Seeing discourse about this again (not necessarily on Tumblr which I've been less active on lately, around the Internet, but there are a few people on here who bring this up every once in a while) so just a reminder: "the candidate should fit the district" goes both ways. I see a lot of people who use this to mean "the Democrat who runs for an R+2 district probably shouldn't be a hardline progressive" and sure, but then those same people throw fits when a deep-blue urban district in New York or Boston or Austin or Portland elects a self-described socialist who has a history of criticizing Netanyahu or supporting defunding police departments and it's like... y'all, this is also a district electing someone who represents what they stand for. I get that some specific people on here who pretend to be pragmatic but at this point are just genuine centrists in terms of their own politics don't want to hear this, but progressives also deserve to have representatives who represent us. And people who are on the left are allowed to be frustrated with centrists who keep voting differently than they would vote on issues they care about, and an overly moderate candidate can be demotivating for a progressive electorate. It's fine for those voters to say "nah, let's pick someone who actually fits what we want in a representative." That's what voting is supposed to do!
Anyway, if you want to take issue with overly-extreme candidates representing parts of the country that are much swingier, the issue there is on the Republican side. There are lots of hardened MAGAts in R+singledigit suburban districts that could easily flip this year with some nudging. There's the Texas Senate race. Idk I think the idea of Ken Paxton and Ted Cruz being the two Senators for a state full of minorities, progressives and liberals of all shapes, and immigrants should be the thing that's engaging and enraging you far more than Brooklyn socialists electing other Brooklyn socialists.
