An entire classroom was massacred with an AR-15 just 280 miles from this stage, and the Texas GOP is loudly booing someone for proposing even the mildest of gun safety legislation. #txlege https://t.co/oOJGEqtyxr
— Texas Democrats (@texasdemocrats) June 17, 2022
A Texan opines:
A Texas journalist (Christopher Hooks, Senior Editor of the Texas Monthly) — “Yes, the 2022 Texas GOP Platform Is Extreme. But Little of It Is New”:
Party conventions are supposed to win a public spotlight for the party in question. By this measure, the 2022 convention of the Republican Party of Texas in Houston was a stunning success. Typically, the event, in which thousands of activists gather to rub shoulders while elected officials give speeches, can be a dry business. But this year, national media pored over the party’s interminably long platform, highlighting language that declared the 2020 presidential election results illegitimate, endorsed a referendum that would allow Texas voters to declare their secession from the United States, and called for the state’s schoolchildren to be drilled on “the humanity of the preborn child.” The platform also declared homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice,” and called for Texas to strengthen the electric grid, not with regulations that keep the lights on in other states hit by extreme weather that our own leaders are averse to, but rather to defend against mythical “electromagnetic pulse weapons.” …
The convention indeed showed a state party moving back to the right after a brief period, in 2018 and 2020, in which it inched ever so slightly to the center over concerns that Democrats might be getting more competitive in elections here. But the difference from prior conventions was one of degrees.
The Log Cabin Republicans have never been allowed to participate in the convention. Abbott has long been loathed by conservative activists, and both the current and former chair of the state GOP are among his enemies. (Current chair Matt Rinaldi, who presided over the convention, called Abbott a petty tyrant two years ago.) And John Cornyn is always booed at the gathering. He was simply booed louder and longer this time, and for a specific reason rather than a general sense among the grassroots that he is a wishy-washy Republican In Name Only. (When Cornyn spoke of the pain the families in Uvalde must feel after the school shooting, shouts of “No gun control” filled the room.)
The platform, meanwhile, always contains ludicrously extreme planks and is mostly irrelevant when it comes to actually passing bills. The platform-drafting process at the Texas Republican convention is a sort of day-care program for the grassroots. For many right-wingers, this is the highlight of their year. Texans who get their news from Facebook threads and chain emails gather together, load up a document with their complaints, pass it, and then elected officials throw it in the trash. That elected officials don’t enact the platform is among the most common criticisms you’ll hear from those who draft it. But it would be tough for even the most ideological legislators to adopt the planks wholesale: they are always a jumble of often-contradictory messages. (The 2022 platform, for instance, opposes decriminalization of drugs but also calls for marijuana to be moved from the federal Schedule 1 to Schedule 2, which would lessen legal penalties.)…
A difference of degrees is still a difference, however, and those degrees can add up over the years. There were indeed some developments at this year’s convention that seemed indicative of larger dysfunctions within the state party. One of them was the convention’s attendance. Somewhere between four thousand and five thousand showed up, which is not unimpressive. But a decade or so ago the convention regularly boasted ten thousand or more attendees. Back then, speakers would describe it as the largest gathering of its kind in a free country, or some such boast. Whether or not it was true, it was possible to believe. This year, state senator Brandon Creighton from Conroe, north of Houston, rather limply described the event as “one of the largest gatherings of conservative patriots in the country.”
Can I dream of the term ‘extinction burst’?
It’s not clear why attendance dropped, and Republicans I interviewed offered a range of explanations. One reason might be that years ago the convention was a place where factions of the party would come together and vigorously contest ideas. In 2014, for example, there was a big fight over whether the platform should include a guest-worker program—a “Texas Solution” to the immigration crisis that would allow workers to come from Mexico legally for months at a time. Throughout the years there were also libertarians and chamber of commerce types and tea party activists all fighting for their priorities. Now there’s little to contest. The delegates this year were a smaller, purer group of like-minded right-wingers, which is why the platform they produced was marginally more hardcore than that of the last convention…
What’s perhaps most bizarre is that, in leading us into these choppy waters, conservative activists in Texas are framing their fight as one for a return to tradition. The mascot of the convention this year, if not its star, wasn’t a politician at all, but Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick’s pickup truck, which got a berth of honor in the gathering’s trade show. This was the folksy down-home antique you may have seen in Patrick’s ads, where he puts on his boots and hunting garb and sits in a rocking chair and acts like your angry grandpappy. Patrick is from Baltimore, of course, and his childhood home probably saw more delivery vans than pickup trucks. His current home, in suburban Houston, is more accustomed to the Escalade.
