I moved to the purple state of Iowa in 2007. It had a Democratic governor and an ideologically diverse state legislature and political discourse. And it soon became the launching pad for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, our first black president.
Iowa was never perfect. My politics always sat well to the left of anyone who held office in 2007. But having moved here from Indiana, I found it a breath of fresh air. Compared to Indiana’s four decade long decline into hard conservatism, Iowa practically felt like California.
It doesn’t feel like California now. Looking back two decades later, I have to ask: what happened?
