The House Republicans’ experiment with continuously nationalized politics didn’t work out. Politics operates as two interlocking systems, sort of like your left and right brain hemispheres: One system is local, parochial, individualized, pragmatic, while the other involves big national choices and ideas. Successful politicians and parties operate at both levels. Politics of local interests alone can lead to the kind of logrolling bargains — you support my farm subsidy and I’ll support your oil-drilling tax break — that create a functioning Congress but risk losing sight of big national obligations such as addressing climate change. But nationalized politics alone strips away the many little points of common ground that cut across polarizing lines of ideology and help make bargains and compromise possible. When the two systems are both healthy, when politicians are engaged both with big ideas and with their own constituents and their concerns, it brings a kind of fluidity to politics that we’ve seen in more productive periods, such as the 1980s.

If the new members of Congress are able to govern as they campaigned, tirelessly, unafraid of hostile audiences, deeply connected to their districts, focused on improving individual lives, they might eventually pull politics out of the box in which either one party pushes through an entire unpopular agenda or Congress is paralyzed. A newfound focus on the local will also allow new members to bring forward innovations in local government and civic engagement.

But today’s politicians face an obstacle that the class of ’74 could mostly ignore: the enormous cost of campaigns. Republican members fell out of touch with their districts in part because they were increasingly dependent on a few large national donors, operating through super PACs and political nonprofits such as the Congressional Leadership Fund, which get the bulk of their donations from billionaires in Las Vegas, New York, Texas and Florida. Democrats, too, relied on these outside groups and their own billionaires, but 2018 brought an enormous wave of small donors. And while much of that came from fired-up progressives in solid Democratic districts, even in the highest-profile races, a surprising share came from the candidates’ own constituents — for example, more than 54 percent of Beto O’Rourke’s contributions came from Texans. A majority of Democratic challengers also refused corporate PAC money, which often runs through Washington lobbyists.

In 2020 and 2022, these new members will no longer be exciting insurgent challengers but incumbents, probably forced to compromise in ways that some supporters might find disappointing. If the volunteer energy and small-donor support that lifted them to victory in 2018 is missing, their campaigns will look very different. They’ll have to turn to corporate PACs again and, much like their predecessors elected in 2006 and 2008, focus their attention on donors rather than their districts, compromising their promises.

The Democratic caucus has announced plans to make a package of political reforms, including the provisions to encourage small donors long championed by John Sarbanes, Democrat of Maryland, their top priority, bearing the symbolic bill number H.R. 1. In addition to highlighting corruption and the corrosive consequences of the post-Citizens United era, such reforms, if they were ever to pass, could give elected officials a way to stay in better touch with their districts, spending more time with voters and that way keeping the vital, diverse local dimension of politics alive even in a time of deep national polarization.

Mark Schmitt (@mschmitt9) is the director of the political reform program at the research organization New America.

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