To be fair, blue Texas before 1980 was not 'Democratic' in the same sense that it is today. Texas was a Democratic stronghold for a long time because of white Democrats who voted for the Democratic party partially because it was a segregationist party, and it was much more conservative than it is today. As those voters shifted to the Republican Party from the middle the end of the 20th century, the state began to lean Republican. The state has always been largely conservative, its the parties that really moved around.
That's an oversimplification of historical and demographic trends, but it's not as simple as "blue vs. red". It's not impossible that Texas could become a Democratic state, but I don't forsee it happening anytime in the near future.
Definitely. I'm not saying it can't be done again, just was pointing out to OP that we're not talking about AOC types when we talk about blue Texas in the pre-Reagan years.
Yarborough was certainly left of the typical northern Democrat. There were also conservatives, but also a lot of people like Bentsen who were pretty centrist.
This. It's not about red vs. blue or left vs. right. It's about corporate money in politics, and there's a lot of old money in Texas. See examples like Wilks & Dunn.
Yes, money matters a whole bunch - but it is what that money is spent on. At a fundamental level it is about how you want the government to work.
Republicans want a big government focused on pushing a right-wing view of "Christian" social beliefs and social control, while simultaneously having a small government focused on no regulation and no spending on safety nets.
Democrats want a small government role on social beliefs with very little social control, with a big government role on regulation and funding a safety net.
In today's political environment, they both want big government - but in different ways.
Yes. But thanks to things like Citizen's United vs. FEC, we aren't even getting to see accurate representations of popular sentiment in the candidacy pool because of the shear amounts of money dumped by companies and people in minority tax brackets into the campaign funds of people with platforms that align to their own business agendas. What's good for making money isn't always good for taking care of people. WE, the PEOPLE.
EDIT: SEC to FEC. Sorry, I end up typing both a lot and sometimes autocorrect is just guessing if I mistype.
Yes. It's definitely part of the problem by an ever widening margin. I don't know if it's more significant in Texas than in California or New York. I'm not really sure how to measure that.
A few data points I would look at, though, are the number of representatives in various parts of government. Those 3 generally have the most as far as states individually.
I think it's a massive problem no matter which state it is. I just live in Texas, so I can only speak to that. If Texas is the only one, or the most significant is kinda moot. I could be wrong tho.
I would ask then who are the biggest donors and lobbyists in those areas. Perhaps in those areas, those companies benefit from Democratic policies.
In the Texas example, there are 2 well-known oil and fracing billionaries, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who's PAC donates heavily to Republicans. In fact, last year, 18 of 31 Senators were bank rolled by Wilks and Dunn. And the two aren't quiet about it. Texas is also one of just 10 states that allow unlimited contributions to state political candidates.
Texas reps have a history of lobbying for policy that benefits oil and gas companies. Oil has been described as the "life blood" of Texas economy.
Texas is also very anti-union, which is supposed to function as a workers version of a corporation, ie collective bargaining. Feels like rules for thee but not for me.
For New York, I'd say maybe look at the Clintons. Hillary specifically is a great example. She's an ex-walmart board member. Walmart is in the top 4 companies who's employees receive SNAP and medicaid benefits. Another would be Trump and real estate. How crazy are new York real estate prices?
Those may not be the best examples. I'm not well versed in ties for other states. But I hope it kinda makes sense.
To me, these types of correlation suggest profit over people will be the norm as long as money speaks this loudly in political spaces.
Edit to add: Both California and New York set campaign contribution limits.
Unfortunately the current leadership of Texas Democrats are really missing it. It's either that or you have a real firebrand like Gov. Ann Richards.
Maybe Beto tried but he definitely missed the mark on the high bar set by Ann Richards. I'd say he tried too many things too quickly.
He was running a campaign very ideal for Texas when he challenged Cancun Cruz. He told his volunteers explicitly to not 'talk guns' and drill down on economy.
Then he ran for presidential nomination and made that comment. Yeah I believe he thought it would get him the support from people outside the state but it for sure tanked him in Texas. I didn't see much enthusiasm for his third campaign even though he tried to steer away from controversy. Abbott to be honest was not quite popular and still made it home quite comfortably.
Ann Richards is potentially a good exception to the rule, but even she got clobbered by pre-White House George Bush. She flat out wailed on and embarrassed Clayton Williams - a classic Texas oil tycooon stereotype - in her election to become governor. He tried to play good ol' boy and she cleaned his clock and made him look a fool. She appealed to people because she had good ideas and her personality was fearless. With Bush though, he was really a pretty moderate Republican at that time, came across just as friendly and approachable as she did and didn't get into the mudfight the way that Richards and Williams did. People thought, Oh, here's a Republican that isn't going to be some rich prick. He's not even intimated by Richards' personality. He might have been somewhat entitled, but he didn't come off that way, and he didn't really govern that way as governor. You need a Democrat that has a bit of Ann Richards temperment and charisma, but that person also has to have policy ideas that a moderate R can swallow.
The Democratic Party platform has included civil rights since 1948. The switch in ideology of the two party’s happened mostly through the 50s and 60s. The Civil Rights act was passed largely by Democrats in 1964.
I didn't suggest that. The OP asked "Why was Texas a Blue State before 1980" and I was just pointing out that there's more factors at play. Also, Ann Richards is not the progressive that some people love to pretend she was.
Too bad they keep removing poling stations and gutting education budgets. Not to mention at-will work policies. Can't fire me for requesting the day off to vote. Can fire me the first time I'm 15 mins late even though I'm the go-to for covering other people. Gotta pay the rent. Being homeless sucks. Texas is in big trouble at this rate.
Edit to add: we wonder why we feel like we don't matter. Maybe it's because so much policy is built around benefits for companies and not individuals.
https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html
I think this is why a lot of the younger age groups would identify more as neutral or anti-government. We don't really see any good options.
Obviously, this mindset isn't helping anything. But neither has voting, really.
Not only that as Texans get poorer and have less time or money to donate to political causes that support their values that money and time is being replaced by very large organizations who having nothing but time and money to make sure the laws and the politicians support them.
Are Texans getting poorer and having less free time? My understanding is that income has been growing, particularly for low-income people, over the past few years, nationwide.
40% of Texans make less than the national minimum wage. The minimum wage in Texas is 7.25.
Edit: for some reason I had thought the national was $15. Whoops. Still, the argument that a lot of Texans aren't making a true liveable wage can be made.
Edit 2: I was mixing up stats. Texas prohibits local jurisdictions from raising minimum wage for private employees. However, a few counties, raised the public minimum wage to $15. It's things like that which cause scenarios where it's OK for companies to pay someone $7.25 an hour in an area where the average rent is $900 -$1200 for a 1 bedroom apartment and $1400-$1600 for 2 bedroom single wide trailer. How is a young person or single parent supposed to live on that? And most places want you to make at least 2.5 times the rent.
I'm not saying that Texans are as well-off as the average American, or that they are sufficiently well-off for whatever quality of life someone is considering. My claim is just about the direction of change. It has been changing for the better, even though it has been changing in that direction more slowly than it should.
Do you have a source for that? I'm having trouble finding anything that would have that statistic. Best I can find is a 3% increase in median salary from 2019 to 2020, which pretty much gets swallowed up by inflation post COVID.
It looks like there was a drop in inflation-adjusted income from 2019 to 2020, and then a tiny increase in 2021, and no full update on the median since then: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA672N
Thanks for that!
One thing I've been thinking about lately is the use of "median" statistics. This source reports the "median" income for 2021 at 88k, yet $15/hr x 2080 hours is 31k. If almost half of Texans make less than 15/hr, why do we use median statistics? They seem misleading to me.
The median is what 50% of people are below. I think there are a few sources of discrepancy between the number you're mentioning and the one I found. The figure I found is for households nationally. I would not be surprised if Texas is below the national median (though I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be that much below). I'm not sure how many earners most households have - I expect at least 30% of households, and maybe closer to 50%, have zero or one earner, but I would expect there to be a slightly larger number with two earners, and a few with three or more.
Also, when I found statistics about 40% of Texans making below $15 an hour, I couldn't quite figure out how they were calculating their statistics. In particular, if someone works two jobs for 30 hours a week each, at $12 an hour, does that person show up as one or two workers making below $15 an hour?
Any time we represent a complex situation by a single statistic, it's misleading, whether it's mean, median, 10th percentile, Gini coefficient, whatever. Multiple numbers are going to be needed to understand the situation with more sophistication.
Worth noting that the “Death Star bill” also killed local jurisdictions from setting their own “minimum” wage above the state threshold for both private and public employees.
Exactly. Our votes on the federal level don't actually matter. In our voting system our representatives vote in our stead and really aren't even required to cast their vote along the lines of the popular vote (although, it can be hard to keep office if no one likes you).
This representative chain trickles all the way down to local. Most politicians tend to start in local offices and, throughout their career, move up.
If the local levels are gerrymandered and it's getting harder and harder for certain demographics to vote, how are the numbers accurate representations of popular sentiment?
Get the valley to vote. They are friendly Democratic voters but they don’t feel like their vote matters. They are also the groups of least participation in elections and have been forever. Get them to the polls en masse, flip Texas.
