Follow the Power

“Carol” and me, years ago. She’s taller now—and about to cast her first vote.

The Curriculum I Built for You

When I started writing “Season One,” I thought I was writing for people like me—political junkies, policy wonks, anyone fascinated by the machinery of elections. I set out to map the system: dark money, gerrymandering, the “permanent campaign.” I was documenting it for those who already wanted to understand.

Then, somewhere around Article 4 or 5, something shifted.

I started defining terms I normally wouldn’t. I began providing context I’d never needed to give before. And I realized I wasn’t writing for experts anymore.

I was writing for someone about to enter this system for the first time—someone I love more than anything.

I was writing for you, “Carol”.

What I Want You to Know

The narrative they’re selling you is not the real fight.

They’ll tell you that democracy hinges on this specific election. That you must donate and rage because the stakes are unprecedented. And yes—some elections genuinely matter. But the system that monetizes this conflict? That’s a con.

I wrote these nine articles to help you see the difference between the game and reality. Here’s the curriculum I’ve spent a season building for you:

Article 1: Welcome to Permanent Campaign Mode

This is where it starts. I want you to see that the campaigning never actually stops. The “permanent campaign” isn’t just a strategy—it’s an industry. A machine designed to keep you anxious and engaged, ensuring the political apparatus keeps churning (and getting paid) long after the polls close.

Article 2: The Playbook—A Torrent of Propaganda

I wrote this because I need you to recognize when you’re being manipulated. The content flooding your feed isn’t designed to inform you—it’s designed to activate you. There’s a difference between news and activation. Learning to spot the outrage machine is the first skill you need to survive.

Article 3: The PAC Problem

By the time you see a candidate on a ballot, the real choices have often already been made. This article explains how billionaire donors, ideological kingmakers, and party insiders use Political Action Committees to winnow the field long before you step into the voting booth. Your vote is real—but it isn’t the first one that matters.

Article 4: How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made

They taught you “How a Bill Becomes a Law” in civics class. That’s not how it works in Charleston. I wrote this to show you the real machinery: backroom negotiations, lobbyists who draft the actual text, the sheer opacity of the legislative process. The sausage-making is messier—and more exclusive—than they admit.

Article 5: Election Denial as Infrastructure

You need to understand that doubt is a product. It’s manufactured. Using examples like Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner, I showed how election denial isn’t just a belief system—it’s funded infrastructure, designed to undermine faith in the very system you’re preparing to join.

Article 6: The Ranked Choice Voting Gambit

This one is about structural reforms that threaten the status quo. I explained why extremists and entrenched parties fear Ranked Choice Voting: because it forces candidates to appeal beyond their base. It’s a reminder that the rules of the game can be changed—which is exactly why they fight so hard to keep them the same.

Article 7: Buckley v. Valeo and the Roots of Dark Money

The dark money architecture wasn’t inevitable. It was constructed decision by decision. I walked you through the 1976 Supreme Court case Buckley v. Valeo to show you where the rules came from. Anything that was built can be taken apart—but you have to know the history to know where to push.

Article 8: We Want Your Vote, Just Not Your Voice

This is the hardest lesson. The system craves your validation—your vote—but fears your actual input. This article explores how genuine participation gets suppressed while voter turnout is maximized for pre-determined outcomes. They want you to rubber-stamp their power, not challenge it.

Article 9: When Silicon Valley Meets Appalachia

Finally, I wrote this because I want you to see how systems designed by people who don’t understand a place will fail that place. The campaign algorithms and data models were built for a reality that doesn’t exist here. They can’t see the “Friends of Coal” license plate on the truck in front of them—yet the consultants who build these flawed models keep getting paid anyway.

I’m Sorry

I can’t protect you from this.

I’ve tried to shield you from pain your whole life. But I cannot fix the political system you’re inheriting. It was rigged before you were born—a system where money screams, consultants profit from anxiety, and choices are narrowed before you ever see them.

My Goal: Clarity, Not Cynicism

I wrote Season One because “sorry” isn’t enough. I want you to walk into your first election with your eyes open.

Don’t be cynical. Cynicism is exactly what they want—because it means you stop paying attention while they keep taking.

Be clear-eyed instead. See the machine for what it is.

When I was your age, I believed the system’s problems were bugs. Now I know they’re features. The system is designed to perpetuate itself.

I wish I had known that at seventeen.

Now you do.

The Context Behind “Season One”

This series sits at the intersection of politics, parenting, and civic responsibility. It’s not just an analysis of West Virginia’s political machinery—it’s a manual for the next generation on how to navigate a system that feels opaque and rigged.

My Perspective

I write with the authority of a former legislative liaison. For a decade, I had a front-row seat to the real work of government—backroom negotiations, lobbying influence, the forces that shape policy before it ever makes headlines.

But this analysis is filtered through the lens of a single mother. I’m not just critiquing the system; I’m revealing my own blind spots and fears. By addressing my daughter—who’s casting her first vote—the stakes become immediate. This isn’t abstract analysis. It’s a roadmap.

What Season One Teaches

Politics is not a spectator sport. The most important decisions happen before the public knows a race has begun.

Power is hidden, not broken. The system works as intended—to protect entrenched interests, not empower new voices.

Information is power. Understanding the flow of money and the drafting of bills is the prerequisite for meaningful participation.

Hope is insufficient. Engagement requires skepticism, strategy, and the willingness to look past partisan noise.

My Final Words

My message to “Carol”—and to every young voter—is simple:

See the system for what it is. But don’t let it paralyze you.

I’m not asking her to accept the system. I’m not asking her to give up on it. I’m asking her to understand it—so she can participate effectively.

The most important political act isn’t just casting a ballot. It’s teaching someone else to see the world clearly—and giving them the courage to change it.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

Original Publication Date: 10/4/2025. This article has not been updated since its original publication date.

I know you don't have time for this. You're working full-time, shuttling kids to activities, doing homework help at 9 PM, and trying to figure out what the hell a "Hope Scholarship" even is because your neighbor mentioned it at the bus stop and you nodded like you knew.

I get it. I'm doing it too.

I'm a single-parent with two kids in West Virginia public schools. I work full-time. I have a college degree in public policy analysis and 15+ years of government experience, which is a fancy way of saying I can read policy briefs without falling asleep and I know when politicians are lying.

In the video above, President Hardesty perfectly illustrated what policy analysts call asymmetric regulation. It’s a classic managed-decline strategy. You don’t actively destroy your target—you just rig the game so it can’t possibly compete. Impose crushing compliance costs on one player while letting competitors operate with zero constraints.

The Funding Trap: Policy Malpractice 101

Let me put on my nerd glasses and explain the con at the heart of this whole scheme.

West Virginia funds schools through the Public School Support Plan (PSSP)—an enrollment-based model. Simple concept: money follows students. Enrollment up? Funding up. Enrollment down? Funding down.

Sounds fair, right?

Here’s the trap: This only works if costs are variable. If expenses scale directly with student numbers, enrollment-based funding makes perfect sense.

But most school costs are fixed, not variable.

Let’s break down what school districts actually pay for:

* Infrastructure: Buildings, maintenance, utilities (fixed)

* Transportation: Buses, routes, drivers—especially in rural areas where you can’t just cancel a 40-mile route because three kids left (fixed)

* Administration: Principals, superintendents, support staff (fixed)

* Debt service: Bond payments on capital projects (fixed)

Only a slice of costs—mainly teacher salaries and instructional materials—actually vary with enrollment.

So when a school loses students, it loses proportional funding but cannot reduce its fixed costs proportionally. The result? A structural deficit that can only be “solved” by cutting teachers and programs or closing schools entirely.

This is what we call policy malpractice. Any competent first-year policy student would flag this model as unsustainable.

The legislature knows this. They’ve been told. Repeatedly. By the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy and others. They’ve done nothing to fix it.

* West Virginia Must Modernize School Funding Formula to Prioritize Community Schools and Student Needs

* Tracking Public School Closures in WV

* The Perfect Storm: Limited Oversight and Accountability Contribute to Growing Costs of the Hope Scholarship

The ALEC Playbook: Starve the Beast

When President Hardesty named ALEC—the American Legislative Exchange Council—as the architect of West Virginia’s school choice strategy, I wasn’t even slightly surprised. I’ve tracked ALEC’s model legislation for years.

When he said, “If you bankrupt the school system, change can occur,” he was describing a strategy ALEC has deployed across multiple states. It’s called “starve the beast.”

Here’s the playbook:

Step 1: Create alternatives (charters, vouchers, ESAs) that siphon students and funding from public schools.

Step 2: Maintain crushing regulations on public schools while exempting alternatives, ensuring public schools can’t compete.

Step 3: Underfund the public system while pointing to “declining enrollment” as justification, manufacturing a fiscal crisis.

Step 4: Point to the crisis as “proof” that public schools are “failing” and must be replaced with privatized alternatives.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it’s devastatingly effective.

The Competitive Rigging I See Every Single Day

Here’s where my policy and mom brain really start screaming at each other.

As policy analyst, I can explain regulatory capture and asymmetric compliance burdens. As a mom, I live the consequences.

My son’s elementary school principal spends hours every week on compliance paperwork:

* Special education documentation

* Teacher evaluation protocols

* Attendance reporting

* Nutrition program requirements

* Safety drills

The list is endless.

Meanwhile, the charter school that opened last year? “Exempt from many regulatory constraints.” They hire and fire at will. Set their own curriculum. Establish enrollment “preferences” that—surprise, surprise—let them cherry-pick students.

This is textbook competitive disadvantage imposed by regulation. And it’s deliberate.

The legislature could have:

* Reduced regulatory burden on public schools when they created charter alternatives

* Applied equal accountability standards to all schools

* Leveled the playing field

They did none of that. Because fair competition was never the goal. Managed decline was always the plan.

The Numbers They Hope You Won’t Notice

Let me show you what the data actually reveals—because this is where policy expertise becomes most valuable.

State Funding Trends (inflation-adjusted):

* FY 2009 baseline: 100%

* FY 2026: 83% (down 17%)

Enrollment Trends:

* 2009-2026: Down 14.7%

See the problem? The funding decline (17%) exceeds the enrollment decline (14.7%). That means per-pupil funding is actually decreasing, not just total funding.

Per-Pupil Spending (2023):

* West Virginia: $14,575

* National average: $16,526

* Difference: -$1,951 per student

* Regional ranking: Dead last among all neighboring states.

Now here’s the question any policy analyst has to ask: Is this because West Virginia is poor? Can’t afford education investment?

Nope. West Virginia has run budget surpluses in recent years. The state has money.

The legislature is choosing to underfund public education while simultaneously pumping $245 million into programs designed to drain students from those schools.

This is a policy choice, not fiscal necessity.

MY KIDS: Why This Isn’t Academic For Me

I need to tell you about my kids, because this isn’t abstract policy analysis for me. This is my family’s future.

My oldest started kindergarten in Fall 2013. They’re graduating high school in Spring 2026. That means they’ve watched West Virginia public education transform from 2013 to 2026—the entire arc of their K-12 experience.

They’ve spent their middle school and high school years watching programs shrink, teachers leave, class sizes grow, and opportunities disappear as funding gets diverted to subsidize private school tuition for families who already had money.

My fourth-grader has ADHD and a high IQ. They’re in the gifted program, which provides exactly the kind of specialized, individualized support that makes the difference between a kid who thrives and a kid who struggles. I am terrified that program will be cut.

Because here’s what happens when $52 million gets diverted from public schools: specialized programs disappear first. Gifted programs. Advanced courses. Arts. Music. The “extras” that aren’t actually extras—they’re what makes education work for kids whose brains work differently.

Private schools don’t have to replicate these services. They don’t have to accept kids with IEPs. They don’t have to provide the same level of special education support. They can be selective in ways public schools legally cannot.

So when families with resources leave public schools via Hope Scholarships, the students who remain—the ones who need the most support, the ones with learning differences, the ones whose families can’t afford alternatives—get fewer services with less funding.

My fourth-grader, who needs that gifted program? They’re not going anywhere. We can’t afford private school even with a $4,921 subsidy. I can’t homeschool because I work full-time. We’re staying in public school.

And that public school is getting gutted to fund scholarships for other people’s kids.

Tell me how that’s fair. Tell me how that’s “choice.” Tell me how that helps my child.

I’ll wait.

The Money Behind the Machine: Koch Cash and Dark Money Pipelines

Here’s where we follow the money—because understanding who’s funding this dismantling matters. (Learn how to track Dark Money HERE AND HERE)

Behind the deliberate strategy to bankrupt public education sit powerful organizations operating in close coordination:

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

The model legislation factory. They write the bills, lawmakers copy-paste them into state law.

Americans for Prosperity West Virginia (AFP-WV)

The ground-level mobilization arm. They organize, lobby, and campaign for the policies ALEC designs.

Both are funded extensively by Koch family foundations—Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch Charitable Foundations among others. These foundations channel millions through donor-advised funds like DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, which serve as dark-money conduits for politically aligned campaigns supporting both ALEC and AFP.

The Stand Together network, led by Charles Koch, acts as an umbrella funneling resources to grassroots advocacy and model legislation strategies. This funding supports lobbying, organizing, and promoting school choice legislation that siphons money from public schools to privatized alternatives.

AFP-WV operates as the key state-level mobilizer, campaigning for education policies aligned with ALEC’s model legislation while obscuring funding sources and coordination.

This isn’t conspiracy theory. It’s documented funding flows and organizational relationships. The question isn’t whether this network exists—it’s why more people aren’t talking about it.

The Constitutional Violation Nobody’s Prosecuting

West Virginia Constitution, Article XII, Section 1: “The Legislature shall provide, by general law, for a thorough and efficient system of free schools.“

Current reality:

* Thorough? 53 schools closed, 25 more closing, programs gutted

* Efficient? Spending $52 million to help 2.2% of students while defunding schools for the other 97.8%

* Free? Hope Scholarship covers 27-32% of actual private school costs

As a policy analyst, I’d argue this constitutes a violation of the state’s constitutional duty.

As a mom, I’d argue they’re breaking their promise to my kids.

The McDowell County Smoking Gun

Here’s the data that should end every “school choice helps poor kids” argument forever:

McDowell County (poorest in WV): ZERO Hope Scholarship recipients. Not one. Nada. Zilch.

