Share this comment
Let's see if we can meet halfway.
1) First, I agree that Republicans are building one-party red states, as I've actually written about before (x.com/balajis/status/17…). I think they are doing this partly in response to Democrats building one-party blue states. But regardless, both red and blue have rejected democracy *within* their state…
Let's see if we can meet halfway.
1) First, I agree that Republicans are building one-party red states, as I've actually written about before (https://x.com/balajis/status/1711301185494482969). I think they are doing this partly in response to Democrats building one-party blue states. But regardless, both red and blue have rejected democracy *within* their states in the sense of competitive multiparty elections.
2) Democrats are rejecting democracy in practice while claiming they're for it in principle, while Republicans are increasingly just saying they want republics rather than democracies. What it equates to is that "blue democracy" = rule by Democrats and "red republic" = rule by Republicans.
3) So, where is there room for democratic choice? There's the federal election. But that's going to be so contentious this year that I doubt both sides will be happy with the outcome.
4) What that leaves is democracy as *migration* rather than election. More than a million people have chosen to leave California for red states, which means they're voting with their feet against blue governance.
5) Nevertheless, if you really want blue governance, sure, you can move there. At a theoretical level I'm glad that choice exists. In practice many people are stuck in blue states even though they wanted Bloomberg Democrats rather than BLM Democrats.
6) I'd also note that I do not believe red states are the apex of governance on the planet. They are recruiting from blue states, but in many ways countries like the UAE, Singapore, and Estonia are better managed. There are also innovations from East Asia and even now Latin America (Bukele's anti-crime program) and India (eg UPI) that red states could learn from.
So: both parties are building one-party states, but Democrats are the ones claiming to be "for democracy", and that isn't what they're for.
One problem Red States have is that:
1) Their cities (and often bureaucrats and professionals) are still blue
2) A lot of the things you cite would be invalidated by the federal government and the courts. For instance, no Red State governor could institute Bukele style crime policy, it would get overridden by the Feds and the Courts. Bukele himself basically had to become a quasi dictator and neuter the Supreme Court there.
You have to remember that Blue Staters are very concerned with imposing their will on Red Staters, in the name of the "downtrodden vulnerable minorities" that reside there.
The worry of course is that if immigration continues we will no longer have competitive federal elections, and then even the reddest states will have the blue model completely forced on them by the feds.