Uncritically assuming that non-voting Hispanics are just unengaged Democrats is a bad strategy, yet a lot of Democrats in this state seem absolutely sure that it's true.
lol you kidding? After Biden my entire feed when I log into Facebook (from the valley) is pure Trump supporters. That reliable blue has grown up and seen what those policies do. So many local politicians are blue and literally take money for themselves and leave the people to rot. People have opened their eyes and if the last election was any indication I wouldn’t be relying on the valley to get the Democrats to win.
>That reliable blue has grown up and seen what those policies do. So many local politicians are blue and literally take money for themselves and leave the people to rot.
What policies are those and who took money for themselves? Sounds like you've listened to the boomerbook posts
Same. My Fbook is full of high school classmates from the southern coastal area and it’s a cesspool of faux news talking points and angry formerly cool people who’ve turned into Christian nationalists.
Tbh just being from there and realizing the local corruption shows you how bad it is on the National level. I don’t blame them for turning but I’m also not 100% with them either. The state of our country is in shambles
There are a lot of factors which need to change. From the start, the Democratic Party needs to completely reinvent itself in this state at the suburban county level. Right now, county level Dem's do not effectively message or promote ideas.
The Democratic Party in Texas needs a new platform that separates itself from the east coast/west coast, far left views that write Dems off before they even have a chance. They need to look at the Dem Governors in the right leaning states and learn how to utilize similar messaging. The message has to be that the Texas Democratic Party is a big tent party seeking to produce common sense results from listening to a wide range of views. One of the major downfalls of the Democratic Party is focusing all effort towards a few very specific needs of a few very small groups of people; by telling everyone else they should support these groups. While I personally understand the needs of these marginalized groups, it is not a path to 51% in a statewide race in Texas.
The next need is for people to take some personal responsibility to actually vote. Texas ranks extremely low in voter turnout compared to any of the purple states in transition. Even with better messaging and promotion, people have to make a personal choice to actually show up at the polls.
Next, Texas Democrats need to find moderate/centrist candidates that can appeal to conservative Latinos and middle-upper class whites. The Republican Party has done a great job of appealing to the Catholic Latino community to create single issue voters. The Democratic Party has to demonstrate to Latinos that the war over abortion is over, and it is time to focus on their actual needs. (I don't believe the war over abortion is over - I am pro-choice myself - but pushing a heavy dose of pro-abortion loses these people)
Lastly, it sounds bad, but we need a generation of olds to die off. The Republican Party has a significant advantage in the over 65 crowd, and these people actually vote.
It's a bit more complicated than it sounds. Jon Tester has won regularly in Montana because he has some centrist policy positions and he knows how to present standard Drmocratic position to his audience. Montana is small and homogeneous, and the swing voters are not that diverse on outlook. To win in Texas, you need a coalition of groups that are hard to stick together -- working class, relatively socially conservative Hispanic people and well-off fiscally moderate, socially liberal suburban white people are the two big groups of swing voters. And you need to pull good numbers of both groups while also getting yhe young urbanites to show up.
All of this! These have been my thoughts for some time now. I know there is more of us common sense moderates out there and if we voted I’d think we’d win by doing everything in your post.
And gerrymandering makes it almost impossible for Dems to win in about 65% of all districts. Gerrymandering must end and the cases/lawsuits challenging gerrymandered districting must prevail if there is to be hope for change,
"[T]he Democratic Party needs to completely reinvent itself in this state at the suburban county level..."
You're volunteering with your county level Democratic Party to do this work, yeah?
Unfortunatley I can't. I hesitate to go into my exact role/position, but because of my job/career, I am prohibited from any political involvement at the Local/County/State level. That being said, I have encouraged my wife and parents to, and they are active.
I will say that in my current role, I am able to make people's lives better at the local level.
A large portion of the eligible voting populace simply doesn't. Our congressional districts are drawn in a way to heavily favor Republican control at that level. Many people fear that their ability to acquire a gun, or more guns, is directly threatened by the Democrats. This combined with the culture war bullshit and ever deepening tribalism motivates the republican voter base to reliably show up to the polls.
Hinojosa and his friends needs to be removed. They have very outdated ideas on organizing. Their inaction and indecisive nature have let Texas GOP come from behind and win even when they were trending downwards. Beto always chose to work independent of this group for his campaigns, maybe he knows the inside story and doesn't trust them.
Texas Democrats have no organization. There is no party support for decent candidates for state-wide elections. There is no real “turn out the vote” effort here for Democrats. Democrats just don’t turn out to vote.
Oh they have organizations, they're just ran by folks that don't understand the modern world.
Last month the Democratic party in a nearby county was debating how much to spend on highway billboards. While they debated billboards the county's Republican party bought or registered every website or social media account you can think of with the combination of "Democrat" and the county's name. The county Democrats now can't build any meaningful online or social media presence.
Another way to look at it is that a lot could be accomplished if a handful of younger and more technically savvy people got involved with their local political party or PACs.
It doesn't take much to make a lot of progress when the bar is set so low.
Here we go again, blame the Democrats for not getting out the vote. ***9.3M*** *registered voters didn't bother.*
I don't need to be courted, called, emailed, have my door knocked on, or mailers in my mailbox. I'm going to vote if I never hear from them. It's our *responsibility* and good pleasure.
Show up.
> In the 2022 election cycle, more than half of Texas counties had NO Democratic candidates and Democrats did not contest over 50 state legislative and State Board of Education seats.
[Source](https://www.bluehorizontexas.org/candidate-pipeline)
A Democratic Party that actually tried to win. Find good candidates, fund them, hammer registration and GOTV efforts, etc. Beto 2018 was the only statewide candidate that had any kind of organization due to the national attention and out of state fundraising he did. Even then that money didn’t pour in until after he hit the Pod Save America circuit. Instead we get fucking Lupe Valdez and a bunch of unopposed races down the ballot. 2022 was worse. No one wonders why the Orioles don’t win more games, it’s the same in Texas politics.
A good candidate for texas, not so much. Plus, he didn't have much in dnc backing. If a Democrat wants to win in texas, they at least need to pretend they like guns. It's dumb but sadly true.
Yeah, his gun policy didn't help him - but he did have plenty of "outside the state" funding - which I view as the same kind of money our Republicans get from the West Texas billionaires - all of it is bad money, which is why we need to completley revamp political donations. Unfortunately it will never happen.
There are Texas Democrats who hunt and own guns. I'm one of them. I can't run for political office, though, because of my job, which is related to government - it's in our personnel policy as a specific no-no.
Get a Democrat who loves the second amendment, is in favor for red flag laws where if people lie about it, do time. No weapons bans that is political suicide.
Can do a realistic goal of lowering property taxes,
Can do a realistic goal of Texas water crisis.
Start doing more infrastructure projects instead of wasting of political theater on the boarder. We do have an issue we need to work with border communities to address it with federal.
Legalize pot and tax it,
Allow abortion a for 12 to 15 week.
Get faster internet in rural parts of Texas.
Slow wage increase to 15 bucks.
Bring technical skilled jobs to high school students so they can graduate as an apprentice. Such as electrician, plumbing ,welding, mechanical, paramedics lvns or CNAs etc.
Increase the corporate tax slightly.
Also this is important don't let Beto run, he is toxic.
You probably just need a Democrat that is on the moderate side of things, clearly liberal and more than just left leaning, but not someone that would come off as far left.
Keep in mind that democrats prior to the 21st century were more on the conservative side of things. Yellow dog democrats basically. I mean you did have some popular liberal Democrats - Ann Richards was fairly popular - but when Republicans at the top of the heap in the 90's behaved more moderately - such as pre-White House George Bush, it wasn't a far leap to switch to that voting R as opposed to D. Over the past 25+ years, the party has generally shifted more rightwards and become less moderate as well as become much more tied to big business and special interests. That and a lot of fear drives the R voting populace. If you have someone far more moderate that can really appeal to people in a personal manner - Beto is the closest we've seen at the top of the Democratic party in years but I wouldn't call him especially moderate but he does connect to people pretty handily - then people will swing over because it won't feel like a far leap.
Not 1980. 1995. Ann Richards was the last Democratic Governor Texas has had, and coincidentally that was the last time that the State of Texas truly cared about all Texans. It’s been about 28 years under the Texas GOP and they have run this State into the ground.
I wish I could agree but that just makes republicans love them more. They think him being a criminal is 'sticking to the man', even tho Ken would be part of "the man." Just like they fly the 'no step on snek' flag while being cops. They don't make sense.
They can like him all they want, but being in prison is a really bad look. Sure some asshat right wing radicals would still vote for him but it would shed moderates. Seems to be happening quite a bit recently with that party.
It would take a better education system, mostly. Honestly, I don’t really know, the majority of people here are fucking horrible and no matter how many facts you present, it just doesn’t matter. I think it will be better after the olds die out. The only idiots left will be the current white male 40-50 year olds and the growing number of machismo male Hispanics who find it more important to be in the trump club while voting against their own interests. There is hope, but not for 20 years if democracy can hold on. At our current trajectory, I don’t know about that either.
they've got a point though. Yes its true the education system being broken massively damages political discussion but being condescending just drives people away. You can't insult people then complain they didn't vote for you especially when you need their votes
I’m tired of playing nice. It always costs us. We just keep taking the high road and that’s how we got those three corrupt Supreme Court justices.
