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Follow the Power

Carrie Clendening

By Carrie Clendening carrieclendening.substack.com

government politics

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12:01

Why Americans Are Turning to Canadian News to...

Follow the Power ·

2026/01/10

Watch more “About That” episodes: Watch more “About That” episodesBack in 2004, a political science professor gave me advice that seemed counterintuitive at the time: when you’re struggling to figure out what’s really happening in this country, turn off American news and look at what BBC, CBC, and other international outlets are saying. I filed it away and mostly forgot about it.Then came early summer 2025.I was trying to understand the situation unfolding between Iran, Israel, and the American

14:54

RE-RELEASE: Every Candidate Americans for Prosperity...

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2026/01/09

Disclaimer: Due to several factors, I cannot publicly discuss at the moment, I felt compelled to re-release this article.Note: This article was originally published on November 7, 2025, and has not been updated. The school closure and Hope Scholarship data may no longer be current. They Made One Critical Error: They pissed off parents.We’re the demographic that will spend 47 hours researching the best car seat. You think we won’t spend a weekend exposing who’s trying to destroy our kids’

14:47

Welcome to Season 2: Democratic Institutions Under Siege

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2026/01/08

PrefaceWhen I started this journey, I set out to do one thing: pull back the curtain on how government actually works. I wanted to show you what I saw during my decade as a legislative liaison—the real decisions, the real power, the real stakes. Season 1 was about understanding the machinery: how bills get written, how elections get administered, how money flows through campaigns, and how both parties often serve entrenched interests rather than the public good.But understanding the machinery isn’t

23:43

When Silicon Valley Meets Appalachia: The Systematic...

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2026/01/06

Season 1* Article 1 - Welcome To Permanent Campaign Mode* Article 2 - THE PLAYBOOK: A Torrent of Propaganda* Article 3 - The PAC Problem: How Ideological Kingmakers Took Over Primaries* Article 4 - How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made and Why Understanding this Machinery Matters* Article 5 - Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner: A Case Study in Conservative Partnership Institute‘s State Election Takeover Strategy* Article 6 - The Ranked Choice Voting Gambit - Why Extremists Fear Ranked Ballots*

17:41

We Want Your Vote, Just Not Your Voice

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2025/12/23

Today, we need to talk about closed primaries. More specifically: what happened in West Virginia, why the Republican Party closed their primary to no party affiliation voters, and the very strange follow-up that basically amounted to, “We don’t want your voice — but hey, join our team.” Okay, let’s get into it.So, first things first: terminology. This is boring but important, so stay with me for a second. In West Virginia there is no “Independent” registration box. When you don’t check Republican or

25:46

RE-RELEASE WELCOME TO PERMANENT CAMPAIGN MODE

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2025/12/23

9:04

An Open Letter to the Leaders Who Chose the Low Road

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2025/12/22

Dear Senators, Representatives, Executives, Pundits, and Assorted Architects of Our Current Nightmare,I’m writing this on December 22, 2025. Three days before Christmas. The end of a year that felt less like twelve months and more like a slow-motion car crash we were all forced to watch while somehow also being inside the car.I’m writing it as a parent. I’m writing it exhausted—not the normal exhausted, the kind that doesn’t go away with sleep, the kind that’s settled into my bones like a second

7:10

The Political Economy of Plastic Crap: Why I Almost...

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2025/12/20

Listen, nobody asked me to become the person who explains why a fourth-grade holiday party is actually a microcosm of late-stage capitalist failure, and honestly, I wish I didn’t have to be that person. But I was standing in a Five Below on Thursday, vibrating with a specific frequency of rage usually reserved for cable news chyrons, and I realized I can’t let you walk into this blind.I had a “State of the Union” breakdown. It didn’t happen in a briefing room or a lecture hall. It happened while

11:36

Field-Guide - Narratives vs. Systems Thinking: A...

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2025/12/13

A note on why I am publishing this now: I have had a number of people reach out wanting to engage with this work—to collaborate, to contribute, to produce their own analysis in a similar vein. I appreciate the interest. It is validating to know this work reaches people.However, I have also observed a pattern. Many who are attracted to systems analysis are not yet equipped to do it. They have absorbed the conclusions and the vocabulary, but not the methodology. Engaging with them—gently redirecting,

17:21

How “Team Mooney” and “Team Morrisey” Weaponized...

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2025/12/12

The 2024 West Virginia election cycle wasn’t just another primary season—it was a masterclass in campaign finance innovation. Two federal Joint Fundraising Committees quietly transformed obscure county party organizations into powerhouse financial vehicles, flooding rural committees with six-figure transfers from Major League Baseball owners and national conservative donors.This is the story of how “Team Mooney” and “Team Morrisey” turned Morgan and Upshur Counties into something their founders

8:13

The Inherited Resentment: Understanding the Scars of...

