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I unintentionally started a series of posts on what it means to fight by asking questions about the Colin Allred campaign in Texas (post 1) and the Tim Ryan campaign in Ohio (post 2).  I was cleaning out my feed reader and found two posts about Texas that are deep dives into what it takes to win in that state and, more importantly, how we judge progress even if we lose there.

First, from the people that run the LBJ account on Twitter, who are a bunch of historians as far as I can tell,  a summary of how they would judge “success” for Allred:

THE STANDARD, AGAIN: Beto won Harris by 15.5. He won Ft. Bend by 12. He won Tarrant by less than one. He lost Collin by 6. He lost Denton by 8. He won Williamson by 2.5. Beto won Hays by 15.

THE TARGETS: And here, we’ll set the target margins based on the minimum for what a Democratic statewide victory would look like in Texas. In a cycle a Democrat won in Texas — Harris would be +30. Fort Bend +20. Tarrant, Collin and Denton in the +5-7 range. Williamson +10. Hays +20. Those are the numbers Allred should be reaching for. Those are numbers, for the most part, I don’t expect Allred to reach. Anything between the numbers Beto put up and the targets of where those numbers need to be is measurable progress.

WHY I HAVEN’T DISCUSSED THE RGV: Because, while it’s not unimportant, it isn’t and shouldn’t be the central focus of the Democratic strategy here. The field of battle is in the suburbs. It shouldn’t be the focus of Hispanic voting outreach either. Quickly — The entire RGV is 1.3 million people. Harris County has 2 million Hispanic people. The choice isn’t Hispanic outreach or the suburbs. The key is Hispanic outreach in the suburbs.

If the county names are confusing, read the whole thing, because they explain both the location of the counties and how they have evolved over the years.  “RGV” is the Rio Grande Valley, a heavily Latino area which everyone in Democratic politics was concerned about when it swung towards Republicans in 2020.  Over at Split Ticket, a couple of the data nerds have mined as much as they can from RGV voting statistics, and have an interesting theory tying the Sanders primary vote to the Trump general election vote:

While it’s true Democratic primary voters are not representative of all general election voters, the sheer correlational strength suggests there is at least some relationship between Trump’s success in Latino communities with economic populism. Additionally, because most Latinos identify as Democrats (44–25%), heavily-Latino areas have much more overlap between their Democratic primary and general electorates. Even if it was not pro-Sanders Latino Democrats who shifted towards Trump, it was their neighbors and family members. These voters live in the same communities and face the same economic realities, and were subsequently attracted to both economically populist candidates.

Looking ahead to 2024, a campaign which wishes to be successful among these voters must have a strong, populist economic plank. Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign appears to be starting to do just that. Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson notes that Harris could be climbing in the polls because she is regaining trust that President Joe Biden lost on handling the economy while simultaneously reviving Latino support that Biden had lost.

Beyond the 2024 election, the growing “nonwhite populism” could transform American partisan politics. If Democrats want to contest increasingly-Latino Texas, they should consider Sanders’ success in Latino areas when forming their economic legislative agenda and electoral platform. If someone seen as racially inflammatory as Trump can win record vote shares along the Mexican border, a Democratic Party seen as weak on working class economic issues could slow or even reverse Democrats’ ascent in Texas and flip the RGV’s 3 congressional districts — and swing Latino communities beyond Texas.

So, just to re-emphasize their point, it isn’t that a bunch of Democratic primary voters voted for Sanders and then decided to vote for Trump in the general, it’s that Sanders’ economic message resonated with them, and the same message delivered by Trump resonated with their lower-information friends and neighbors, who chose to vote for Trump, despite his racism.

Anyway, this is pretty Texas-specific, but Texas is a long-term Democratic project.  Allred might lose, but if he beats Beto’s numbers in the spots that the LBJ team identifies, his campaign did something right.  If the Trump gains in the RGV are reversed, Harris’ message is better for non-college-educated, non-white voters.   And, just like Republicans, we need to keep and nourish our long-term projects, and Texas is definitely a key one of those.

What Does it Mean to Fight? Some NumbersPost + Comments (137)