But no matter. The pickup’s falseness is appropriate for a political movement that is becoming more and more radical in pursuit of what it likes to call “traditional” values. In searching for a mythic past that never was, the delegates at the convention promise to take us to places we’ve never been.
Ted Cruz gets heckled and harassed by a right winger at TX State GOP Convention, who calls him a coward and a globalist, asks him how he can like Trump after he called his wife ugly, then finished with Cancun. pic.twitter.com/L1hEvN8nV5
— Ron Filipkowski ???? (@RonFilipkowski) June 19, 2022
Serious analysis (plus a pic of Patrick’s pickup) from a serious guy (the Washington Post‘s Philip Bump):
… One should not be surprised at the rhetoric in the party’s platform, of course, however extreme it happens to be. This is a state party that recently had as its chairman right-wing personality Allen West and which has consistently offered positions that sit to the right even of the GOP nationally. But it is worth identifying the way in which this platform captures a very specific evolution of the party in the era of Donald Trump.
It was seven years ago last week that Trump first descended the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for the presidency. The year prior, the Texas Republican Party produced a platform document that offers an interesting point of comparison for the one approved this weekend: It is the last platform from the party that was not touched at all by the way in which Trump shifted the party’s politics…
I went through both platform documents to identify significant places the two differ. Key differences have been highlighted…
Immigration
Statement of core principles
2014: “America is proudly a nation of immigrants. Throughout our history, our nation has attracted productive, industrious and gifted people to America because she is exceptional, and those immigrants and their descendants helped make America the world’s unrivaled economic and military superpower. It remains imperative to create fair and consistent procedures that will again enable freedom-loving, hard-working and law-abiding immigrants to join us, by providing them an efficient, practical method of legal entry, so they can lawfully take positions where their labor is needed, without exploitation or harassment.”
2022: Not included…“Western civilization”
2014: Not included.
2022: In a section titled “Fund and Support Western Civilization Instruction, Defund Political Correctness,” the platform states that Republicans “oppose any state formula funding or graduation requirements for divisive curricula inconsistent with the above, including Marxist, anti-American, Critical Race Theory, multiculturalism, or diversity-equity-inclusion courses” and oppose “using public funds for homosexuality, transgender, or diversity-equity-inclusion centers.”…
There’s lots more — read the whole thing — but, IMO, the rightward tack is less about ‘Trumpism’ and more about the increasingly intolerant currents that Trump (with help from Putin, not to mention our Very Serious #Failed Media) rode into the Oval Office.
The Republican Party of Texas has controlled every lever of state government since 2003.
But the mood at the Texas Republican Convention this weekend was not celebratory.
Here, was a climate of mistrust, conspiracy and victimhood. https://t.co/1TBv7vMF33
— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) June 19, 2022
Schadenfreude, from another Texan publication, the Texas Tribune:
… Above all, attendees said they were fed up. Fed up with elections they believe are rife with fraud. Fed up with their own politicians — including U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, whom they rebuked for taking part in bipartisan talks on gun legislation — for being open to compromise with Democrats. Fed up with the persecution of Christians with traditional values. Fed up with a credulous mainstream media that spouts liberal talking points and disdains anyone who disagrees as racists or bigots. Fed up with undocumented immigrants, even those fleeing war and poverty, for taking advantage of public benefits. Fed up with the education of their children, especially on matters of history and race. Fed up with experts, starting with Dr. Alfred Kinsey, who they said are “sexualizing” students before they’ve hit puberty.
“The enemy is coming in and trying to change our society, change the very fabric of what made America great and they’re doing it by going to the children,” said Conny Moore, a 75-year-old retired pharmacist and pastor…
Sid Miller, the state agricultural commissioner, said the struggle for America wasn’t even partisan anymore.
“The battlefield used to be between Republicans and Democrats,” he told the convention on Saturday. “Then it was between conservatives and liberals. Now the battlefield has once again changed. We must improvise, adapt and overcome to defeat our enemy. This new battlefield, this new battlefield is between patriots and traitors.”
