Decembrist on Monopoly Politics
This is the type of post that has me reading and re-reading it to pick up every last detailed point in full.
There's a lot to the analysis in the superb Monopoly Politicsreport put out every two years by the Center for Voting and Democracy, which demonstrates that the vast majority of House seats are structurally uncompetitive. This is, as CVD argues, partly the result of gerrymandering and partly the inherent tendency of winner-take-all politics.But there is another dimension to political analysis and prediction: candidate quality does matter. A good or great candidate, at the right time, can defeat a poor candidate much of the time -- certainly often enough to make significant shifts in congressional control possible. The weakest of the 1994 and later Republicans have already been knocked off; the best have entrenched themselves, but there is still a group in the middle that can be beaten, but only by the right candidate. That's why candidate recruitment and leadership development projects such as Progressive Majority, which are only just getting started, will be the most important component of the effort to turn the country's politics around.
The more I think about it, the way we approach candidates is like the third element of the transformation of progressive politics in the last couple of years. The first two are contributors and voters.
There's more, and there's links ... read it all ... I mean, if you're into this sorta thing.