If we judge everyone by their political representatives, then everyone becomes an arsehole and the term loses its meaning.

There’s a fallacy a lot of people fall victim to: we judge ourselves by our perceived virtues, but we judge others by their mistakes as we perceive them. It’s like that in your analogy. We might say “oh California and New York are quite progressive, so they aren’t arseholes” (or assholes, since we’re talking about Americans and that’s how they say it). But, there are people there who are bad, so we might as well say they’re bad, too. Though, I suppose less bad than states like Texas, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, and others that have been in the news for human rights abuses. But it’s varying degrees. They’re all assholes.

It starts to look like another fallacy, one this analogy creates. To judge states we like by the politicians we agree with (like the current governor of New York sounds like a genuinely good human) but to judge the ones we don’t like by the politicians we don’t. I’m sure the six states I named that are constantly in the news for bad behaviour have politicians who are also genuinely good humans.

So, in theory, good idea… in practice… debatable.