Thread by @Pinboard

Glad to see this (and previous tweet) in data form. This is why there won't be a Great Slate in 2022. Elections down to the county level are now so strongly welded to national politics that the name to the left of the (R) or (D) on the ballot simply doesn't matter.

https://twitter.com/MattGrossmann/status/1402082904809869316

One way around this problem (the Justice Democrats approach) is to pick districts that you know will be solid D and try to move them in a preferred ideological direction in the primaries. But this strategy only reinforces the polarization.

I'm very proud of our support for one of the few exceptions to this rule, Jared Golden in Maine's second district. But if there's a way to transfer that to other parts of the country and break through the strict party identity, I have not found it, and money just can't change it.

I believe U.S. politics is stuck right now for reasons related to the telescoping of distance by social media, and a deepening split of public life into two disjoint public spheres. I have no idea how to fix this; all I can say is fundraising is probably just making things worse.

The pandemic was a clarifying moment for me, too. When people double down on their political beliefs at the risk of their health, that means there's no flyer or lawn sign or "deeply empathetic meaningful conversation" with a stranger interrupting your dinner that's going to help

My political plans for 2022: theonion.com/man-who-though…

If you held a gun to my head and forced me to keep doing political stuff in 2022, after begging you to pull the trigger, the next thing I would try would be some outlandish ideas like getting blue state remote work people to move to low-population red states for an election cycle

Everything else comes down to Bears fans trying to persuade Packers fans that their team sucks and they should switch allegiance, via 30 second TV ads and phone calls from out-of-state college students reading a script.

The overarching lesson of the Trump era for me was that in order to heal, America needs an exceptionally quick and lightweight way to keep track of all the various political candidates, with tags and notes, and that such a service should cost only pennies a day. Mission accepted.