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”.  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 centrist with a record of success in a red state

The (much and properly maligned) DLC: There’s also a Democratic governor in the red state of Iowa, whose name escapes me at the moment. (A joke, because the article is written by Tom Vilsack hisownself, which means that Vilsack conciously positions himself as a “red state governor”.  He either should know better, or is a highly cynical operator.)

And there are several other examples you can find for yourownself.

Iowa voted for the Democratic presidential candidate since 1988 to 2000, narrowly voting for Gore in 2000 and narrowly voting for Bush in 2004.  One of the more liberal Democrats, Tom Harkin, heralds from the state.

In 2002, there was a news story posted at something like abcnews.com.  It contained a sentence that stated that Iowa was won by George W Bush.  This was false.  It was changed, sans correction notice, to a reflect that Al Gore narrowly won the state.

In our popular imagination, there are three regions of the nation that are blue.  The northeast.  The Pacific Coast.  And, less stated than the regions marked as being up against the oceans, this group of states which collectively at least are up in the middle of the nation against the Canadian border.  Iowa has been part of that congregation, and has been not part of that congregation.  Iowa 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 fell off in 2004.

As an aside, in 2000 we also had the island of New Mexico floating there as “Blue State”.

So, in the popular imagination, Iowa is “red”.  I am not entirely sure how the politics of Iowa plays out.  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.  Beyond this I figure there are several hitches, and Labor plays a bigger role than in most states – Iowa is part of the “Rust Belt”, I think.

Iowa has a conservative Republican Senator, a liberal Democratic Senator, a “Centrist” Democratic Governor, and a five cycle record of voting for the Democratic presidential candidate.

So why is Iowa red?  Iowa is red because it grows a lot of corn.  Not so much as neigboring Nebraska, mind you, but it grows corn nonetheless.  They also, I presume, eat a lot of beef.  Ergo, Iowans are the alt of the Earth.  Red is heartland (get it? Heart?  Red?) , and Blue is the Ocean (get it?  Blue?  Bunch of elitists sipping late on the beach).  Iowa cannot possibly be blue.

Is the color coding ditchable?  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”.  Maybe we can change the color scheme next time out.  I want green and yellow.  I have a theory that seeing different colors on the electoral map will reshape our conciousness in subtle yet profound ways.  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.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 1st, 2006 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.