There are some core competencies that define effective governance. One of them is keeping the literal lights on. Texas is failing at that. And it's not a one-off. Texas' decision to maintain their own power grid is a terrible idea executed terribly. Power outages hit Texas all the time from everything from hurricanes to ice storms, but their grid is too small and fragile to function at scale. What's more, Abbott has been out of the state (Ted Cruz could not be reached for comment) during the crisis.
So, on a basic level Republican governance of Texas is bad. Yes, throw in restricting abortions and giving ready access to guns...there's a lot to choose from, but they do a poor job.
The problem is it doesn't matter. There's this pundit's fallacy that voters will vote their interests; they will make reasoned choices based on preferable outcomes. Well, Abbott and Republicans routinely plunge their state into actual darkness and yet voters will line up in November and vote for Republicans.
Since everything has to be tied back to Biden's age, I suppose I come at it this way. We have a new poll from NBC/Marist that has Biden up 2, and the 538 Model has him winning just enough electoral votes to win. The question is clearly not exactly "Who was a better president" because Trump's presidency was terrible and Biden's has been remarkably successful. Still, people think Trump's economic stewardship ended in December 2019 and Biden was responsible for Covid. People don't care about data.
The question that I keep coming back to is this one: Who is a Biden->Trump voter? Who voted for Biden i 2020, looked at January 6th and Dobbs and then decided to switch their vote to Trump? I can't imagine that, but I can't imagine someone voting to return Greg Abbott to the Texas governor's mansion, but they clearly will. Is that because they voted for him once? Or because nothing really matters?
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