Anyway, if you think Zohran is an incredible politician and Spanberger and Sherrill are boring establishment mods, then you should take last night's results as evidence in favor of the electoral power of moderation. But also who cares in a sense, give me all the protected bike lanes please.

Zohran is a generational political talent and I'm very happy he's mayor and Cuomo is not. Also Spanberger and Sherrill do not seem to be generational political talents and yet they obviously did very well and Republican turnout cratered in their elections.

Some critics of "gifted" programs argue that they mainly serve to placate rich white parents, so they don't pull their kids from big-city public schools.

I don't think that's true. But also: placating rich white parents is important www.vox.com/politics/464...

It doesn't follow that the impact of national position-taking is negligible though

I've written very long pieces about the degradation of the information environment in recent months. It is of course true that Fox News is a rightwing propaganda outfit, and this generates problems that more strategic position taking would not solve www.vox.com/politics/414...

...in Bonica's suggestion that academic research shows that softening cultural positions doesn't yield significant gains in contemporary elections, and elsewhere. I think this conveys more certainty about the inefficacy of targeted national moderation than is warranted

And I did read your paper. My issue is that I think you and Adam have overstated the implications of your results in your popular commentary, in both the sentence mentioned...

I think the natural reading of your sentence is that national tides don't include party positions, since you describe such tides as something outside of political strategists control.