Thread by @RachelBitecofer

1. One that values the elation that floods in from ACTUALLY saving lives/improving lives on Election Night much more MUCH MORE than the moral smugness of moral/ethical absolutism that leads to the crushing realization of 4 more yrs of Trump? Esp bc for other people, "perfect"

https://twitter.com/I_Harlequin/status/1360638576195629059

2. candidates, platforms, "I won't run negative ads, I won't lie about my opponent, I don't want to exploit my opponents issues when he was in his 20s, etc" & although I ♥️ @MichelleObama this, what I call the 'We Go High" strategy just go you, under the best race fundamentals

3. any party could ever get (horrific as they are): a crazy, frankly out of control incumbent prez w lower than Carter approvals who is, and I'm not kidding sadly, murdering via indifference & incompetence 2000, 3000 people a day & whose party in Congress, the Radical Republicans

4. Are so greedy, so wholly owned by their corporate sponsors, are literally holding the aide to the American people hostage. Holding the HEROES ACT hostage. BC its not passing, the Republicans are literally defunding the police. Dems have conditions to push the BEST

5. offensive attack again the GOP since 2006 (net 31 seats!, +6 in the senate) and it was bc for the 1s time in their entire lives someone convinced them to run a referendum campaign. They did NOT do this 2018, when the conditions BEGGED for it, and cut their gains in both

7. chambers down. And IF they had just done it in 2020 they'd have gained 15 seats, NOT lost 20. SO, as much as it hurts your priors losing LP will suck bc no they didn't single handedly win 2020 (spoiler alert- politics is almost never like that, though an event can come close

8. Their real value, and it was significant, was to teach Ds how to shape their messaging, which is SO DEF from R messaging, and not just the topics, there is a lot of tech stuff I won't get into here, but that helped the prez race BIG TIME bc Rs taught Ds how to create

9. referendum ads, for Democrats (bc this ARE diff).And it worked. BUT ads are not persuasive or affective in the ways people think. Any study you see about how LP ads didn't really impact turnout, or persuasion, could be replicated for any group RNC, DNC, literally anyone. The

10. political science on this stuff is really really strong. The effects of ads are hard to measure and to tell if they matter at all the best way would be competitive elections where one side agree not to use them. Very hard to get candidates to do that, for obv reasons.