This was a crowd familiar with The Great Replacement, the theory that immigrants are being used to replace white, native-born Americans, and The Great Reset, supposedly a plan by global capitalists meeting in Davos, Switzerland, to impose their environmental and social goals on the world economy and restrict what people can eat and own. Fox News did not come up much; One America Network and NewsMax seemed far more influential.
Conspiracy theories abounded. Anne Meng, a middle-aged nurse-practitioner in The Woodlands, said she believed the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde was “a ploy by the government,” and that “cops were told to stand down.” (The police delay in confronting the gunman, who killed 21 people, has been widely criticized.)…
Attendees were also in lockstep in their views on election integrity. Several said that in-person, watermarked, hand-counted, sequentially numbered paper ballots were the only trustworthy way to conduct an election (even though delegates themselves used Scantron ballots to vote on the platform planks, and the results won’t be known for days until the ballots are tallied in Austin)…
Our minds are made up, don’t confuse us with facts. Maybe we don’t know much (and much of what we *do* know is false), but we know what we hate!
Recap Open Thread: The Jan 6 Committee Hearings So Far
SpaceUnit
Let Texas secede.
Then build the wall.
Old School
Condolences to the Democrats living in Texas. I hope the turning Blue comes eventually.
Dangerman
There has to be a mushy middle, even in Texas; and there must be a significant number of RiINOS that are only there for the tax cuts…
…that will say fuck you and the horse you didn’t ride in on.
I don’t get it other than these people are off their rocker.
Ken
I’m going to assume the last three words were needed because attendance was higher for CPAC in Budapest.
Mike in NC
In 2005 I spent three weeks on a Joint Forces exercise at Fort Hood. It only felt like six months.
James E Powell
We need a national TV spot – w/social media versions – that highlights this & Rick Scott’s plans for the future. It needs to be pounded into people’s heads all summer.
lollipopguild
Gee if they vote to leave in 2023 then they will not be able to vote in the 2024 election.
Another Scott
@SpaceUnit: Nope.
These goobers are a small minority. Too many people fought and died to keep the country united to let these RWNJs to break it apart – even in jest.
Cheers,
Scott.
BlueGuitarist
Warming up for the CRT panic, the 2012 Texas R Platform opposed teaching critical thinking:
“Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
Link: http://s3.amazonaws.com/texasgop_pre/assets/original/2012Platform_Final.pdf
SuzieC
Let the motherfuckers secede, with their 38 electoral votes. Republicans will never again win a national election. In the short term we are rid of 2 red Senators and 10 red Congresspukes. Amnesty for about a year for refugees fleeing Texas.
West of the Cascades
“German word for feeling [NO] sympathy for someone as the suffer the natural and probable consequences of their chosen political association” … Leopardgesichtgegessen?
debbie
Their faces tell you all you need to know about them. They’ll never be happy.
SFAW
I still say we should rename it Dumbfuckistan, wall it off (after allowing the non-insane to leave temporarily), dump about 20 Mil AR-15s in there, plus sufficient ammo, then wait a few weeks “to let nature take its course.” [Maybe helping things along by doing a “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” thing.] Then knock down the wall, explain to the survivors that they have a choice to either stop being insane fascists or get relo’d to Somalia, and let the non-insane return to their homes.
Someone here has suggested that Wyoming be used instead of Texas. Philosophically, I agree, but I think the exigent circumstances require it be Texas, at least in the near term.
OK, maybe it’s not the most enlightened way of dealing with the problem, but outside of that?
ian
@SpaceUnit: Strong no to both. Millions of red state dems exist, and their cause is not helped by anti-red state sentiments
Edit- multiple people in this thread seem to think walls work. 10,000 year old technology that was circumvented 9,999 years ago. Check out John Olivers takedown of walls for a good explainer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU8dCYocuyI
tom
Deleted because not helpful
SFAW
@West of the Cascades:
gefressen, maybe? [I believe “fressen” is used to describe animals eating.]
SuzieC
@SFAW: I like it. Wyoming does not have enough population though. Enough AR15s in walled off Texas is a solution. After all, it’s what they want.
Cameron
Goddam. I thought I was living in Crazy, USA here in Florida. I stand corrected.
