The Blue Wave Flipped Texas Scam

that we felt as younger men. Anyway, my co hosts on this episode, James Stout and me along, welcome to it could happen here.

it always costs an insane amount of money. It is a con by DC political consultants to get your money and pump it into something that will fill up their coffers and not achieve anything of value for the state of Texas or for the Democrats nationwide. And this makes people very angry for two reasons. One, they tend to interpret it as saying abandon Texas and the people there, which is not the statement I was making or anyone

else was making. And number two, everyone kind of obsessively starts pointing out like, look, look at how over the last thirty years, you know, the things have narrowed in Texas and the proportion of like Democratic votes is raised. This is winnable. We can do it. We can do it. We're going to talk today about why anyone who talks to you about flipping Texas as a political goal that you should give money to is conning you, and not only conning you, but making it actually more difficult for

Democrats to win, both in Texas and nationwide. That's that's that's the premise of the episode, everybody.

just an anti electoralist. You're not being practical. There was a there was one particular guy who's like a local Democratic candidate who responded seven times to my tweet being like with variations, and his obsession was like, if we win Texas, it's impossible for the GOP to win national elections, which is true. If theoretically the Democrats flipped Texas, the GOP would have no chance at winning a federal election ever. Again.

down approach, right. You are not focusing on we want to fill up and win a bunch of different local elections. We want to flip, you know, the state houses. We want to flip a bunch of mayoralties and stuff. You are saying, what matters is how Texas votes in the national election. And if you were to get if you were to kind of eke out a bear like in Georgia right where you get a narrow victory in the federal election, that would be great for the Democratic Party.

One of my issues with it is that kind of focusing obsessively on flipping Texas isn't focusing on the stuff that actually will help Texans, like Texans currently being targeted by the state government, because flipping the state in a federal election, but not taking the governor's seat, not taking the lieutenant governor seat, not like actually taking the state house,

doesn't improve life for people in Texas. I think the kind of the degree to which the federal government, Biden's administration, has been unable to push back very effectively against kind of a lot of the shit that DeSantis has been doing in Florida. You know, they have started to make some attempts. Is evidence of this, and kind of more to the point, even if you don't agree with that, fundamentally, these strategies that the Democratic Party has embraced in Texas

do not work. The Texas Democratic Party is incompetent. They

are bad at their job. They are worse. People bring up Georgia a lot when I talk about flipping Texas, and folks are like, well, we flipped Georgia, And it's like, yeah, because the state elected officials and candidates in George number one, the state party did a much better job of kind of harvesting is a weird way to phrase it, but of incubating talent to run for election in a number of local offices then the Texas Democratic Party has ever done. And that was a big part of what allowed them

to be competitive and eventually to flip the state. There's a lot of like kind of dollar sign information on how bad the state party in Texas is at this shit, and I guess I should go ahead and provide some of that now. So in the twenty twenty two election, the midterms famously an unusually good showing for the Democratic Party nationwide for a midterm election everywhere but Texas. O'Rourke

ran against Greg Abbott. He lost by eleven percent. This is kind of to contrast the election that got everyone excited when he was running against Cruise. I think they were like three percent apart. And again, the only reason there was this kind of mistaken belief and excitement among dims that O'Rourke, because he was so close to Cruz, had a real shot of winning Texas. No, he got kinda close to beating Cruz because Ted even Republicans hate

Ted Cruz. No one is ever liked that man. His own wife can barely stand to be in a room with him. His political allies would turn the other cheek if fucking somebody anyway, we shouldn't talk about political assassinations

on this podcast. It wouldn't anger anybody though, right. Lindsay Graham has said that, like Lindsay Graham's like, what maybe the only good joke a Republican elected officials ever told is that if you were to shoot Ted Cruz on the floor of Congress and the trial was held in Congress, like nobody would vote to convict the murderer anyway. So Beto lost quite badly to Greg Abbott and beyond that, basically every statewide candidate that the Democrats ran lost in

that election. It was a bad election for the Democratic Party and people who pay attention to Texas politics and actually like aren't just trying to like grift your donation money.

suburbs of Dallas. Uh. And you know, like but basically in all of these areas, Uh, these were like super narrow wins, like these the big successes, and they were narrow wins in areas that Joe Biden had carried by double digits two years ago. And Joe Biden is a historically like that is part of some of them. Some of it will show you how bad the Texas Democratic

