This will surely be my most-hated tweet of the day, but: What is the strategy behind showing up at lawmakers' homes to protest or (obviously worse) vandalize them? I understand it may be cathartic, but it seems mostly to drum up sympathy for the lawmaker and their family.

Does it actually "create costs" for a lawmaker doing something the protesters think is bad? Or does it reinforce the person's idea that the other side is aggressive, unhinged, and dangerous, making them all the more set in their ways?

Yes, I saw that very dumb tweet being like, "what if anti-abortion protesters did this???" Indeed, they have done this -- shown up at doctor's homes, vandalized clinics, even killed people -- and it made them far less popular. It was a very bad strategy.

Protesting outside a lawmaker's office makes sense -- it focuses the protest of the person's work on their place of work. A lot of people naturally recoil when you take a protest to someone's private home, and they DEFINITELY recoil when a home is vandalized.

I don't feel particularly bad for Josh Hawley and it's also totally possible he is lying about there being a big protest. But Nancy Pelosi's home was vandalized too, right? I don't think that does much except engender sympathy for Nancy Pelosi.

Protesters certainly have a legal right to protest on public streets outside of peoples' homes. (And this is not just about Josh Hawley). I just wonder if it's a good strategy and I don't think it is.

I'll say one more time: I'm not suggesting people who protest outside of lawmakers' homes or even vandalize them don't have righteous grievances. I am suggesting that there's a strategy question here separate from the question of whether someone is right to be angry.

To be fair here is a very good counterpoint: ACT-UP activists who made sure Jesse Helms wasn't home and then put a giant condom over his house. https://www.poz.com/blog/in-memory-of-je