While you might think that Iowa is an agricultural state through and through, it is actually the case that manufacturing is the number-one source of jobs in the state. According to the Iowa Area Development Group, “With over 17% of Iowa’s GDP attributed to manufacturing, Iowa ranks seventh in the U.S. for the percentage of GDP derived from manufacturing.” What’s more, “More than half (52.9%) of Iowa’s manufacturing jobs are in its non-metropolitan counties.” And one more: “Iowa’s well-educated and dedicated workforce is a recognized asset to advanced manufacturing firms. The state’s network of University-driven manufacturing-oriented research and community college training programs help drive productivity.”
Although COVID has an effect on the state—recent stats show it is mid-pack nationally in terms of deaths per 100,000 citizens (0.41), which is better than Washington (0.44) but not as good as Michigan and New Mexico (0.36).
Although the job situation there is pretty good, as the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics has the unemployment rate at 4.1%. Most of the jobs lost are in the leisure and hospitality category.
According to “Iowa’s Workforce and the Economy 2021,” a publication from the Iowa Workforce Development agency, “Workers with less education continued to experience a higher unemployment rate than better educated members of the labor force: those with less than a high school diploma (6.7 percent), high school graduates with no college (6.5 percent), some college or associate’s degree (4.9 percent) and Bachelor’s degree and higher (2.8 percent).”
On Saturday, October 9, Donald J. Trump, the only president in the history of the United States to have been impeached twice, the man who lost the popular vote (e.g., the vote of “the people”) to Hillary Clinton in 2016 (65,853,514 for Clinton, 62,984,828 for Trump, or a 2,868,686 deficit for Trump) and the popular vote to Joe Biden in 2020 (81,282,916 for Biden, 74,223,369 for Trump, or a 7,059,547 deficit for Trump), took a stage on the grounds of the Iowa State Fair and proclaimed, according to Politico, “I’m telling you the single biggest issue, as bad as the border is and it’s horrible, horrible what they’re doing they’re destroying our country, but as bad as that is the single biggest issue the issue that gets the most pull, the most respect, the biggest cheers is talking about the election fraud of the 2020 presidential election.”
Why think about the hard stuff like immigration reform and whatever it is that he imagines that “they” are doing to destroy “our country” when it can be about him?
The election fraud of the 2020 presidential election is that Trump keeps claiming that somehow he was meant to win but he lost and the only way that could have happened is if something nefarious happened, or that should be “somethings nefarious happened,” as there would have to be a whole lot of shenanigans going on in order to account for the delta in the number of votes. (Yes, there is a concentration on the number of Electoral College (306 Biden, 232 Trump), but he lost that, too.)
One of the things that seems odd about all of the bluster that is emitted by Trump is this whole certainty that the victory was his.
Might one not think, “Maybe someone assured him that he would win, some who has not inconsiderable power and know-how in the ways of things not on the up-and-up”? One could make the argument that given what we don’t know about his conversations with some world leaders when he was in office and given his evident vanity, an assurance that didn’t come to be is something that would lead to this continued claim of what simply isn’t the case. “How could it be otherwise?” he may imagine.
Trump won in Iowa in 2020, with 53.1% of the votes to Biden’s 44.9% (897,672 for Trump and 759,061 for Biden). The numbers for Republican Senate incumbent Joni Ernst and her opponent Theresa Greenfield are quite similar: 51.8%, or 864,997 votes for Ernst and 45.2%, or 754,859 votes, for Greenfield.
If there was a steal, was there a steal in Iowa?
Of course the people who were there in Iowa hooting and hollering in support of the sore loser. Of course he basked in it. Of course venal players like Chuck Grassley who was obsequious to Trump.
But here’s the thing: with the changes that are occurring in Iowa, as higher education and manufacturing are becoming essential to one’s livelihood in the state, isn’t it likely that flim-flam artists who are trying to sell a line of bull are going to become less tolerated in the state?
You don’t run 3D printers and advanced CNC metalcutting equipment without a grounding in education, not fantasy.
At some point reasonable people are going to understand that numbers are numbers, reality is reality, false claims are just that: Not true.
Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings.
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