If you've paid attention to the political landscape over the past couple of years — and as a PJ Media reader, I'm sure you have — you can't help but notice that the Biden campaign has tried to short-circuit the primary process to his advantage in the run-up to the 2024 election cycle.
We already know that Biden has thrown New Hampshire under the campaign bus, trying to undermine its first-in-the-nation primary in favor of South Carolina. That move was ostensibly to give black (Democrat) voters more of a say in early primaries, but the move was a quid pro quo to Rep. James Clyburn (R-S.C.), whose endorsement in the Palmetto State saved the flagging Biden campaign in 2020.
And now the Democrats have abandoned Iowa. A New York Times piece from last week sets the stage.
"What Iowans will not be seeing are Democrats," writes Jonathan Weisman. "President Biden spoke Friday in Pennsylvania, and he and Vice President Kamala Harris both were in South Carolina over the weekend and on Monday. But Iowa, a state that once sizzled with bipartisan politics, launched Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008 and seesawed between Republican and Democratic governors, has largely been ceded to the G.O.P. as part of a remarkable sorting of voters in the Upper Midwest."
Weisman explains how the region has become a political mixed bag lately, with states like the Dakotas planting themselves firmly with the GOP and states like Minnesota and Illinois lurching left. But why is Iowa the outlier? Is it the early date of its caucus, or are there more factors at play?
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"No state in the nation swung as heavily Republican between 2012 and 2020 as Iowa, which went from a six-percentage-point victory for Barack Obama to an eight-point win for Mr. Trump in the last presidential election," Weisman points out, and the reasons reveal as much about the mainstream media's view of the state at they do the Democrats' calculus.
"Deindustrialization of rural reaches and the Mississippi River regions had its impact, as did the hollowing out of institutions, from civic organizations to small-town newspapers, that had given the Upper Midwest a character separate from national politics," he writes. Notice the emphasis on "small-town newspapers." This is why the left is trying to buy up smaller news outlets all over the country — for the influence.
"Another issue: Brain drain," Weisman adds. "The movement of young college graduates out of Iowa and the Dakotas to the metropolises of Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul made a mark on the politics of all five states." Is this a veiled admission that the left thinks that conservatives are dumb?
On his podcast on Tuesday, Dr. Albert Mohler clarified that "the reality is Iowa has turned so deep red that it really matters far more to the Republicans than to the Democrats in the first place. Footnote here, that's why the Democrats and especially the Biden administration and the Democratic National Committee have been working hard to sideline Iowa when it comes to the Democratic nomination process for the future."
"Iowa is just too conservative and the Democratic party is so liberal and its future is clearly understood to be on the left," Mohler continued. And the main factor that leads the Democrats to turn their noses up at Iowa is its rural identity.
Mohler explained:
In the worldview dimension, it would make sense that farmers are conservative. It really would. It makes sense that farmers are conservative because they have to deal with facts, they have to deal with soil, they have to deal with reality. They understand the relationship that is necessary in the stewardship of the land and with the planting of a crop and the investment of that labor.
And they understand the reality of just being close to the ground. The closer you get to an agrarian or an agricultural context worldwide, at least there is a likelihood you're moving into more conservative territory.
Farming communities are also where most American populist movements have originated; that's been the case since the end of the 19th century. While some of these movements have trended to the left, Trump's conservative populism easily appeals to the salt-of-the-earth Iowans.
Rather than counter the appealing GOP message with something that resonates with Iowans, the Democrats are abandoning the state. It's another signal that today's Democrat party is the domain of urban-dwelling elitists.
That elitism explains so much about the direction Democrat policies have taken: a radical environmental agenda (including the headlong plunge toward electric vehicles), the abandonment of any attempts to identify with the pro-life movement, and attempts to "save Democracy" that only benefit one side. It's also why the party is abandoning rural states like Iowa.
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