Berkeley County (wealthy DC suburbs): 439 recipients

Just five affluent counties (Kanawha, Berkeley, Wood, Cabell, and Raleigh) captured 40% of all Hope scholarships. These same counties contain 30% of the state’s private schools.

My Battle Plan: What I’m Doing With This Knowledge

I’m in a unique position. I have policy expertise to understand exactly what’s happening and personal stakes to care deeply about stopping it.

So here’s my battle plan:

* Documenting Everything: Building a comprehensive dataset showing direct correlation between Hope Scholarship expansion and public school decline. Data doesn’t lie, even when politicians do.

* Translating Policy Into Plain Language: Most parents don’t have time to decode legislation and fiscal notes. But they need to understand what’s being done to their schools. So I’m writing, speaking, explaining.

* Organizing: Individual parents feel powerless. Organized parents are a political force. We need a coalition of parents, teachers, and community members who understand what’s at stake.

* Holding Legislators Accountable: Tracking votes, analyzing statements, calling out the gap between rhetoric and action. When legislators claim to support public education but vote to expand vouchers without fixing the funding formula, their constituents need to know.

The Frustrating Truth: This Is Completely Fixable

The legislature could:

* Reform the funding formula to account for fixed costs and provide stability grants to declining-enrollment districts

* Level the regulatory playing field by reducing burden on public schools OR increasing accountability for charters (pick one, cowards)

* Adequately fund public education at competitive regional levels

* Add guardrails to Hope Scholarship to control costs and prevent fiscal collapse

* Conduct comprehensive fiscal impact analysis of school choice policies on public school sustainability

These aren’t radical ideas. They’re basic good governance.

My mom heart knows they won’t do any of this unless we make them.

To Every Parent Who’s Too Tired to Fight (But Too Angry to Quit)

I know you don’t have time to analyze policy. You’re working, raising kids, trying to survive. I get it—I’m doing it too.

But here’s what you need to understand:

This isn’t incompetence. It’s not budget constraints. It’s not demographic destiny.

It’s a deliberate, coordinated, billionaire-funded campaign to destroy public education.

They’re betting you’re too busy to notice, too tired to fight, too overwhelmed to organize.

Prove them wrong.

Print these numbers. Make them explain how ZERO scholarships to McDowell County helps “poor kids.”

Ask uncomfortable questions: Why are we subsidizing families who already chose private school?

Share this everywhere. Make it viral. Make it uncomfortable. Make them answer for it.

I’m not just a policy nerd who can decode their strategy. I’m a mom whose kids are in their crosshairs.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

Watch more “About That” episodes: Watch more “About That” episodes

Back in 2004, a political science professor gave me advice that seemed counterintuitive at the time: when you’re struggling to figure out what’s really happening in this country, turn off American news and look at what BBC, CBC, and other international outlets are saying. I filed it away and mostly forgot about it.

Then came early summer 2025.

I was trying to understand the situation unfolding between Iran, Israel, and the American government— involving bunker buster bombs and military operations that our media seemed incapable of explaining coherently. Every cable network offered a different version of events, each colored by predictable partisan framing. I couldn’t determine the basic facts of what was actually happening.

That’s when I remembered my professor’s advice from two decades earlier. I started searching for international coverage and discovered the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “About That” series. For the first time in what felt like years, I watched journalism that prioritized facts and neutral information over propaganda. The show helped me finally understand that situation in a way American media never could.

I’ve been watching regularly ever since. And a recent episode—their breakdown of the fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis—demonstrates exactly why my professor’s advice was so prescient. When the American government won’t be truthful with the public, and when American cable news has become more interested in advocacy than accuracy, sometimes clarity can only come from outside our borders.

A Note About What We Call “News”

Before diving into the Minneapolis coverage, it’s worth understanding something most Americans don’t realize: what we call “cable news” isn’t technically news at all.

The FCC classifies broadcast channels—those under channel 13—differently than cable channels. Broadcast networks operating on the public airwaves have historically been held to higher standards of factual accuracy and public interest obligations. Cable channels, by contrast, are classified as entertainment. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC—they’re legally in the same category as ESPN or the Food Network.

This distinction matters. When Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow present information, they aren’t bound by the same expectations that once governed broadcast journalism. They’re entertainers, and their programming is designed to engage and retain audiences, not necessarily to inform them accurately. The fact that we still call these channels “news” is itself a kind of deception.

Even broadcast news, which theoretically operates under stricter standards, has deteriorated to the point where the distinction feels largely academic. But understanding that cable “news” was never really news in the regulatory sense helps explain why it has deviated so far from journalism’s core purpose.

When the Government Narrative Doesn’t Match the Evidence

On January 7, 2026, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old American citizen and mother of three, during a massive enforcement operation deploying over 2,000 federal agents to Minneapolis. Within hours, the administration had constructed a narrative. President Trump described it as “an attack on America” and claimed Good had “gunned it straight at” the officer. Vice President Vance called it “an obvious attempt at murder.”

The problem? Video evidence tells a different story.

CBC’s “About That” broke down three verified bystander videos “moment by moment,” comparing what’s visible against official DHS guidelines on deadly force (”How Trump and Vance’s Accounts”). The show cited law professor John P. Gross, who concluded that the videos “clearly don’t support” the administration’s characterization that Good weaponized her vehicle against the agent. Former DHS deputy assistant secretary Thomas Warrick agreed deadly force wasn’t required under the circumstances shown (”What ICE Agent’s Phone Video Reveals”).

This is what journalism is supposed to do: examine official claims against available evidence and let viewers draw informed conclusions. Yet this basic function has become so rare in American media that we now rely on Canadian broadcasters to perform it.

What American Cable Entertainment Did Instead

Fox News immediately echoed DHS claims of “domestic terrorism,” with evening hosts Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity declaring Good had attacked the officer—despite video showing her vehicle’s wheels turned away from the agent (”A Look at How Fox Used Its Coverage”). CNN and MSNBC countered with civil rights framing, drawing comparisons to George Floyd. Neither approach prioritized what CBC chose to do: forensic analysis of evidence against established rules.

The contrast is stark. The “About That” episode posed a question rather than asserting a conclusion: “Self-defence? A breakdown of the fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis.” It showed viewers the analytical process rather than simply delivering pre-packaged verdicts aligned with partisan expectations.

This matters because when government officials make claims that video evidence contradicts, citizens need journalism that helps them see the discrepancy—not entertainment programming that amplifies one narrative or another based on political allegiance.

The “About That” Model: What Explanatory Journalism Looks Like

CBC’s “About That” is hosted by Andrew Chang and dedicates 30-minute episodes to single topics—a luxury impossible in cable’s breathless minute-and-a-half segments between commercial breaks.

TV News Check described the show as CBC’s “R&D lab for TV news experimentation,” praising how Chang traded the traditional anchor’s suit and tie for “a fashionable hoodie and more palpable ease” (Marszalek). The production approach emphasizes what CBC calls “transparent track in the newsgathering”—showing viewers the analytical process rather than simply delivering conclusions. This engenders “greater viewer trust in the process” (”About That with Andrew Chang”).

The show’s treatment of American affairs has been consistently sophisticated: fact-checking presidential claims with trade data, providing mathematical analysis of policy proposals, and using accessible analogies for complex systems like the Electoral College. The approach mirrors BBC’s Ros Atkins, whose “explainer” format Chang discussed at a 2023 Canadian Journalism Foundation event (”The News Explainer, Explained”). Both represent public broadcasters answering demand for neutral, context-rich journalism that American commercial media has abandoned.

This is what helped me understand the Iran-Israel situation in summer 2025. Not partisan spin, not entertainment masquerading as analysis—just careful examination of facts presented with enough context to actually make sense of complex events.

American Cable Has Gone Too Far

My professor’s advice in 2004 wasn’t born from anti-American sentiment—it reflected a clear-eyed assessment of where our media ecosystem was heading. Twenty years later, the research confirms what any frustrated news consumer intuits.

A landmark 2025 study published in Scientific Reports analyzed nearly a decade of television and found that “cable news stations have become increasingly distinct, both from broadcast news and from each other, diverging in terms of both content and language” (”Unpacking Media Bias”). Critically, this polarization is driven by hard news as much as partisan commentary programs.

A Virginia Tech study tracking ten years of broadcast transcripts found audience members on social media “echoed the same language patterns of broadcast news they favored” within 2-3 months—evidence that networks actively shape how Americans talk and think about issues (”Two Networks, Two Realities”).

The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School found all three major cable networks became more polarized after 2016, with Fox moving rightward in response to events that pushed CNN and MSNBC leftward. Professor Yphtach Lelkes observed that media bias “moves, and pretty quickly” (”Cable News Networks Have Grown More Polarized”).

Perhaps most concerning: research shows cable news has a much bigger effect on America’s polarization than social media (”Cable News Has a Much Bigger Effect”). Meanwhile, the information density of American news has collapsed—time devoted to national political issues fell from 20 minutes in 1969 to only 10 minutes in 2024, with broadcasts spending roughly twice as much time on commercials and “soft” news compared to a few decades ago (”No News Is Good News?”).

Why International Media Covers America Differently

The American Foreign Service Association explains that “foreign observers of the United States can view us from a perspective we are unable to see ourselves—from the outside.” They can “cast our present and future in a different kind of light, without the emotional distractions of enthusiastic wishful thinking or the fantastical imaginings of worst-case scenarios” (”Outside Observers See the United States”).

Several structural factors enable this clearer sight. The BBC operates under legal obligations for neutrality, funded by license fees rather than advertising. CBC similarly functions as a public broadcaster with mandated editorial standards. American cable networks depend on advertising revenue that rewards engagement—and nothing engages like controversy and conflict.

As Foreign Policy noted, outlets like the BBC offer “an outsider’s view of America and the world mostly free from the interminable partisan battles and culture wars that degrade U.S. current affairs programming” (Braw).

Americans Recognize the Difference

Trust data confirms that Americans can identify quality journalism when they see it—even if they have to look abroad to find it. The 2020 Reuters Institute study found that 56% of Americans trust the BBC—making it the most trusted non-local news organization in the country. Domestic outlets scored lower: ABC at 51%, NBC/MSNBC at 49%, and CNN at 47% (Teixeira).

A Pew Research Center global survey found 75% of respondents believe it is “never acceptable for a news organization to favor one political party over others” (”Publics Globally Want Unbiased News Coverage”). Americans want neutral news. The problem isn’t demand—it’s that commercial incentives reward the opposite of what audiences claim to want.

The Uncomfortable Truth

When a Canadian broadcaster can produce more illuminating analysis of a Minneapolis shooting in 24 hours than American cable networks manage in a week of continuous coverage, something has gone profoundly wrong. When government officials make claims that contradict available video evidence, and American media sorts into camps that either amplify or reject those claims based on partisan loyalty rather than examining the evidence itself, citizens are left without the basic information democracy requires.

My professor understood this in 2004. It took me until 2025—struggling to make sense of international events that American media seemed determined to obscure—to finally take that advice seriously. Since then, CBC’s “About That” has become a regular part of how I understand what’s happening in my own country. The sad irony of needing a Canadian broadcaster to explain America to Americans is not lost on me.

The “About That” video on the Minneapolis ICE shooting isn’t important because it reaches a particular conclusion. It’s important because it shows viewers the evidence, applies established standards, consults relevant experts, and trusts the audience to think. That used to be the baseline for American journalism. Now it’s a service we increasingly seek from abroad.

The solution isn’t to abandon American media entirely. But recognizing that international coverage offers a corrective lens—a view unclouded by the partisan entertainment that has replaced journalism on our cable channels—is the first step toward demanding better from our own institutions. Until that happens, my professor’s advice from 2004 remains sound: when you can’t figure out what’s really happening in America, sometimes the clearest view comes from outside.

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Sources

* “About That with Andrew Chang.” CBC Media Centre, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, https://mediacentre.cbc.ca/program/about-that-with-andrew-chang.

* “A Look at How Fox Used Its Coverage of the Minneapolis ICE Shooting to Push the Administration’s Propaganda.” Media Matters for America, Jan. 2026, www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/look-how-fox-used-its-coverage-minneapolis-ice-shooting-push-administrations-propaganda.

* Braw, Elisabeth. “The United States Needs a BBC.” Foreign Policy, 28 Jan. 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/28/bbc-partisan-news-united-states-polarization/.

* “Cable News Has a Much Bigger Effect on America’s Polarization than Social Media, Study Finds.” Nieman Journalism Lab, Harvard University, Aug. 2022, www.niemanlab.org/2022/08/cable-news-has-a-much-bigger-effect-on-americas-polarization-than-social-media-study-finds/.

* “Cable News Networks Have Grown More Polarized.” Penn Today, University of Pennsylvania, 2020, https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/annenberg-communication-cable-news-networks-have-grown-more-polarized.

* “How Trump and Vance’s Accounts of Minneapolis ICE Shooting Differ from Video Evidence.” CBC News, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 9 Jan. 2026, www.cbc.ca/news/world/minneapolis-ice-shooting-video-trump-vance-9.7038446.

* Marszalek, Diana. “Talking TV: CBC’s ‘About That’ Elevates Explainer News for Streaming.” TV News Check, 2023, https://tvnewscheck.com/journalism/article/talking-tv-cbcs-about-that-elevates-explainer-news-for-streaming/.

* “No News Is Good News? The Declining Information Value of Broadcast News in America.” PubMed Central, National Institutes of Health, 2025, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12507307/.

* “Outside Observers See the United States in Ways We Ourselves Cannot.” The Foreign Service Journal, American Foreign Service Association, https://afsa.org/outside-observers-see-united-states-ways-we-ourselves-cannot.

* “Publics Globally Want Unbiased News Coverage, but Are Divided on Whether Their News Media Deliver.” Pew Research Center, 11 Jan. 2018, www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2018/01/11/publics-globally-want-unbiased-news-coverage-but-are-divided-on-whether-their-news-media-deliver/.

* Teixeira, Ruy. “Why Is the BBC the Most Trusted News Brand in America?” The Liberal Patriot, 2022, www.liberalpatriot.com/p/why-is-the-bbc-the-most-trusted-news.