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2025/12/11

My father once told me something that stopped me cold.He said the coal miners of West Virginia were treated like property. That they were bought and sold, worked until they broke, and discarded when they had nothing left to give. And then he said something harder: that nobody cares about their suffering the way they care about others’.It was a controversial comparison—miners to slaves—and I bristled at it. But sitting with his words over the years, I’ve come to understand something important. He

11:22

Why Journalists Miss Almost Everything

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2025/12/10

I’ve spent several years investigating how West Virginia’s government was systematically captured by out-of-state interests. In that time, I’ve watched dozens of legitimate news stories break about the same ecosystem I’m documenting—and I’ve watched almost all of them miss the point entirely.Not because the journalists were lazy. Not because they were biased. Not even because they lacked resources.They missed it because they were trained to see narratives, and what they were looking at was a

29:27

A Forensic Autopsy of the Americans for Prosperity...

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2025/12/05

The Laboratory of OligarchyWest Virginia, historically the battleground of labor rights and the engine of American industrialization, has been repurposed. It is no longer merely a state struggling with post-industrial transition; it has become a “laboratory of oligarchy,” a testing ground where national special interest groups, funded by untraceable capital, deploy radical policy experiments that dismantle the public commons to benefit a distant donor class. The Americans for Prosperity-West

19:04

Buckley v. Valeo: The 1976 Decision That Built...

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2025/12/03

Season 1This article is part of my ongoing series on the machinery of American politics. Previous articles:* Article 1 - Welcome To Permanent Campaign Mode* Article 2 - THE PLAYBOOK: A Torrent of Propaganda* Article 3 - The PAC Problem: How Ideological Kingmakers Took Over Primaries* Article 4 - How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made and Why Understanding this Machinery Matters* Article 5 - Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner: A Case Study in Conservative Partnership Institute‘s State Election

11:58

The Ranked Choice Voting Gambit - Why Extremists Fear...

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2025/11/22

The Math That Terrifies Ideological PACsLet me show you the one reform that makes professional political operatives lose sleep: ranked-choice voting in open primaries. Not because it’s some democracy-saving miracle cure—it’s not. But because it fundamentally breaks the mathematical model that ideological PACs have perfected.Here’s the dirty secret: In closed primaries with low turnout, you need about 6-8% of eligible voters to win. That’s it. Six percent. That’s not democracy; that’s a rounding

44:52

Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner: A Case Study in...

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2025/11/20

Cleta Mitchell, the Trump attorney who participated in the notorious January 2, 2021 Georgia phone call, has built a nationwide election infrastructure that transforms election denialism into tangible policy changes through carefully cultivated relationships with state officials like West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner. Their partnership exemplifies how the Conservative Partnership Institute creates "parallel governing infrastructure" that coordinates national strategy with state

11:15

The PAC Problem: How Ideological Kingmakers Took Over...

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2025/11/19

Let me tell you how democracy actually dies. Not with jackboots and manifestos. With spreadsheets and Super PACs.You want to know why your congressman sounds like he’s reading from a script written by someone who’s never set foot in your district? Because he essentially is. The script’s authors are sitting in D.C. offices funded by billionaires you’ve never heard of, running ideological PACs that have turned primaries into auction houses where democracy goes to the highest bidder.Here’s what nobody

25:36

How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made and Why...

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2025/11/19

Season 1Article 1 - Welcome To Permanent Campaign ModeArticle 2 - THE PLAYBOOK: A Torrent of PropagandaArticle 3 - The PAC Problem: How Ideological Kingmakers Took Over PrimariesArticle 4 - How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made and Why Understanding this Machinery MattersArticle 5: Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner: A Case Study in Conservative Partnership Institute‘s State Election Takeover StrategyWest Virginia has become the most visible example of this system in America. Here’s what you need

25:46

WELCOME TO PERMANENT CAMPAIGN MODE

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2025/11/14

Season 1Article 1 - Welcome To Permanent Campaign ModeArticle 2 - THE PLAYBOOK: A Torrent of PropagandaArticle 3 - The PAC Problem: How Ideological Kingmakers Took Over PrimariesArticle 4 - How West Virginia Policy Actually Gets Made and Why Understanding this Machinery MattersArticle 5: Cleta Mitchell and Mac Warner: A Case Study in Conservative Partnership Institute‘s State Election Takeover StrategyThe System That Now Runs American PoliticsSomething fundamental shifted in American politics, and

12:50

The Chilling Effect: How Dark Money Turns Elections...

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2025/10/22

In my article, “Big Pharma’s Dark Money Network in West Virginia,” we rolled up our sleeves and did the hard work of following the money. We started with a single, misleading political ad and pulled the thread, tracing it from a generically named Super PAC through state and federal databases, right to the doorstep of the dark money nonprofits that serve as the financial intermediaries for powerful corporate interests. We exposed the “how.”Now, it’s time to talk about the “why.”This Substack is

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