Why would a political party support a candidate who's less likely to win an election?

Because winning the election isn't the only consideration. Party leaders and political activists also care about what their candidates will do once elected.

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis examines the trade-off between electability and political loyalty—and why a weaker candidate may sometimes offer party leadership more influence than a stronger, more independent one.

We explore:

• Why independently popular politicians have greater freedom to defy party leadership.

• How primaries create incentives for ideological conformity.

• The difference between partisan voting records and actual obedience to leadership.

• A simple probability model for comparing a candidate's electoral prospects with their expected value to party leaders.

• How political dependence can shape the relationship between elected officials and the people who helped put them in office.

Ultimately, the episode asks whether political movements are trying to elect the most effective representatives—or the representatives they can most easily influence.

We measure success because we need to know whether we're making progress. But what happens when the measurement becomes more important than the goal?

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis explores how metrics can reshape the incentives, priorities, and even values of the people using them.

From politicians celebrating legislation without examining its results to journalists chasing page views, individuals competing for wealth and status, and policymakers navigating the Cold War, the same problem keeps appearing: once we establish a scoreboard, people start playing to win.

How do we distinguish genuine progress from impressive-looking numbers? And how can we hold institutions accountable without encouraging them to pursue the wrong objectives?

This week's episode examines how the way we keep score can change the game itself.

Americans increasingly experience politics as a national struggle over everything—from presidential power and cultural disputes to issues that once would have been settled locally.

But nationalizing politics comes with a cost.

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis examines the relationship between democracy, political scale, and individual agency. Larger governments can provide greater resources, expertise, security, and economic coordination—but as political systems grow, each individual has less influence over the decisions that govern his life.

We look at how national partisanship increasingly shapes state and local politics, why one-size-fits-all policies often fail in a diverse country, and how federalism can combine the advantages of national cooperation with greater local self-government.

The larger question is simple: if democracy is supposed to allow people to determine their own futures, how many decisions really need to be made nationally?