SuzieC
@ian: Yes I would worry about the red state Dems. Amnesty and welcome for them in other states. Maybe more northern states where climate change is not yet as extreme.
JaySinWA
@SFAW: You are presuming the Leopard party is made of real leopards? OTOH I remember my HS german teacher said that using fressen for people was implying that they ate like animals, so maybe not.
SFAW
@Another Scott:
And yet they (in effect) run the state. But considering Abbott, Paxton, Patrick, Cruz, et al. are all probably OK with the platform, it doesn’t really matter whether they’re a “small minority” (which I don’t believe they are, by the way).
SFAW
@JaySinWA:
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Essen? Fressen? Macht nichts.
marklar
“Can I dream of the term ‘extinction burst’?”
I’d rather not.
What you really want is extinction of the operant response.
An extinction burst is when behavior becomes more intense as reinforcement is withdrawn. Examples include pressing an elevator button over and over again when one isn’t coming, going gonzo on a vending machine when your Snickers doesn’t come out, and the Republican National Committee’s platform (at least when they finally release one).
Bill Arnold
Sure, but there is also the population biology term “Extinction Vortex”:
Extinction vortices are a class of models through which conservation biologists, geneticists and ecologists can understand the dynamics of and categorize extinctions in the context of their causes. This model shows the events that ultimately lead small populations to become increasingly more vulnerable as they spiral toward extinction. Developed by M. E. Gilpin and M. E. Soulé in 1986, there are currently four classes of extinction vortices.[1] The first two (R and D) deal with environmental factors that have an effect on the ecosystem or community level, such as disturbance, pollution, habitat loss etc. Whereas the second two (F and A) deal with genetic factors such as inbreeding depression and outbreeding depression, genetic drift etc.
Captain C
@SFAW:
No reason to inflict them on the already troubled Somalis.
kalakal
I cannot think of a way to get through to people so detached from reality. The only answer would seem to be damage limitation whilst age thins their ranks.
What a hot mess of vicious, spiteful craziness.
Eolirin
I feel a lot like Theoden facing the horde of Orcs at Helm’s Deep: “What can men do against such reckless hate?”
Except there’s no Gandalf coming to save the day.
These people aren’t going to stop, win or lose. It’s just going to get worse and worse. I have no idea how we get past this.
MisterForkbeard
They’re not wrong that it’s between patriots and traitors. Except they’re the traitors.
craigie
Far and away the best part.
kindness
There are no doubt good liberals in Texas. I guess they don’t vote. Because it sure seems to me they keep electing crazy Republicans there. So…..
Ksmiami
@Eolirin: hmm. We destroy them by any means necessary. They are traitors and fascists.
Eolirin
@Ksmiami: That kills democracy just as dead and turns us into fascists as well.
We’d have to create a permission structure that allowed rampant violation of rights and populate positions of power with the kinds of people all too ready to abuse power. They’d be far more likely to turn on us if such a thing were successful rather than yield back power once it was no longer needed.
It’s not a solution. We end up in the same place.
Ksmiami
@Eolirin: break up their networks, seize the assets of their large donors… these ppl have declared war on the United States and I don’t think the seriousness of this has sunk in. Ffs I live in Texas and am trying to get out.
Mai Naem mobile
We should cut Texas off and let it secede. Buh-bye. Don’t let the door hit ya where the lord split ya. And,oh, yeah give us back the NASA stuff, the freeways, the airports and all the other stuff the feds spent money on. And keep Elon Musk while you’re at it. He can shack up with his fellow Canadian Ted Cruz.
Kelly
I had a similar vintage 1953 GMC pickup in college. Sweet driving old truck. Mine had windows in the rear corners of the cab. It’s the vehicle I wish I’d kept until I had money to put into it. The 4 speed automatic transmission was shot and parts were scarce. I’d like to have it with modern drivetrain.
Joe Falco
There’s still some small hope in me that Texas can be turned around considering Georgia, my home state, sent two Democrats to the Senate. It still seems possible that even in a mid-term election that we can hold the line and at the very least still maintain a slim majority. I know Beto and a lot of Texan Democrats know what’s at stake and will keep working to have their own blue miracle like Georgia did.
livewyre
It’s simple. All we have to do is kill all the bad people until only good people are left.
Who’re “we”, you say? The good ones, obviously.