* “The News Explainer, Explained.” Canadian Journalism Foundation, 2023, https://cjf-fjc.ca/event/explainerexplained/.

* “Two Networks, Two Realities, One Big Problem.” Virginia Tech News, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Aug. 2023, https://news.vt.edu/articles/2023/08/eng-cs-two-networks--two-realities--one-big-problem.html.

* “Unpacking Media Bias in the Growing Divide between Cable and Network News.” Scientific Reports, vol. 15, 2025, www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-01046-7.

* “What ICE Agent’s Phone Video Reveals about Renee Good’s Shooting Death in Minneapolis.” CBC News, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 9 Jan. 2026, www.cbc.ca/news/world/ice-agent-shooting-video-minnesota-renee-good-9.7040480.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

Disclaimer: Due to several factors, I cannot publicly discuss at the moment, I felt compelled to re-release this article.

Note: This article was originally published on November 7, 2025, and has not been updated. The school closure and Hope Scholarship data may no longer be current.

They Made One Critical Error: They pissed off parents.

We’re the demographic that will spend 47 hours researching the best car seat. You think we won’t spend a weekend exposing who’s trying to destroy our kids’ schools?

We’re tired. We’re busy. We’re also angry. And, more motivated than 47 political operatives combine.

They Made a Calculation. We’re Making Them Pay For It.

The Koch network thought they could buy our politicians, dismantle our schools, and face no electoral consequences. They thought parents were too busy, too tired, too disconnected to fight back at the ballot box.

They were wrong.

This is not another policy analysis. This is not a gentle explanation of how privatization works. This is a declaration of war at the voting booth. Every candidate endorsed by Americans for Prosperity (AFP), every politician backed by ALEC, every official who takes Koch Network money while claiming to support public education—we’re coming for their seats.

They chose billionaire ideology over our children’s futures. We’re choosing to remove them from office.

Here’s how that started for me.

I was sitting at my kitchen table, working through the campaign finance data for what felt like the hundredth time. My high school senior across from me, filling out college applications and trying to figure out how to explain the gaps in their education—the programs that disappeared, the teachers who left, the opportunities that just vanished while politicians talked about “choice.”

And I realized: I can write all the policy analyses I want. I can document every funding cut, trace every dollar, map every connection between ALEC and AFP and the Koch network. I can educate people about managed decline and asymmetric regulation and the invisible doctrine.

But if we keep electing the same people who are implementing this destruction, my kids will graduate from a hollowed-out education system while I’m still explaining why it happened.

Understanding the problem is necessary. But it’s not sufficient.

They Handed Us the Evidence. We’re Using It.

You want to know the most beautiful irony in this entire fight? Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia (AFP-WV) publishes an annual Legislative Scorecard. They put it online for everyone to see. They’re proud of it.

The scorecard tracks which legislators vote for their agenda. They celebrate politicians who “empower people by removing government barriers to expand freedom, opportunity and prosperity.” That’s their language for dismantling public institutions and cutting government spending on things like, say, public education.

They think this scorecard makes them look transparent. They think it holds legislators accountable to them. They think it’s a tool to reward their allies and pressure their opponents.

They’re right about one thing: it’s a transparency tool.

But it’s about to become our transparency tool.

Every legislator with a high AFP-WV score? That’s a legislator who voted to defund our schools. Every politician they celebrate? That’s a politician who chose their agenda over our children. Every name they highlight as a champion? That’s a name we’re putting on our “vote against” list.

They built a searchable database of everyone who’s betrayed public education. They organized it by district. They made it easy to use.

So we’re using it.

When parents ask me who to vote for, I’m sending them to wvscorecard.com. Not because AFP-WV tells the truth about their agenda—they dress it up in freedom language while pushing privatization. But because their scorecard tells us exactly who’s implementing that agenda in our legislature.

High AFP-WV score? Voted to expand Hope Scholarships without fixing funding. Celebrated by ALEC? Supported school choice legislation that drained money from public schools. Praised by Koch-backed groups? Chose billionaire ideology over constituent needs.

They made it easy for us. They did the research. They tracked the votes. They published the results.

All we have to do is flip the meaning. Their honor roll becomes our hit list. Their celebration becomes our warning. Their scorecard becomes our voter guide.

They weaponized transparency to pressure politicians toward their agenda. We’re weaponizing that same transparency to remove those politicians from office.

The Disconnect I Finally Saw

Here’s what hit me that night at the kitchen table: every parent I know is furious about what’s happening to our schools. They’re angry about class sizes. They’re heartbroken about program cuts. They’re terrified about school closures.

But when election time comes, many of them vote for the exact candidates who are orchestrating this dismantling—because the connection isn’t visible.

Not because they don’t care. Not because they’re uninformed. But because the connection between the ballot box and the classroom isn’t visible. The line between a candidate’s endorsements and their education votes isn’t clear. The relationship between campaign funding and policy outcomes remains obscure.

We’ve been taught to look at candidates through a partisan lens—Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal. But that lens obscures what actually matters: is this candidate taking money from the organizations actively working to privatize public education, or aren’t they?

When AFP campaigns for a candidate, that’s not a partisan signal. It’s a policy signal. It tells you exactly what that candidate will do once elected.

When the ALEC endorses someone, they’re marking that person as loyal to their agenda—and their agenda is explicit: dismantle public education, expand school choice, reduce government spending on public institutions.

These endorsements are receipts. They’re evidence. They’re predictions.

And we need to start treating them that way.

Why This Became Personal in a New Way

I spent almost two decades in government work. I understand how policy gets made. I know how legislation moves from model bills written in think tanks to actual law passed in state capitols. I’ve seen the machinery up close.

But I hadn’t fully reckoned with how that machinery connects to what happens in my children’s actual school building.

The legislator who votes to expand Hope Scholarships without fixing the funding formula? They’re taking money from AFP-WV and getting endorsed by ALEC.

The politician who claims to support public education while gutting its budget? They’re receiving campaign contributions from Koch-aligned donors.

The official who talks about “parental choice” while creating a system that only works for wealthy families? They’re implementing ALEC model legislation almost word-for-word.

These aren’t coincidences. These are patterns.

And once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it. More importantly, once you see it, you have a responsibility to make it visible to other parents who are too busy surviving to do the research themselves.

The Accountability Gap That Demands Action

We have mechanisms for holding politicians accountable. Elections. But those mechanisms only work if voters have the information they need to make informed choices.

Right now, there’s a massive information gap.

Parents know their schools are struggling. They don’t necessarily know why. They can see the funding cuts, but they might not understand that those cuts are deliberate policy choices, not inevitable fiscal realities.

They see candidates talking about supporting education, but they don’t always know which candidates are funded by organizations whose explicit goal is education privatization.

They hear about “school choice” and “parental freedom” without necessarily understanding that these terms are marketing language for a coordinated campaign to defund and dismantle public education.

This information gap is not accidental. It’s strategic. The Koch network operates through a complex web of organizations precisely so that average voters won’t easily trace the connections. They use innocuous names like “Americans for Prosperity” and frame their agenda in language that sounds reasonable.

They’re counting on parents being too busy, too tired, too overwhelmed to dig through funding reports and track endorsements and connect the dots.

They’re counting on us not having time to do the research.

Well, I have the time. And I have the training. And I have the motivation—my kids’ futures are at stake.

So I’m doing the research. And I’m sharing it.

What I’m Actually Doing Now

This isn’t abstract anymore. This isn’t just policy analysis and community education. This is electoral accountability.

I’m tracking every endorsement from every Koch-aligned organization in West Virginia. Cardinal Institute, Americans for Prosperity, any group that’s part of the Stand Together network—if they endorse a candidate, I’m documenting it.

I’m building a database. I’m creating voter guides. I’m making the connections visible and accessible so that when parents go to vote, they know exactly which candidates have been purchased by billionaires who want to destroy public education.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: the Koch network thought their endorsements would provide cover. They thought putting their stamp of approval on candidates would legitimize them, would signal to conservative voters that these are “their” candidates.

But those endorsements can work against them if parents understand what they actually mean.

Every AFP-WV endorsement becomes a red flag for parents who care about public schools. Every ALEC stamp of approval marks a candidate as hostile to public education funding.

Their endorsements become our voter guide. Their support becomes our warning system.

They built the infrastructure to influence elections. We’re just using that infrastructure to inform voters about which candidates have sold out our children’s schools.

The Moral Framework I Can’t Escape

I keep coming back to this: there is no neutral ground here. There is no middle position where you adequately fund public education while also supporting the organizations that are systematically defunding it.

Either you believe public education is a public good that deserves robust funding, or you believe it should be privatized and subjected to market forces.

Either you believe elected officials should serve their constituents, or you believe billionaire donors should control policy through campaign funding.

Either you believe my fourth-grader with ADHD deserves the same quality education as a child whose parents can afford private school tuition, or you believe market mechanisms should determine who gets opportunities.

These aren’t policy disagreements. These are moral choices.

And when candidates accept funding from organizations whose explicit mission is to privatize public education, they’re making a moral choice. They’re choosing billionaire ideology over children’s futures.

Voters deserve to know about that choice. And then voters get to make their own choice in response.

Why This Is Different From Partisan Politics

I need to be clear about something: this is not about party affiliation. This is not about voting Democrat or Republican. This is about voting for or against the deliberate dismantling of public education.

There are Republicans who refuse Koch money and fight for public school funding. There are Democrats who support privatization. Party labels don’t tell you what you need to know.

But endorsements do. Campaign finance reports do. Voting records do.

When I create voter guides, I’m not telling people which party to support. I’m telling them which candidates are backed by the organizations actively working to destroy their children’s schools.

What they do with that information is up to them. But they deserve to have it.

The Urgency That Won’t Let Me Rest

My high school senior is graduating in six months. They’ve spent their entire K-12 experience watching public education in West Virginia decline. They’ve seen programs disappear, teachers leave, opportunities shrink.

They’re getting out just before it gets worse.

But my fourth-grader has eight more years in this system. Eight years during which the Hope Scholarship will continue draining resources. Eight years during which school closures will accelerate. Eight years during which the managed decline will intensify—unless we stop it.

We stop it through elections. That’s the mechanism we have. That’s the lever we can pull.

But only if we know which candidates to vote for and which to vote against. Only if we make the connection between ballot box and classroom. Only if we treat endorsements as evidence of allegiance.

I cannot sit at my kitchen table, understanding exactly how this system works, knowing exactly which organizations are funding which candidates, seeing exactly how the destruction is being implemented—and do nothing with that knowledge.

I can’t watch my fourth-grader’s gifted program disappear while staying quiet about which politicians enabled that disappearance.

I can’t watch my community’s schools close while keeping silent about who’s orchestrating those closures.

The policy analysis was step one. Community education is step two. Electoral accountability is step three.

And step three starts with making every endorsement visible, every funding connection clear, every vote consequence understood.

The Promise I’m Making

To every parent reading this: I’m doing the research so you don’t have to.

I’m tracking endorsements. I’m documenting funding. I’m creating guides that show you exactly which candidates are backed by the organizations dismantling our schools.

Before every election, you’ll have the receipts. You’ll know which candidates chose Koch money over your kids. You’ll know which politicians are implementing the ALEC playbook. You’ll know who’s actually fighting for public education and who’s just performing support while voting for privatization.

I’m making the invisible visible. I’m making the obscure obvious. I’m connecting the ballot box to the classroom.

Because you deserve to vote with full information. Because your children deserve elected officials who will protect their schools. Because we can’t fight this fight without political accountability.

Why This Work Matters More Than Ever

The dismantling is accelerating. Fifty-three schools closed already. Twenty-five more closures planned. The Hope Scholarship bleeding $245 million from public school budgets while serving primarily wealthy families who were already in private schools.

This isn’t slowing down. It’s intensifying.

And every election where we don’t hold these politicians accountable is another two or four years of decline. Another generation of children cheated out of the education they deserve. Another set of communities losing their schools while billionaires profit.

I started this work because an advertisement about financing groceries broke something open in my understanding. I continued it because I have the privilege of education and the responsibility to share what I learn.

I’m intensifying it now because my children’s schools are being destroyed while the people destroying them run for reelection unopposed by informed voters.

That changes now.

Every endorsement tracked. Every funding connection documented. Every voter informed about which candidates serve billionaires and which serve children.

This is how we save our schools. This is how we stop the dismantling. This is how we turn our understanding into action.

The ballot box is the lever. Knowledge is the power. Accountability is the mechanism.

Let’s use them.

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Preface

When I started this journey, I set out to do one thing: pull back the curtain on how government actually works. I wanted to show you what I saw during my decade as a legislative liaison—the real decisions, the real power, the real stakes. Season 1 was about understanding the machinery: how bills get written, how elections get administered, how money flows through campaigns, and how both parties often serve entrenched interests rather than the public good.​

But understanding the machinery isn’t enough. Knowing how the system works is only step one. The real question is: what happens when the system itself is under threat? What happens when the institutions that are supposed to protect us—Congress, the courts, the electoral process—start to weaken, to erode, to fail?

That’s what Season 2 is about. This isn’t just a continuation. It’s a deepening. We’re moving from understanding the system to understanding what’s happening to it. We’re tracing the slow erosion of mutual toleration, the breakdown of institutional forbearance, and the dangerous rise of executive power. We’re following the money that fuels this decay, and we’re looking at how these national trends play out right here in West Virginia and in your own backyard.​

Most importantly, we’re not just diagnosing the problem. We’re asking: what do we do now? How do we rebuild what’s been broken? How do we defend the institutions that matter?

Season 1 was about seeing clearly. Season 2 is about acting wisely. The stakes have never been higher. But neither has the opportunity to make a difference.

Democratic Institutions Under Siege

When I ended “Thinking Out Loud,” I made a simple argument: loyalty must be to institutions, not individuals. Politicians come and go. The system endures. And when you bend that system to serve a person instead of protecting the system itself, you break the only thing that stands between us and something worse.

That’s not abstract theory. It’s happening now. And it’s happening faster than most people realize.

The Two Things That Actually Protect Democracy

If you study how democracies die—and I mean really die, not just “the other side is winning the election”—you find two things repeatedly missing from systems that slip into authoritarianism. Political scientists call them “mutual toleration” and “institutional forbearance.”

