It reminds me of the old line about war: Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics. Right now, Trumpists are talking logistics.
“These local races that determine the mechanics of American democracy are the ventilation shaft in the Republican death star. These races get zero national attention. They hardly get local attention. Turnout is often lower than 20%.” - @benwikler
If I could convince everyone who follows politics of only one thing, it’d be this, from @GabriellaCKelly:
“One thing I was really struck by when I first started getting involved in politics is how much power there is in just showing up to things.”
And did you know @runforsomething has a tool that will let you see every office you can run for in your district? So much power pools in elected offices virtually no one even knows exist. You should take a look at it: wherecanirun.org
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I've seen a lot of people link to my piece with Tip O'Neill's old aphorism that "all politics is local."
I don't think that's quite right. It's that local politics is increasingly national. nytimes.com/2022/01/09/opi…
I talked with @JakeMGrumbach for the piece, who's forthcoming book, "Laboratories Against Democracy," is all about this. He had a line I didn't end up getting into the column, but have been thinking about since:
As he put it, this moment is unique in how much "national conflict is playing out through subnational institutions."
What Substack and other newsletters have brought back is the long blog essay. That's a great form, and I'm thrilled to see it revived.
But that was always a small fraction of blogging, and it wasn't what built the ecosystem.
So much of blogging was "Link + quick comment."
The sites that built the blogosphere as a conversational ecosystem — Instapundit, Atrios, Daily Dish — specialized in that. But we all did a lot of it. And it created maps and conversations for readers to follow.
Another example: It looks like CDC is going to revisit ending quarantine after 5 days without a test. But there isn't an available supply of rapid tests in many areas.
So we're going to have possibly infectious people driving from drugstore to drugstore, looking?
I enjoyed this @VitalikButerin post on the Bulldozer vs. Vetocracy axis, but I think the problem is vetocracies are, by nature, complex and opaque, and people often don't even know the vetocracies shaping their lives. vitalik.eth.limo/general/2021/1…
Which is to say: This might be a good way of thinking about the problems of different societies, i.e., China's has bulldozer problems, America has vetocracy problems.
But I'm skeptical it's a good way of thinking about individual or even collective preferences.
Also: People's preference for veto points tend to change a lot with who's in power. I don't find that irrational or insincere, as some do, but it makes it harder to pinpoint an abstract preference in the area.
I'm seeing this too, and I...don't think it's great.
There are more options here than, as @EricTopol puts it, inevitability vs. avoidance. This is what I've been trying to tease out pushing for a clearer description of goals.
There are other camps one can fall into, rather than seeing this as a binary between "let 'er rip" and "lock back down" (which seems to me to be what's obviously demanded by many arguments here, but since it won't happen, few are directly advocating it)
Here's mine: People are going to have very different risk tolerances, different needs, and little patience for lockdowns. No strategy that doesn't accept that can work.
So I want policymakers to make sure people have a full supply of risk management tools.