Thread by @RachelBitecofer

1. Ok, I'm liking @RepSeanMaloney

"I sure as hell didn't win 5 Xs as a gay guy in a Trump district"

Much more imp he just correctly pointed out that even liberal MSNBC gives the GOP a major assist by constantly talking about Defund the Police, socialism, & intraparty fighting

2. and @JoeNBC is right, in my "modernized moderates" plan, you have to have these candidates go on offense. Its CRAZY that @SpanbergerVA07 is defending her record as a moderate when she's running against an ideologue in Nick Freitas.

If you ask the wrong questions & ask them

3. the wrong way, the evidence & data will screw you. Such as it did in 2020 because there is no reality in which Dem congressional/senate candidates were well-served by pulling out all their registration and in-person voter contact while the GOP was doing it. It was a bold

4. decision that someone, looking at the weak or inconsistent findings of research on effects of GOTV and esp the diff between in-person and "remote" forms and decided "you know, there is likely no diff from in-person and remote & in fact, remote you can contact WAY more people."

5. And the fact is, maybe this is right. Maybe the Ds total bomb on the congressional map has nothing to do with the decision to suspend the field programs of the House & Senate campaigns. Maybe. I'll be interested in the analysis when the voter file is updated I'll be looking at

6. turnout differentials between Rs & Ds and between campaigns that ran in-person field and didn't (and campaigns that put that field up last minute after myself & other upon finding out about it, totally freaked out). Again, the Biden campaign is in this bucket- only reinstating

7. in-person field once stories of troubles in FL began to leak out. BUT again, something I've highlighted elsewhere, they had grassroots groups doing in-person field on their behalf, something that wasn't happening, generally, for these congressional candidates bc the grassroots

8. tend to focus on the prez in this cycle (although some do the full ticket). Again, could be that the lack of in-person GOTV appears to have no effect in my controlled analysis. But, something weird happened. Its possible that every single forecasting model & qualitative race

9. handicapper was wrong for 2020 & that our estimation that Ds, under these fundamentals and the assumption that Ds would unseat a one term incumbent pres (which is HARD) would also likely improve on their margins in the House was simply wrong. That for some reason, the things

10. that my far better established (& frankly, better at the race handicapping thing) at @Center4Politics @kkondik suddenly misread House races even though the dude gets it right every other time. IDK. Seems weird though. It seems weird that the House elections did an unexpected

11. thing, that this MAJOR electioneering change was made to the side which experienced this major unexpected loss. Keeping in mind, in the normal course of things, suspending in-person field would NEVER happen bc it would be deemed politically suicidal not to run any in-person

12. field, even IF the experimental results on it are often inconclusive. So, point is, the Ds have these data shops & lord knows I like data but you want to be careful about data bc as Cohn's analysis that argues that Black voters "let Ds down" (his argument, not mine) data is

13. always vulnerable to the person loading it for the analysis and the frame set for analyzing it.

Maloney imploring to MOJO to think about the effects coverage on MSNBC has on assisting the GOP's efforts on setting the narrative & terms of the debate was GREAT & if I ever got

14. to have dinner or coffee w those guys, it was on the list of things I wanted to talk about bc the GOP feeds that shit over to MSNBC intentionally- they understand exactly how our media works (as does Trump) and use it strategically against us.