I completely agree with everything you wrote above, except for the last sentence—I don't disagree that state politics affect each other because of the existence

I completely agree with everything you wrote above, except for the last sentence—I don't disagree that state politics affect each other because of the existence of a federal government, and therefore this is not the miscommunication between us. the interesting part to me is exactly what you highlighted in your third paragraph: Democrat voters encourage each other to move to certain states that meet certain criteria, and, as far as I can tell, no other group of citizens in the country engages in similar behavior. I believe the miscommunication here is more ideological: I cannot imagine myself moving to a given state with given criteria in order to alter elections, or to otherwise bolster any kind of ideology or demographic. this is really interesting to me because it for me this is just an idea that would never cross my mind, and I'm trying to figure out why that is, because this ideological distinction seems significant. I don't buy that it's just because of Senate seats.