If someone tells you up, down and sideways that they follow an idealpolitik view of the world, they really are usually doing realpolitik. If someone tells you up, down and sideways that they follow a realpolitik view of the world, they usually are up in idealpolitik up to their eyeballs. So no realpolitik was happening today

Green New Deal projects (renewables, EV and battery storage manufacturing) were specifically built in red states to make it harder to pull the plug, but you can't stop folks from voting to cut their legs off.

Have to build where people will continue to support the projects through the political cycles. Tangentially, consider where folks will keep migrating to as rural America continues to hollow out. Most of this work is going to be automated in the future (as China does today), so the labor force available is less relevant (versus climate risk and clean energy availability).

China, for comparison, has the capacity to build ~20M EVs per year, and satisfy current total global EV demand (they are export capacity constrained). Will the US ever be able to build more than a few million units a year? Probably not, on current trajectories.

https://newrepublic.com/article/195350/republicans-rejoicing...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48586250 (citations)

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (my comments on Rural America decline)

(think in systems, "demographics is destiny")