Is being good a matter of birth or of accomplishment? Whichever makes me one of them.
If you think about it, good is whatever you can get away with. So just go wild. As long as it’s somebody else taking the actual risks, at least. Wouldn’t want to run out of luck while talking tough.
JWR
Okay, so last month we were all like, “just let Florida secede!” Now we’re all like, “just let Texas secede!” Boy, pretty soon the good ol’ US of A is gonna start looking pretty bad at this self-governing stuff. I get it! I get the frustration. But until TFG is coronated as our Forever Idiot King, I’d suggest we all hang together, at least for the time being.
That is all, but carry on. I enjoy the venting just as much as the rest of you! : )
Citizen Alan
@Ksmiami:
Agreed. I will be in Mississippi thru August to settle my mother’s affairs (while teleworking for court in Pennsylvania). But if I can’t get a job in a blue state by then, I would consider suicide preferable to staying in the South. I just can’t stand the thought of one more day surrounded by people who are fucking evil.
livewyre
A little less bitterly, for whoever comes across this: there’s a lot of focus on what kind of people we’re dealing with, while I suspect that’s a red (as it were) herring.
This isn’t something we can kill our way out of – or even quite only vote our way out of. The problem as I see it is a lot deeper than that. It’s about what allows folks to end up that way, to grow up that way – the feeding of Jim Crow, to crib from the Reverend Doctor.
And it’s not only the South. Remember that saying about where certain kinds are allowed to go – “close but not high” in the South, “high but not close” in the North. Race is all over the system. It’s in us. Grown in the South, processed in the North. Nowhere and no one is free of it, no matter how high the imaginary wall.
That means all of us have work to do. We’re moving into a world where what our parents taught us isn’t enough to get us by. Some of us react differently than others, depending on exactly what was taught, but I can guarantee each and every one of us is missing a piece. And anything that gets us bogged down in where others’ lives are meaningless, where all that matters is taking advantage, where authority is the whole of the law, where respect means do what you’re told with no lip and discipline means you had it coming, is exactly what we’re bound to confront if we want a world bigger than our finite selves.
We have to rise to what challenges us where we live in order to change. That is, if change is what we’re looking to do, rather than hope somebody else does it for us.
bjacques
The place to build that Texas wall was around the convention hall. Then have Big Tex’s head descend on it, spewing AR-15s for one and all. Problem solved, because these people don’t really like each other all that much.
Mimi
Give Texas back to Mexico. If course we would probably have to pay them. Or they could just tax the carp out of the oil companies.
Liminal Owl
@SuzieC: Heinlein’s “Coventry” in vivo!
Geminid
@Joe Falco: I like Beto O’Rourke’s chances this November. Election results show a clear Democratic trend in Texas over the past decade. Romney won in 2012 by 16%. Trump won in Texas in 2016 by 9%, while his margin in 2020 was 5.5%. The voters totaled a little over 8 million in 2012, and increased to around 12 million in 2020. Texas is growing, and it’s growing bluer.
In between the last two Presidential elections, O’Rourke came within 2.6% of Cruz in the 2018 Senate race. He is a strong candidate, especially for a state that has had one-party rule for decades now. The Republicans’ flaccid response to last year’s freeze is only one example of their fatal complacency. The call to “throw the rascals out!” can be a potent political dynamic and I think Texas Democrats can make the most of it this fall. Rochelle Garza, their candidate for Attorney General, is the only woman and only Latino on either party’s statewide ticket and that can help.
Also, the anecdotal vidence of this convention is that Republicans are not unified. They may not have many defections in November, but they cannot afford many at all. The dynamic of a unified Democratic party and a fractured opposition is what elected the two Democratic Senators in Georgia last year.
The spirit of Texas Democrats seems to be that of feisty donkeys and not the Eeyores often seen on political blogs. So I like O’Rourke’s chances this fall.
SFAW
@Captain C:
You’re right. I also like your edit to my proposal.
Baud
@Geminid:
Matt McIrvin
@bjacques: where’s Sean Connery in a red diaper when you need him?
Marmot
@Old School: I really appreciate that!
Back in the day, commenters would tell us to just move somewhere else — but this disease has always been nationwide.
Barry
@Dangerman: “There has to be a mushy middle, even in Texas; and there must be a significant number of RiINOS that are only there for the tax cuts…”
Think about the past 20 years….