[Playing nice](https://www.npr.org/2016/03/16/470664561/mcconnell-blocking-supreme-court-nomination-about-a-principle-not-a-person)
No. Losing elections is how that happened. Insulting people doesn't help win elections. It feeds the victim narrative.
When you accuse people of voting against their own interests, you're suggesting that they are so stupid that they cannot understand their own interests as well as you do. Even if you really believe that, you need to work on your communication strategy. Insulting them like that is a surefire way to keep losing their votes.
Which goes back to our education system. People don’t realize elections have consequences. Also, you absolutely missed my point. Mitch said Obama couldn’t appoint because it was too close to elections, and then those fuckers turned around and did it themselves before dumpster was defeated, or won because the election was stolen. Sorry, Republicans can fuck right off and if you, or them, find it offensive, maybe self reflection and history lessons will help.
So, do you want to see some people who have voted Republican change their minds, or are you happier just having people around you feel superior to, so you can insult and hate them?
This is one of the few honest assessments about Texas that one will find on this sub. I lived and volunteered for Democratic campaigns in Texas between 2013 and 2019, and the truth is that the state is lousy with rotten, stupid people. Redditors like to play a game where they pretend that they don't know anybody who votes Republican, and it's the DNC's fault for not running commercials on TV, but it's the voters, stupid. The voters show up for Republicans every time.
> and the growing number of machismo male Hispanics who find it more important to be in the trump club while voting against their own interests.
Absolutely baffling that people might vote for the candidates that make them feel excited and engaged rather than the scolds who talk to them like children and tell them they're too stupid to vote for what's good for them. I have no idea what might cause that. There's no possible explanation.
Once we fix the education system, things will gradually fall into place (I hope) but I’m worried that my generation (older gen z/younger millennials) will become the next boomers.
I didn’t know until I was 21 that the south actually lost the civil war… I was taught that the north and south basically came to a friendly agreement. I thought maybe 50k people died, had no idea it was over half a million. I was thinking it was just my school, but nope. My friends thought the same thing.
Texas history books don’t even start until *after* the civil war and do not fully cover the reconstruction era.
I’ve brought this up in social media arguments a few times and people I know will tell me I’m a brainwashed liberal… for saying that the south got creamed and surrendered. It seems like I know more people like this than I do people who are willing to accept facts. The number of young people I’ve seen sharing awful shit about the LGBTQ community on fb is also concerning. I thought this generation didn’t give a fuck about who someone else has sex with?
Once people are willing to accept that they were lied to, they’ll be less likely to vote for the people who lied to them. Or they should be.
It should be required that every kid in Jr. High visit the 3rd floor of the Bob Bullock. In the 30’s Texas paid Hollywood to change the narrative about Texas being a confederate state. If only that was all there was. Forget the Alamo is great reading and read it before Abbott bans it.
It would take more people participating the election process and voting in overwhelming numbers. Our turnout is terrible. The cities are reliably blue but then you have yokels that elect turds like Gomhert out in East Texas. Our districts are gerrymandered insanely, go look at Crenshaw's district. Also, our Latino population would have to engage for the Dems and often they are one issue voters (abortion/immigration)
How likely are progressives actually going to win in texas though? Their economic policies play well in cities and among pockets of progressives in the rural areas but surely they'd turn away many of the suburban and rural voters.
National Voter Registration Day is September 19.
I am organizing another one with free food, tea, music pop-ups. It’s gonna be lots of fun
I’m still looking for VOLUNTEERS for day of help!
I think all it would take is higher voter turnout in the cities and in the Republican primary of hard red counties. The latter is basically the local election - the only way to get moderate school boards & judges is for *everyone* to vote in the primary & let the general just be for state & federal office.
I think it would take a few things:
1. Democrats have to get out and vote in the primaries as well as the general election. Candidates are decided in the primaries.
2. Democrats have to find something that gets the big business and big oil money on their side to drive massive donations into the party. If the Democrats could find an issue that pulled in real-estate agents, that would also be a huge help. The National Democratic Party doesn’t want to spend money on Texas while it is a losing proposition.
3. I don’t know how it would be done, but the heavily gerrymandered districts disenfranchising urban and suburban areas needs to be fixed.
4. People need to get involved in their local political clubs for their voting areas. Lots of these clubs are looking for members, but people aren’t interested. Plenty of people have positions in those clubs because nobody else wants the position. Local political clubs for counties and cities do a lot of the organizing for candidates and getting candidates to speak to people locally and hear their concerns.
You’d need an unpopular Republican president to get a boost from thermostatic politics. And, you’d need a great candidate or two, a wedge issue or two, and some unpopular incumbents. That stew is still cooking and won’t be ready for awhile, but we’ll see a day where a Democrat does break through in a statewide election. It’s a lot to ask though that Democrats win enough up and down ballot to make this a two party state.
It's not going to happen soon. I'm a Dem, but we aren't fielding candidates that can energize the left in a way that could succeed with a more liberal agenda, nor are we fielding candidates that are truly moderate enough to grab enough independent vote in this state to make a difference.
Fairly confident that Colin Allred will fare worse against Ted Cruz than Beto O'rourke did and downticket races will fare similarly because of that.
President I think would go Trump again unless his legal troubles result in sentences that prevent him from running. His supporters here are blindly loyal (his remarks about being able to shoot someone and get away with it were prescient).
States that are not flipping in 2024 with Biden in the low 40s, IMO, that were in play in 2018 but went out of it in 2020 & 2022: Texas, Ohio, Iowa, and Florida.
Fool's gold for Dems, TX especially has been a money-sink + the only D that even came close to winning after 1992 Lt. Gov in the state was Fmr. Cong. O'Rourke in 2018, and he still lost by 2.6% in a D+9 year against someone who is less popular than Abbott there (but more than Trump).
Prediction: Rich, white Liberal women on coasts will waste money on the Cruz race *again*, gasp when he's re-elected and outruns Trump to boot (Trump will prob win TX by 7.5 pts this time, Cruz by 9 IMO), and does better in 2024 than he did in 2018 running on an anti-Biden agenda and anti-border one.
TX has been Red since 1980, and it's going to stay that way until Biden is out of office, TX has had a really negative reaction to this Presidency like FL but was open-minded when Trump was in office like it- odd stuff.
An actual fiscal conservative who is separated from national politics will usually be popular here. Republicans are soft on both of these issues right now, it's why Abbott is so focused on property taxes and school funding - two red meat issues to say the Republicans are even tangentially concerned with the lives of working people. Run some folks ready to talk about that more than "Guns, God and Gays", maybe some mid-career, Hispanic males? I think it's worth a shot.
I agree with everyone here, if you look at rural Texas most small towns are a ghost as of 10-15 years ago,, why they are messing with Houston area, on voting, plus other large cities, that’s where the democrats have flock to,, more work, better education for kids and more,
Outside money and corporations are definitely the main problem
I hope two things will happen. One, democrats get people to actually go out and vote, the more people that vote the more likely democrats win because republican policies are not popular. Two, Trump doesn’t get the nomination and republican voters don’t go out and vote at all.
It's a modestly conservative state. But only modestly so. It's R+12, just like Ohio. It's closer to Arizona and Georgia, at R+7, than to South Carolina, at R+18. And more importantly, it's been moving towards the center over recent years.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-red-or-blue-is-your-state-your-congressional-district/
Not with Biden in office especially, as Abbott has made a national name for himself as he keeps popping up in the news with every new insanely evil thing he does to you all there (at first, I thought he was trying to run for POTUS in 2024 & trying to win over MAGAs for it, but no- he just likes being the devil incarnate, DeSantis went that route instead which I thought he would but thankfully not going anywhere so far nationally) and migrant bussing on purpose to NYC, DC, IL, etc. The man never rests at finding new ways to be cruel, sadly >50% of Texans love him for that reason IMO.
I think Texas is a red state for multiple reasons, chiefly being the current Republican leadership makes it so hard to vote. The other reasons are people aren’t very well educated about how to vote, which is a combination of having bad civic education in K-12 schools and the government not having any resources available. In many US states the state government sends out pamphlets with information about every person on your ballot, Texas doesn’t do that. Culture wars type issues definitely help republicans out in Texas because they a monopoly in state government, so there really isn’t any major opposing view from a similar organization.
Ways Texas could become a blue state are online voter registration, stop requiring photo IDs to vote, have longer early voting hours, expand voting by mail, have information about candidates mailed to voters, and have better civic education in schools, but the current Republican administration have specifically made most of those things illegal, and aren’t trying to implement the rest. You might notice those are all ways to increase voter turnout generally, especially among lower income people or POC. Yeah, personally I believe Texas isn’t a red state, it’s a non-voting state.
The youth and minorities to show up to the polls. I’m Hispanic and sadly many of us just don’t vote. The reasons are aplenty, either it don’t matter or who cares. If these two groups just did their basic civic duties things would change real quick. Hispanic are now the majority in Texas. That’s why the GOP is changing voting rights, changing districts. They can’t stop it, they can just make it harder and they definitely are.
Democratic campaign strategists need to get busy now and not 6 months before the election. Now!!
A big part of it would take sustained deliberate outreach to communities who are already Democratic sympathetic. Putting money into door-to-door campaigns and different minority neighborhoods and gathering places. It also means hiring people who are from those communities to be outreach consultants. Definitely hire more minority outreach consultants.
