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\n Is James Talarico doomed to be the latest disappointing Texas Democrat?
\n Photo: Brandon Bell\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
For a data-driven number cruncher of the highest order, Nate Silver is refreshingly honest in admitting<\/a> his skepticism about the Senate candidacy of Texas Democrat James Talarico<\/a> is a \u201cgut\u201d hunch that may even reflect a bit of superstition. In a piece this week, Silver went through all the reasons his election model rates Talarico as a slight favorite over Republican Ken Paxton<\/a> and refuted some misconceptions about the Texas Senate race (e.g., that recent Democratic Senate losers like Beto O\u2019Rourke did just as well in polls as Talarico).<\/p>\n \u201cWould I still be surprised if Talarico carries Texas a few months from now? Absolutely,\u201d Silver concluded. \u201cI just don\u2019t know that you ought to give that gut feeling much weight.\u201d<\/p>\n This is a common feeling among political observers and, particularly, Democrats. In recent years, the prospect of turning Texas blue has seemed tantalizingly close yet always just out of reach. Democrats can\u2019t help but keep hoping as the state is so large (with 40 electoral votes) and so significant both economically and culturally. And there are many aspects of Texas demography, with the state\u2019s rapidly growing and very diverse big cities and suburbs, that suggest a brighter future for the Democratic Party. Recent Republican success<\/a> among Texas Latinos probably isn\u2019t sustainable. And the Texas GOP\u2019s steady slide into extremism on issues like abortion<\/a> and public education<\/a> will alienate many swing voters.<\/p>\n But the fact remains that no Democrat has won a governor\u2019s race in Texas since 1990 or a Senate race there since 1988. No Democratic presidential candidate has carried Texas since 1976, when a lot of white conservatives still identified as Democrats and were especially attracted to Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter of Georgia. Is this the year all that changes, and is James Talarico the candidate to push open a door long closed to members of his party?<\/p>\n It\u2019s good to remember that the political stereotypes we carry around in our heads about particular states can become out of date very quickly. Iowa and Ohio, for example, were among the preeminent dead-even swing states of the early 21st century. Then in 2016 Donald Trump carried Iowa by 9 percent and Ohio by 8, and we\u2019ve come to see them as red states (albeit red states where Democrats could win some key races in 2026). Florida seesawed back and forth between the two parties\u2019 presidential tickets for years; no one in the first six elections of this century carried the state by more than 5 percent. Then seemingly out of nowhere Trump carried it by 13 points even though it was a very close race nationally. Georgia, which seemed semi-permanently lodged in the GOP column after Bill Clinton\u2019s first election, famously went for Joe Biden in 2020, even as the state elected a Black man and a Jewish man, both Atlanta liberals, to the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n In living memory the now-deep-blue states of California, Illinois, and New York were all swing states, often governed by Republicans. For that matter, Vermont was the most-Democratic state in the last two presidential contests. From 1856 until 1992<\/a>, Vermont was carried by the Democratic presidential candidate exactly once (in the LBJ landslide of 1964).<\/p>\n States change, sometimes gradually, sometimes suddenly. It\u2019s entirely possible, of course, that James Talarico will become the latest Democratic statewide candidate to disappoint his party. The anticipated Democratic \u201cwave\u201d could be shallower than currently expected. The national GOP (led by both Trump\u2019s and Elon Musk\u2019s deep-pocketed super-PACs<\/a>) could throw a ton of money into Paxton\u2019s financially struggling campaign to be spent on countless ads depicting Talarico as a Jesus-hating tofu-eating super-woke leftist. But there\u2019s nothing inevitable about a GOP win in the Texas Senate race this year, especially given Paxton\u2019s scandal-ridden history<\/a> and the wounds left from his bloody and divisive primary win over incumbent Senator John Cornyn<\/a>. In your gut, you may figure Republicans will find a way to win. But in your mind, you know that may not be right.<\/p>\n