These people will vote GOP forever.
Marmot
@kindness: Doing what I can to promote democracy, getting people registered, etc. Also, we’re talking Repub delegates here.
A lot of folks here see “Texas” and go bananas in a way I don’t see with Tennessee or Florida. We could use your help — the scorn is completely the opposite.
Marmot
@Mimi: Hey—TX Dem here. How’s about you donate a little scratch to a Get Out The Vote program, rather than whatever useless irrational fantasy you’re cultivating here at my expense?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Damn, that’s Onion level comedy, these are the people who run that state saying this.
The GOP isn’t some white nationalist party, it’s the party of stupid people.
Kay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
It’s crazy making to listen to them. Conservatives say the same things in Ohio. They almost completely dominate the state at this point yet it’s ALL grievance and resentment and an insistence that they are being discriminated against.
There’s not even any joy or satisfaction in winning- they win and they bitch exactly as much as when they lose.
Geminid
@Barry: When I think about political affiliation in Virginia over the last 20 years, I remember a lot of so-called “mushy middle” Republicans and Independents drifting over to the Democratic vote column. Virginia was a red state coming into this century, but it voted for Joe Biden in 2020 by 10 points. That’s the best performance by a Democrat since LBJ in 1964, before party realignment put Republicans in the driver’s seat the next 40 years.
Some of this political shift was Demograhic, with new voters entering the state and the eletoral mix. But a substantial piece of the puzzle was the moderate conservatives who were repelled by the hard right turn Republicans have taken in Virginia and other states like Texas.
A Man for All Seasonings (formerly Geeno)
Texas has the right to split itself into as many as five states. Split it up and let the parts that want to secede, secede. Keep the parts that don’t. We get the liberal cities, and the rest is no longer our problem. Win-Win.
Paul in KY
@Marmot: I have traveled to Texas 3 times in past 3 years (my wifey is from there) and before I ever went down there I can say I HATED Texas. Mostly because of the politics, but also the ‘everything is better in Texas’ BS you would hear occasionally from jerkwads.
After visiting it, I must say I have a much more nuanced view of the Lone Star State now. There are alot of nice things in Texas. The people at least use their turn indicators a hell of a lot more than they do up in the KY. Dallas-Fort Worth is a vibrant metropolis. Austin is pretty damned nice. So, I want Texas to remain in the Union and hopefully one day be like Georgia is becoming.
Geminid
@Paul in KY: Current trends show Texas running a few years behind Georgia and Arizona. These trends won’t neccesarily continue, but if they do Texas could be a bluish purple in five years, and so could be North Carolina. I think that if O’Rourke can win this year’s race for Governor, the trend in Texas will accelerate. This race will be one of the most consequential of the year.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kay: I was pondering this on the drive in to work today and I suspect “There are traitors in the GOP” theme on display here is a result of the twin debacles of the Bush and the Trump admins. The usual “the ideologically can’t fail, it can only be failed” extremist thinking.
Torrey
@livewyre: Well said!
I’m stealing that fourth paragraph. It’s about as clear and concise a summary as I’ve seen. The curious thing is that I think it might speak to my MAGA relatives as a starting point for conversation. In at least a couple of cases, I think they’d recognize that “authority is the whole of the law” and “respect means do what you’re told with no lip and discipline means you had it coming” is the way they were raised and what they as young adults recognized as the wrong way to do things.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
Madame Rasputin and I are sponsoring an old friend’s escape from the city she calls “Sorry Ass” (San Antonio). She finally saw that Texas finds the dumbest man in the state and makes him governor.
Right now, there’s at least a 4-way tie for the job.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@Cameron:
I live in southern Indiana, the home of Hoosier Crazy, so don’t feel alone.
TheTruffle
@Geminid: I’m curious: is NC trending blue/purple?
Geminid
@TheTruffle: North Carolina is trending blue. Democrats elected Dan Cooper by a narrow margin in 2016, but he won easily in 2020. Joe Biden came up 70,000 votes short that year, but he did considerably better than Clinton did in 2016. If Senate candidate Cal Cunninham had finished just halfway between Biden and Cooper he would have beaten Tom Tillis, but his extramarital affair cut into his vote and he lost by a margin similar to Bidens