Mutual toleration is simple: you acknowledge that your political opponents have the right to exist, to compete for power, and to govern. They’re not enemies. They’re rivals who follow the same rules you do. You don’t view losing an election as an existential threat. You view it as an inconvenience until the next election.

Institutional forbearance is the other half: even when you have the legal power to do something destructive, you don’t. You exercise restraint. You recognize that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. You leave things alone that technically fall within your authority because doing them would break norms that, once broken, can’t be put back together.

These aren’t laws. They’re not written in any statute. They’re the invisible threads that hold everything together.

And we’re watching them unravel.

What Breaking These Norms Actually Looks Like

Here’s the problem with studying democratic collapse: by the time it’s obvious, it’s too late. The machinery creaks before it breaks. Small violations become precedent. Exceptions become normal. One branch of government stops acting like a check and starts acting like a rubber stamp.

The current administration—at both federal and state levels—is moving through a playbook that’s been perfected elsewhere. And the speed matters. When norms are still strong, any attempt to break them triggers massive institutional pushback. Media outrage. Congressional investigations. Courts block it. Public alarm.

But each violation makes the next one slightly easier. Each precedent makes the next power grab slightly more defensible. “The last guy did it,” becomes the excuse. And suddenly, things that would have been unthinkable five years ago become routine.

At the federal level, we’re seeing:

Military troops deployed to police American civilians—something the Posse Comitatus Act was specifically written to prevent. Members of Congress arrested for conducting oversight. Federal agents detaining public officials for asking questions. The Justice Department prosecuting attorneys for representing clients. The FBI director recast as a political appointee, not an independent official. Courts and law firms being pressured through loss of security clearances and government contracts for defending people the administration doesn’t like.​

The rule of law isn’t being bent. It’s being shattered, piece by piece, in full view.

Congress—the branch explicitly designed to be the people’s voice, the body that holds the power of the purse—is weak. Weaker than it’s been in modern history. Legislative gridlock has gotten so bad that bills that should pass with overwhelming bipartisan support die quietly in committee. The filibuster has gone from being a tool for deliberation to being a veto weapon wielded by a minority. Between 2005 and 2015, the percentage of bills passed by Congress fell by two-thirds.​

A weak Congress creates demand for a strong executive. And when executives aren’t constrained by Congress, they fill the vacuum. That’s not a bug. That’s how authoritarianism works.

At the state level, the story is similar but often overlooked:

West Virginia’s governor is one of the most powerful in the nation. The legislature has essentially no ability to block executive orders. The governor controls the budget entirely, can call special sessions whenever he wants, and can even appoint successors to vacant legislative seats. And here’s the thing that should alarm you: the legislature that’s supposed to check this power is also starving. Three hundred fifty-two staff members serving 134 legislators—201 permanent staff positions for a body that’s supposed to be a co-equal branch of government. That’s threadbare.​

When an institution is that underfunded, that understaffed, that resource-limited, it can’t do its job. Members of the legislature can’t effectively investigate. They can’t hire specialized staff to analyze complex budgets or regulations. They rely more and more on information handed to them by the executive branch they’re supposed to be checking. It’s not conspiracy. It’s structural weakness being exploited.

The Partisan Double Standard

Here’s what breaks my heart about this: people across the political spectrum will support—and even celebrate—institutional erosion as long as their side is doing it.

When a president from your party uses executive power to bypass Congress, suddenly executive authority seems reasonable. When a president from the other party tries it, it’s tyranny. The same action. The exact same constitutional question. But the answer depends entirely on whose team is in charge.​

This is the death of institutional thinking. This is what happens when loyalty shifts from the system to the person running it.

We saw it with Trump’s first administration. Republicans who had spent eight years thundering about executive overreach under Obama suddenly went silent or worse—they cheered. Now we’re seeing it with Democrats who defended emergency powers and expanded executive authority under Biden, only to watch those same powers used in ways they find abhorrent.

The problem is: once you’ve normalized it, you can’t un-normalize it. The precedent exists. The next administration will use it. And the one after that. And eventually, you look back and wonder how you got to a place where the president can unilaterally do basically anything, and Congress is too weak, too divided, or too partisan to stop it.

That’s not democracy. That’s theater with a dictator.

Mutual Toleration Is Already Gone

I want to be clear about something: mutual toleration—the agreement that the other side has a right to exist and govern—is not just fraying. It’s dead.

One deputy national security official recently declared that the Democratic Party is not a legitimate political party but a “domestic extremist organization.” Not a policy disagreement. Not a difference of ideology. A categorical rejection of the other side’s right to exist in the political system.​

This matters because once you’ve decided your opponents are enemies rather than rivals, you stop respecting institutional boundaries. You prosecute them for things your own side does with impunity. You use federal agencies as weapons. You arrest them for political opposition. You declare them illegitimate so that crushing them doesn’t require justification.

And the terrifying part? Significant shares of both parties would support this behavior if it were directed at the other side. People know what they’re defending when it serves their interests, and what they’re attacking when it doesn’t.​

Where’s the Pushback?

You might be wondering: okay, but don’t courts stop this? Don’t institutional guardrails kick in? Doesn’t Congress push back?

Not as much as they used to. And here’s why:

Courts are too slow. Even when judges rule against the executive, the appeals process takes so long that the damage is already done. A court can strike down a policy a year from now, but if that policy was implemented yesterday, the harm is already spread through the system. The courts become, de facto, irrelevant.​

Congress is unwilling. This is the hardest one to say because it means accepting that our representatives—the ones we elected—are complicit. But it’s true. Congress has the power to push back on executive overreach. It can fund agencies or not fund them. It can pass laws or refuse to. It can hold hearings and subpoena documents. But increasingly, it doesn’t—especially when it’s their own party in the White House.​

When the Republican Congress is asked to investigate Republican overreach, they mostly don’t. When the Democratic Congress was asked to investigate Democratic overreach, they mostly didn’t. We’ve lost the institutional instinct to defend the system. We’ve replaced it with tribal loyalty.

The norms are already broken. This is the deepest problem. Breaking norms once was supposed to be so costly—politically and institutionally—that nobody would do it. But now that it’s been done? Now that the precedent exists? Now that half the country cheered when their team did it? The norm that protected against it is gone. You can’t restore a norm once it’s shattered. You can only build new constraints to replace it.

What This Looks Like Where You Live

I have spent a decade as a legislative liaison, operating in the space between county government and state power. You know what I learned? Everything that happens at the federal level—eventually—trickles down to the state and local level.

When the executive branch gets stronger and the legislature weaker at the federal level, the same thing happens in state capitals. Governors push harder. Legislatures push back less. The balance of power shifts. And suddenly, decisions that used to require public deliberation and democratic input are being made unilaterally, behind closed doors.

You see it in budget fights where governors veto entire budgets rather than negotiating with the legislature. You see it in executive orders that reorganize entire agencies without legislative approval. You see it in appointments made without the legislature’s say-so. You see it in regulatory agencies where the governor’s loyalty officers are placed instead of experienced civil servants.

And at the local level? County commissioners start operating like the governors operate. The pattern reproduces. Institutions weaken. Executive power grows. Democratic deliberation becomes theater.

This Is Reversible—But Only If We Act Like It Matters

Here’s what gives me any hope at all: this didn’t happen overnight. Norms didn’t shatter in a day. It took years of small violations, normalized exceptions, and partisan double standards. And that means—theoretically—it could be reversed.

But not if we keep doing what we’re doing.

Reversing institutional erosion requires something that’s become almost extinct: people who are willing to defend institutions even when it costs them politically. It requires Congress to investigate their own party. It requires executives to exercise restraint even when they have the power to act unilaterally. It requires judges to move faster and courts to take institutional questions seriously. It requires citizens to care more about whether the system works than about whether their team wins.

It requires, in other words, institutional forbearance. Mutual toleration. A return to the idea that protecting the system is more important than any single victory.

I don’t know if we still have people willing to do that. I honestly don’t. But I know what happens if we don’t: we find out what it looks like when the only thing protecting you from tyranny disappears.

And by then, it’s too late to rebuild it.

The Thing You Need to Understand

When I talk about loyalty to institutions, I’m not being sentimental. I’m not being nostalgic for some golden age when politics was noble. Politics has always been about power. But for the last seventy years, that power was constrained by invisible threads—norms, expectations, precedent, and mutual agreement that there are some lines you just don’t cross.

Those lines are being erased. And the people erasing them are doing it in the open, defending it as strength.

That’s not strength. That’s the sound of the system dying.

My job—the thing I’m trying to do in everything I write—is to make sure people understand that this is happening. Not in abstract, theoretical terms. But in concrete, practical terms: This is how the machinery actually works. This is what’s breaking. This is why it matters.

Because once you see the system clearly, once you understand that it’s not broken but being broken, you have a choice. You can accept it. You can rationalize it. You can tell yourself that at least your side is winning.

Or you can decide that the system itself matters more than any team. That institutions are what protect everyone, including you, from being crushed by whoever has power today.

The choice is still ours. But the window for making it is closing faster than most people realize.

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There’s something about a decade in the legislative trenches that changes how you see things. I got my degree in Public Policy Analysis from the University of Charleston, but the real education started when I became a legislative liaison for the Kanawha County Commission in 2008. For ten years—through 2018—I watched how government actually works, not the textbook version, but the version with lobbyists, campaign money, and backroom deals that shape bills long before the public even hears about them.

That’s where I learned to tell the difference between real legislative movement and political theater. And honestly? Once you see the machinery from up close, you can’t unsee it.

The honest truth is that I’ve spent years working outside partisan bubbles, watching from the sidelines, and becoming deeply skeptical of both parties’ claims. What I saw taught me that the system isn’t broken—it’s working exactly as designed. It’s designed to protect entrenched interests, not to empower new voices or respond to grassroots movements. That matters. That’s the whole ballgame.

People sometimes ask me what you learn in that role. It’s not glamorous work. You’re monitoring legislation, analyzing bills, serving as the bridge between local government and the state legislature. You have to stay ahead of policy changes, understand what they mean for your county, and communicate those impacts clearly to both the people running government and the people living in your community.

But here’s what it teaches you: priorities have to be rooted in both practical reality and long-term vision.

I learned to distinguish between bills that would actually affect people’s lives and those that were mostly about political messaging. Some bills sound good. They test well. They get people talking. But when you trace through what would actually happen when they became law—who would implement them, what resources would be needed, what unintended consequences might follow—suddenly that good-sounding bill looks a lot different.

I became obsessed with transparency, accountability, and community engagement. I saw how easily decisions made behind closed doors could reshape everything from school funding to healthcare access. The further you zoom out from individual bills, the more you realize that the real power lies in understanding how broader trends in policy, money, and power will ripple through your community.

That shifts your whole approach. You stop reacting to bills one at a time. You start anticipating. You build coalitions. You educate the public about how government actually works. And you learn—really learn—that lasting change doesn’t come from grand gestures or partisan victories. It comes from persistent, strategic work that nobody’s watching, done by people committed to process over personality.

Before that job, I thought about policy in a more theoretical way. Broad ideas, big principles. But when you’re actually responsible for how legislation lands in people’s lives, everything becomes concrete. Policy isn’t about what sounds good. It’s about what actually improves people’s lives on the ground.

I started asking different questions. Not just: “What does this bill say?” But: What will actually happen? Who benefits? Who gets hurt? What does it cost in real terms? And what resources do we actually have to make this work?

I learned to prioritize issues with direct, measurable effects on constituents—healthcare access, education funding, economic opportunity—over symbolic or partisan wins. That’s not to say symbols don’t matter. They do. But symbols don’t fix broken things. Work fixes broken things.

This experience also made me strategic in ways I wasn’t before. I learned to anticipate implementation challenges before a bill even passed. I learned to see which policies were driven by evidence and community input, and which ones were driven by expediency and political calculation. The distinction matters because one kind of policy actually lasts.

Here’s what I’m certain about: loyalty must be to institutions, not individuals.

Politicians are temporary. They serve their terms, they make their deals, and they leave. Some are great. Some are terrible. But they all eventually walk out the door.

The institutions they inhabit—the legislature, the courts, the electoral process—those are what endure. They’re the scaffolding of our democracy. They’re the only things standing between organized society and chaos. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s just true.

My entire career has been loyalty to those institutions. I believe in the process, even when it’s messy. I believe in the rules, even when they’re inconvenient. Because I know what happens when you start bending institutions to serve people: you break the only thing that protects us all.

The opportunistic—the consultants, the fixers, the partisan warriors—they’re different. Their loyalty is transactional. They attach themselves to politicians like barnacles to a ship, riding the wave of power as long as it lasts. They don’t care if the hull is rotting, as long as they get to the destination. And here’s the scary part: they will burn down an institution to save a candidate, because to them, the candidate is the point.

But that’s backwards. The candidate is not the point. The candidate is temporary.

The point is the system that allows us to govern ourselves without violence. The point is the rule of law. The point is the promise that no matter who’s in charge today, the structure will be there tomorrow. That institutions are stronger than any single person.

I don’t see politics as red versus blue. I see it as a complex ecosystem where power, money, and influence intersect. Understanding that machinery—how bills get written, how elections get administered, how money flows through campaigns—isn’t about making you cynical. It’s about making you strategic.

The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed. My hope is that by understanding that design, we can start to unrig it.

That’s what I’m thinking about when I write. I’m thinking about my daughter. I want her to see the system for what it really is—not to feel hopeless about it, but to know how to navigate it, how to push it, and how to protect the institutions that matter when people who don’t understand them try to break them for power.

That’s what “thinking out loud” means to me. It’s rigorous analysis grounded in real experience. It’s healthy skepticism of both parties. And it’s an unshakeable belief that understanding how power works is the first step toward wielding it responsibly.

Get full access to Carrie Clendening at carrieclendening.substack.com/subscribe

Season 1

* Article 1 - Welcome To Permanent Campaign Mode

* Article 2 - THE PLAYBOOK: A Torrent of Propaganda

* Article 3 - The PAC Problem: How Ideological Kingmakers Took Over Primaries

* Article 4 - How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made and Why Understanding this Machinery Matters

* Article 5 - Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner: A Case Study in Conservative Partnership Institute‘s State Election Takeover Strategy

* Article 6 - The Ranked Choice Voting Gambit - Why Extremists Fear Ranked Ballots

* Article 7 - Buckley v. Valeo: The 1976 Decision That Built America’s Dark Money Architecture

* Article 8 - We Want Your Vote, Just Not Your Voice

* Article 9 - When Silicon Valley Meets Appalachia: The Systematic Failure of Campaign Technology in Rural America

I need you to picture something for me.

