Member-only story
Featured
Here comes another terrifying election
Counting on an election that can’t be trusted
Here we go again. Optimism. Hope.
The midterms will bring a blue wave. The Republicans will lose both chambers of Congress. The Democrats will finally take a Senate seat in Texas.
The whole nation always fusses over Texas, partly for the symbolism of turning the ultimate red state blue, and partly because Ted Cruz is so loathsome. But he keeps winning.
This year, Texas’s other Senate seat is open, and the Republicans are tempting fate with a phenomenally bad candidate. If Donald Trump didn’t exist, Ken Paxton would be the gold standard for a corrupt, swampy, cruel, incompetent politician. On the Democratic side, James Talarico is a preacher, a teacher, a Christian who talks more about the mercy of Jesus than the meanness of God. He’s an inconvenient mirror in the face of what passes for Christianity among MAGA folks.
If there was ever a winnable Senate election for the Democrats in Texas, this would be it. But we’ve said that before. Ted Cruz smarmed his way past several prototypes of “the perfect politician” in Beto O’Rourke (a tall, young, handsome, bass guitar player who said all the right things) in 2018 and Colin Allred (a tall, young, handsome, football player who said all the right things) in…
