Thread by @Pinboard

One thing I feel my group and many others demonstrated in 2020 was that there's no relationship between political giving to state house races and the outcomes of those elections. In fact, there's some evidence it backfires. Hold on to your wallets with both hands.

https://twitter.com/BobbyBigWheel/status/1405601078478098432

I normally hate to pee on other people's fundraising, but I think it's important to make new mistakes rather than repeating old ones. And we've seen in state after state that pouring any amount of national money into state legislative races just doesn't work.

The political spending cycle is spinning out of control, and as everyone runs out of ways to spend money upballot, the money is moving downballot. At the same time, those races have become nationalized (and therefore tethered to political identities local spending can't shift)

I can promise you on bended knee that there will not be a single political candidate above the level of dogcatcher whose campaign will fail for lack of money in 2021 or 2022. All your donation will do is feed a growing chain of parasites that dead-ends in Facebook profits.

I wish I knew the answer! But we have to at least learn from failure. Even trying new stuff at random is better than repeating what doesn't work.

https://twitter.com/RSWestmoreland/status/1441835332853452802

Before you make political donations based on emotion, please look at what happened in 2020 with Senate campaigns ($15M left unspent in Maine, for example) and state campaigns in Iowa and Florida, where record fundraising combined with massive losses in places we expected to flip.

I'm 100% in favor of political giving if you're doing it to feel good. But at least make people charge you for fresh stories, not the same reheated stuff about door knocking, early money, and chronic non-voters all being left of Trotsky if we could just mobilize them.

If you've ever had your vote determined by an out-of-state college freshman calling you at dinnertime and reading from a prepared script, a bulk text message, or a stranger knocking on your door to talk politics, then by all means support those tactics. But if not, reflect a bit.