Nate Cohn

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@mattyglesias @chrislhayes @alexburnsNYT compared to that equally biased system, democrats will have the added burden of: midterm penalty when in power; needing to hold three branches; needing to peel back senate losses over three cycles, not all at once — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@mattyglesias @chrislhayes @alexburnsNYT so here again the quirks of the US system may be the bigger factor over geographic bias. the democrats would have full control of government quite a bit more often if was a parliamentary system, even if the median seat were just as biased as the EC/Senate/House average — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@mattyglesias @chrislhayes @alexburnsNYT sort of; it showed that the democrats were running on the extremely tough 06-12 map. the dems plainly would have won the senate in 18 if all states were at stake, and gained on the maps of the other two cycles — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@mattyglesias @chrislhayes @alexburnsNYT (i'd note, btw, that the implication is that structural bias isn't necessarily the core reason why democrats don't have continuous control of government. it's that they don't have enough of a national edge to win midterms and overcome party-in-power penalties) — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@mattyglesias @chrislhayes @alexburnsNYT the reasonable expectation in a closely divided country is once every 16 years, and that would be true even without any structural biases against democrats — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@davidshor @xenocryptsite have you ever asked whether people believe they can trace their ancestry to the mayflower/plymouth? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@Redistrict @davidshor @kwcollins @kapoano @NateSilver538 @AlecMacGillis my best guess is that it wouldn't be a huge factor? you're building in the middle of nowhere, given the outdoor/ski angle. no one is nearby. these states all tout development. and national politics so polarized that i doubt there's that much vote flipping on it — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@davidshor @kwcollins @kapoano @NateSilver538 @AlecMacGillis if that's a real possibility, democrats would want to maximize the chance that this flowed to a more competitive states and regions, like Montana and Bozeman, than Idaho and Boise — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@davidshor @kwcollins @kapoano @NateSilver538 @AlecMacGillis and i do think that this kind of plan would want to prepare for the possibility that intra-western migration could become more favorable for democrats in difficult to predict ways, given housing pressures in SEA/SF, more remote work, milennial aging, etc. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@davidshor @kwcollins @kapoano @NateSilver538 @AlecMacGillis even without the population growth, the 100k vote margin would be tough. you really do need a new boulder to overcome that. but there still aren't many better options--besides AK--for democratic migration based on a environmental-outdoor-ski-education-tech angle — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@kwcollins @davidshor @kapoano @NateSilver538 @AlecMacGillis i think the practical version of this sort of liberal colonialist fantasy--which more or less amounts to planting the seeds of a new boulder, colo. in alaska or perhaps montana--would obviously take well over a decade to even get started, let alone to fully unfold — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@davidshor @kapoano @NateSilver538 and that doesn't even mention the old @AlecMacGillis idea of sending federal agencies off to the hinterlands — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@davidshor @kapoano @NateSilver538 lol well you net another 5k out of building another Park City, you net another 2k out of the new Apple/MSFT/whatever campus, and once you have all of that and a university, you probably have escape velocity toward something bigger — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@davidshor @kapoano @NateSilver538 it's not like there isn't a secret recipe for creating much more than 22k democrats in the middle of the mountains: build an airport, ski resort, new elite research university, and get a new tech company outpost — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@davidshor @kapoano @NateSilver538 so why 22k — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@davidshor @kapoano @NateSilver538 how sensitive is this to 22k tho — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

RT @FlynonymousWX: The Orion constellation is visible above the eye wall of #HurricaneSam early this morning. Green on left is reflection… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

A lot of political debate is basically just fantasy government, until you're suddenly the GM once every forty years https://t.co/q8duwWbL39 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

RT @rickhasen: My new one in @washingtonpost on whether Democrats in Congress should try to go it alone on fighting election subversion ris… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@davidshor @mattyglesias but if we're counting 'democrats should do popular things that appeal to the median voter' as contrarian, then you've lost me lol — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@davidshor @mattyglesias and for that reason, i do think the various arguments that cast doubt on that view of the 04-12 elections--many of which i argued and advanced at the time-- could be fairly cast as contrarian — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@davidshor @mattyglesias i also think something similar was true in the world more generally, with the various rhetoric about a coalition of the ascendent, the emerging democratic majority, bad exit polliing, and so on — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@davidshor @mattyglesias i totally buy that in the world of activists, NGOs and campaign staff, that the Obama era led many progressives to erroneously overestimate the significance of demographic changes and underestimate the role of persuasion, etc. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@mattyglesias fair enough--i'll just say that i think that if you've tweeted before, as I think you have, that popularism is at odds with the capital-D Democratic conventional wisdom, that i do think it's fair to say you've framed your view as contrarian, even if not in that exact language — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@pollhannes well yeah, i think it's *a lot* less true than it used to be, but it's still not completely untrue. its waning value can leave some to forget it altogether, or at least seem to, and create a space to say something broadly accepted as if it's novel — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@mattyglesias although now that i've looked it back up, it seems like you deleted your half of the conversation--so maybe you overstated your position or changed your mind or something https://t.co/qnat7O6Kt3 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@mattyglesias maybe my memory is bad, but i think we had an exchange in which you said you didn't think your view was the CW, after I said that I thought popularism had been the CW for decades — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@RyanDEnos another reason i find it strange is that the ideas are often perceived or introduced as somewhat revelatory, even when they're ancient. there's probably just a knowledge-gap that explains it. but it can still feel like rediscovering the wheel to me, and it feels odd — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@RyanDEnos i'd also add that the ideas are often seen as perceived as somewhat revelatory, even when they're ancient. there's probably just a knowledge-gap that explains it. but it can still feels like rediscovering the wheel to me, and it's odd — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@RyanDEnos if anything, it betrays the insecurity of a given bubble--its perceives being a contrarian view, perhaps mainly because there's dissent from outside the bubble — PolitiTweet.org