Thread by @gelliottmorris

This is a good piece from @Edsall & scholars that overlaps with a lot of what I've been thinking about re: US institutions over the last yr. Should remind us of how much democracy has progressed internationally since 1787, and how little we've done at home
nytimes.com/2021/12/08/opi…

As far as contemporary debates go, I think scholars are right to point out that anti-democratic institutions do much more harm to Liberal progress, the will of the majority, and the Dem Party than messaging squabbles do — even tho activists can only really influence the latter.

I do think, by the way, that the question of whether "LatinX" and "Defund" hurt Democratic candidates (by association) would be a much lesser, though not non-existent, issue in the party if the Ds didn't have to win 53%+ of voters to have a governing majority, like they do now.

Another way of saying this is that the overall median voter's policy preferences and ideological/cultural attitudes look a lot more like your average Democratic House member's than the average Republican's, but the functional median is skewed right by at least 3 or 4 points