The catalog of unrequited hopes and hearts is a long one.<\/p>\n
Captain Ahab went mad in his vengeful search for \u201cMoby Dick.\u201d<\/a> Jay Gatsby\u2019s ostentatious fortune failed to win the love<\/a> of Daisy Buchanan. Charlie Brown<\/a> never kicked the football.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s Texas<\/a>, the land of broken Democratic dreams.<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s been half a century since the party carried Texas in a presidential election. The last time Democrats won a statewide office, back in 1994, \u201cThe Lion King\u201d was smashing box office records, Boyz II Men ruled the radio and the World Wide Web was about to change everything.<\/p>\n As Texas grew increasingly Republican, and politically beyond reach, Democrats insisted every election year was the one when they\u2019d end their futility and take back power in either Washington or Austin, the state capital.<\/p>\n It never happened.<\/p>\n But is this, finally, the year?<\/p>\n With Ken Paxton stomping incumbent John Cornyn on Tuesday in a fierce and astronomically expensive U.S. Senate primary, many Democrats believe so \u2014 and even neutral observers agree they\u2019ve been handed their best shot at resurrection in a good while.<\/p>\n \u201cPaxton is going to be a much tougher guy [for Republicans] to haul over the finish line five months from now as opposed to Cornyn, who never lost an election until this one,\u201d said Richard Murray, an emeritus political science professor at the University of Houston, who spent decades surveying Texas voters. \u201cWe\u2019re looking at a very expensive, hard-fought race.\u201d<\/p>\n Paxton, Texas\u2019 three-term attorney general, is a singularly flawed candidate. Indicted,<\/a> impeached,<\/a> accused by his ex-wife of adultery,<\/a> the GOP nominee is, to put it mildly, \u201can ethically challenged individual,\u201d as the famously understated (and concerned)<\/a> Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins put it.<\/p>\n But Paxton was the choice of President Trump<\/a> \u2014 he, too, of impeachment<\/a>, indictment<\/a> and adulterous infamy <\/a>\u2014 and that settled that.<\/p>\n Trump described Cornyn, a four-term senator and former justice of the Texas Supreme Court, as a \u201cgood man\u201d but insufficiently supportive when \u201ctimes were tough.\u201d Among those occasions of abandonment, Cornyn voted to certify the incontrovertible result<\/a> of the 2020 presidential election, thwarting Trump\u2019s bid to illegally stay in office.<\/a><\/p>\n The Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate is James Talarico,<\/a> 37, a state representative from Austin and a Presbyterian seminarian and former public schoolteacher who\u2019s built a nationwide following with his articulate and scriptural takedown of Republican foes. Imagine Beto O\u2019Rourke <\/a>with a clerical collar and capacity to mint money.<\/p>\n In 2018, O\u2019Rourke came from seemingly nowhere and nearly upset Republican Ted Cruz<\/a> in the closest Texas Senate race in decades. Before that it was the filibustering Wendy Davis<\/a> who fired up Democratic imaginations nationwide<\/a>. She commandeered the floor of the state Senate to briefly block antiabortion legislation \u2014 This is the year! \u2014 before falling well short in a 2014 bid for governor.<\/a><\/p>\n The key difference this time, with all due credit to Talarico and his prodigious fundraising, is his damaged-goods opponent. Normally, all it takes to win in Texas is a Republican \u2018R\u2019 beside a candidate\u2019s name. But polling suggests a not-insignificant number of GOP voters could have a hard time supporting Paxton, which doesn\u2019t necessarily mean they\u2019ll back Talarico. They may simply not vote in the Senate race, which could be nearly as costly.<\/p>\n (The counterargument is that Paxton, a martyred hero to the MAGA movement, could boost turnout among the party base at a time Trump is leaking support<\/a> within the establishment GOP.)<\/p>\n Either way, the president\u2019s me-first political self-indulgence is not making things any easier<\/a> for his fellow Republicans as they fight to hang on to control of the House and Senate in November.<\/p>\n In the 2022 midterm election,<\/a> Trump boosted a batch of unappealing misfits \u2014 their sole attribute being their fealty to him \u2014 with poor results. Republicans lost eminently winnable Senate contests in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and, with it, their chance at control of the chamber.<\/p>\n Even if Paxton prevails in November, Trump\u2019s endorsement could prove quite costly to the GOP, and not just in the figurative sense.<\/p>\n Democrats need a gain of four seats to flip the Senate. To do so, they must successfully defend seats in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire and then pick up at least four others from a menu that includes Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio and, now, Texas.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a considerable reach. But Democratic chances look a lot better<\/a> than they did just a few months ago, before Trump mired the country in an Iranian quagmire<\/a> and the price of gas and just about everything else<\/a> began to sail through the ceiling.<\/p>\n Holding on to Cornyn\u2019s seat will end up costing Republicans a kingly sum \u2014 money that \u201ccan\u2019t be spent in two places at the same time,\u201d as Matt Mackowiak, a longtime Texas GOP strategist and advisor to Cornyn\u2019s campaign, noted. \u201cIt can go either to Michigan, New Hampshire, Georgia, Iowa, Alaska. Or it can go here to Texas, which is extremely expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n Odds are against Talarico and Democrats winning the Senate race in November, because Texas remains, fundamentally, a Republican and conservative-leaning state. Paxton may win for that reason and that reason alone.<\/p>\n