John Oliver, a man famous for going viral after routinely DESTROYING the political adversaries of run-of-the-mill liberalism in monologues slightly less funny than Jon Stewart’s but imbued with gravitas thanks to a British accent, has turned his cutting, erudite gaze to a subject rarely covered in national news. State legislatures.

Just days before the national election, Oliver discovered these diffuse and disparate mechanisms for policy making, and launched an exposé. It turns out, a lot of stuff happens at the state and local level that is missed by those who focus myopically on federal politics as the only outlet for doing anything. Conservatives, of course, know this. Though certainly guilty of being sucked into the vortex that is national politics—please see: my whole existence— conservatives are more ideologically inclined to favor state and local policy making and perhaps therefore more likely to figure out how to impact it. Hence, the long-established and successful American Legislative Exchange Council, which has worked since 1973 to systematically push for free-market and conservative policies in the nation’s 50 state capitals, not just Washington. It’s flanked by a network of state-based think tanks, too. ALEC, partially funded by the Koch brothers, has recently become a bogeyman of the Left, which feels like it’s late to this state-based party.

The ALEC scare on the Left feels much like the Heritage Foundation scare that brought us the Center for American Progress to copy what right-leaning think tanks had been doing for 30-some years. And, now the left-leaning ALEC is soon to be upon us. Originally called American Legislative and Issue Campaign Exchange (ALICE, get it?) it’s been renamed SiX, and is being pitched to the Left’s money men this week at a meeting of the Democracy Alliance.

President Barack Obama’s former liaison to the states will launch a major new state-focused organization called the State Innovation Exchange — or SiX for short — before donors on Friday at the annual winter meeting of the Democracy Alliance liberal funding club.

SiX’s goal is an ambitious one: to compete with a well-financed network of conservative groups — including the American Legislative Exchange Council — that for years have dominated state policy battles, advancing pro-business, anti-regulation bills in state after state.

SiX ultimately plans to raise as much as $10 million a year to boost progressive state lawmakers and their causes — partly by drafting model legislation in state capitols to increase environmental protections, expand voting rights, and raise the minimum wage — while also using bare-knuckle tactics like opposition research and video tracking to derail Republicans and their initiatives.

“Progressives are looking around to figure out where to go to push back, and there has not been a vehicle to do that at the state level — it’s the biggest missing piece in the progressive infrastructure,” said Nick Rathod, a career Democratic operative who started and will run SiX.

Though it’s fun to believe liberals have ceded the local and state-level fields to conservatives due to their deifying of national politicians and process, there’s too much evidence in places like North Carolina and Wisconsin (not to mention, Colorado, the Blueprint state) that that’s simply not the case. Though activists overstepped in Wisconsin and have been unable to reverse a ton of state or federal gains for Republicans in N.C., they are certainly present, loud and active. In North Carolina, heaps of protesters gather every Monday to impose a literal drumbeat of opposition on the Republican state legislature. Duly elected Democrats in the state, though corrupt and disliked, were left to do their business relatively unmolested during the early Obama years. And certainly, teachers unions are an active, monied liberal influence in each state that could easily be analogized with the power of ALEC. Not taking them into account is just a woe-is-us tale meant to cast Republicans as all-powerful schemers against innocent does.

But this does seem like an effort to organize liberal forces in a different way, making them more effective. It will also be an opportunity for the national media to act like ALEC is the devil while SiX is a beneficent creator of kindly legislative suggestions for the unenlightened, despite SiX’s declaration that “[w]e’re going to be much more aggressive than ALEC.”

Lachlan Markey, who does indespensable reporting on the secretive Democracy Alliance, is filing from their conference this week on some of what the donors are already doing on a state level and their strategies for skirting campaign finance law to do it. The Alliance’s briefing materials says it dropped “$45 million in funding for state-level liberal and Democratic organizations during the 2014 election cycle.”

One such group, Catalist, is among the Democracy Alliance’s core network of supported groups. The company, a limited liability corporation, is the data hub of the Democratic Party, providing extensive voter information to political groups, parties, and candidates, some of which are legally prohibited from coordinating their efforts.

Other Democracy Alliance-linked groups have alleged that this sort of arrangement violates campaign finance laws.

The American Democracy Legal Fund—a sister organization of DA-supported Media Matters for America run by Hillary Clinton operative David Brock, who attended April’s DA conference—filed a federal election complaint last month against the Republican National Committee that alleged illegal coordination with outside groups by way of a mutual for-profit data vendor.

Brock’s group claimed that the RNC and independent political groups were illegally coordinating by accessing the same information, held by the private company Data Trust. The Committee on States appears to be promoting a similar relationship.

In addition to this data work, the Committee is supporting extensive voter registration efforts at the state level through its support of the Voter Participation Center (VPC).

Other efforts will focus on voter registration and strategizing for the 2020 post-Census redistricting. But that horse may have already left the barn, as Marc Thiessen rightly notes with some stunning numbers on state Republican dominance not seen since the ’20s.

The number of GOP governors has risen from 21 to 31 since Obama took office (32 if Gov. Sean Parnell holds on in Alaska) — just short of the all-time high of 34 Republican governors in the 1920s.

Voters have also given those governors Republican legislatures to enact their agendas. When Obama first took office, Republicans held just 3,220 state legislative seats. After Tuesday’s vote, the number stands at 4,111 — a net gain of nearly 900 seats on Obama’s watch. Thanks to the 291 state legislative seats Republicans added in 61 chambers across the country last week, there are now more Republican state legislators than at any time since 1920.

Put another way: In 2008, the GOP controlled just 36 state legislative chambers. It soon will control 69 — and voters have given the GOP total control of state government in nearly half the country. In 2008, Republicans held both the legislature and governors’ mansion in just eight states. Today, the number is 24. By contrast, Democrats now control both the legislature and governor’s office in just seven states, down from 15 before the 2014 election. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, that is the lowest number of states Democrats have controlled since 1860.

And, the best part about all of this is that while Democrats play catch-up, Republicans governors can enact some conservative policies, reign in some of the more insane spending leading their states toward ruin, and leave the average voter realizing the sky has not fallen and the future looks pretty decent. The party earns back trust by demonstrating competence, managing expectations, delivering on some promises, and not acting like idiots. I know, it’s a lot to ask, but it’s easier to accomplish such things on a smaller, state level, easier to do them well, and in the end, that’s what conservatives are all about. So, have at it, state legislatures and may the odds be ever in your favor.