Secessionist threats can be a useful strategy to get what you want. Spain and the UK are examples of countries whose increased decentralisation (greater power for regional governments) is largely an attempt to subdue secessionist demands, if those secessionist demands had never existed that decentralisation may well never have happened-certainly not to the same degree. Similarly, the Canadian political establishment invested immense resources in constitutional reforms to try to satisfy Quebec nationalists (the Meech Lake Accord and Charlottetown Accord), although those reforms failed - without the threat of Quebec secession they likely never would have put so much time into it.

Whether that strategy works as well in the very different political context of the US remains to be seen, but it isn’t impossible that it might