Iowa was, for a long time, a political swing state. Speaking as one who grew up there and lived there until my 26th year, and most of whose family still lives in Iowa, I can say with some confidence that Iowa is a place of great momentum. In small towns and rural areas like the one I grew up in, not much changes from generation to generation. Not industries, not farming practices, not families. But Iowa is an important state politically, mostly due to its status as the opening bell for presidential primaries. Note Tucker Carlson’s recent series of interviews with various GOP POTUS candidates – in Iowa.

This makes Iowa’s political shift to a solid-red state pretty interesting.

“There has been remarkable change in the political makeup of the state,” veteran Iowa-based Democratic consultant Jeff Link told Fox News.

Link spotlighted that “what has changed the most is there was significant shift in the counties along the Mississippi River that were traditionally Democratic strongholds. They were counties that had lots of organized labor and those are the places that have had the biggest change.”

This shift certainly happened, and part of it may be due to an overall drop in private-sector union membership. But Mr. Link misses the larger point; one that GOP consultant David Kochel didn’t miss:

David Kochel, a longtime Republican consultant and veteran of numerous GOP presidential campaigns in Iowa and nationally, also pointed to “the migration of White working-class voters from the old Democratic Party coalition, which included a lot of labor and blue-collar workers.”

“As the Democratic Party became more progressive, those White working-class voters migrated into the Republican Party,” added Kochel, a former Iowa GOP executive director.

Kochel spotlighted Howard County in northeastern Iowa, which he noted “had the largest swing from Obama and Trump of any county in the country.”

It’s not that Iowans have moved right. It’s that Democrats have moved left.

That leftward lurch has hurt Democrats more in Iowa than in plenty of other places. Colorado, for example, consists of a large cohort of small-town and rural communities that generally vote Republican, but they are overwhelmed by the Denver-Boulder Axis, which holds most of the population of the state.

Even California, minus the Bay Area and Los Angeles, would count as a pretty red state. Ditto for Washington, minus Seattle/King County. This is true for most states with large cities. It’s a pattern you see too often for it to be a coincidence.

Iowa, on the other hand, has only Des Moines and Cedar Rapids. A look at the 2022 Iowa Governor results is revealing:

Note the blue areas. Des Moines (Polk County) and Cedar Rapids (Lynn County) are what pass for urban areas in Iowa; the two darker-blue areas contain Ames (north of Des Moines) and Iowa City (south of Cedar Rapids). Those have two of Iowa’s three major state universities, the students and staff of which tend to vote heavily Democratic.

The rest of the state is awash in a sea of red.

Iowa has always been friendly to GOP candidates who took the right policy positions – mostly, those who are perceived as friendly to agriculture. Back in the Seventies, Iowa held the motto “A Place to Grow,”  to which wags generally added “…a place to grow corn, soybeans, hogs, chickens…” But Iowa is and will remain a heavily agricultural state. Chuck Grassley has always campaigned as a friend to farmers, and he has been Iowa’s senior Senator since dirt. Joni Ernst won election initially, in large part, due to her farm background.

In fact, in 2014, when Grassley was up for re-election, his Democrat opponent, Bruce Braley, made one of the biggest blunders in the history of Iowa politics by saying:

“You might have a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law, serving as the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Braley said in a video released by the conservative America Rising PAC. “Because, if Democrats lose the majority, Chuck Grassley will be the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

Braley was apparently unaware that he was speaking to a bunch of farmers from Iowa who never went to law school.

That’s Iowa in a nutshell. Iowa hasn’t gone red because her citizenry shifted. Iowa has gone red because national Democrats adhere to ideas like transgender treatments for kids, and kowtow to the likes of environmental activists like the Doom Pixie, and to every leftist fringe cause to come along. And until the Democrats slide back to being a center-left party rather than a progressive one, Iowa will probably stay red.