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President Ronald Reagan (left) and Vice President George HW Bush pose with cheerleaders during a stop on their reelection campaign, Austin, Texas, July 26, 1984 (Photo Robert R. McElroy/Getty Images)
Although Texas is nowadays considered the Republican state ne plus ultra, it was not always thus. In fact, for over 100 years after Reconstruction, the Democratic Party dominated politics in the Lone Star state and the GOP could barely get a look in. Texans didn’t elect a Republican to Congress until 1961 and it took decades for the state to turn red; there were still Democrats holding statewide office right up until 1998.
Yet as far as presidents go, it’s been a while since a majority of Texans voted for a Democrat — nearly half a century, in fact. The last time it happened was 1976, when residents of the state opted for Jimmy Carter over the Nixon-pardoning Gerald Ford. Back then, Emmanuel Macron was still two years away from being born and Joe Biden was but a bonnie wee laddie of 34, serving out the first of his seven terms in the Senate. We hadn’t yet hit peak disco, let alone gone through the backlash and subsequent revival, and nobody knew who Darth Vader was. Needless to say, things didn’t exactly end well for Carter and since then, Texans have steered well clear of Democratic candidates for president.
Until now, perhaps. With less than a week to go before the election, and at least one poll showing that Biden might be slightly ahead in Texas, the question of whether the Democrats could finally break a decades-long losing streak and score electoral victory in the Lone Star State is filling the party (and pundits) with a sense of nervous excitement.
A Biden victory in Texas is regarded as a prelude to flipping the entire state, reversing the Republicans’ vice-like grip on Lone Star politics, from the presidency downwards. In this scenario, the prophecy of The Emerging Democratic Majority will at long last be fulfilled: the Republicans will be reduced to a rump of elderly trailer-dwelling deplorables clinging to their guns and scratched Duck Dynasty DVDs, while the youthful, diverse, progressive Democrats shall enjoy political hegemony forever and ever, amen.
Is their hope misplaced? Recently, it seemed that reports of the demise of the Republican Party in Texas were greatly exaggerated, to say the least. Consider, for instance, the lightning fast rise-and-fall of Democrat Wendy Davis, the Harvard-trained lawyer and Texas state senator who in 2013 became briefly famous for filibustering a bill that would have placed numerous restrictions on abortion in the state.
Davis not only made headlines on CNN and in the pages of the NYT but some parts of the British media also did that weird self-colonising thing where they reported on US regional politics with far more interest than they do their own. The Guardian in particular dedicated lots of column inches to Davis, including a particularly hard-hitting piece of reporting on how the trainers she wore during her filibuster had become the bestselling shoe on Amazon and an “unlikely feminist symbol”.
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SubscribeTexas, like most of the American South, was Democrat for a century because the Democrats were passing Jim Crow laws. Interestingly, these laws are always presented as “southern”, never “Democrat”, notwithstanding that every single one of them, without qualification or exception, was passed by a Democrat legislature, signed into law by a Democrat governor and enforced by Democrat officials. Equally interesting, the South turned Republican as it moved away from racism. So which came first, the chicken or the egg?
To the leftists who scream “the parties changed places” – they did NOT. For example the Republicans who have dominated Eastern Tennessee since the Civil War have remained much the same. What has happened is that the Democrats who used to push racial politics for white people, now push racial politics for black and Hispanic people, the Democrats refuse to see people as INDIVIDUALS. They treat them only as members of groups. That was true for Collectivist Democrats such as Governor Bilbo of Mississippi a century ago – and it is true for Democrats now.
What a bizarre story to push too, that entire parties just “swapped”, and according to the accepted narrative, nearly overnight as a result of the Southern Strategy. For starters, the Southern Strategy was a failure by its own metrics. I don’t care how many tapes you have of Nixon and Buchanon talking about how they’re going to get the southern Wallace votes; they didn’t actually get the votes.
The simple fact remains: only a couple of racist Democrats switched parties, like Strom Thurmond. The rest of the 200 or so racist Dixiecrat, former KKK, Southern Manifesto signatory congressmen, and elected officials stayed Democrats until they retired, well into the 80s.
The diversion is getting people to look at the electorate, instead of the elected. The southern Democrat electorate did switch red, but it started as early as 1928 with Hoover, and spread over several generations, and was multifaceted, for many reasons having nothing to do with race (imagine that”people concerned with things other than race, like southern fiscal conservatism in the face of FDR’s expansive policies). And as Joe said, the less racist each generation became, the more Republican they voted.
Having pretty much destroyed California with their insane policies and sky high taxes, they are leaving in droves and moving to Texas, where, like a cancer they will destroy that to.
And yet California is full of people and has the country’s biggest economy and most innovative. Crazy, right?
I got some money, can I get a house in Lake Tahoe for the same price as in Dallas suburb ($ per sq foot0?
The great Californian economy is fading; unlike it’s homeless problems and the emergence of diseases that Europe has not seen since the middle ages.
All very well being progressive but what are they progressing towards?