It’s October 2024. A canvasser from Virginia—let’s call him Tyler—is sitting in the parking lot of a Dollar General in rural West Virginia. His iPhone 15 Pro Max has been reduced to an expensive paperweight. The Campaign Sidekick app, which requires 50 Mbps download speeds to function correctly (that’s 4K video streaming bandwidth, for reference), is buffering endlessly on his 3 Mbps connection. Tyler has 847 doors left on his quota for the week.

So Tyler does what any rational economic actor would do when faced with an impossible task and the threat of losing his hotel room: he downloads a GPS spoofing app and starts “knocking” doors from the comfort of his Nissan Altima.

This is not a hypothetical. This is what the data shows happened at industrial scale across battleground states in 2024.

And here’s the thing—the fraud was predictable. It wasn’t a glitch in an otherwise functional system. It was the system working exactly as designed, which is to say: a system designed for a reality that doesn’t exist in the places that decide elections.

Welcome to the infrastructure hallucination.

The $290 Million Canvassing Scandal You Barely Heard About

Let’s start with what we can verify, because unlike the voter models I’m about to eviscerate, I believe in showing my work.

Elon Musk poured approximately $290 million into the 2024 election through America PAC—more than any individual donor in American history. Of that, $54 million went to a single canvassing vendor called Blitz Canvassing, more than the PAC spent on its three other vendors combined.

Here’s what that $54 million bought:

In Arizona, on a single day (October 16, 2024), 8,511 out of 35,692 door knocks—23.8%—were flagged as suspicious by the Campaign Sidekick app’s own fraud detection. The pattern was accelerating: October 15 showed 20.1% suspicious, October 16 hit 23.8%, October 17 reached 26.9%.

In Nevada, more than 46,000 suspicious entries were logged in a single week.

How were workers gaming the system? A bootleg instructional video obtained by multiple news outlets explained the technique: “I’d say it’s 30 to 40 seconds [for] each house... You just keep bouncing between houses. And you don’t want to go too fast. You want to make it look realistic.”

(I want you to sit with that last sentence. You want to make it look realistic. The canvassing industrial complex has reached the point where workers are coaching each other on how to fake door-knocking convincingly enough to fool the algorithm. We have achieved a kind of perverted optimization—not for voter contact, but for the appearance of voter contact.)

The human cost was documented through WIRED Magazine’s audio recordings and leaked contracts. Workers were told they’d lose their hotel rooms if they didn’t hit quotas. They were transported in U-Haul vans without seats or seatbelts. They faced requirements of 1,000+ doors per week with “engagement rate” minimums of 17-22%.

The incentive structure made fraud inevitable. Pay per door. Quotas that exceed human capacity. Infrastructure that literally cannot support the technology. Supervisors threatening housing.

This wasn’t a rogue operation. This was the best-funded ground game in Republican history, and nearly a quarter of it was fake.

“But Wait,” I Hear You Say, “That’s a Republican Problem”

Oh, honey. No.

The Democratic Party spent $37.9 million on NGP VAN in the 2022 cycle alone—verified through OpenSecrets FEC expenditure analysis. This is the software backbone of every Democratic canvassing operation in America.

A 2023 DNC memo described the system as “inflexible, slow and unreliable, particularly during periods of peak use.”

(Pause to appreciate the euphemism. “Periods of peak use” means “elections.” The voter contact software crashes during elections. This is like an umbrella that works great except when it rains.)

But the software failures are almost beside the point. The deeper problem is what the software is trying to do: deploy urban consumer data models to predict rural political behavior.

Let me show you what that looks like in practice.

The McDowell Paradox: Knocking on Ghosts’ Doors

If you ran a standard Democratic targeting query for “Likely Democrats” in McDowell County, West Virginia today, the algorithm would light up like a Christmas tree.

The Registration Reality: As of December 2025, Democrats still hold a registration advantage in McDowell— 5,071 Democrats versus 3,080 Republican and 2,421 No Party Affiliation (NPA).

The Election Reality: Donald Trump won the county with 79.45% of the vote.

The model sees “Registered Democrat.” It infers “Persuadable.” It generates a walk list. A canvasser drives four hours from Northern Virginia to knock on that door.

The human answering that door? They haven’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton. They’re registered Democrat because their grandfather marched at Blair Mountain in 1921. They have a “Friends of Coal” license plate on their truck and a MAGA flag on their porch.

The algorithm cannot see the plate or the flag. It only sees the “D.”

The model is effectively targeting ghosts.

This isn’t a West Virginia problem. It’s an Appalachian problem. It’s a coal country problem. And until someone explains to the data scientists in Brooklyn that registration is not identity in post-industrial America, campaigns will keep burning cash in a fire barrel.

The “Ancestral Democrat” Phenomenon: When Your Voter File Is 30 Years Out of Date

Here’s the timeline of West Virginia’s political reality versus its registration reality:

2000: Gore wins West Virginia. (Just kidding—Gore loses West Virginia, and that’s part of why he lost the presidency. But Democrats still have a massive registration advantage.)

2016: Democrats hold a 175,867 voter registration advantage in West Virginia. Trump wins the state with 68.5% of the vote.

2020: Biden loses West Virginia by 39 points. Democrats still hold a registration advantage.

2025: Republicans finally—finally—overtake Democrats in registration, 42.38% to 28.27%.

It took nearly 25 years for the registration to catch up to the voting behavior.

Now multiply this across every coal county in central Appalachia:

Eastern Kentucky: Breathitt County maintained 79-81% Democratic registration through 2024 while voting overwhelmingly Republican. Knott County: 73-77% Democratic registration. Pike County had 34,464 registered Democrats versus 11,178 Republicans in 2014, yet Trump dominated.

Southwest Virginia: Former Congressman Rick Boucher, who represented VA-9 from 1983-2011, told VPM: “In Buchanan County I used to get more than 80% of the vote in some of those heavy coal precincts. That was routine, election after election.” Buchanan County now gives Republicans 80%+ margins. A complete inversion.

Rural Pennsylvania: Cambria County (Johnstown) shifted from a 12,622 Democratic registration majority in the 1990s to 45,000 Republicans versus 32,000 Democrats by 2024. Westmoreland County has seen nearly 40,000 voters move from Democratic to Republican registration since 2016—representing almost half of Biden’s entire winning margin in Pennsylvania in 2020.

The data scientists look at this and see a “puzzle.” I look at it and see a crime scene where the body was moved twenty years ago, but the consultants are still taping off the wrong house.

The Data is Wrong (And We’ve Known This for Years)

The Pew Research Center published a landmark study in February 2018—before the 2018 midterms, before the 2020 election, before the 2022 cycle, before the 2024 disaster—documenting exactly how broken commercial voter files are:

* Household income was missing or inaccurate 63% of the time on average across major vendor files

* Education level was missing or inaccurate 48% of the time

* Only 42% of voters appeared in all five major commercial files tested

Think about what this means. When a campaign buys “high-income college-educated suburban women” as a targeting segment, they’re working with data that’s wrong on income 63% of the time and wrong on education 48% of the time.

You might as well flip a coin.

(Actually, flipping a coin might be better. At least you wouldn’t pay Experian for the privilege.)

But here’s where it gets really damning. A 2023 MIT study by Tappin, Wittenberg, Hewitt, Berinsky, and Rand asked a simple question: does sophisticated microtargeting actually work better than basic targeting?

The finding: Targeting based on a single variable (party affiliation) is 70% more effective than generic ads. But adding sophisticated “microtargeting” variables—all those expensive data overlays from Catalist and L2 and Experian—adds zero additional persuasive value.

Zero.

Campaigns are paying millions for complexity that yields nothing.

As David Rand, one of the study’s authors, put it: “We didn’t find much evidence that microtargeting works. We found we got just as much persuasive advantage from targeting based on just one attribute as we did targeting on more attributes.”

The consultants get their 10-15% commission on data buys whether the data works or not. (That’s an industry-standard rate, verified through the Center for Public Integrity and Johns Hopkins research.) The canvassing vendors get paid per door, even if the door doesn’t exist. The only people losing are the candidates and the voters who are being modeled by algorithms designed for a different reality.

The Friends of Coal Hack: Analog Viral Marketing in a Digital World

While Silicon Valley was trying to figure out how to microtarget voters with cookies, the coal industry executed one of the most brilliant analog cultural hacks in political history.

They didn’t use an app. They used license plates.

The “Friends of Coal” campaign launched in West Virginia in 2002. But they didn’t just buy ads. They created an identity layer to replace the dying United Mine Workers of America.

The mechanism:

* License plates: 97% of the organization’s revenue comes from those ubiquitous black “Friends of Coal” plates. They literally bolted the identity to the back of the pickup truck.

* The Bowl: They sponsored the “Friends of Coal Bowl” (WVU vs. Marshall) for seven years, branding the state’s civil war.

* The Vacuum: When the union halls closed, “Friends of Coal” offered a new tribe.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting quoted historian Richard Mulchay describing it as “a kind of company union”—an industry-funded group that created collective identity and alliance between employers and workers.

There is no column in NGP VAN for “Has a Friends of Coal license plate.”

That visual marker is probably the single most predictive data point in the state, and it is completely invisible to the digital model. The data consultants are modeling West Virginia voters based on whether they subscribe to The New Yorker or shop at Target (they don’t), while ignoring the giant cultural flag literally attached to their vehicles.

The Infrastructure Reality: Where the App Dies

We’ve established that Campaign Sidekick requires 50 Mbps to function properly. Let’s look at what exists in coal country:

The Appalachian Regional Commission reports 86.2% of Appalachian households have broadband subscriptions—3.5 percentage points below the national average. That gap might sound small until you realize it represents over a hundred counties where subscription rates fall below 80%.

In West Virginia specifically, 35.9% lack internet service entirely and 30% cannot purchase plans meeting the basic 25/3 Mbps federal standard.

Here’s where the numbers get wild. The FCC claimed in 2020 that only 14.5 million rural Americans lacked broadband access. Microsoft, using actual usage data from Windows, Xbox, and Office (not provider self-reports), found the real number was 120.4 million—more than a third of the country.

The discrepancy exists because FCC maps use census-block granularity. If one house in a census block has service, the entire block is marked “served.” The FCC is essentially counting people as having access because their neighbor has access.

This is the foundation upon which tens of millions of dollars of campaign technology is built.

When Tyler from Virginia drives to West Virginia to “save democracy,” his iPhone turns into a paperweight the moment he leaves the town center. He switches to offline mode. The GPS timestamping fails. The real-time verification vanishes. The data becomes garbage.

And then someone in Brooklyn looks at the canvassing numbers and thinks the ground game is working.

The Tale of Two West Virginias

Here’s the cruelest joke: the data models do work. In one place.

Monongalia County (Morgantown/WVU):

* Registration: Nearly split (as of December 2025, 22,802 Dem / 22,452 Rep / 19,029 NPA)

* 2024 Vote: Trump 50.88% / Harris 46.46%

Monongalia is an academic hub with transient students, active consumers, and reliable broadband. The “Digital Twin” matches the human. The voter file reflects reality. The canvassing app functions. The targeting works.

The trap: Consultants see the Monongalia data matching their models and assume the rest of the state is just an outlier. They don’t realize Monongalia is the outlier—an island of legible data in a sea of dark matter.

This is why the Democratic establishment keeps getting blindsided. They test their models in places where the models work, then deploy them to places where the models are worse than useless.

It’s like testing your submarine in a swimming pool and being surprised when it fails in the ocean.

When Did They Know? (Spoiler: They’ve Known Forever)

Katherine Cramer’s field research in Wisconsin from 2007-2012—published in 2016 as The Politics of Resentment—documented growing rural distrust of urban-based Democratic politics before Trump was a political figure. She found rural voters who felt “distrustful that politicians will respect the distinct values of their communities.”

This was published before the 2016 election.

The 2018 “Hope from the Heartland” report (the Bustos Report), based on 72 interviews across 8 heartland states, found “the number of Democrats holding office across the nation is at its lowest point since the 1920s and the decline has been especially severe in rural America.”

A 2025 academic paper quantified the organizational collapse: since 2016, the Democratic Party has failed to declare a party chair in about 20% of rural counties. Democratic vacancies in rural counties are six times higher than Republican vacancies. Counties without Democratic chairs experienced up to 8 percentage-point drops in voter turnout.

The DNC completed a comprehensive 2024 autopsy with “hundreds of interviews with people from all 50 states.”

In December 2025, they announced they would not release the report.

(Let that sink in. They did the work. They know what went wrong. They are choosing not to tell anyone.)

Leaks from the suppressed autopsy indicated it “questioned the efficacy of peer-to-peer text messaging in influencing voters, as well as door-knocking quotas.”

In other words: the autopsy confirms what I’ve been telling you. The entire canvassing-industrial complex is optimized for the wrong metrics.

The Commission Structure: Why Nothing Changes

Here’s the part where we follow the money.

Political consultants earn a standard 10-15% commission on advertising buys. This is verified through the Center for Public Integrity and Johns Hopkins research. Some firms take as high as 15%; even major presidential campaigns with leverage rarely negotiate below 4.5%.

Think about what this incentivizes.

If you’re a consultant and you have a choice between recommending a $10 million TV buy (which earns you $1-1.5 million in commission) or a $10 million investment in ground-game infrastructure (which earns you nothing), what do you recommend?

Academic research by Martin and Peskowitz (2018) documented exactly this dynamic. The commission structure creates systematic incentive misalignment favoring TV advertising over canvassing—even when ground-game activities would be more effective.

This is why nothing changes. The people who would need to change the system are the same people who profit from the system staying exactly as broken as it is.

The canvassing vendors get paid per door whether the door exists or not. The data vendors get paid whether the data is accurate or not. The consultants get paid whether the campaign wins or not.

The only people with skin in the game are the candidates and the voters. And neither of them is in the room when these decisions get made.