Party is. Joe Biden is not a popular president, and the fact that he carried a lot of these areas by more than the candidates who narrowly won in twenty twenty two could is not a great sign for the way things are trending.

those people are normally Democrats. Yeah, but you have guys like Henry is it Quella Quala, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, who is opposed to abortion rights are yeah yeah and extremely hawkish on the border, and like yeah, yeah, what do we gain by having like, yeah, blue team good, Like not really if this person's going to take away your bodily autonomy and brutalize people for coming to this country for one day about a life.

where the money could have gone better. For example of how fucking wasteful, particularly the Beto wort campaign was. Right, he loses by eleven points to Greg Abbot. He raised seventy seven million dollars to lose by that much. A few years earlier, Lupe Valdez ran against Greg Abbot. She spent raised like two million dollars and lost by thirteen points, So seventy five million dollars may have bought Beto two percent.

You know, like if you assume that national trends had nothing to do with that gap closing by a tiny amount, Like.

You know, Beto raised seventy seven million dollars. The gubernatorial race cost in total something like one hundred and forty million dollars, which is a huge amount of money for something that fails that badly and doesn't there's no evidence that Beto's campaign, like he was he's obviously good at fundraising, right, And there was kind of this belief among a lot of dims, an errant belief that this meant that he

would be good for down ballot races. Right, He's going to bring the entire because of how much attention he gets. He's going to raise the entire Democratic Party up. The poor showing of the Democratic Party in Texas in twenty twenty two suggests that that's not the case. And the money like there are there are fights that could have been won and probably weren't because the money wasn't being

invested in those fights. It was going to bettle. And I'm gonna quote from an article by the Texas Tribune here. This year, the party ran Rochelle Garza, a civil rights lawyer with little political experience, against Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was widely seen as the most vulnerable Republican incumbent.

But Garza struggled to raise money or gain traction in Auric's shadow and lost by ten percentage points against Paxton, who has been indicted on felony security fraud charges and is being investigated by the FBI for abuse of office accusations. And it's what maybe she couldn't have won no matter

what you did. But one of the rules of politics in this country is that the money you spend at a big race, like a gubernatorial race, like a like a like a Senate or a congressional campaign at the federal level, like a presidential campaign, goes less far per dollar than the money you spend in smaller local elections. Right, ten million bucks going into that election might have done something, you know, as opposed to seventy five million going into

Bedo O'Rourke and accomplishing very little. This has been not just a problem in Texas in previous elections, throughout the Trump area and a little before in particular, this was a problem the DIMS had kind of from the middle of the Obama years until the last couple of like really the last midterm at twenty eighteen is when it started to turn around nationally, and the DIMS have learned a lot in other regions about like not spending stupid

amounts of money on hopeless contests, but not like comprehensively. Example, in twenty twenty two, the second most expensive house race was the fourteenth Congressional District of Georgia, where Marcus Flowers raised sixteen million dollars and lost by thirty two points, not a great return on the investment. And it was like, the reason why he raised so much money is because he was running against Marjorie Taylor Green and nationally, DIMS outside of Georgia wanted to put in money because they

hate her. And it's a trend that relies a lot on social media on kind of the way in which like hardcore dims, the dims that do a lot of the small dollar donations think about politics where it's like Marjorie Taylor Green bad donate money to opponent, Well, her opponent had no chance of winning in that district, Like no amount of money would have flipped that, and you just wasted sixteen million dollars that could have helped somewhere else.

Like maybe that's an insane thing and it's not as bad as it used if you want to look at like the like the kind of the dumbest it ever was. In twenty twenty, so Lindsay Graham's seat was up in South Carolina and Jamie Harrison ran against Lindsay Grant and dims again because Lindsay Graham evil, you know, raised one hundred and thirty million dollars and he lost fight ten points.

Amy McGrath lost to Mitch McConnell, who is another Like you can always get a shitload of money to fight Mitch McConnell ninety four million dollars lost by twenty points either of the like one hundred and thirty million, ninety

four million, that's two state legislators. You could have flipped, or at least made progress on flipping, right, Like that amount of money could potentially do that or at least help set up, you know, get a couple of people elected who have a chance at kind of broadening a base of support and becoming you know, leaders in states that are currently like dominated by red legislators, Like there's a chance at least here.

they lost like a thousand seats. It was like yeah, and and and you know, on the we were seeing the product of this right like this like like Wisconsin was sort of just a hell hole for the last decade. Uh and you know, I mean like and these are like Minnesota to like the like there are lots of these states that like that, like not Minnesota or am I talking about Michigan?

the Democrat Party like is not run by sort of like it's it's not a party in like an actual real sense. It is a it is a collection of consultants, and those consultants only care about senates about Senate races. Sometimes they care about house races, and they care specifically they spend all of their fucking money in presidential races.