California also has the highest number of welfare recipients, a staggering poverty cohort, and income inequality – which the left used to care about – that is off the charts. And almost no one thinks “Tahoe” when first thinking of California. Big Tech’s presence is a fact but it wasn’t caused by a govt that now wants to control people’s Thanksgiving events.
California and its extreme stratification of class – very rich and very poor and not so much in between makes it a perfect case for a soon to be ‘Banana Republic’.
‘The Left used to care about’ — but there is really no significant Left any more.
Since 2018 there is a huge exodus of medium to small companies leaving California. Don’t think I can put a link on the comment section, but look up the Hoover institute on that subject: red tape and punitive taxes are driving them away. CA isn’t called for nothing the Socialist Republic of California
Mr Smith – the land use regulations that push up house prices in California are not something to be boasted about. And those “innovative” companies you mention are being taxed and regulated into the ground – and now (thanks to the “Green” doctrine) can not even get a reliable electricity supply. They will not stay in California.
What if Texas is getting the best and brightest Californians? I mean, they’re smart enough to leave.
The big cities in Texas have long been “blue” – if by that is meant Democrat controlled, their wild spending and big debts are very bad (compare cities in Texas to cities in Florida where, generally, cities follow more conservative fiscal policies). The question is whether the combination of the “liberal” (which oddly means Big Government in modern usage) cities (with their Californians and so on) and the illegal immigrants (many of whom vote illegally – and their children can vote legally) will outvote small town Texas. The way that Texas has attracted immigrants (both from other parts of the United States and from Latin America) may destroy the limited government model (at least at State level) that gave the immigrants their private enterprise jobs.
In Florida many Hispanics are conservative – but that seems to be because they are people who came to Florida to escape socialist policies (in Cuba, Venezuela and so on) – it is a bit different in Texas. One can make a case that the poverty of Mexico is due to Collectivist policies – but that case does not seem to really get home to many Mexicans. They look at the large privately owned farms and ranches of Texas. and the privately owned oil industry and do not seem to think “that is what we should be doing in Mexico!” (well some DO think that – but perhaps not enough), too many seem to think “Texas is what Mexico was like before 1910 Revolution – the land should be taken from the landowners, and the oil should belong to the masses!” which plays to the Democrats.. Politics is NOT genetic – there is no biological reason why Mexicans (and Central Americans generally) should think this way, but education and cultural factors push this way.
It would be a shame if the United States ended up as poor as much of Latin America – but the “Social Justice” Collectivist doctrine that the Democrats are now wedded to, would produce that result.
As for “Beto” – his vague ramblings do not even qualify as socialism. But they were perfect for the empty headed college crowd. The schools and universities teach that all problems can be solved by lots of government spending and endless new regulations (in reality these policies make everything worse) – and they produce mindless “educated” voters who fall for people like Mr Robert O’Rourke. They are the same sort of people who support lockdowns and mask mandates – and the “Green New Deal” (at some point the excuse for tyranny will switch from Covid 19 to “the environment”).
My (legal) American-Ecuadorian housecleaner announced to me she was voting for Trump, much to my surprise. Her reasoning : she hears that back in Ecuador that Peruvians and Venezuelans are inundating Ecuador because of the comparatively better economy and that they use American dollars for currency. She said this influx of people is having a detrimental effect on Ecuador which made her understand how Americans must feel when the USA gets flooded with immigrants. She likes Trump’s policies, his strength and his positive vision for America, a country she has committed to. She said her friends are shocked when she tell them her position and to that end is trying to persuade them to vote Trump as well. Surprised me.
I think in the next 20 or 30 years in the US we are headed for a big political re-alignment. I suspect there are a lot of people like myself who are politically homeless to some extent or another. I’m a longtime Democrat and traditional liberal. I despise the Woke who have taken over my tribe the last ten years. But the Republican party as it is presently constituted could never work for me. Hopefully that will change, because it increasingly looks like I’ll need somewhere else to go.
The situation in the UK largely mirrors that in the US.
The left, which I consider to be my natural home politically but not exclusively, has been hijacked by ‘the Wokerati’ in much the same way as the Democratic Party has in the US.
The problem in the US is even more acute as you only have a two party system leaving you and others with some pretty major compromises to have to make if you want to vote.
Similarly, whilst the UK electorate might have many more parties on paper to vote for, given the First Past The Post electoral system, it might as well be a two party system as well, certainly in England anyway.
The SNP, or Scottish Nationalist Party, have recently done extremely well out of it also incidentally.
Out of sheer frustration then I’ve recently joined a teeny, tiny party established in the 1980s that most people in the UK have long forgotten about or likely never heard of, the SDP or Social Democratic Party.
Its chances of seeing any actual power in my lifetime, particularly given our current outmoded electoral system, are less than zero, quite frankly, but if nothing else I feel I’ve finally found a political home.
I believe you are right, I only wish I could join a smaller party that had any relevance whatsoever.
O’Rourke’s failed presidential campaign almost certainly sealed that he’s never going to win statewide office in Texas because of his gun control positions during that campaign.