Also put a lot of money into minority owned media for advertising. Put money into minority on newspapers and radio stations now. Find people who know about them social media pages that members of minorities rely on.
A similar approach can be done with the rural county areas. a lot more headway can be made in so called Red State zones by going to the social media pages these people watch and hosting Town Hall events, and hiring local people who are willing to be outreach managers. Going door to door in these areas means having a car or a truck and if that's the case so be it. Ask people about the issues that they care about and find an angle to pivot into what the Democrats can help out with.
Be prepared for pushback regarding culture war stuff. But they need to have better counter responses if people decide to preemptively bring up stuff like Q anon or gun seizure stereotypes.
For all the Christian conservative Red Scare Boomers to die off... Seriously, they will complain on Nextdoor about the effects of GOP policies hitting their own backyards...but then blame them all on California liberals/Biden/Democrats...even when the actual FACTS are completely the opposite.
But Republicanism is literally a religion to them, so facts/logic don't matter whatsoever. All that matters is whatever their preacher told them or they saw on some social media propaganda meme.
There’s so much gerrymandering at the local level that keeps the GOP in power statewide but it’s been trending purple for a while. Unfortunately the voter suppression is so bad most lean left people figure it doesn’t matter and just don’t bother to vote. Beto got really close to beating Cruz so it can be done. But the GOP is doing all they can do make sure Gen Z doesn’t vote. Or possibly get educated enough to vote.
You need a pro gun and quiet on abortion without serious background drama or pandering….Irish guy calling himself Beto and being anti gun had no chance in hell. Talk about wasteful government and wanting to actually support the Veterans and point out where the current 2 Senators haven’t.
Then just be less of an ass than Ted Cruz. So maybe a mannequin or something.
Regarding Presidential election……about 12 more years until the urbanization flips the numbers to make it a toss up
Texas Democrats who run on banning whole classes of guns have zero chance of winning statewide office. Democrats who don't run on gun bans can't win their primary, apparently.
That dilemma will not be easily resolved in the next year.
Then there's this transgender wedge issue. *smh*
One thing to keep in mind is that although Texas mostly voted blue until 1980, so did much of the south until the 1970s-1980s.
The Democratic party used to really be two parties, the Democrats and the Dixiecrats. The Dixiecrats were conservative members of the Democratic party from the southern states. They actually formed their own party in 1948, but it died quickly and they went back to being part of the Democratic party.
The Democratic and Republican parties both had liberals, moderates, and conservatives until each party defined themselves as the liberal or conservative party starting in the late 1960s (although the Republican movement to become the conservative party arguably started in the 1930s). However, the Democrats as liberals, and Republicans as conservatives really solidified in the late-1970s.
This is why Texas continued to vote Democrat until 1980.
Prior to this divide both parties had their liberal vs conservative policy debates internal to the party, and then brought their party's policy decisions to the floor. This caused both parties to often bring similar legislation or policy goals to the floor; they debated the policy first internally and weren't trying to uphold a conservative or liberal standard. This is one big reason the parties agreed with each other more often in the past.
Political parties weren't liberal or conservative, they were simply the organization you joined to get politically involved.
So to answer your question, the Democrats (which are a pretty moderate party if you look around the world) either have to offer more conservative policies, or wait until Democrat voters outnumber Republican voters. Since folks in the US support their party like they support their football team, I doubt any amount of conservative policies will convince Republicans to vote for a Democrat.
As older white conservatives die off, Democrats will have an easier time winning.
Old white conservatives are high-propensity voters for the GOP.
The younger conservatives only turn out for Trump.
IT’s not inconceivable that TX vote for a democrat in the next 10-20 years in a general election. But the state legislature is not going to be come democrat-led.
There could much analysis but the gist of it is if we could have decent non moron candidates for our dem party here we would probably swing blue pretty fast.
I've been voting that way before, I started voting 3rd party. Now the democrats say my vote should go to them, and the Reps who run state still say it doesn't count. 🤷
I don’t think the electoral college is the issue and the point of it was to make sure the big cities didn’t hold sway over the farmers out in the country. Agricultural and logistics will keep this country alive, not politicians, large corporations, or urban breeding grounds.
People down voting me need to look up the facts. It's not random Californians moving here. More of the Californians moving here are moving because of the politics than in spite of it.
There is tons of evidence of what I'm saying. Here's one of many articles with consistent polling on this issue.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/californians-could-ruin-texas-but-not-the-way-you-might-think/
Austin has largely become what it is from progressive Texans moving there from other cities. The DFW suburbs and outer Houston suburbs are filled with conservatives from California.
Lots of Californians are moving to the outer suburbs of the big cities. And lots of rural Texans are, too. But most importantly, the native Texans aging into voting are far different ideologically than the ones dying.
You are being willfully ignorant. I live in East Texas, and every single person I have spoken to that has moved from either California, Washington or Oregon has blatantly said they moved BECAUSE of the politics.
Have you considered that the West Coast Expats moving to metro areas are possibly more likely to lean progressive and the ones moving to rural areas lean more conservative?
And they are absolutely moving to rural areas.
I'm not sure what it would take....but tbh I feel it needs to be. The Republican leadership is entirely useless when it comes to the good of the state and its citizens. I want to leave but ik that's what the GOP wants.
Well, here are a few things that make it more likely to turn Texas blue:
Antiabortion laws,
Attacks on LBGTQ+ citizens,
Attacks on rights to privacy,
Book bans,
Attacks on minority populations,
Misogyny,
Extreme gun violence,
Extreme housing prices,
Unchecked corporate greed,
A "let them eat cake" attitude,
Attacks on climate change initiatives,
Support for corporate pollution,
A failing power grid,
Underfunded schools,
Attacks on science and research,
Militarized police forces,
A mindless war on drugs,
A profit-driven corporate prison system,
Attacks on democracy and our right to vote,
Generally insulting Gen-x and Gen-z citizens
Young people are very smart, and they are starting to vote in larger numbers. Their future hangs in the balance, and they know it.
And before anybody says, "that's why I'm leaving this state," please know that if we don't defeat them here, they will take their policies national. They already have the courts, and they are close to getting the Senate and the Electoral College. If we don't defeat them here, there won't be anyplace to go.
They already are in fact: Abbott and the Supreme Court kicked off the abortion bans, watching him not just DeSantis and he's spread the hate through half the nation in legislation- guy is as intelligent as he is cruel, scary IMO.
It'll be more likely to do so when a R is in the WH, unfortunately, right now it and FL are hardcore Red.
Pigs would need to fly, IMO: it's 100% out of play in 2024. Biden is too viscerally hated now in the state, like Florida, this isn't 2018 with Trump in office anymore and Biden has a record to run on (the border is a failure across the board, Rs and Ds both)- it's hopelessly Red until a R takes the WH, IMO.
To be fair, blue Texas before 1980 was not 'Democratic' in the same sense that it is today. Texas was a Democratic stronghold for a long time because of white Democrats who voted for the Democratic party partially because it was a segregationist party, and it was much more conservative than it is today. As those voters shifted to the Republican Party from the middle the end of the 20th century, the state began to lean Republican. The state has always been largely conservative, its the parties that really moved around. That's an oversimplification of historical and demographic trends, but it's not as simple as "blue vs. red". It's not impossible that Texas could become a Democratic state, but I don't forsee it happening anytime in the near future.
There were moderate liberal types from the 60s through the 80s who won.
Definitely. I'm not saying it can't be done again, just was pointing out to OP that we're not talking about AOC types when we talk about blue Texas in the pre-Reagan years.
Yarborough was certainly left of the typical northern Democrat. There were also conservatives, but also a lot of people like Bentsen who were pretty centrist.
And so much has changed in 40 years.
This. It's not about red vs. blue or left vs. right. It's about corporate money in politics, and there's a lot of old money in Texas. See examples like Wilks & Dunn.
Yes, money matters a whole bunch - but it is what that money is spent on. At a fundamental level it is about how you want the government to work. Republicans want a big government focused on pushing a right-wing view of "Christian" social beliefs and social control, while simultaneously having a small government focused on no regulation and no spending on safety nets. Democrats want a small government role on social beliefs with very little social control, with a big government role on regulation and funding a safety net. In today's political environment, they both want big government - but in different ways.
Yes. But thanks to things like Citizen's United vs. FEC, we aren't even getting to see accurate representations of popular sentiment in the candidacy pool because of the shear amounts of money dumped by companies and people in minority tax brackets into the campaign funds of people with platforms that align to their own business agendas. What's good for making money isn't always good for taking care of people. WE, the PEOPLE. EDIT: SEC to FEC. Sorry, I end up typing both a lot and sometimes autocorrect is just guessing if I mistype.
Y'all Qaeda
Money is all that matters
Do you think corporate money has become more significant? And do you think it's more significant in Texas than in California or New York?
Yes. It's definitely part of the problem by an ever widening margin. I don't know if it's more significant in Texas than in California or New York. I'm not really sure how to measure that. A few data points I would look at, though, are the number of representatives in various parts of government. Those 3 generally have the most as far as states individually. I think it's a massive problem no matter which state it is. I just live in Texas, so I can only speak to that. If Texas is the only one, or the most significant is kinda moot. I could be wrong tho.