And you know, it's like again, and the Republicans don't do that because they have a bunch of like people they you know, because they have a bunch of like part of their base, right is these like small and mid scale capitalists in you know, in cities, in rural areas who have like immediate concerns about like, you know, there's like there there are specific workers who they want like lives to be worse. And so because of that, the Republican machine is like seize the entire fucking country.

And the Democrats have been sitting around like spending like a trillion dollars on Wendy Davis losing by twenty points.

that get attention because there's famous names involved. You have, like in twenty twenty I think it was you have or no, it's twenty twenty two. You have the election between Ted Budd, a Republican against the Democrat Sherry Beasley in North Carolina where the Democratic Party decided not to prioritize this election because it wasn't winnable, and then Bud won up wound up winning by just four points. That's

a seat you can flip with money. That's not an unreasonable thing as opposed to again, the races where it went to and people are losing by like thirty something fucking percent. And if you want to know who a serious candidate is, who is not just trying to do the sexy thing or not just trying to like again flip the states so that we can win the federal election, but actually wants to help their state. And this is again there's very nice things about Beto O'Rourke. I was

in Texas during the ice storm. He did good work during the ice storm, like actual community defense kind of stuff that I do have some respect for. He is not and has never been a serious politician, and I will tell you why he went from winning an election to losing a state election against Ted Cruz, to losing a presidential race to losing the governor seat. That is so fucking scattershot. That is not building a base of power, That is not building from the ground up and like

encouraging the growth of other personalities. You're just darting from whatever the sexiest and most like pr driven race is. That's not serious. I want to talk about what number one, the Democratic Party, the ship that like, as we've said, they're getting better. The National Party got a lot better at this, particularly in twenty twenty two. It was less stupid than the previous couple of elections had been.

using to very successfully raise money for him. He was really good at it. He was a reasonably intelligent candidate. And then he gave the speech that we're about to play for you, and it completely created his and ended him as a as a candidate. You know, I always says the thing about Dean.

a state off at unwinnable. Instead, spread the money that the DNC has around two campaign throughout the country everywhere, particularly to fund local dncs, so that they can start building a stable of candidates that can attract voters and eventually win local elections. It's not like an easy It's not a sexy strategy because a lot of it is focused on like the slow, kind of grueling fight to build up a base of support and unfriendly terrain. But

it worked like really well. Actually in twenty or so states, those that had voted solidly Republican in private previous recent presidential races, Democratic candidates like won elections that had previously like in the like gone against them like it had.

of all seats in the states analyzed. They lost two, you know, state Senate seats net, but it worked great in the House and gained an attorney generalship, gained three House seats, gained a Senate seat, and in fifteen of the twenty seats the Democratic nominees on increase in vote share between two thousand and four and two thousand and eight, which was the years that so again not super sexy.

These aren't like we flipped Texas suddenly, but it's like, oh, we started to see real gains and like a lot of pretty red states. Now it didn't work everywhere. It was not particularly successful in a large chunk of the South, like it did not arrest the slide into the red everywhere. But in a lot of the Midwest, particularly the states that were like the Hillary Clinton so called firewall that went for Trump in twenty twenty, it was extremely effective.

And of course it got mixed immediately after Obama won election, and this is a big part of why in twenty ten the dims lost disastrously. But like the basic idea of we should be putting money into local democratic parties in order to like number one, have like a big part of winning any conflict, whether it's a war or a political election, is having the resources available reserves to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves in the moment.

