> That's the theory, but in practice I think states have less competitive pressure. VA for example shifts massive amounts of funding from the northern part of the state. This has worked due to continuous gerrymandering that allows one party to maintain control despite statewide elections being far more competitive.
You're talking about competition between parties rather than between states. And gerrymandering is a problem exacerbated by strong national parties, because the opposition party is then laden with positions from their party's national platform that may be locally unfavorable. Otherwise they could tailor their platform and message to something which is locally competitive in light of how the district lines are drawn, and respond accordingly if they change, reducing the incentive to redraw the lines by making it less effective.
Even then, it only moves the debate to within that party and effectively makes the primary the election. You can still get individual representatives to change their position for fear of losing their seat, with much more ease than doing the same thing at the national level.
> In practice VA almost can't mess things up, simply by because it's so close to DC.
That's kind of the point. DC is a huge outlier created by federal activity.
And it's all relative. Nothing the government of Topeka does is ever going to turn it into New York City, but they can make it better or worse than it is, which is a thing that the local people who elect them or choose to live or do business there will certainly care about.
Whereas if a change in federal policy makes things worse for the people of a given state when all of that state's federal representatives were already from the opposing party, all they can really do is whinge about it and suffer from the negative impact.
> National elections on the other hand regularly shift power around.
That's half the problem. Instead of having many localities with many different policies that are largely locally stable, allowing each person a choice in which rules they prefer to live under, you have national policy that flip flops back and forth based on who is currently in power so that at any given time some 40+% of the people are unhappy with the latest national rules, and the uncertainty makes it difficult to plan for the future.
> People may not like the FBI, but few feel it’s ineffective.
The percentage of US citizens who ever have any interaction with the FBI rounds to zero, and their role is enforcement rather than policy-making.
There are a lot of people who think the current EPA is ineffective[1][2]. And the FCC[3], and the FAA[4], and the FDA[5][6], and so on. What's the approval rating of the US Congress? Still somewhere between Comcast and dog poop?
You're talking about competition between parties rather than between states. And gerrymandering is a problem exacerbated by strong national parties, because the opposition party is then laden with positions from their party's national platform that may be locally unfavorable. Otherwise they could tailor their platform and message to something which is locally competitive in light of how the district lines are drawn, and respond accordingly if they change, reducing the incentive to redraw the lines by making it less effective.
Even then, it only moves the debate to within that party and effectively makes the primary the election. You can still get individual representatives to change their position for fear of losing their seat, with much more ease than doing the same thing at the national level.
> In practice VA almost can't mess things up, simply by because it's so close to DC.
That's kind of the point. DC is a huge outlier created by federal activity.
And it's all relative. Nothing the government of Topeka does is ever going to turn it into New York City, but they can make it better or worse than it is, which is a thing that the local people who elect them or choose to live or do business there will certainly care about.
Whereas if a change in federal policy makes things worse for the people of a given state when all of that state's federal representatives were already from the opposing party, all they can really do is whinge about it and suffer from the negative impact.
> National elections on the other hand regularly shift power around.
That's half the problem. Instead of having many localities with many different policies that are largely locally stable, allowing each person a choice in which rules they prefer to live under, you have national policy that flip flops back and forth based on who is currently in power so that at any given time some 40+% of the people are unhappy with the latest national rules, and the uncertainty makes it difficult to plan for the future.
> People may not like the FBI, but few feel it’s ineffective.
The percentage of US citizens who ever have any interaction with the FBI rounds to zero, and their role is enforcement rather than policy-making.
There are a lot of people who think the current EPA is ineffective[1][2]. And the FCC[3], and the FAA[4], and the FDA[5][6], and so on. What's the approval rating of the US Congress? Still somewhere between Comcast and dog poop?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/26/trump-epa-ca...
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-plans-to-revoke-californi...
[3] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190702/09221042510/killi...
[4] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/09/24/faa-bo...
[5] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/
[6] https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/27/perspectives/vaping-epidemic-...