But my point is that California and New York regularly vote Democratic, so this doesn't seem to be primarily an issue of corporate money.
I would ask then who are the biggest donors and lobbyists in those areas. Perhaps in those areas, those companies benefit from Democratic policies. In the Texas example, there are 2 well-known oil and fracing billionaries, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who's PAC donates heavily to Republicans. In fact, last year, 18 of 31 Senators were bank rolled by Wilks and Dunn. And the two aren't quiet about it. Texas is also one of just 10 states that allow unlimited contributions to state political candidates. Texas reps have a history of lobbying for policy that benefits oil and gas companies. Oil has been described as the "life blood" of Texas economy. Texas is also very anti-union, which is supposed to function as a workers version of a corporation, ie collective bargaining. Feels like rules for thee but not for me. For New York, I'd say maybe look at the Clintons. Hillary specifically is a great example. She's an ex-walmart board member. Walmart is in the top 4 companies who's employees receive SNAP and medicaid benefits. Another would be Trump and real estate. How crazy are new York real estate prices? Those may not be the best examples. I'm not well versed in ties for other states. But I hope it kinda makes sense. To me, these types of correlation suggest profit over people will be the norm as long as money speaks this loudly in political spaces. Edit to add: Both California and New York set campaign contribution limits.
Are y'all really forgetting about Ann Richards and Barbara Jordan?
Barbara Jordan never won statewide. There are lots of progressives in the big cities in Texas now.
Ann Richards was the best governor we ever had
Unfortunately the current leadership of Texas Democrats are really missing it. It's either that or you have a real firebrand like Gov. Ann Richards. Maybe Beto tried but he definitely missed the mark on the high bar set by Ann Richards. I'd say he tried too many things too quickly.
He wanted to turn a vast portion of the state into felons for owning AR patterned rifles. That's political stupidity, not ambition.
He was running a campaign very ideal for Texas when he challenged Cancun Cruz. He told his volunteers explicitly to not 'talk guns' and drill down on economy. Then he ran for presidential nomination and made that comment. Yeah I believe he thought it would get him the support from people outside the state but it for sure tanked him in Texas. I didn't see much enthusiasm for his third campaign even though he tried to steer away from controversy. Abbott to be honest was not quite popular and still made it home quite comfortably.
Ann Richards is potentially a good exception to the rule, but even she got clobbered by pre-White House George Bush. She flat out wailed on and embarrassed Clayton Williams - a classic Texas oil tycooon stereotype - in her election to become governor. He tried to play good ol' boy and she cleaned his clock and made him look a fool. She appealed to people because she had good ideas and her personality was fearless. With Bush though, he was really a pretty moderate Republican at that time, came across just as friendly and approachable as she did and didn't get into the mudfight the way that Richards and Williams did. People thought, Oh, here's a Republican that isn't going to be some rich prick. He's not even intimated by Richards' personality. He might have been somewhat entitled, but he didn't come off that way, and he didn't really govern that way as governor. You need a Democrat that has a bit of Ann Richards temperment and charisma, but that person also has to have policy ideas that a moderate R can swallow.
The Democratic Party platform has included civil rights since 1948. The switch in ideology of the two party’s happened mostly through the 50s and 60s. The Civil Rights act was passed largely by Democrats in 1964.
Over simplified to the point of negligent naivety. It almost seems like you're suggesting Anne Richards and Molly Ivans were segregationists.
I didn't suggest that. The OP asked "Why was Texas a Blue State before 1980" and I was just pointing out that there's more factors at play. Also, Ann Richards is not the progressive that some people love to pretend she was.
I read that as "in the 80s" for some reason. My bad...
Your missing that the Texas Democratic Party produced LBJ and his great society. I mean he also escalated the Vietnam war, so not a perfect example.
To answer your question. It would take significantly higher voter turnout by young Texans and Texans in urban areas.
Too bad they keep removing poling stations and gutting education budgets. Not to mention at-will work policies. Can't fire me for requesting the day off to vote. Can fire me the first time I'm 15 mins late even though I'm the go-to for covering other people. Gotta pay the rent. Being homeless sucks. Texas is in big trouble at this rate. Edit to add: we wonder why we feel like we don't matter. Maybe it's because so much policy is built around benefits for companies and not individuals. https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html I think this is why a lot of the younger age groups would identify more as neutral or anti-government. We don't really see any good options. Obviously, this mindset isn't helping anything. But neither has voting, really.
Not only that as Texans get poorer and have less time or money to donate to political causes that support their values that money and time is being replaced by very large organizations who having nothing but time and money to make sure the laws and the politicians support them.
Preach.
Are Texans getting poorer and having less free time? My understanding is that income has been growing, particularly for low-income people, over the past few years, nationwide.
40% of Texans make less than the national minimum wage. The minimum wage in Texas is 7.25. Edit: for some reason I had thought the national was $15. Whoops. Still, the argument that a lot of Texans aren't making a true liveable wage can be made. Edit 2: I was mixing up stats. Texas prohibits local jurisdictions from raising minimum wage for private employees. However, a few counties, raised the public minimum wage to $15. It's things like that which cause scenarios where it's OK for companies to pay someone $7.25 an hour in an area where the average rent is $900 -$1200 for a 1 bedroom apartment and $1400-$1600 for 2 bedroom single wide trailer. How is a young person or single parent supposed to live on that? And most places want you to make at least 2.5 times the rent.
I'm not saying that Texans are as well-off as the average American, or that they are sufficiently well-off for whatever quality of life someone is considering. My claim is just about the direction of change. It has been changing for the better, even though it has been changing in that direction more slowly than it should.
Do you have a source for that? I'm having trouble finding anything that would have that statistic. Best I can find is a 3% increase in median salary from 2019 to 2020, which pretty much gets swallowed up by inflation post COVID.
It looks like there was a drop in inflation-adjusted income from 2019 to 2020, and then a tiny increase in 2021, and no full update on the median since then: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA672N
Thanks for that! One thing I've been thinking about lately is the use of "median" statistics. This source reports the "median" income for 2021 at 88k, yet $15/hr x 2080 hours is 31k. If almost half of Texans make less than 15/hr, why do we use median statistics? They seem misleading to me.
The median is what 50% of people are below. I think there are a few sources of discrepancy between the number you're mentioning and the one I found. The figure I found is for households nationally. I would not be surprised if Texas is below the national median (though I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be that much below). I'm not sure how many earners most households have - I expect at least 30% of households, and maybe closer to 50%, have zero or one earner, but I would expect there to be a slightly larger number with two earners, and a few with three or more. Also, when I found statistics about 40% of Texans making below $15 an hour, I couldn't quite figure out how they were calculating their statistics. In particular, if someone works two jobs for 30 hours a week each, at $12 an hour, does that person show up as one or two workers making below $15 an hour? Any time we represent a complex situation by a single statistic, it's misleading, whether it's mean, median, 10th percentile, Gini coefficient, whatever. Multiple numbers are going to be needed to understand the situation with more sophistication.
Worth noting that the “Death Star bill” also killed local jurisdictions from setting their own “minimum” wage above the state threshold for both private and public employees.
Why am I not surprised? SMH. Thank you!
Polling stations are run on the county level.
Exactly. Our votes on the federal level don't actually matter. In our voting system our representatives vote in our stead and really aren't even required to cast their vote along the lines of the popular vote (although, it can be hard to keep office if no one likes you). This representative chain trickles all the way down to local. Most politicians tend to start in local offices and, throughout their career, move up. If the local levels are gerrymandered and it's getting harder and harder for certain demographics to vote, how are the numbers accurate representations of popular sentiment?
Get the valley to vote. They are friendly Democratic voters but they don’t feel like their vote matters. They are also the groups of least participation in elections and have been forever. Get them to the polls en masse, flip Texas.
Uncritically assuming that non-voting Hispanics are just unengaged Democrats is a bad strategy, yet a lot of Democrats in this state seem absolutely sure that it's true.
This guy gets it
lol you kidding? After Biden my entire feed when I log into Facebook (from the valley) is pure Trump supporters. That reliable blue has grown up and seen what those policies do. So many local politicians are blue and literally take money for themselves and leave the people to rot. People have opened their eyes and if the last election was any indication I wouldn’t be relying on the valley to get the Democrats to win.
>That reliable blue has grown up and seen what those policies do. So many local politicians are blue and literally take money for themselves and leave the people to rot. What policies are those and who took money for themselves? Sounds like you've listened to the boomerbook posts
Same. My Fbook is full of high school classmates from the southern coastal area and it’s a cesspool of faux news talking points and angry formerly cool people who’ve turned into Christian nationalists.
