I recently returned from a mid-sized town in the Mountain West, and I can confirm that the headline is true. It's a particular kind of boom. A lot of out-of-st

I recently returned from a mid-sized town in the Mountain West, and I can confirm that the headline is true. It's a particular kind of boom. A lot of out-of-state money and migrants have poured in to buy houses in places with fewer COVID restrictions and lower prices. That is fundamentally changing the character and politics of those cities. People are buying houses after nothing more than a Zoom tour. The car dealerships have run out of four-wheel drives (even though the winter was dry). Traffic is up. A couple of those states have turned more blue, and a couple have turned more red. It might all be a symptom of the Big Sort. Construction materials have increased in price by several times, and building improbably continues, especially in places like Bozeman (mentioned in the piece). In some Mountain states, a lot of people never took masks seriously. You could say that people are moving down the COVID policy gradient.