicans and the state legislature was already heavily Republican and went even more so. Democrats lost two seats in the state Senate giving the GOP a 34-16 seat majority. In the state House 4 Democratic seats flipped and the Republican majority is now 64-36. Iowa looks hopelessly red. Nationally, Democrats have stopped prioritizing white, working class voters and in Iowa those voters responded by voting in the Republicans in a big way, not unlike the way they have in Iowa and Florida.
Yesterday, I read a report from the Patriotic Millionaires about how inequality has become greater in America in recent years and that our country can no longer lay claim to being the top country in the world— not according to any metric important in peoples’ lives. Take life expectancy. The average American can now expect to live 76.4 years. Life expectancy in the US has dropped off in recent years; as life expectancy in other wealthy countries rebounded after the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it continued to decline in the US. All in all, the US now ranks 53rd among 200 countries in life expectancy. Citizens of all developed countries suffer from things like heart disease, cancer, and liver disease, but Americans suffer more and, as a result, live shorter lives. Countries where life expectancy is the highest ( > 82 years) include places like Japan, Australia, Switzerland, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, and Canada. What are these countries doing differently than the US, you may ask? Why are their citizens living longer?
It all comes down to one word: inequality. The US is not poorer than any of these countries— year after year, we have the highest GDP in the world. And on a per-capita basis, we’re consistently in the top 10, far from 53rd in the world. But the difference between the US and other developed countries is that we do a much poorer job sharing wealth (and all the benefits that come with it) among our citizens. Among developed countries, the US has one of the highest rates of inequality, both in terms of wealth and income— and we can, unfortunately, see that disparity in health and life expectancy as well.
Just because the average American life expectancy is 76.4 years doesn’t mean that all Americans can expect to live that long. It’s sad, but in America how long you live has a lot to do with how much money you have. People with high incomes can live 10 to 20 years longer than people with low incomes, even if they live just miles apart in the same metro area. For example, rich residents in Columbus, Ohio can expect to live close to 85 years while poor residents in the very same city typically live just 60 years.
This trend applies to a host of other social outcomes besides life expectancy. Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson made this case in their 2009 book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. They found that countries with low inequality consistently outperformed those with high inequality not only in life expectancy but in literacy rates, homicides, imprisonment, teenage births, levels of trust, obesity, mental illness, and social mobility. (With high inequality, the US was among the lowest performers in all of these metrics.) It was not GDP or overall levels of wealth that mattered for these social outcomes; it was instead how wealth was distributed that made the difference.
Inequality is not just an abstract concept or a set of numbers - it’s a real-world phenomenon that has tangible effects on the way that ordinary people live (or don’t live) their lives. And we are clearly not doing very well in the US on this front compared to the rest of the world. Americans shouldn’t go around boasting about living in the greatest country on Earth when our citizens are quite literally not living as long as their neighbors.
But all hope is not lost. Our situation in the US is not in any way an inevitability. Inequality is a choice. We certainly can’t bring about change overnight, but, if we keep at it, we can bring about change.
What can be done to turn the tide? It’s simple: follow the example of our neighbors with less inequality and orient our economic policy around reducing the gap between those at the top and everyone else. We can do that by raising taxes on rich people like us, just as President Biden proposed in his latest budget, to limit extreme wealth. We can also lift up the bottom by raising the minimum wage, strengthening unions, and investing in a strong social safety net that keeps all Americans afloat.
Republicans have been more successful in exploiting this kind of inequality even though it is conservative policies that have caused it and, as bad as the Democrats have become— particularly in places like Iowa where Democratic politicians aspire to be, at least fiscally, Republican-lite— the GOP is still a more Conservative party. On Monday the Washington Post ran a report on Iowa’s sharp right turn by Annie Gowen. “Iowa,” she wrote, “has veered so far to the right in recent years that its political landscape is virtually unrecognizable from the centrist place that chose Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and was one of the earliest states in the country to affirm same-sex marriage. A joke among statehouse reporters is that Iowa is becoming the ‘Florida of the North’— without the beaches.” The 3rd state to approve gay marriage has been busy passing anti-LGBTQ bill this month— 3 so far.
J. Ann Selzer, the president of Iowa’s best-known public opinion research company, said that while voter registration in the state has historically been split by thirds between Democrats, Republicans and “no party” voters, Republicans are more likely to vote than others. In the 2022 midterm elections, for example, she estimates that 42 percent of registered Republicans voted versus 34 percent of registered Democrats and 24 percent of “no party” voters.
Experts say Democrats have struggled not only to get out the vote but also to attract popular candidates and match Republican fundraising. The party also lacks a national standard-bearer like former senator Tom Harkin, who retired in 2015, analysts said, or a deep bench of inspiring younger politicians.
…While Obama’s message of “hope and change” once resonated with working-class Democrats— and the state’s independents— the Democrats’ current struggle to focus their message on the economy amid culture war noise has put off some centrist voters… Iowa already has the 10th-worst “brain drain” in the country, according to an analysis of federal data by economists at the University of North Carolina, the W.E. Upjohn Institute, the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago, which shows the percentage difference between the number of college graduates Iowa produces versus the number of college graduates living in the state at minus-34 points.
Last year the last Democrat in Congress, conservative New Dem Cindy Axne lost to a real Republican Zach Nunn, 156,262 (50.35%) to 154,117 (49.65%). She won in Polk County (Des Moines) but lost the district’s other 15 counties. The 2018 midterm, when she ousted Republican incumbent David Young, saw her turn out almost 20,000 more voters who didn’t bother to vote in 2022. That sums up what went wrong with the Iowa Democratic Party. In 2018 another very conservative Republican-lite Democrat, Abby Finkenauer ousted GOP incumbent Rod Blum 170,342 (51.0%) to 153,442 (45.9%). She was one of Congress’ worst freshmen and lost in 2020 to Republican Ashley Hinson 51.3% to 48.7%. This past year, the district went red by an even stronger margin, despite a well-financed Democratic campaign. Just 142,173 Democrats turned out for Christina Bohannan— another uninspiring centrist Democrat— nearly 30,000 fewer voters than in the 2018 midterm. Iowa Democrats whine they don't have a giant like Tom Harkin for the party to rally around any longer. Maybe they ought to think about what Harkin stood for-- and stop turning to Republican-lite wimps.