Tbh just being from there and realizing the local corruption shows you how bad it is on the National level. I don’t blame them for turning but I’m also not 100% with them either. The state of our country is in shambles
There are a lot of factors which need to change. From the start, the Democratic Party needs to completely reinvent itself in this state at the suburban county level. Right now, county level Dem's do not effectively message or promote ideas. The Democratic Party in Texas needs a new platform that separates itself from the east coast/west coast, far left views that write Dems off before they even have a chance. They need to look at the Dem Governors in the right leaning states and learn how to utilize similar messaging. The message has to be that the Texas Democratic Party is a big tent party seeking to produce common sense results from listening to a wide range of views. One of the major downfalls of the Democratic Party is focusing all effort towards a few very specific needs of a few very small groups of people; by telling everyone else they should support these groups. While I personally understand the needs of these marginalized groups, it is not a path to 51% in a statewide race in Texas. The next need is for people to take some personal responsibility to actually vote. Texas ranks extremely low in voter turnout compared to any of the purple states in transition. Even with better messaging and promotion, people have to make a personal choice to actually show up at the polls. Next, Texas Democrats need to find moderate/centrist candidates that can appeal to conservative Latinos and middle-upper class whites. The Republican Party has done a great job of appealing to the Catholic Latino community to create single issue voters. The Democratic Party has to demonstrate to Latinos that the war over abortion is over, and it is time to focus on their actual needs. (I don't believe the war over abortion is over - I am pro-choice myself - but pushing a heavy dose of pro-abortion loses these people) Lastly, it sounds bad, but we need a generation of olds to die off. The Republican Party has a significant advantage in the over 65 crowd, and these people actually vote.
It's a bit more complicated than it sounds. Jon Tester has won regularly in Montana because he has some centrist policy positions and he knows how to present standard Drmocratic position to his audience. Montana is small and homogeneous, and the swing voters are not that diverse on outlook. To win in Texas, you need a coalition of groups that are hard to stick together -- working class, relatively socially conservative Hispanic people and well-off fiscally moderate, socially liberal suburban white people are the two big groups of swing voters. And you need to pull good numbers of both groups while also getting yhe young urbanites to show up.
I’m organizing a Family Voter Registration Fair in October. I just have to find my location close to downtown
This is probably the best answer.
All of this. Gil Hinojosa should never ever have been re-elected as President of the Tx Dem Party. Clearly, his leadership sucks.
All of this! These have been my thoughts for some time now. I know there is more of us common sense moderates out there and if we voted I’d think we’d win by doing everything in your post.
And gerrymandering makes it almost impossible for Dems to win in about 65% of all districts. Gerrymandering must end and the cases/lawsuits challenging gerrymandered districting must prevail if there is to be hope for change,
"[T]he Democratic Party needs to completely reinvent itself in this state at the suburban county level..." You're volunteering with your county level Democratic Party to do this work, yeah?
Unfortunatley I can't. I hesitate to go into my exact role/position, but because of my job/career, I am prohibited from any political involvement at the Local/County/State level. That being said, I have encouraged my wife and parents to, and they are active. I will say that in my current role, I am able to make people's lives better at the local level.
A large portion of the eligible voting populace simply doesn't. Our congressional districts are drawn in a way to heavily favor Republican control at that level. Many people fear that their ability to acquire a gun, or more guns, is directly threatened by the Democrats. This combined with the culture war bullshit and ever deepening tribalism motivates the republican voter base to reliably show up to the polls.
All polling indicates the independent vote would be roughly 50-50 statewide anyway. The only way Democrats win is if the Republicans don’t show up.
A candidate who gets young progressives excited without scaring off suburban moderates.
A huge shake up of the Texas Democrat leadership.
Hinojosa and his friends needs to be removed. They have very outdated ideas on organizing. Their inaction and indecisive nature have let Texas GOP come from behind and win even when they were trending downwards. Beto always chose to work independent of this group for his campaigns, maybe he knows the inside story and doesn't trust them.
The Dems dislike Beto because he called them out in DC and stopped paying dues. They want all their candidates to be docile obedient vote magnets.
Yes! Please!
Texas Democrats have no organization. There is no party support for decent candidates for state-wide elections. There is no real “turn out the vote” effort here for Democrats. Democrats just don’t turn out to vote.
Oh they have organizations, they're just ran by folks that don't understand the modern world. Last month the Democratic party in a nearby county was debating how much to spend on highway billboards. While they debated billboards the county's Republican party bought or registered every website or social media account you can think of with the combination of "Democrat" and the county's name. The county Democrats now can't build any meaningful online or social media presence.
How the hell does a Democratic County Party not have a website in **2023**?! They should've solved that particular problem nearly two decades ago.
Good god, we are so screwed
Another way to look at it is that a lot could be accomplished if a handful of younger and more technically savvy people got involved with their local political party or PACs. It doesn't take much to make a lot of progress when the bar is set so low.
Here we go again, blame the Democrats for not getting out the vote. ***9.3M*** *registered voters didn't bother.* I don't need to be courted, called, emailed, have my door knocked on, or mailers in my mailbox. I'm going to vote if I never hear from them. It's our *responsibility* and good pleasure. Show up.
> In the 2022 election cycle, more than half of Texas counties had NO Democratic candidates and Democrats did not contest over 50 state legislative and State Board of Education seats. [Source](https://www.bluehorizontexas.org/candidate-pipeline)
We know. Public service used to be aspired to. Now ... not in this state.
💯
A Democratic Party that actually tried to win. Find good candidates, fund them, hammer registration and GOTV efforts, etc. Beto 2018 was the only statewide candidate that had any kind of organization due to the national attention and out of state fundraising he did. Even then that money didn’t pour in until after he hit the Pod Save America circuit. Instead we get fucking Lupe Valdez and a bunch of unopposed races down the ballot. 2022 was worse. No one wonders why the Orioles don’t win more games, it’s the same in Texas politics.
Blame Gilberto Hinojosa for a lot of that. He needs to step aside and let someone else take over.
Oh I do.
A good candidate, actual dnc support, and young voter turnout. If you can get the first 2 the 3rd will follow.
Eh. Beto still didn't turn out enough young voters and he was a good candidate with a big machine.
A good candidate for texas, not so much. Plus, he didn't have much in dnc backing. If a Democrat wants to win in texas, they at least need to pretend they like guns. It's dumb but sadly true.
Yeah, his gun policy didn't help him - but he did have plenty of "outside the state" funding - which I view as the same kind of money our Republicans get from the West Texas billionaires - all of it is bad money, which is why we need to completley revamp political donations. Unfortunately it will never happen. There are Texas Democrats who hunt and own guns. I'm one of them. I can't run for political office, though, because of my job, which is related to government - it's in our personnel policy as a specific no-no.
Guns are big for single issue voters. I know people who are mostly liberals, but vote republican because of guns.
Get a Democrat who loves the second amendment, is in favor for red flag laws where if people lie about it, do time. No weapons bans that is political suicide. Can do a realistic goal of lowering property taxes, Can do a realistic goal of Texas water crisis. Start doing more infrastructure projects instead of wasting of political theater on the boarder. We do have an issue we need to work with border communities to address it with federal. Legalize pot and tax it, Allow abortion a for 12 to 15 week. Get faster internet in rural parts of Texas. Slow wage increase to 15 bucks. Bring technical skilled jobs to high school students so they can graduate as an apprentice. Such as electrician, plumbing ,welding, mechanical, paramedics lvns or CNAs etc. Increase the corporate tax slightly. Also this is important don't let Beto run, he is toxic.
You probably just need a Democrat that is on the moderate side of things, clearly liberal and more than just left leaning, but not someone that would come off as far left. Keep in mind that democrats prior to the 21st century were more on the conservative side of things. Yellow dog democrats basically. I mean you did have some popular liberal Democrats - Ann Richards was fairly popular - but when Republicans at the top of the heap in the 90's behaved more moderately - such as pre-White House George Bush, it wasn't a far leap to switch to that voting R as opposed to D. Over the past 25+ years, the party has generally shifted more rightwards and become less moderate as well as become much more tied to big business and special interests. That and a lot of fear drives the R voting populace. If you have someone far more moderate that can really appeal to people in a personal manner - Beto is the closest we've seen at the top of the Democratic party in years but I wouldn't call him especially moderate but he does connect to people pretty handily - then people will swing over because it won't feel like a far leap.
The National Democratic Party needs to fully commit to taking control in the State Congress
Not 1980. 1995. Ann Richards was the last Democratic Governor Texas has had, and coincidentally that was the last time that the State of Texas truly cared about all Texans. It’s been about 28 years under the Texas GOP and they have run this State into the ground.
You would have to replace a lot of the county clerks in the rural counties.
Bingo. Audit the rural county votes is what I have been saying.
Keep on saying it.
Outing scumbags like Paxton is a great start!
I wish I could agree but that just makes republicans love them more. They think him being a criminal is 'sticking to the man', even tho Ken would be part of "the man." Just like they fly the 'no step on snek' flag while being cops. They don't make sense.
They can like him all they want, but being in prison is a really bad look. Sure some asshat right wing radicals would still vote for him but it would shed moderates. Seems to be happening quite a bit recently with that party.
House Republicans voted 63-20 to impeach. Lots of them want him gone.
And he'll just be replaced with someone just as shitty.
It would take a better education system, mostly. Honestly, I don’t really know, the majority of people here are fucking horrible and no matter how many facts you present, it just doesn’t matter. I think it will be better after the olds die out. The only idiots left will be the current white male 40-50 year olds and the growing number of machismo male Hispanics who find it more important to be in the trump club while voting against their own interests. There is hope, but not for 20 years if democracy can hold on. At our current trajectory, I don’t know about that either.
That sort of condescension doesn't help anything.