What Would Have to Change

I don’t want to leave you in pure despair, so let me sketch what functional rural outreach would actually look like:

1. Kill the quota system. Pay for quality contact, not quantity of doors. The moment you incentivize volume over value, you get fraud.

2. Design for offline-first. Any canvassing technology deployed in rural America needs to work with zero connectivity and sync when bandwidth is available. The current apps are designed for Brooklyn, not Barbour County.

3. Use registration as a negative screen, not a positive one. In Appalachian counties with major registration-voting divergence, a “D” next to someone’s name should trigger more investigation, not automatic targeting. What’s their primary voting history? When did they last vote in a Democratic primary?

4. Add cultural markers to the model. I’m only half-joking about the Friends of Coal license plates. But bumper stickers, yard signs, church attendance, union membership (or former membership)—these are all more predictive than household income data that’s wrong 63% of the time.

5. Rebuild county party infrastructure. You cannot run a ground game without local people who know the terrain. Democratic chair vacancies are six times higher than Republican vacancies in rural counties. That’s not a data problem; it’s an abandonment problem.

6. Change the consultant compensation model. As long as TV commissions are the profit center, TV will be the recommendation. Tie consultant compensation to electoral outcomes, not media spend.

Will any of this happen?

I’ll believe it when I see the DNC release that autopsy.

The Verdict

The Democratic Party is spending millions to knock on the doors of people who have a “D” next to their name in the courthouse basement but have a “Friends of Coal” plate on their truck and a MAGA flag on their porch.

The Republican Party is spending millions on canvassing operations where 25% of door knocks are fake.

Both parties are paying data vendors for voter files that are missing or inaccurate on income 63% of the time and education 48% of the time.

Both parties are deploying technology that requires 50 Mbps to regions where 30% of households can’t get 25 Mbps.

Both parties are using models built on MIT research that shows sophisticated microtargeting adds zero persuasive value over simple party-based targeting.

And the consultants keep getting paid either way.

Trump doubled his rural vote advantage from 15 points in 2020 to 30 points in 2024. Whatever the campaigns are doing, it isn’t working—unless the goal was never to contact voters in the first place, but to create the appearance of contacting voters while the commission checks clear.

I’ve seen behind this particular curtain. The data consultants look at West Virginia and see a “puzzle.” I look at it and see a crime scene where the body was moved twenty years ago, but everyone’s still taping off the wrong house.

The algorithm can’t see the license plate on the back of the truck. Until it can—or until someone decides to just ask the people who live there what they think—we’ll keep watching campaigns pour millions into infrastructure that was never designed for the terrain where elections are decided.

The infrastructure hallucination continues.

Notes:

All claims in this article are verified through primary sources including FEC filings, Pew Research Center data, MIT academic publications, NBC News and Guardian investigative reporting, and Appalachian Regional Commission statistics. Specific citations available upon request.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Season 1

* Article 1 - Welcome To Permanent Campaign Mode

* Article 2 - THE PLAYBOOK: A Torrent of Propaganda

* Article 3 - The PAC Problem: How Ideological Kingmakers Took Over Primaries

* Article 4 - How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made and Why Understanding this Machinery Matters

* Article 5 - Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner: A Case Study in Conservative Partnership Institute‘s State Election Takeover Strategy

* Article 6 - The Ranked Choice Voting Gambit - Why Extremists Fear Ranked Ballots

* Article 7 - Buckley v. Valeo: The 1976 Decision That Built America’s Dark Money Architecture

* Article 8 - We Want Your Vote, Just Not Your Voice

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

Today, we need to talk about closed primaries. More specifically: what happened in West Virginia, why the Republican Party closed their primary to no party affiliation voters, and the very strange follow-up that basically amounted to, “We don’t want your voice — but hey, join our team.” Okay, let’s get into it.

So, first things first: terminology. This is boring but important, so stay with me for a second. In West Virginia there is no “Independent” registration box. When you don’t check Republican or Democrat, you’re registered as no party affiliation — NPA. That’s not a third party. It’s not a mysterious faction. It’s literally opting out of the party system.

Yeah. It matters. Seriously. Because party officials keep getting this wrong. Chairman Josh Holstein’s outreach called a lot of these voters “independent” or “unaffiliated,” and the newsletter asked those people to switch to Republican. But the form they fill out has the words “no party affiliation” on it. So either he doesn’t know the terminology, or he’s softening it on purpose. Either way, it’s... telling.

Here’s the timeline. January 2024: the state Republican executive committee voted 65 to 54 to close their primaries starting in 2026. After 38 years of letting NPA voters participate, they decided to close the gates. The rationale given was... mixed. Some said NPA voters were being swayed by shiny mailers; others claimed Democrats were registering NPA to mess with Republican primaries — though nobody’s shown that happening at any meaningful scale.

Yeah. You heard that right. They argued NPA voters were too easily influenced, then, later, asked those same voters to register with the Republican Party. It’s like telling someone they can’t sit at the table, then handing them a plate and asking them to eat.

Delegate Jim Butler said that NPA voters “will vote for candidates that have the shiniest piece of mail or best TV ad.” Senator Eric Tarr said Democrats had been switching to no party affiliation to “mess with” Republican primaries. And Senator Jack Woodrum — he said the quiet part out loud: “Independent voters have been with the Republican Party for years. We cannot take the right from them to vote in primary elections. Now that we’re in the supermajority, we can’t just kick them to the curb.” Then, well — they kicked them to the curb anyway.

Hang on — that contradiction matters. The rhetoric was basically: ‘We need to protect our party from outside influence.’ But then, fast forward to December 2025, and a state Republican newsletter lands in inboxes asking NPA voters — again, they called them “Independent” or “Unaffiliated” — to please switch to Republican if they believe in Republican values. Chairman Holstein announced a “very intense public outreach campaign” to recruit these voters. You see the disconnect?

I mean… it’s almost comical if it weren’t so purposeful. You literally close the primary to NPA voters and then send them an invitation to join the party. It’s like you barred the front door, walked out the side door, and then—you know—typed an Evite.

There’s a county response worth noting. The Monongalia County Republican Executive Committee passed a resolution in December calling for the state party to reverse course. Chairman Dale Sparks said, and I quote, “There are a lot of people who don’t want to check a box, and we’re alienating them.” That’s real. Some local Republicans saw that closing the primary could actually hurt turnout by pushing people away.

Okay, I’ll get personal for a second. Full disclosure: in December 2025, I changed my registration to Republican. Why? Because in West Virginia the primary is where most races are decided. The general election is often a formality. If the Republican primary is the only election that matters, I’m not going to be locked out. So yes — I checked the box. But let me be clear: that registration change says nothing about my actual political beliefs.

You’re not alone if you do the same. Rumor—and it’s a loud rumor—says a lot of NPA voters are doing the exact same calculation: register Republican to access the primary, vote however you want in November, and let the party claim you on their roster while you… you know, mentally file them under ‘not mine.’

Right — and here’s the kicker: parties run on data. The whole targeting and turnout machinery assumes a registered Republican is at least likely to vote Republican. They spend time and money based on that assumption. So if a big chunk of those new Republicans are actually NPA voters gaming the system to access a primary, suddenly your data is garbage. You’re relying on bad input.

Congratulations, you played yourself. That’s essentially what’s happening. You incentivize people to lie on a registration form for access, and now your voter models, your messaging, your allocation of resources—none of it is as meaningful as you think.

It’s worth spelling out the mechanics: the parties want your registration. They want to claim you, show growing membership numbers, and then point to those numbers when they ask for donations, volunteers, and votes in November. But they don’t want your say in choosing candidates. That’s the irony.

So what’s the actual game? Parties close primaries to reduce ‘outsider’ influence and concentrate the power to pick candidates among their core voters. But then they also want the November turnout numbers that look robust, so they recruit the same voters they just excluded. The result is the party gets the registration—on paper—but not necessarily loyalty or meaningful engagement.

Some people say ‘Why not just join?’ Well, that’s the point. A lot of NPA voters registered as such because they looked at both parties and decided neither deserved their allegiance. That’s not a marketing problem to be fixed with nicer newsletters. That’s a verdict.

And this isn’t just West Virginia. There’s a national pattern. Wyoming reacted to that Cheney-Hageman primary drama by seeing about 16,000 voters switch from Democrat to Republican. The reaction was to pass a law requiring you to register with a party 96 days before the primary—before candidates even file. That’s basically shutting the door early.

Texas Republicans? They’re currently suing to close their primaries entirely. Chairman Abraham George compared open primaries to ‘letting Eagles players choose the Cowboys’ quarterback.’ It’s a sports metaphor trying very hard to make sense, and it doesn’t, if you think about it beyond three seconds.

Pennsylvania has had closed primaries for 88 years. That locks out 1.4 million unaffiliated voters. A lawsuit was filed in December by a group of voters, including commentator Michael Smerconish. Florida? There are 3.6 million no party affiliation voters—27% of the electorate—who can’t participate in primaries. In 2020 a ballot measure to open primaries got 57% approval but needed 60% to pass. Both parties opposed it. Both parties. Right.

The irony is thick: both parties talk about being a ‘big tent’ and welcoming different perspectives, but their systems say, ‘You’re welcome to vote for us in November, but you don’t get to help pick who we are.’ That’s a different message.

Let’s talk numbers for a beat from what we have: in West Virginia, there were 304,174 no party affiliation voters as of November 2025. Republican registered voters were at 507,884 in November 2025. Chairman Holstein acknowledged the closed primary ‘probably has something to do with it.’ Well, yeah.

Nationally, Gallup says 43% of Americans identify as unaffiliated with either major party. Among millennials and Generation Z, that number is 52%. Those are not small groups. They’re growing, and they’re not waiting around for a better slogan to woo them.

People keep asking: are unaffiliated voters actually undecided, or are they deliberate in their independence? The data we have suggests a deliberate choice. For many, it’s a judgment call after watching both parties over time and deciding neither deserves allegiance. These are not people waiting to be convinced by better messaging—they’ve made a judgment.

Which brings us back to the recruitment emails. They’re weird because they reveal the party’s priorities. They want registration numbers. They want to claim people. But they seem less interested in actually letting those people participate in candidate selection unless those people formally join the club.

There’s also the local politics angle. Monongalia County Republicans noticed the contradiction and asked the state party to rethink. Dale Sparks said the party was alienating folks who simply don’t want to check a box. That’s a warning sign from inside the party, not just outside it.

So what do voters do? Some sit out. Some register strategically. Some, like me, check the box to participate in the crucial primary. But—importantly—many plan to vote however they like in November. Registering Republican as an access credential doesn’t make someone a loyal party soldier.

And that’s where the ‘data problem’ becomes tactical pain. Parties rely on registration as a proxy for preference. But when registration becomes a tactical move—an access pass—that proxy breaks. Targeting models, turnout forecasts, and messaging priorities all assume the accuracy of that proxy. It’s a house of cards if the proxy is fake.

You wanted us on your team. You got us on your roster. Not the same thing. That’s the short version.

I know I sound cynical. But I also think voters are smarter than parties give them credit for. If the party is going to try to have it both ways—exclude NPA from primaries and then recruit them for registration numbers—voters will respond in a way that makes that strategy self-defeating. Data will be polluted, and the party will notice eventually.

Let me tell you this: 70% of unaffiliated voters tell pollsters both parties are ‘too extreme.’ 77% call their exclusion from primaries ‘unfair.’ Those are huge numbers. That’s not confusion; that’s a broad perception of exclusion and extremity that parties ignore at their peril.

Here’s a thought experiment: imagine you run a customer loyalty program, but customers can’t influence product decisions unless they pay for a premium membership. Then you close the free voting booth and ask them to sign up. Some will sign up. Some will play the system. Your membership numbers will spike — but your customer feedback will vanish because people signed up for access, not because they love your brand. The same thing is happening here.

By the way — the parties claim this is about ‘party integrity.’ That’s political-speak for gatekeeping. They want a reliable electorate in primaries who will choose candidates aligned with internal priorities. That’s—on the face of it—an understandable interest. But the result of these rules and recruitment pushes is that party registration becomes a hollow credential for access instead of a meaningful measure of loyalty.

Which raises a bigger question: what does party membership mean in 2025? If almost half of the electorate identifies as unaffiliated, and that number is even higher among young people, then parties that insist on closed systems are increasingly out of step with how Americans see political identity. They’re trying to have the cake and eat it too.

Look, I don’t think parties are evil masterminds plotting to deceive voters. Most of this is logic-driven: the party elite sees risk and uses rules to control that risk. But rules that lean heavily toward exclusion have consequences they either don’t want to see or don’t understand.

And when party officials can’t even get the terminology right—calling NPA voters ‘independent’—it suggests a real lack of understanding about who these voters are or why they chose to opt out. That matters because recruitment targeting that treats NPA voters like an undifferentiated mass is going to fail.

Let’s talk about outcomes for a second. If the parties succeed in pushing NPA voters to join but those voters remain transactional—checking the box to access a primary—what happens? You get inflated membership numbers, noisier data, wasted resources on outreach that assumes loyalty, and, potentially, worse candidate selection because the party is relying on bad signals.

I want to emphasize this: the parties didn’t just accidentally create this incentive. Closing primaries and then recruiting NPA voters is a deliberate policy mix. And it shows a short-term thinking: get the registration numbers now, worry about the quality of engagement later. But ‘later’ is where campaigns live. That’s when you need reliable volunteers, donors, and consistent voters.

It’s also worth noting that when NPA voters register to access the primary, they risk being miscast in future targeting. A campaign might shove an expensive, ideologically aligned ad at you because the model says you’re a Republican, even though you registered only to vote in May. That’s a waste of campaign dollars—and it’s frustrating for the voter.

You see? This becomes a feedback loop of waste. Parties waste money chasing phantom supporters; voters get annoyed; trust declines; and the very thing parties say they want—engaged, loyal members—becomes rarer.

All right — a final practical point for West Virginia voters: if you want to participate in the 2026 Republican primary, you need to register Republican. The party made that clear. But also understand what that registration might mean for how the party treats you afterwards. It might put you on a mailing list and a fundraising matrix without actually giving you a voice in shaping candidates unless you show sustained loyalty.

