"not much unites the various factions of the Republican coalition, save opposition to the Democratic Party."Completely true. I'm chair of my red county's Democratic Party. Last cycle we had a dream candidate for the state assembly. He was a well-respected local physician who self-funded his campaign and overachieved with door-knocking and handshaking. He was also running for an newly open seat, and his unqualified Republican challenger ran on a platform of "COVID is God's punishment for abortion."The end result was that there was no noticeable difference from prior elections with much less qualified Democratic candidates. The two county parties in this state legislature district had a post-mortem with the candidate, and our conclusion was that the dominant factor in elections here is that Republicans have been very successful in inventing and propagating cartoon caricatures of what Democrats supposedly believe and that our strategy going forward must be to relentlessly debunk them.

"not much unites the various factions of the Republican coalition, save opposition to the Democratic Party."Completely true. I'm chair of my red county's Democratic Party. Last cycle we had a dream candidate for the state assembly. He was a well-respected local physician who self-funded his campaign and overachieved with door-knocking and handshaking. He was also running for an newly open seat, and his unqualified Republican challenger ran on a platform of "COVID is God's punishment for abortion."The end result was that there was no noticeable difference from prior elections with much less qualified Democratic candidates. The two county parties in this state legislature district had a post-mortem with the candidate, and our conclusion was that the dominant factor in elections here is that Republicans have been very successful in inventing and propagating cartoon caricatures of what Democrats supposedly believe and that our strategy going forward must be to relentlessly debunk them.

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