I wholly endorse the ideas in this post. No need for Dems to remain the bigger people while the GOP keeps pushing the envelope.

Should Democrats Threaten a Project 2026?:

It has two parts, the counterforce, which matches aggression tit-for-tat, and countervalue, which is designed to annihilate the other side if triggered. Here's how that would work now.

The counterforce part would have Democrats redistrict their states as much as they can, to match or exceed the number of House seats Republicans would flip. This is a kind-for-kind battle, your House seats for my House seats.

The countervalue part would go way beyond that if invoked. It would use the blue states' greater economic power to inflict real pain in the red states. The 15 states where the Democrats have the trifecta are economically much stronger than the 23 states where the Republicans have the trifecta. The strategy here is to (threaten to) use that power to force the red states to cut it out.

For example, blue states could make it more difficult for big corporations to operate in red states. Laws could be passed forbidding blue state pension funds from buying stocks, ETFs, or mutual funds containing companies headquartered in "Bad States," where the governor would maintain the list of "Bad States" and could update it as needed. This means no AT&T, American Airlines, ExxonMobil, Phillips 66, and more. Selling off that stock would depress the prices.

Further, when the state put out a tender to have companies bid on a contract, state agencies would be banned from buying anything from a company on the Bad State list unless there was no alternative. That means no more Dell computers (headquartered in Round Rock, TX) but good news for HP in Palo Alto. Also no more Teslas (Austin), which would be good news for General Motors and Ford (in Michigan). Going a step further, all state contracts, also for services, with Bad State companies would be banned.

The next level would be poaching key personnel. California, Illinois, New York, etc. could offer substantial relocation bonuses for doctors, nurses, teachers and other valued professionals to relocate to their states if they settled in areas that are currently underserved. If the only doctor and all the teachers in some rural county in Texas decamped for an equally rural county in California, it would hurt Texas while helping California. The governor could appoint a chief poaching officer who would ask hospitals, medical associations, school boards, etc. in underserved areas to send a Web page listing job vacancies (and information about living in that county) and put them together on a new website to make it easier for people who want to move to easily search for jobs that qualify. Some people might be inclined to think hurting the poor patients and students in Texas is not fair to them, but instead they should focus on the improved services for the poor people in California in the areas these people moved to.

California and New York could explore facially neutral taxes on financial transactions, data processing, and other things that in practice hurt Texas businesses more than local ones. Texas produces a lot of oil and gas. Taxes on gas-guzzling cars and subsidies for electric ones come to mind here.

There are plenty of creative professionals in the blue states. Those state governments could hire some of them to think up ways to use their economic, buying, and market power to actively hurt Bad States and inflict as much pain as possible at the lowest cost to their own state.

Is this unprecedented? To some extent, yes—for the states. But the Trump administration is using every bit of power it has to force law firms, media companies, universities, nonprofits, and more to bend to its will. The states, or better yet, a compact among the 15 blue-trifecta states, could be a countervailing force. A credible threat to use federalism to pit the massive economies of the blue states against the largely agricultural economies of the red states could be a game changer if done right. (V)