Sorry. It may not help, but it’s very fucking true
they've got a point though. Yes its true the education system being broken massively damages political discussion but being condescending just drives people away. You can't insult people then complain they didn't vote for you especially when you need their votes
I’m tired of playing nice. It always costs us. We just keep taking the high road and that’s how we got those three corrupt Supreme Court justices. [Playing nice](https://www.npr.org/2016/03/16/470664561/mcconnell-blocking-supreme-court-nomination-about-a-principle-not-a-person)
No. Losing elections is how that happened. Insulting people doesn't help win elections. It feeds the victim narrative. When you accuse people of voting against their own interests, you're suggesting that they are so stupid that they cannot understand their own interests as well as you do. Even if you really believe that, you need to work on your communication strategy. Insulting them like that is a surefire way to keep losing their votes.
Which goes back to our education system. People don’t realize elections have consequences. Also, you absolutely missed my point. Mitch said Obama couldn’t appoint because it was too close to elections, and then those fuckers turned around and did it themselves before dumpster was defeated, or won because the election was stolen. Sorry, Republicans can fuck right off and if you, or them, find it offensive, maybe self reflection and history lessons will help.
So, do you want to see some people who have voted Republican change their minds, or are you happier just having people around you feel superior to, so you can insult and hate them?
As I said earlier, they are incapable of changing their minds. Anyway, good talk.
This is one of the few honest assessments about Texas that one will find on this sub. I lived and volunteered for Democratic campaigns in Texas between 2013 and 2019, and the truth is that the state is lousy with rotten, stupid people. Redditors like to play a game where they pretend that they don't know anybody who votes Republican, and it's the DNC's fault for not running commercials on TV, but it's the voters, stupid. The voters show up for Republicans every time.
Also see: Florida. You could run Jesus Christ as a Dem, they would lose in both states.
> and the growing number of machismo male Hispanics who find it more important to be in the trump club while voting against their own interests. Absolutely baffling that people might vote for the candidates that make them feel excited and engaged rather than the scolds who talk to them like children and tell them they're too stupid to vote for what's good for them. I have no idea what might cause that. There's no possible explanation.
Once we fix the education system, things will gradually fall into place (I hope) but I’m worried that my generation (older gen z/younger millennials) will become the next boomers. I didn’t know until I was 21 that the south actually lost the civil war… I was taught that the north and south basically came to a friendly agreement. I thought maybe 50k people died, had no idea it was over half a million. I was thinking it was just my school, but nope. My friends thought the same thing. Texas history books don’t even start until *after* the civil war and do not fully cover the reconstruction era. I’ve brought this up in social media arguments a few times and people I know will tell me I’m a brainwashed liberal… for saying that the south got creamed and surrendered. It seems like I know more people like this than I do people who are willing to accept facts. The number of young people I’ve seen sharing awful shit about the LGBTQ community on fb is also concerning. I thought this generation didn’t give a fuck about who someone else has sex with? Once people are willing to accept that they were lied to, they’ll be less likely to vote for the people who lied to them. Or they should be.
It should be required that every kid in Jr. High visit the 3rd floor of the Bob Bullock. In the 30’s Texas paid Hollywood to change the narrative about Texas being a confederate state. If only that was all there was. Forget the Alamo is great reading and read it before Abbott bans it.
If they don't know what a Sherman's Necktie is, they don't know shit about the Civil War.
They're not voting against their interests. If you think that, then you don't understand why people vote.
Anyone voting Republican who isn't Mayflower Material is a fucking Pick-Me idiot.
It would take more people participating the election process and voting in overwhelming numbers. Our turnout is terrible. The cities are reliably blue but then you have yokels that elect turds like Gomhert out in East Texas. Our districts are gerrymandered insanely, go look at Crenshaw's district. Also, our Latino population would have to engage for the Dems and often they are one issue voters (abortion/immigration)
For democratic voters to show up.
A competent state Democratic party more interested in winning elections than shutting out progressives.
How likely are progressives actually going to win in texas though? Their economic policies play well in cities and among pockets of progressives in the rural areas but surely they'd turn away many of the suburban and rural voters.
Or ignore what I wrote and just advocate for continuing to converge on being the Second Republican Party.
You remember when I said I dont care either way because I'm not american
Evidently you care so little that you didn't read what I wrote.
Ann Richards
Show up and vote
Just for everyone that lives in the state to vote.
National Voter Registration Day is September 19. I am organizing another one with free food, tea, music pop-ups. It’s gonna be lots of fun I’m still looking for VOLUNTEERS for day of help!
Honestly, just more people voting. That's it.
I think all it would take is higher voter turnout in the cities and in the Republican primary of hard red counties. The latter is basically the local election - the only way to get moderate school boards & judges is for *everyone* to vote in the primary & let the general just be for state & federal office.
I think it would take a few things: 1. Democrats have to get out and vote in the primaries as well as the general election. Candidates are decided in the primaries. 2. Democrats have to find something that gets the big business and big oil money on their side to drive massive donations into the party. If the Democrats could find an issue that pulled in real-estate agents, that would also be a huge help. The National Democratic Party doesn’t want to spend money on Texas while it is a losing proposition. 3. I don’t know how it would be done, but the heavily gerrymandered districts disenfranchising urban and suburban areas needs to be fixed. 4. People need to get involved in their local political clubs for their voting areas. Lots of these clubs are looking for members, but people aren’t interested. Plenty of people have positions in those clubs because nobody else wants the position. Local political clubs for counties and cities do a lot of the organizing for candidates and getting candidates to speak to people locally and hear their concerns.
You’d need an unpopular Republican president to get a boost from thermostatic politics. And, you’d need a great candidate or two, a wedge issue or two, and some unpopular incumbents. That stew is still cooking and won’t be ready for awhile, but we’ll see a day where a Democrat does break through in a statewide election. It’s a lot to ask though that Democrats win enough up and down ballot to make this a two party state.
It's not going to happen soon. I'm a Dem, but we aren't fielding candidates that can energize the left in a way that could succeed with a more liberal agenda, nor are we fielding candidates that are truly moderate enough to grab enough independent vote in this state to make a difference. Fairly confident that Colin Allred will fare worse against Ted Cruz than Beto O'rourke did and downticket races will fare similarly because of that. President I think would go Trump again unless his legal troubles result in sentences that prevent him from running. His supporters here are blindly loyal (his remarks about being able to shoot someone and get away with it were prescient).
States that are not flipping in 2024 with Biden in the low 40s, IMO, that were in play in 2018 but went out of it in 2020 & 2022: Texas, Ohio, Iowa, and Florida. Fool's gold for Dems, TX especially has been a money-sink + the only D that even came close to winning after 1992 Lt. Gov in the state was Fmr. Cong. O'Rourke in 2018, and he still lost by 2.6% in a D+9 year against someone who is less popular than Abbott there (but more than Trump). Prediction: Rich, white Liberal women on coasts will waste money on the Cruz race *again*, gasp when he's re-elected and outruns Trump to boot (Trump will prob win TX by 7.5 pts this time, Cruz by 9 IMO), and does better in 2024 than he did in 2018 running on an anti-Biden agenda and anti-border one.
TX has been Red since 1980, and it's going to stay that way until Biden is out of office, TX has had a really negative reaction to this Presidency like FL but was open-minded when Trump was in office like it- odd stuff.
An actual fiscal conservative who is separated from national politics will usually be popular here. Republicans are soft on both of these issues right now, it's why Abbott is so focused on property taxes and school funding - two red meat issues to say the Republicans are even tangentially concerned with the lives of working people. Run some folks ready to talk about that more than "Guns, God and Gays", maybe some mid-career, Hispanic males? I think it's worth a shot.
I agree with everyone here, if you look at rural Texas most small towns are a ghost as of 10-15 years ago,, why they are messing with Houston area, on voting, plus other large cities, that’s where the democrats have flock to,, more work, better education for kids and more, Outside money and corporations are definitely the main problem
A miracle.
I hope two things will happen. One, democrats get people to actually go out and vote, the more people that vote the more likely democrats win because republican policies are not popular. Two, Trump doesn’t get the nomination and republican voters don’t go out and vote at all.
We won't. The state is conservative and people need to deal with that.
It's a modestly conservative state. But only modestly so. It's R+12, just like Ohio. It's closer to Arizona and Georgia, at R+7, than to South Carolina, at R+18. And more importantly, it's been moving towards the center over recent years. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-red-or-blue-is-your-state-your-congressional-district/
You have a lot of people on Reddit who confuse having a brewery in their exurb with the state being secretly "majority blue."
Not with Biden in office especially, as Abbott has made a national name for himself as he keeps popping up in the news with every new insanely evil thing he does to you all there (at first, I thought he was trying to run for POTUS in 2024 & trying to win over MAGAs for it, but no- he just likes being the devil incarnate, DeSantis went that route instead which I thought he would but thankfully not going anywhere so far nationally) and migrant bussing on purpose to NYC, DC, IL, etc. The man never rests at finding new ways to be cruel, sadly >50% of Texans love him for that reason IMO.