If you’re an NPA voter and you’re trying to decide what to do? Consider your goals. Do you want access to influence who gets selected in the primary? Then register. Do you want to send a message about the limits of party power? Maybe stay NPA and sit out. Do you want to play the system tactically and register only for access? That’s an option lots of people are apparently taking.

I’ll say this: registering purely for access is a defensive move. It doesn’t solve the underlying problem that parties are closing doors and then asking people to step through them. That’s a problem of party structure and democratic legitimacy, not a failure of marketing.

A quick national reality check. Remember those high-level facts: Florida’s 3.6 million NPA voters, Pennsylvania’s 1.4 million locked out, Gallup’s 43% unaffiliated nationwide, 52% among younger voters. Those aren’t footnotes. They’re a signal that party systems are increasingly disconnected from how a large share of Americans think about identity and participation.

And where parties think closing primaries will protect them from outside influence, they might instead be building incentives for people to game the system. That undermines the whole notion of party loyalty that those closed systems were meant to strengthen.

Final thought: the recruitment emails will keep coming. The ‘big tent’ speeches will keep getting repeated. And NPA voters will keep answering the question for themselves: is the box on the registration form worth checking? For many, increasingly, the answer is ‘no’—or ‘only if I have to.’ That says as much about the parties as anything else.

So what do I want you to take away? Three things. One: know your registration status and why it matters. Two: understand that registration is now sometimes an access credential, not a measure of loyalty. And three: recognize that this is part of a broader national trend that both parties need to reckon with if they hope to remain relevant to younger and unaffiliated voters.

If you’re a West Virginia voter navigating this mess, tell me what you did. Did you switch to Republican? Stayed NPA? Sat out? Hit reply, leave a comment, whatever — I want to hear from you. These choices matter, and the more we hear from actual voters the clearer the picture becomes.

Short one: I’m annoyed. But also curious. Politics doesn’t have to be dumb.

And one more quick aside: don’t be fooled by the ‘we want you’ language in recruitment drives. Parties have an incentive to boost their roster. But membership without voice is hollow. If you join, ask what membership actually means—beyond the email list.

If you liked this, share it with someone who’s registered NPA or on the fence. If you didn’t like it, tell me why anyway. I read everything.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel like free to share it

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrieclendening.substack.com

Season 1

* Article 1 - Welcome To Permanent Campaign Mode

* Article 2 - THE PLAYBOOK: A Torrent of Propaganda

* Article 3 - The PAC Problem: How Ideological Kingmakers Took Over Primaries

* Article 4 - How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made and Why Understanding this Machinery Matters

* Article 5 - Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner: A Case Study in Conservative Partnership Institute‘s State Election Takeover Strategy

* Article 6 - The Ranked Choice Voting Gambit - Why Extremists Fear Ranked Ballots

* Article 7 - Buckley v. Valeo: The 1976 Decision That Built America’s Dark Money Architecture

* Article 8 - We Want Your Vote, Just Not Your Voice

The System That Now Runs American Politics

Something fundamental shifted in American politics, and most people don’t realize it yet.

We’re not in a temporary crisis. We’re not dealing with an anomaly that will correct itself. We’re witnessing a structural reorganization of how political power operates—one that’s being driven by technology, enabled by law, and defended by inertia.

The old system is dead. We just haven’t fully absorbed what replaces it.

Let me explain what I mean, because this affects how you understand every race, every primary, every political story you see over the next five years.

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THE OLD SYSTEM (AND WHY IT PROTECTED YOU)

For most of American political history, there was a clear hierarchy:

Parties controlled messaging. If you ran as a Republican in a Republican district, the party apparatus helped you message. You didn’t have to build your own communication infrastructure. The party did that. Local party chairs, state party communications, national messaging—it was coordinated around you.

Parties protected members. If you were an incumbent with a voting record that could be attacked, the party mobilized resources to defend you. They couldn’t prevent primary challenges, but they could make those challenges expensive and difficult. An incumbent with party backing was genuinely hard to remove.

Parties coordinated strategy. The party decided which races were winnable, which candidates had the best shot, and where resources should flow. This sounds like centralized control (and it was), but it also meant that experienced, thoughtful people were protected long enough to develop actual expertise in governance.

Candidates competed primarily in general elections. Primaries existed, but they weren’t the existential threat they are now. You could usually survive a primary challenge if you had party backing. The real competition was in the general election, where party affiliation actually meant something and swing voters actually decided outcomes.

This system had real flaws. It was sometimes corrupt. It protected entrenched interests. It wasn’t particularly responsive to grassroots movements. All of that is fair criticism.

But it had one crucial feature: it created stability for people willing to do the work of actual representation.

If you were willing to serve your district, pay attention to local concerns, build relationships with constituents, and cast difficult votes with party backing, you could have a career. You could serve for years or decades. You could develop expertise. You could take positions that weren’t purely aligned with national ideological movements because you had local political protection.

The party’s interest in electing and protecting you aligned, at least roughly, with your interest in serving your district. You were a long-term investment. They wanted you to keep winning.

THE NEW SYSTEM (AND WHAT IT REPLACED)

Then several things happened simultaneously:

Citizens United and subsequent campaign finance decisions eliminated many restrictions on outside money. Wealthy individuals and organized groups could now spend unlimited amounts on independent campaigns. The law now permits something that was previously restricted: outside actors spending $8.7 million to defeat politicians in states where they don’t live and have no accountability.

Technology made targeting cheap and fast. You can now identify voters with surgical precision, send them different messages based on their demographics, and measure the impact in real-time. Organizing a million-voter outreach that used to take months now takes weeks. The cost per contact has dropped dramatically.

Media fragmented. There’s no longer a single local newscast that everyone watches, or a local newspaper that everyone reads. Instead, voters get information from social media, podcasts, targeted digital ads, and direct mail. It’s possible to reach specific voters with specific messages without that message being seen or discussed broadly. The public sphere fragmented into private spheres.

Parties weakened. For various reasons—demographic sorting, geographic polarization, internal divisions, donor consolidation—party infrastructure stopped being able to protect members the way it used to. Parties are still around, but they’re less able to rally resources to defend an incumbent against an outside attack.

Outside groups proliferated. Into the vacuum left by weakened parties came coordinated outside actors: PACs, advocacy groups, ideological organizations. These groups don’t answer to local voters. They’re not accountable to state or local party structures. They answer to donors. And they’re disciplined, well-funded, and strategically focused.

The combination of these factors created something genuinely new: outside actors with resources can now instantly identify vulnerable politicians, deploy targeted messaging against them in primary elections, and remove them before the general election even becomes relevant.

This isn’t an occasional tactic. It’s becoming the dominant strategy.

WHAT THIS ACTUALLY MEANS

The old system said: “You have a voting record. The party will defend you. You’re protected.”

The new system says: “You have a voting record. Someone will find the vote that can be reframed. They will spend six figures to tell primary voters that vote is disqualifying. You will be removed in a primary where you have no protection. Congratulations.”

The protection disappeared, but the vulnerability remained. In fact, the vulnerability got worse because your voting record became more exposed, more analyzed, more available for reframing.

Here’s what changed operationally:

Party affiliation became insufficient. Being a Republican in a Republican district used to mean something. Now it means you’re eligible to be primaried by someone more ideologically pure. Party label is still useful—it prevents you from being challenged from the other party—but it doesn’t protect you from being challenged within your party by an outside-funded actor.

Incumbency became a liability. Historically, incumbency was an advantage. You had name recognition, campaign infrastructure, relationships with donors. Now it’s often a liability because you have a voting record to defend. A blank slate candidate funded by an outside group can attack you for years of votes while maintaining the fiction of ideological purity because they’ve never voted on anything.

Institutional power became risky. If you rise in seniority in your legislative chamber, you accumulate a longer voting record. Every vote is a vulnerability. Higher office (state legislative leadership, congressional seats) means more votes to defend. Experienced legislators are now more vulnerable than less experienced ones, which is backwards from how it used to work.

Outside money became determinative. If you’re running without a PAC willing to spend $400,000 on your behalf, you’re at a disadvantage. This means politics is increasingly determined by which candidates attract outside backing rather than which candidates actually connect with voters or which candidates have the best ideas. The people with money to spend on campaigns are increasingly determining who gets to be a politician, not the voters of that district.

Primary elections became the real election. In safe districts and states, the primary is now where the outcome is decided. And primaries have lower turnout, more polarized voters, and more vulnerability to targeted messaging. If you can move the needle in a 20% turnout primary with surgical messaging, you can remove the incumbent before the general election is even relevant.

Ideological purity became competitive. The new system rewards politicians who are consistent enough that they can’t be reframed. But consistency and governance are in tension. Actual representation requires nuance, compromise, trade-offs. Ideological purity requires the opposite. So the system now incentivizes politicians to be ideologically pure rather than representative.

THE PERVERSE INCENTIVES THIS CREATES

Once you understand the new system, you understand why politicians now behave in ways that seem irrational or cowardly.

First, it incentivizes candidates to avoid positions entirely. Why take a stance on anything controversial when that stance can be weaponized by an outside group six months from now? This produces a generation of politicians who are essentially blank slates—all messaging, no actual governance philosophy. They’ll say they support “education” and “jobs” and “families”—concepts so vague they mean nothing. But they won’t say how they’d actually fund education or what kinds of jobs they’d create. Because specificity is vulnerability.

Second, it incentivizes candidates to hide their records. If you’ve been in government for any length of time, your record is vulnerable. The old response was to be transparent about your votes, explain the context, and trust the party to back you up. The new response is to hope nobody notices. When outside groups do notice and attack, the instinct is to go silent rather than defend, because defending requires re-litigating votes that half your primary voters might disagree with.

Third, it incentivizes primary challenges against any incumbent perceived as insufficiently ideologically pure.Because the playbook works, primary challenges become common. Incumbency becomes a liability. If you’re a moderate Republican in a district that’s trending conservative, or a progressive Democrat in a district trending progressive, someone will run against you from the “purer” direction. And with outside money, they can be competitive even if they have no track record.

Fourth, it requires outside money to remain competitive. If you’re running without a PAC willing to spend hundreds of thousands on your behalf, you’re operating with one hand tied behind your back. This concentrates political power in the hands of the people with money to spend on campaigns, which usually means wealthy individuals, organized industries, and ideological networks. This also means that politics becomes less responsive to actual constituents and more responsive to donors and outside groups.

The result is a political system where experienced, thoughtful people increasingly don’t want to serve, because the headache isn’t worth it. Why spend years building expertise and relationships if an outside group can end your career in a compressed primary cycle where you have no protection? Why cast difficult votes if every vote will be reframed? Why take positions if positions are vulnerabilities?

So experienced people retire. Blank slates rise. Outside groups get more influence. And the people who know how government actually works increasingly step aside.

THE WEST VIRGINIA EXAMPLE ISN’T UNIQUE—IT’S THE NEW NORMAL

Craig Blair’s 2024 primary loss is useful not because it was surprising, but because it was clarifying.

He was a state senator with over a decade of experience. He had favorable ratings in his district. He was leading in polling by double digits. He had party support. By every measure that mattered in the old system, he was safe.

Then Make Liberty Win, an out-of-state PAC funded by Texas donors, decided to attack him. They spent millions on mailers characterizing his votes (particularly on Medicaid expansion) as betrayal. They deployed these attacks in a compressed timeline 4-6 weeks before the primary. They operated without accountability to West Virginia voters. And they won.

But here’s the thing: Blair’s loss is becoming normal.

Primary challenges against incumbents have increased dramatically. Outside spending in primary elections has exploded. Voting records are being weaponized with increasing sophistication. Ideological purity tests are replacing coalition-building as a primary strategy. Experienced politicians are being replaced by candidates with thin or no records.

This isn’t a West Virginia problem. It’s not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem. It’s a structural problem in how American politics now operates. And it’s not going away.

Look at any state legislature, and you’ll see versions of this pattern:

* Wyoming: Outside groups attacked incumbents on voting records

* Ohio: Primary challenges funded by outside money defeated experienced legislators

* Idaho: Outside-funded challengers removed incumbents in safe seats

* Nevada: Similar patterns emerging

This is the new normal. Not the exception. The exception is the incumbent who survives a well-funded primary challenge when an outside group decides they’re a target.

WHAT PROTECTS YOU NOW?

The honest answer: not much.

But there are some asymmetries worth understanding:

Record cleanliness matters, but it’s almost impossible to maintain. If you serve in government for any length of time, you vote on complicated issues with genuine trade-offs. Any vote can potentially be reframed as betrayal. You could try to vote “safely,” but that’s not actual governance—that’s just surviving. And even then, someone will find a vote to attack.

Early narrative control is increasingly valuable. The outside group attacking you has an advantage if they define the narrative before you can. If you can control your own story before someone else tells it for you, you have breathing room. This requires resources, strategic messaging, and speed—essentially, your own outside-funded apparatus. So to compete with outside money, you need outside money. That’s a trap.

Outsider status can be an advantage in primary elections, but it’s a liability in general elections. You can win a primary as a blank slate because no one knows you well enough to have opinions about you. But in a general election, being a complete unknown is risky. This creates a perverse situation where the people who win primaries are often the people worst equipped to win general elections.

Ideological consistency can provide some protection. If you’re consistently voting a particular way, it’s harder to create the shock of “betrayal” that makes reframing effective. But ideology and governance are in tension—ideology is clean, governance is messy. So this protects you by making you a worse representative.

Being boring helps. Genuinely. If you’re not someone that outside groups perceive as a particular threat or opportunity, you might not attract the resources necessary for effective primary challenges. This is a depressing advantage, but it’s real: flying under the radar is safer than being visible and engaged.

Having a fully outside-funded apparatus of your own. If you can match the outside group spending against you with your own spending, you can survive. But this just means politics is now determined by who can attract the most outside money, not by who has the best ideas or who connects with voters best.

So the system doesn’t just offer you no protection. It offers you false options: either don’t govern well enough to have a record to defend, or don’t represent your district’s interests effectively so you’re not a threat to outside groups, or have enough outside money to match whatever’s thrown at you.

Most politicians can manage at most one of these. Many can manage none.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR DEMOCRACY (AND IT’S NOT OPTIMISTIC)

I’m going to be direct: this shift is corrosive to representative government.

