Column
F*ck Iowa
Even Iowans are sick of their unearned, undeserved electoral importance
Fuck Iowa? Fuck Iowa.
It’s not necessarily Iowa’s fault that it needs to get fucked, but fuck it all the same. It’s 2020 and we’re about to rush headlong into actual voting processes. But before we finally reach that point, we have been forced to endure yet another year of presidential election coverage centered almost exclusively around that goddamn state and a caucus system within it that essentially amounts to a handful of bingo gatherings. I’m sick of Iowa. Iowans are sick of Iowa. Just ask the sane ones. Iowa has absolutely no business being the command center for election season on a permanent quadrennial basis.
And yet, here we are stuck with the same state, with the same demographics (over 90% white) and same trucker-hat voters who, by now, probably have Jake Tapper on speed dial anytime they need to pretend to be fickle about issues. In the grand scheme of things, Iowa doesn’t matter. It voted for Trump by a six-point margin in 2016 after going for Obama twice in a row prior to that, but it doesn’t have enough electoral votes to be granted formal admission into the Hall of Official Swing States.
To forever compensate for that slight, Iowa gets to be the darling of an elongated pregame…