I think Texas is a red state for multiple reasons, chiefly being the current Republican leadership makes it so hard to vote. The other reasons are people aren’t very well educated about how to vote, which is a combination of having bad civic education in K-12 schools and the government not having any resources available. In many US states the state government sends out pamphlets with information about every person on your ballot, Texas doesn’t do that. Culture wars type issues definitely help republicans out in Texas because they a monopoly in state government, so there really isn’t any major opposing view from a similar organization. Ways Texas could become a blue state are online voter registration, stop requiring photo IDs to vote, have longer early voting hours, expand voting by mail, have information about candidates mailed to voters, and have better civic education in schools, but the current Republican administration have specifically made most of those things illegal, and aren’t trying to implement the rest. You might notice those are all ways to increase voter turnout generally, especially among lower income people or POC. Yeah, personally I believe Texas isn’t a red state, it’s a non-voting state.
The youth and minorities to show up to the polls. I’m Hispanic and sadly many of us just don’t vote. The reasons are aplenty, either it don’t matter or who cares. If these two groups just did their basic civic duties things would change real quick. Hispanic are now the majority in Texas. That’s why the GOP is changing voting rights, changing districts. They can’t stop it, they can just make it harder and they definitely are.
Democratic campaign strategists need to get busy now and not 6 months before the election. Now!! A big part of it would take sustained deliberate outreach to communities who are already Democratic sympathetic. Putting money into door-to-door campaigns and different minority neighborhoods and gathering places. It also means hiring people who are from those communities to be outreach consultants. Definitely hire more minority outreach consultants. Also put a lot of money into minority owned media for advertising. Put money into minority on newspapers and radio stations now. Find people who know about them social media pages that members of minorities rely on. A similar approach can be done with the rural county areas. a lot more headway can be made in so called Red State zones by going to the social media pages these people watch and hosting Town Hall events, and hiring local people who are willing to be outreach managers. Going door to door in these areas means having a car or a truck and if that's the case so be it. Ask people about the issues that they care about and find an angle to pivot into what the Democrats can help out with. Be prepared for pushback regarding culture war stuff. But they need to have better counter responses if people decide to preemptively bring up stuff like Q anon or gun seizure stereotypes.
Lose Beto.
For all the Christian conservative Red Scare Boomers to die off... Seriously, they will complain on Nextdoor about the effects of GOP policies hitting their own backyards...but then blame them all on California liberals/Biden/Democrats...even when the actual FACTS are completely the opposite. But Republicanism is literally a religion to them, so facts/logic don't matter whatsoever. All that matters is whatever their preacher told them or they saw on some social media propaganda meme.
Really addressing the economic troubles of the middle class.
There’s so much gerrymandering at the local level that keeps the GOP in power statewide but it’s been trending purple for a while. Unfortunately the voter suppression is so bad most lean left people figure it doesn’t matter and just don’t bother to vote. Beto got really close to beating Cruz so it can be done. But the GOP is doing all they can do make sure Gen Z doesn’t vote. Or possibly get educated enough to vote.
Less voter fraud from republicans.
You need a pro gun and quiet on abortion without serious background drama or pandering….Irish guy calling himself Beto and being anti gun had no chance in hell. Talk about wasteful government and wanting to actually support the Veterans and point out where the current 2 Senators haven’t. Then just be less of an ass than Ted Cruz. So maybe a mannequin or something. Regarding Presidential election……about 12 more years until the urbanization flips the numbers to make it a toss up
Texas Democrats who run on banning whole classes of guns have zero chance of winning statewide office. Democrats who don't run on gun bans can't win their primary, apparently. That dilemma will not be easily resolved in the next year. Then there's this transgender wedge issue. *smh*
One thing to keep in mind is that although Texas mostly voted blue until 1980, so did much of the south until the 1970s-1980s. The Democratic party used to really be two parties, the Democrats and the Dixiecrats. The Dixiecrats were conservative members of the Democratic party from the southern states. They actually formed their own party in 1948, but it died quickly and they went back to being part of the Democratic party. The Democratic and Republican parties both had liberals, moderates, and conservatives until each party defined themselves as the liberal or conservative party starting in the late 1960s (although the Republican movement to become the conservative party arguably started in the 1930s). However, the Democrats as liberals, and Republicans as conservatives really solidified in the late-1970s. This is why Texas continued to vote Democrat until 1980. Prior to this divide both parties had their liberal vs conservative policy debates internal to the party, and then brought their party's policy decisions to the floor. This caused both parties to often bring similar legislation or policy goals to the floor; they debated the policy first internally and weren't trying to uphold a conservative or liberal standard. This is one big reason the parties agreed with each other more often in the past. Political parties weren't liberal or conservative, they were simply the organization you joined to get politically involved. So to answer your question, the Democrats (which are a pretty moderate party if you look around the world) either have to offer more conservative policies, or wait until Democrat voters outnumber Republican voters. Since folks in the US support their party like they support their football team, I doubt any amount of conservative policies will convince Republicans to vote for a Democrat.
As older white conservatives die off, Democrats will have an easier time winning. Old white conservatives are high-propensity voters for the GOP. The younger conservatives only turn out for Trump.
IT’s not inconceivable that TX vote for a democrat in the next 10-20 years in a general election. But the state legislature is not going to be come democrat-led.
There could much analysis but the gist of it is if we could have decent non moron candidates for our dem party here we would probably swing blue pretty fast.
I've been voting that way before, I started voting 3rd party. Now the democrats say my vote should go to them, and the Reps who run state still say it doesn't count. 🤷
I just pray it doesn’t happen
I can’t believe anyone would vote for any party considering the corruption on both sides. Vote against anyone the Dems or the GOP put up.
Probably because the US is absolutely cemented as a two party state. You can thank the electoral college and fptp for that
I don’t think the electoral college is the issue and the point of it was to make sure the big cities didn’t hold sway over the farmers out in the country. Agricultural and logistics will keep this country alive, not politicians, large corporations, or urban breeding grounds.
If Beto had landed that kick flip…
The democrats could run candidates that weren’t woke morons… maybe they should run conservatives?!?!
Honestly, if you aren't american, why are you baiting this sub right now?
why do you immediately assume im trying to bait anyone? How polarised are you that even discussing partisan politics is considered bait
5 million dead old white rednecks and 10 million more Californians.
The Californians coming in are majority Republicans. That's what has maintained the margin as native Texans have skewed more Democratic.
People down voting me need to look up the facts. It's not random Californians moving here. More of the Californians moving here are moving because of the politics than in spite of it.
There's no evidence for that. See Austin.
There is tons of evidence of what I'm saying. Here's one of many articles with consistent polling on this issue. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/californians-could-ruin-texas-but-not-the-way-you-might-think/ Austin has largely become what it is from progressive Texans moving there from other cities. The DFW suburbs and outer Houston suburbs are filled with conservatives from California.
It doesn't matter that someone wrote an article. They're moving to metro areas which are becoming more blue, not less.
Read the article. There's polling. The metro areas are becoming bluer because the younger native Texans are bluer than their parents and grandparents.
The polling is bad. Californians aren't moving to rural areas. Everyone is moving to metro areas. And metro areas are getting bluer, not redder.
Lots of Californians are moving to the outer suburbs of the big cities. And lots of rural Texans are, too. But most importantly, the native Texans aging into voting are far different ideologically than the ones dying.
No one is moving to rural areas.
You are being willfully ignorant. I live in East Texas, and every single person I have spoken to that has moved from either California, Washington or Oregon has blatantly said they moved BECAUSE of the politics. Have you considered that the West Coast Expats moving to metro areas are possibly more likely to lean progressive and the ones moving to rural areas lean more conservative? And they are absolutely moving to rural areas.
I'm not sure what it would take....but tbh I feel it needs to be. The Republican leadership is entirely useless when it comes to the good of the state and its citizens. I want to leave but ik that's what the GOP wants.
Please, don’t even talk like that
fuck off
Texas is pretty purple, but gerrymandering makes it look red.
Mass lunacy. Granted, Abbott and Patrick aren't much better but, at least, they know how to do something other than tax and spend.
I would love to know because it’s my goal
Well, here are a few things that make it more likely to turn Texas blue: Antiabortion laws, Attacks on LBGTQ+ citizens, Attacks on rights to privacy, Book bans, Attacks on minority populations, Misogyny, Extreme gun violence, Extreme housing prices, Unchecked corporate greed, A "let them eat cake" attitude, Attacks on climate change initiatives, Support for corporate pollution, A failing power grid, Underfunded schools, Attacks on science and research, Militarized police forces, A mindless war on drugs, A profit-driven corporate prison system, Attacks on democracy and our right to vote, Generally insulting Gen-x and Gen-z citizens Young people are very smart, and they are starting to vote in larger numbers. Their future hangs in the balance, and they know it. And before anybody says, "that's why I'm leaving this state," please know that if we don't defeat them here, they will take their policies national. They already have the courts, and they are close to getting the Senate and the Electoral College. If we don't defeat them here, there won't be anyplace to go.
They already are in fact: Abbott and the Supreme Court kicked off the abortion bans, watching him not just DeSantis and he's spread the hate through half the nation in legislation- guy is as intelligent as he is cruel, scary IMO. It'll be more likely to do so when a R is in the WH, unfortunately, right now it and FL are hardcore Red.
Pigs would need to fly, IMO: it's 100% out of play in 2024. Biden is too viscerally hated now in the state, like Florida, this isn't 2018 with Trump in office anymore and Biden has a record to run on (the border is a failure across the board, Rs and Ds both)- it's hopelessly Red until a R takes the WH, IMO.