When party affiliation provided real protection, it created stable incentives for legislators to serve their districts. They could cast difficult votes because they had institutional backing. They could take positions that weren’t purely aligned with outside pressure because they had party infrastructure. They could actually represent their communities in ways that didn’t necessarily align with national ideological movements.

Now, politicians are increasingly vulnerable to outside actors with resources and ideological purity tests. This creates pressure toward ideological conformity, against local representation, and in favor of politicians who can attract outside backing. Outside backing usually means alignment with national movements rather than local needs.

The irony is brutal: we’ve created a system where representatives are simultaneously less protected by their parties and more dependent on outside forces.

Party affiliation used to mean something. Now it’s just a label attached to a politician who’s essentially freelancing in a landscape where coordinated outside groups can take them down at any moment.

This is why you’re seeing so many retirements. Experienced politicians are looking at this landscape and deciding it’s not worth it. The protection that used to come with seniority is gone. The vulnerability is maximum. The headache is constant.

And as experienced politicians leave, they’re replaced by people who either:

* Haven’t served long enough to have a real voting record (blank slates)

* Are so ideologically pure that they can’t be reframed (which means they can’t compromise or negotiate)

* Have attracted outside backing and are therefore beholden to outside actors

None of these produces better representation.

THE SYSTEM REINFORCES ITSELF

Here’s the feedback loop that makes this hard to escape:

Outside groups attack incumbents → incumbents lose or retire → blank slates replace them → blank slates can’t be reframed because they have no record → they’re elected → they govern without experience → governance gets worse → voters get more frustrated → outside groups have easier targets.

Each element reinforces the others. It’s a system that perpetuates itself. And once it’s established, it’s incredibly hard to break because the incentives all push the same direction.

Consider what would it take to restore party protection:

* Parties would need to mobilize resources to defend members

* But parties are also weakened by the same dynamics

* Parties don’t have the donor base they used to have

* Parties don’t have the infrastructure they used to have

* So parties can’t actually defend members even if they wanted to

Consider what would take to reduce outside money:

* You’d need campaign finance reform

* But Citizens United made that a constitutional issue

* Reform efforts have consistently failed

* So outside money isn’t going anywhere

Consider what would take to make voters more resistant to targeted reframing:

* You’d need media literacy

* But media literacy is a slow educational process

* It competes against sophisticated messaging and algorithmic targeting

* So voters probably aren’t getting more sophisticated

The system is locked in place. The pieces reinforce each other. Attempts to fix one piece don’t work because the other pieces keep pushing the same direction.

THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH

The most likely outcome is that American politics continues to become:

* More ideologically pure

* More driven by outside actors

* Less representative of local concerns

* Less able to attract experienced, thoughtful people to public service

I’m not happy about this prediction. But it’s the one the data supports.

Experienced legislators retiring. Blank slate candidates winning primaries. Outside groups deciding elections. Voting records becoming liabilities instead of assets. Ideological purity becoming the competitive advantage. Governance becoming secondary to survival.

This is the direction the system is moving. Not because people are making bad choices. But because the structure of incentives now rewards these outcomes.

THE REAL LESSON FROM CRAIG BLAIR

I keep coming back to Craig Blair’s loss because it’s clarifying in a specific way.

He had everything the old system said would protect you:

* Party affiliation ✓

* Institutional power ✓

* Electoral experience ✓

* Favorable polling ✓

* Double-digit lead ✓

And none of it mattered.

An outside group decided to attack him. They had resources. They had a compressed timeline. They had a reframing of his record that, while misleading, was technically defensible. They operated without accountability. And he lost.

His loss didn’t prove that party affiliation is useless. It proved that party affiliation is insufficient.

And that’s a different claim. A more unsettling claim.

Because if party affiliation can’t protect someone like Craig Blair—a legislator with experience, with favorable ratings, with party backing—then it can’t protect anyone.

If no one is safe, then politics becomes about constantly looking over your shoulder. Wondering which outside group will decide you’re next. What vote in your record will they use to take you down. Whether you should retire before they find it.

That’s not democracy. That’s paranoia with voting rights attached.

And it’s the system we’ve built.

WHAT NOW?

This is the operating environment. The old system is gone. Party protection is insufficient. Outside money is dominant. Voting records are vulnerabilities. Blank slates are competitive. Experienced politicians are leaving.

This is happening. The question now is: what do we do about it?

Some people will try to reform campaign finance. That probably won’t work—Citizens United is constitutional law now, and reform efforts have failed consistently.

Some people will try to strengthen parties. That probably won’t work—parties are also weakened by the same structural forces.

Some people will try media literacy efforts to make voters more resistant to reframing. That’s probably too slow to keep up with technological sophistication.

But there’s one thing that might actually work: understanding how the system operates and building defenses specifically designed to counter it.

Not campaign finance reform. Not party reform. Not media literacy. But coordinated, strategic, operationally sophisticated defense against the specific tactics that outside groups use.

If operatives understood how outside groups work—really understood it, not just the surface tactics but the machinery underneath—they could prepare differently.

If journalists understood the pattern across multiple states instead of treating each attack as an isolated incident, they could report with more skepticism.

If voters understood that they were being targeted by outside actors with specific intentions, they could be more resistant to reframing.

If states coordinated their responses instead of treating attacks as local problems, they could scale solutions that work.

None of this would eliminate outside money. None of this would reverse the structural shift. But it might make outside groups’ operations less effective, more expensive, more risky.

And that might change the calculus enough to matter.

WHERE THIS GOES

This is the first article of several. I’m going to walk you through:

* How outside groups actually operate operationally—the machinery underneath the tactics, the decision tree that determines which races they target, why standard responses fail.

* A detailed case study of Make Liberty Win’s operation in West Virginia—specifically how the machinery I describe in Article 2 played out in the Blair race in real time.

* What counter-infrastructure actually looks like—how operatives, journalists, and parties can build defenses specifically designed for the new system.

* How this plays out in practice, what works, what doesn’t, and how the system evolves.

My assumption is that you’re reading this because you’re either:

* A political operative trying to understand why your protected incumbent got removed in a primary

* A party leader trying to figure out why you can’t protect members anymore

* A journalist trying to understand what’s actually happening when outside groups attack candidates

* A voter trying to understand why politics feels more broken than it used to

If you’re in any of those categories, the old playbook doesn’t work anymore. Understanding the new system is the first step toward defending against it.

ONE FINAL THOUGHT

We didn’t set out to build this system. We didn’t wake up one day and decide that American politics should be run by outside actors with no accountability to voters in the states they’re influencing.

It happened gradually. A court decision here. A technology change there. A party weakening. Media fragmentation. Each change made sense at the time. But the combination created something that nobody quite intended.

We’re now living in the world that combination created. And we’re just starting to understand what that means.

The next articles will help you understand it better.

Does this match what you’re experiencing? Are you seeing the pattern in your state or district? Are you watching incumbents lose in primaries they should have won? Are you seeing outside groups win elections with reframed voting records?

I’m genuinely curious how this framework maps onto what you’re observing on the ground. Let me know in the comments—the best follow-up articles will come from the patterns you’re seeing.

And if you know operatives, journalists, or party leaders who need to understand this system, share this with them. They probably need it

Next Article in Series: The Playbook: A Torrent of Propaganda

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Get full access to Carrie Clendening at carrieclendening.substack.com/subscribe

Dear Senators, Representatives, Executives, Pundits, and Assorted Architects of Our Current Nightmare,

I’m writing this on December 22, 2025. Three days before Christmas. The end of a year that felt less like twelve months and more like a slow-motion car crash we were all forced to watch while somehow also being inside the car.

I’m writing it as a parent. I’m writing it exhausted—not the normal exhausted, the kind that doesn’t go away with sleep, the kind that’s settled into my bones like a second skeleton. And I’m writing it because I need to ask you something directly, without the usual performative politeness we’re all supposed to maintain while you light the country on fire and call it “passion”:

Was it worth it?

Was the name-calling worth it? The petty jabs, the playground insults, the genuinely middle school behavior that would get my kid sent to the principal’s office but somehow qualifies you for cable news hits and campaign donations?

Was the cruelty worth it? The mocking. The dehumanizing. The treating of your political opponents—and by extension, the half of the country that disagrees with them—like they’re not even people deserving basic dignity?

Was winning the news cycle worth losing the plot entirely?

I’m genuinely asking. Because from where I’m standing—which is in my kitchen, three days before Christmas, after another year of explaining to my children why adults in power act worse than anyone in their school—it doesn’t look like anyone actually won anything.

Except maybe the algorithms. The algorithms are thriving.

(Congratulations to the algorithms.)

We See You. We’ve Always Seen You.

Here’s what I need you to understand: we’re not confused about what happened. We watched it. All of 2025. In real time. Often against our will, because the news couldn’t look away and neither could we, even when we desperately wanted to.

We watched grown adults—people with law degrees and communications staff and actual power over our lives—engage in behavior that would embarrass a seventh grader.

The name-calling. (Not policy disagreements. Name-calling. Like we’re in a cafeteria and someone looked at you wrong.)

The lying. Not spin, not “different perspectives”—lying. Saying things you knew weren’t true because the truth was inconvenient and your base would believe you anyway.

The performative outrage. The fake tears. The standing ovations for yourself. The treating of every microphone like a chance to audition for your own mythology.

The deliberate division. Not as a byproduct of sincere disagreement, but as a strategy. Because scared people vote. Angry people donate. And you needed both, didn’t you?

(You did. You needed both. Your consultants had the data. The cruelty was always the point, but also the profit margin.)

Do You Know What Parents Have Been Doing This Year?

While you were busy calling each other names and threatening investigations and treating governance like a reality show where the prize is everyone else’s stability, here’s what the rest of us were doing:

We were shielding our children.

We were turning off the television when you came on. We were closing browser tabs. We were having conversations we shouldn’t have had to have—explaining why the person on screen, the one with the title and the power and the supposedly serious job, was acting like a bully at his worst.

“Why is he saying that about her?” “Why are they being so mean?” “Is that allowed? Would I get in trouble if I said that at school?”

Yes. Yes, you would. But the rules are different for them, sweetheart.

(Try explaining that without watching something die in your kid’s eyes. Try explaining that power means you get to be cruel and face no consequences. Try teaching integrity while your living room fills with evidence that integrity is for suckers who don’t have PACs.)

We were exhausted. Not from parenting—that’s baseline—but from parenting against you. From trying to raise decent humans while you modeled the opposite on every screen in our house, every day, for twelve straight months of 2025.

This Year Nearly Broke Us

I need you to understand something about 2025 specifically: it was near unbearable.

Not “challenging.” Not “divisive.” Near unbearable.

There’s a difference. Challenging is a tough project at work. Divisive is a Thanksgiving argument about taxes. Near unbearable is lying awake at 2 AM wondering what kind of country your kids are inheriting while the people in charge of that country act like they’re competing for Most Unhinged in a contest nobody asked for.

Near unbearable is the cumulative weight of a year where the cruelty was loud and the kindness was quiet and you started to wonder if maybe you were the crazy one for still believing in basic human decency.

You did that. Not alone—there were plenty of accomplices—but you were driving. You had the wheel. You could have turned at any point.

You didn’t.

The Damage You Can’t See (Or Don’t Care About)

Here’s what you’ve cost us, since I don’t think you’ve stopped to count:

Trust. Not in one party or the other—in the entire concept that leadership means something. My kids are growing up in a world where “politician” is a punchline and “the government” is either a threat or a joke depending on the day. That’s not healthy skepticism. That’s foundational rot. And you put it there, brick by brick, throughout 2025.

Unity. Not the fake kind you invoke in speeches when it’s convenient. The real kind. The kind where you can disagree with your neighbor about policy but still see them as a full human being. That’s fraying. You know it’s fraying. You needed it to fray, because your entire strategy depends on us seeing each other as enemies rather than fellow citizens getting played by the same game.

Energy. I am tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix. Tired from the vigilance. Tired from the constant monitoring of what my kids are absorbing. Tired from knowing that even now, three days before Christmas, you’re probably doing something I’ll have to explain, contextualize, or shield them from entirely.

Hope. My children watched adults in power behave like the worst version of themselves for all of 2025, and you want me to teach them that the future is bright? With what evidence? Your behavior?

You Had a Choice

This is the part that keeps me up at night: none of this was inevitable.

You chose this.

Every time you reached for the insult instead of the argument, you chose it. Every time you amplified the lie because it played well, you chose it. Every time you prioritized your brand over your responsibility, your donors over your constituents, your next campaign over the country you swore to serve—

You chose it.

You could have been the adult in the room. You could have modeled the behavior we’re desperately trying to teach our kids: disagree without dehumanizing, fight without cruelty, lose without burning everything down.

You could have shown my children that power and decency aren’t mutually exclusive.

Instead, you showed them the opposite. Daily. Relentlessly. With apparent enthusiasm. For all of 2025.

So I’ll Ask Again: Was It Worth It?

Was the viral moment worth the kid who now thinks bullying is how you win?

Was the “sick burn” worth the family that can’t have dinner together anymore because politics has become identity and identity has become war?

Was owning the other side worth the country that increasingly doesn’t feel like one country at all?

Was your victory—whatever hollow, temporary, pyrrhic thing you’re calling victory these days—worth the parents lying awake on December 22nd, 2025, wondering what kind of world they’re leaving behind?

I don’t expect you to answer. Honestly, I don’t expect you to read this. You’re busy. There are donors to call and enemies to tweet about and a whole machinery of division that needs feeding, even now, even during the holidays, even when the rest of us just want five minutes of peace.

But I needed to say it. I needed it on the record, even if the record is just a newsletter that your staff will never see:

We’re exhausted. We’re watching. And we will remember.

Our kids will remember, too. They’re learning right now what leadership looks like—and you’re the ones teaching them.

I hope, for all our sakes, that wasn’t the lesson you intended.

But I suspect it was.

Sincerely (and barely standing),

A Parent Who Expected Better and Got 2025

P.S. — If you’re another exhausted parent reading this on December 22nd, trying to summon Christmas spirit from the wreckage of this year: I see you. You’re not alone. And the fact that you’re still trying to raise good humans in the middle of this chaos? That’s the most patriotic thing anyone’s doing right now. Keep going. They’re watching us, too—and we can still be the example they didn’t get from the people in charge.

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