The Quiet Federalization of the State Legislature

State legislative races have always been the place where parties test ideas they cannot yet pass nationally. What is new is the speed and the centralisation: candidates recruited from Washington, financed from Washington, briefed from Washington, and judged on whether they vote with Washington once seated.

The cost of that shift is local accountability. State houses are losing their oldest function — adjudicating local trade-offs — at exactly the moment those trade-offs are getting harder.