Talarico

 James Talarico won the Democratic primary to challenge for the Senate seat in November. Democrats have been waiting years to win statewide in Texas, but there are signs that maybe...maybe...this could be the year. 

There are a few important reasons.

- Republicans are in disarray. Cornyn and the scandal magnet Ken Paxton will go to a bruising runoff. If Paxton knocks off Cornyn, the seat can be considered a true toss-up. Paxton is super MAGA-ish, so it's entirely possible he succeeds in the runoff.

- Hispanics are fleeing the GOP. Democrats always assumed that what seemed to them to be pretty racist statements and policies from Trump and the GOP would drive Hispanic voters to Democrats. It hadn't happened. That was before Trump 2.0, with Stephen Miller's pogroms unleashed everywhere.

- Talarico seems a better fit with Texas. Crockett is a cable news star and brilliant at invective and the sort of insurgent politics that people say they want from Democrats. Her theory of the election - that there were a ton of un-mobilized Democratic votes - is almost always wrong. Talarico talks like the Sunday School teacher that he is. He's a calming presence. He believes in persuading people fed up with Trump's chaos and corruption to switch sides. This seems key in mobilizing those Hispanic voters.

- Turnout will, in fact, matter, but not in the way Crockett hypothesized. Talarico's job is to get suburban college educated voters and Hispanics to switch from the GOP to him. Democrats - and we have ample evidence for this - will crawl over broken glass to vote this November. Republicans? Especially some of those irregular Trump voters? The various factions of the Trump coalition who feel betrayed - by Epstein, by Iran, by MAHA, by the economic promises - they don't have to vote for Talarico. They just have to stay home.

This is why I think Talarico is such a good pick, because there would have been Republican voters who would have gone to the polls to vote AGAINST Jasmine Crockett, but with MAGA collapsing along with Trump's mental faculties, they can just stay the hell home. 

I think that's the key in all sorts of races, like Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, North Carolina and maybe even some surprising states like South Carolina or Kansas. If Republicans are just dispirited and don't vote, that counts, too.