So you have a solidly read state house seat or judge ship or something like that, or governorship or mayor mayoralty, and a candidate has a health scare or has a scandal, you know, they get caught fucking a thirteen year old or something, and suddenly this seat that was solidly read is in play. And if you have no one who can like get votes, who can get voters excited, who can run for that, well, then you're probably not gonna

win it. It's just going to like go to whoever the RNC you know, picks to pick up the seat next. But if you've got someone waiting in the wings, they have a chance at winning it. And a good example of this is what just happened in Jacksonville, Florida. Right you have DeSantis make go like lunge to the fucking most fascist end of the right and pass this abortion build that something like seventy five percent of the state

doesn't like. And the Dims had a decent candidate there that was able to run against the Republican mayor of Jacksonville and win. And in that election, the dim spent two million and the Republicans spent nine million. You were not talking about the kind of resources expended that you're seeing in some of these dumb races we're talking about. So anyway, like this is most of what I wanted

to get into. Is just like you can win and you can improve things in Texas and you can build a base from which to actually change things electorally in that state, but you can't do it by just like focusing on whoever is at the top. Like it has to be smarter. It's not just about shoveling money into a pit.

why the top down is okay. So this is like if if we're gonna actually do this sort of like complicated electoralism, like this is why Bernie Sanders lost two elections in a row, is that you can't actually like like actual sort of like substantive political change like doesn't happen from the top down. It's it's like it happens on bottom up organizing. And you know, the the democratic waves in like the last two years were basically like them eating actual social movements. It's you know, like they

it's it's them basically like they're there. There's a sort of rejuvenated anti abortion movement that they just sort of consume. Right, They've been doing a very very good job of sort of like eating like whatever sort of queer rights like movements exist alive. And they had kind of stopped doing that for a while because they chose to just like

destroy occupy whether rather than like try to co opt it. Yea, And you know, I mean there were reasons for that, right, but like part of part of the thing like if if you if if you're a Democrat and you want to actually like win Texas, you need to have like actual you to have actual sort of social movements that you know, the Democrats can eventually take over and destroy but in the time between they destroy them destroying them and then and you know, like like in the brief

time while they both exist and are control by Democratic Party, that's how you actually sort of like build the kinds of the build the kinds of coalitions to build the kinds of organization that win these races. And the Democratic Party has just no interest in doing that like almost anywhere basically outside of Minnesota, where I don't know, those in the Minnesota devs are fucking built different. I don't,

I don't, I don't know, I don't. I don't have another explanation for that, but like, yeah, it's I don't know, it's it's.

uh politics in Georgia. You've got people who are motivated because of a specific political issue that Dems are strong on, like abortion, and you can you can get people registered, you can get people out organizing, you can get people donating money, and more most important that you can get people voting and voting in numbers that they haven't before and make if you're able to kind of harness that sort of thing. But being able to harness that, again,

part of it is this is not sexy. This is not something we can say this is going to flip a state in twenty twenty four. But putting in the money and the resources to have people who are being supported to go out and make attempts and to build like a reputation and a base of support and networks in the state. Like, that's the non sexy thing that

the number one the Republicans are really good at. If you're asking yourself looking at all these horrible anti trans bills, anti gay bills, anti abortion bills, how do they do

this well? Because church is organized at the local level to build up the kind of support and the kind of human infrastructure that allowed them to take advantage of the kind of broader social trends that drove some of those states more deeply read and that kind of like made made it possible for them to do things that ten years before people had said, like there's no way to make this happen. That can work on the left side of things, but you have to have the groundwork

in They started with like school boards. Yeah, they started.

in the places where something like this. This is why the state level Midwest Dems are so much further to the left than the Dems everywhere else, because like the people in Minnesota, the people in Wisconsin are like the the only reason they're even so remotely in power is because and you know, you're seeing this like at like in Chicago too with Brandon Johnson, is that like these those people are like functionally dependent on like that they're

on their teachers unions to exist as like a political coalision. Yeah, and so you know, like like union organizing is a is a like we're just like fucking just giving money to a strike fund is even even if the thing that you want to do is win elections, that is a more effective way of winning of winning elections than fucking giving money to Beto Auroric like a seventh time.

to fix them. Right, Beto's not going to win. And even if Texas flips for an election, that doesn't mean the state legend your flips. It doesn't mean the governor flips. It doesn't mean that things get better for people doing these kind of bottom up approaches. Number one will eventually flip the fucking state. Right, there is a demographic trend happening. Part of how you flip the state, by the way, if you're actually responsible, is like proving that you can

make people's lives better. If you want to flip the state. That's maybe more ethical than just being like, what if we dump one hundred and seventy million dollars to try to make this guy who goes viral on YouTube or Twitter sometimes look better? Right, maybe one of those is more ethical than the other. Anyway. I don't want to rant about electoralism anymore, but as a as a transplant in Texan, I get frustrated by this, so I felt like we had to say something.