WHAT A PARTY SWITCH IN NC MEANS FOR DEMOCRATS: Cotham’s decision is potentially devastating as North Carolina, which is a sometime purple state, is in the cross hairs of the same culture wars, dark money and intrastate battles being waged across the nation. Those battles are even more acute post-Donald Trump, whose racial grievance politics draws on deep Southern fault lines. I put her switch in the broader context of a GOP bag of tricks to gut democratic rule by any means necessary. I cannot question Cotham’s state of mind. Her media tour on the subject is nonsensical and vague, though, by the most generous standards. She stutters about unspecified run-ins in public with mean constituents and unwelcoming Democrats, for instance. None of it sounds like substantive policy differences. But I can question the incentives the GOP offers to a candidate who is interested in building a personal political brand. In 2023, attention is currency. It gets you views online, which can get you booked on TV and interviewed in the media. Getting on TV might get you invited to conferences or noticed by a book agent or chosen as a conservative donor favorite. At the very least, being on television and speaking and being cheered by favorable audiences sound like more fun than driving rural highways to have coffee chats with constituents who disagree with your thoughts on a minor local policy issue that even the local news does not — or cannot — cover. Bolding mine, because that's what all this boils down to: an effort to enhance her image as some sort of "firebrand" and influencer, become a swing-vote that lawmakers must "court" if they want their policy ideas to succeed. But just as Joel Ford found out, that's very often a one-way ticket to obscurity.
https://www.wral.com/story/tressie-mcmillan-cottom-what-a-party-switch-in-n-c-means-for-democrats/20...