A few thoughts on candidates declaring their bid of office early: a thread

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There are a lot of folks throwing up tweets declaring candidacy for 2022—pretty much entirely as opposition to the big “villains” or “heels” (to borrow the professional wrestling term) in Congress.
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These are, naturally, accompanied by links to their ActBlue pages and calls for ‘grassroots’ support to ‘defeat’ said Heel (which I get—it costs ridiculous sums of money in our broken system to mount a campaign for federal office & you want to start as early as possible)
3/

First off, there’s a lotta redistricting happening this year—some of these folks may not even be living in the same district as the Heel come Nov 2022. They might even get re-districted into one held by an incumbent D. Are you FOR your candidate or simply AGAINST the Heel?
4/

Secondly, the primaries aren’t for months and months yet. The candidates’ triumphant exhortations that they will ‘defeat the Heel!’ are kinda premature...there’s their own party’s primary to get through first and we don’t know who all the players are yet and won’t for a while.
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Third, do you now who these candidates are? I’m not talking Big Policy Issues yet—it tends to take a while to flesh those out—I just mean have you taken a moment to Google the background of someone you’re amplifying to see if you have values which align...
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...as a random hypothetical, could you be, oh, IDK, amplifying & supporting a former business partner of Erik Prince (mercenary and brother of Betsy DeVos)?
7/

It’s also important to remember the Heels can afford to be the political lightning rod, the locus of the fight, the headline grabbers who pull everyone’s attention away from the quieter politicians who are systematically dismantling our democracy.
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The Heels can afford to be bombastic because they typically come from districts gerrymandered to the point there’s no losing—even if they’re on camera calling for the overthrow of the American government of which they’re a part.
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Which is not to say we shouldn’t fight for those seats and fight hard—every seat matters. But it does mean we need to have a broader view; we need to look past the media sideshows and see where there are winnable districts held by the quietly evil.
10/

I’m not telling you who to r/t or donate to, I’m just asking you to take a sec to remember 1. it’s way early on the road to ‘22; 2. to vet the candidates you support (even casually); & 3. it’s not always the most flamboyant clowns that are doing the most damage to our nation.
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