This is How Democrats Win

As a center-left Democrat, I don’t often look to Texas for good news.

Mostly what we get out of the Lone Star State are hard-right gun and God (in that order) worshiping cowboys.

But even the Democrats aren’t often my cup of tea. Rep. Al Green, who has made it his signature move to yell at Donald Trump at the start of the State of the Union and be escorted from the House floor, is a grandstanding nut. The hard-left likes to describe this kind of thing as “good trouble.” No, folks, it’s just trouble. And Beto O’Rourke, who has an ego outsized to his actual abilities, runs and loses for any office in sight.

I liked LBJ. It’s kind of been slow out of Texas ever since.

But last week the Longhorns provided several pieces of encouraging news.

Let’s start with Green. It looks likely that he’ll go down in a primary runoff to Rep. Christian Menefee. Menefee is 37 while Green would turn 80 during his term if reelected. The Democratic Congressmen were redistricted into the same district in the shameful Republican gerrymander designed to take five more seats for their party. With his outlandish behavior, Green does his party no favors. Menefee is a bright, young attorney. He might be equally progressive, but he promises to be smarter about how he presents his cause.

Then there’s James Talarico. The 36-year old state legislator won a Democratic primary outright (they have a runoff system in Texas if no candidate gets 50% of the vote) for U.S. Senate against Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. Talarico and Crockett hold similar progressive views, but an ocean separated their styles. Crockett has been a hard-left flame thrower, while Talarico believes you build the party by reaching out to moderates and independents and by not scaring the bejesus out of everybody else. He now has a fair chance of actually finally picking up the Texas Senate seat that has alluded his party while running candidates like the outspoken liberal O’Rourke.

And the flip side of that race is also encouraging. While Democrats seem to be mostly hewing to practicality, Republican voters are still held in thrall to MAGA mania. The more or less sensible (it’s all relative in the age of Trump) incumbent Sen. John Cornyn narrowly won the first round primary against the hard-right, full-MAGA, manifestly corrupt Attorney General Ken Paxton. But now they’re headed for a runoff and you’d have to give the edge to Paxton. For one thing, if you count the votes for the third candidate in the first round as anti-Cornyn votes, they’ll go to Paxton. And for another thing, Cornyn is a long-time incumbent and institutionalist who always looks uncomfortable around Trump while Paxton is all MAGA all the time. I’m not sure even a Trump endorsement, if he gets it, can save Cornyn.

And if it’s Paxton versus Talarico in the general election, well, I have to like the Democrat’s chances… but with a caveat. I mentioned above that Talarico and Crockett come from pretty much the same progressive place and their differences were about style. Talarico has left hard-left breadcrumbs that he can’t sweep up. He has embraced the gender fluidity stuff that makes Democrats look kind of nutty. He’s moved back to the center on that, but an eccentric and unpopular position once taken will be driven home by your opponent.

Still, the lessons from Texas are clear. The kind of arguments and persona that excite the hard-left activist class or hard-right MAGA followers are just deadly in a general election. The fundamental question then in all Democratic primaries all over the country is: Will the activists get their candidate and lose the ultimate prize or will the practical Democratic voters prevail with a candidate who can win in November?

So far the answers in much of the rest of the country have been encouraging. Let’s see if Wisconsin’s Democratic primary voters see it the same way in the gubernatorial race come August.