On the Republican side, Ken Paxton and John Cornyn were neck-and-neck and in position for a runoff, according to the poll from the University of Texas’ Texas Politics Project.
I think they’ve both had their issues with where their money comes from, her corporate PACs, him with the Adelson family that’s trying to somehow get gambling legalized in Texas without any Native American reservations and with a Christofascist state government. That said, neither one is a Schumer-style appeaser. He wears a brand of class-conscious social justice theology on his sleeve, throwing the Christian Nationalists’ so-called faith into clear focus, but because of that he’s also very much pitching “electability,” which in Texas right now means “I’m a cishet white guy so maybe some of the racists will stay home on election day.”
She is a firebrand who has made calling out Trump and the gang her full-time job, but her campaign seems to revel more in the idea of pissing off Donald Trump than in letting us know what she’ll do. There is a zeitgeisty element to that, and I think she’d be a more prominent and powerful advocate in Congress, but I think either would slot more into the Progressive wing. Ultimately, either would also be an insane improvement over Cornyn or (gag) Paxton.
Would be remiss of course without mentioning the dustup where a Tiktoker left the Talarico camp for the Crockett camp, saying that Talarico told her he was expecting to run against a mediocre black guy, not a talented black woman. He’s admitted to using the word mediocre about Colin Allred’s prior campaign, and TBF it was extremely mediocre (like Allred knew from day one he had no chance, so why knock yourself out?), but if Talarico did try to add in Allred’s race as (one would hope) a rhetorical flourish, then it was a tone-deaf moment that harmed his credibility in promising to advocate for the black community. “Electability” with white people doesn’t help if you simultaneously depress the vote of the usual 4/9 of Texans who vote blue. I’m as white as Talarico is, but it really gave me pause.
I think they’ve both had their issues with where their money comes from, her corporate PACs, him with the Adelson family that’s trying to somehow get gambling legalized in Texas without any Native American reservations and with a Christofascist state government. That said, neither one is a Schumer-style appeaser. He wears a brand of class-conscious social justice theology on his sleeve, throwing the Christian Nationalists’ so-called faith into clear focus, but because of that he’s also very much pitching “electability,” which in Texas right now means “I’m a cishet white guy so maybe some of the racists will stay home on election day.”
She is a firebrand who has made calling out Trump and the gang her full-time job, but her campaign seems to revel more in the idea of pissing off Donald Trump than in letting us know what she’ll do. There is a zeitgeisty element to that, and I think she’d be a more prominent and powerful advocate in Congress, but I think either would slot more into the Progressive wing. Ultimately, either would also be an insane improvement over Cornyn or (gag) Paxton.
Would be remiss of course without mentioning the dustup where a Tiktoker left the Talarico camp for the Crockett camp, saying that Talarico told her he was expecting to run against a mediocre black guy, not a talented black woman. He’s admitted to using the word mediocre about Colin Allred’s prior campaign, and TBF it was extremely mediocre (like Allred knew from day one he had no chance, so why knock yourself out?), but if Talarico did try to add in Allred’s race as (one would hope) a rhetorical flourish, then it was a tone-deaf moment that harmed his credibility in promising to advocate for the black community. “Electability” with white people doesn’t help if you simultaneously depress the vote of the usual 4/9 of Texans who vote blue. I’m as white as Talarico is, but it really gave me pause.