Texas is far more politically complicated than most Americans realize. Gains in Texas are proportionate to politicians running on platforms that matter to Texans. Hopefully if Cruz gets voted put the Democrats learn a valuable lesson about how to win in Texas. My concern is they’ll take all the wrong lessons and take the win to mean it’s time to double down on the old losing strategies.
If that was the whole story, I would agree with you…but there has been a 30-year campaign of voter suppression, gerrymandering, and general fuckery that causes that number to be so low. In the 2020 election at the height of covid, Greg “piss baby” Abbott limited ballot drop-off locations to one. In smaller, traditionally more republican counties this wasn’t as bad for them…but they did this for Harris County… a very blue county with millions of residents. Texas doesn’t have drop-off boxes for absentee ballots, as some states do. Instead, to drop off a mail-in ballot in person at any location, voters must present an approved form of ID to a poll worker, and voters can’t turn in any one else’s ballot… sick gramma? fuck you drag her here to drop that shit off. Did they sue? you bet they did. did they lose? you bet they did because Texas has been fucked by the right for the last 30 years.
Six percent seems winnable to me. Now that abortion is illegal, I hope that Hispanics will stop voting against their financial and deportation interests. I also hope that Republican women might have second thoughts about being forced to carry their rapists baby to term and will want access to IVF when they are making choices in the ballot booth. Religious minorities ought to be voting against enforced Christianity in public spaces such as schools.
Voter suppression is real though. Additionally, many people feel disenfranchised because of the perception of an insurmountable majority. Biden is not helping turnout with unconditional support for the genocidal Israeli administration either.
Six percent seems winnable to me. Now that abortion is illegal, I hope that Hispanics will stop voting against their financial and deportation interests. I also hope that Republican women might have second thoughts about being forced to carry their rapists baby to term and will want access to IVF when they are making choices in the ballot booth. Religious minorities ought to be voting against enforced Christianity in public spaces such as schools.
i understand what you are saying, but here is the thing: you can hope for all these things and you can hope they will be enough in spite of having bad candidate, or you can have all these things and they can work in concerto with good one.
one of these options is clearly superior to the other and knowing what’s at stake i don’t sea a reason to settle up for the subpar option.
Except that our voting system makes that mostly irrelevant. California still had all their electors vote for Biden. Plus California has 10 million more people so that makes sense too.
Yep. The best part of the U.S. constitution is the amendments. We should probably all spend some time thinking about that. Is our constitution good? The edits and polite suggestions are. The main bits are outdated, though, and were written by eloquent people who had the same knowledge of 2024 as we have for the year 2350.
Statements like theirs are basically those “insightful” maps showing [insert trend here] by location that are essentially just population density maps.
I mean sort of. But also I’ve seen people that disagree with everything Republicans and Republican candidates say, say with a straight face “at least I didn’t vote for a Democrat” so it’s also not that complicated at the same time.
I feel like Beto could’ve pulled it off if he’d ceded the gun issue. Of course it’s a mess but the NRA has convinced people that school shootings need to be a part of life for freedoms or whatever.
::sigh:: It’s not that the NRA has convinced people of anything, it’s that it’s literally a constitutional right. Dems need to drop this call for widespread bans on firearm types and features, and work more on addressing the circumstances that lead to violent crime in the first place.
O’Rourke saying that they were literally going to take guns is exactly the stupidest fucking thing to say in Texas, especially given that Latinos, African-Americans, and women are the fastest growing demographics of new gun owners, and especially given that LGBTQ+ people are finally figuring out that cops and the gov’t won’t protect them and so they need to protect themselves.
Biden was only behind Trump by 600,000 votes in 2020. Biden actually received more votes in TX than NY, but we still need better voter registration and turnout rates.
Wow, republicans losing Texas, that would be a hell of a win if Colin could pull it off.
Texas is far more politically complicated than most Americans realize. Gains in Texas are proportionate to politicians running on platforms that matter to Texans. Hopefully if Cruz gets voted put the Democrats learn a valuable lesson about how to win in Texas. My concern is they’ll take all the wrong lessons and take the win to mean it’s time to double down on the old losing strategies.
As a leftist in Louisiana, it’s sometimes important to remind people that there were more Trump voters in California than Texas.
as a non-american, that is fun fact to me, but it was just because the texans couldn’t be bothered to vote…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_California
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_Texas
If that was the whole story, I would agree with you…but there has been a 30-year campaign of voter suppression, gerrymandering, and general fuckery that causes that number to be so low. In the 2020 election at the height of covid, Greg “piss baby” Abbott limited ballot drop-off locations to one. In smaller, traditionally more republican counties this wasn’t as bad for them…but they did this for Harris County… a very blue county with millions of residents. Texas doesn’t have drop-off boxes for absentee ballots, as some states do. Instead, to drop off a mail-in ballot in person at any location, voters must present an approved form of ID to a poll worker, and voters can’t turn in any one else’s ballot… sick gramma? fuck you drag her here to drop that shit off. Did they sue? you bet they did. did they lose? you bet they did because Texas has been fucked by the right for the last 30 years.
Six percent seems winnable to me. Now that abortion is illegal, I hope that Hispanics will stop voting against their financial and deportation interests. I also hope that Republican women might have second thoughts about being forced to carry their rapists baby to term and will want access to IVF when they are making choices in the ballot booth. Religious minorities ought to be voting against enforced Christianity in public spaces such as schools.
Voter suppression is real though. Additionally, many people feel disenfranchised because of the perception of an insurmountable majority. Biden is not helping turnout with unconditional support for the genocidal Israeli administration either.
i understand what you are saying, but here is the thing: you can hope for all these things and you can hope they will be enough in spite of having bad candidate, or you can have all these things and they can work in concerto with good one.
one of these options is clearly superior to the other and knowing what’s at stake i don’t sea a reason to settle up for the subpar option.
Except that our voting system makes that mostly irrelevant. California still had all their electors vote for Biden. Plus California has 10 million more people so that makes sense too.
Yep. The best part of the U.S. constitution is the amendments. We should probably all spend some time thinking about that. Is our constitution good? The edits and polite suggestions are. The main bits are outdated, though, and were written by eloquent people who had the same knowledge of 2024 as we have for the year 2350.
California has more Republicans than any other state.
Because we’re a big state.
Statements like theirs are basically those “insightful” maps showing [insert trend here] by location that are essentially just population density maps.
I mean sort of. But also I’ve seen people that disagree with everything Republicans and Republican candidates say, say with a straight face “at least I didn’t vote for a Democrat” so it’s also not that complicated at the same time.
I feel like Beto could’ve pulled it off if he’d ceded the gun issue. Of course it’s a mess but the NRA has convinced people that school shootings need to be a part of life for freedoms or whatever.
::sigh:: It’s not that the NRA has convinced people of anything, it’s that it’s literally a constitutional right. Dems need to drop this call for widespread bans on firearm types and features, and work more on addressing the circumstances that lead to violent crime in the first place.
O’Rourke saying that they were literally going to take guns is exactly the stupidest fucking thing to say in Texas, especially given that Latinos, African-Americans, and women are the fastest growing demographics of new gun owners, and especially given that LGBTQ+ people are finally figuring out that cops and the gov’t won’t protect them and so they need to protect themselves.
Biggest thing is that Texas has horribly low voter turnout. The state could easily go purple if left leaning people would actually show up and vote.
Biden was only behind Trump by 600,000 votes in 2020. Biden actually received more votes in TX than NY, but we still need better voter registration and turnout rates.