Some pushback on this on the grounds that instead of weird tricks like this, we should work on making people's lives better in R states.

I agree we should do that! That's step #2! But step #1 is getting the congressional votes you need to do that. https://twitter.com/ryxcommar/status/1326213080498528257

You can say "just tell them we'll make their lives better" and I agree we should also do that, but the big problem with purely communicative channels for winning over folks is that voters often get their information from different sources than you do and hear different things.

AOC has great policies, and she's portrayed as totally evil and/or naive on Fox News. You should still promise to make folks' lives better but there's clearly only so far that gets you! That's why you need the weird tricks!

"Most of our problems are because the Senate / EC / SCOTUS are anti-majoritarian" is insufficiently grandiose for some folks' tastes. But OTOH if you look at every other democracy, they don't have these weird institutions, we do, and they have more social democratic policies.