Amended transcript:
After Tuesday’s Republican primary in Texas, there was a lot of cheering in the Democratic Party.
“Oh, Talarico is such a great candidate. Paxton’s such a flawed candidate. Maybe the Democrats can win this race.”
“Maybe” no longer does justice to the odds. Democrats should not get overconfident, but it’s time to move a Talarico win from “possible” to “likely.”
Why?
Look at the turnout. It was pathetic on the Republican side.
Fewer than a million and a half Republicans voted on Tuesday. Paxton got fewer than a million votes.
Compare that to two years ago, when Ted Cruz was running almost unopposed in the Republican Senate primary. He got roughly a million more votes in that noncompetitive primary than Paxton did this time.
Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, more than a million additional people voted in this Senate primary compared to two years ago.
So the current story, at least based on the raw numbers, is this: Democrats are flocking to the polls. Republicans are staying home.
A lot can change between now and Election Day. But Ken Paxton probably needs something very big and very damaging to emerge about Talarico if he’s going to have a real chance of winning.
If you look strictly at the numbers right now, the likelihood is that James Talarico will be the next senator from Texas. That makes it likely the Senate will turn blue, and true accountability (though not removal of Trump from office) will finally be at hand.
Here’s my short Then and Now convo with Princeton Professor Julian Zelizer, our latest weekly effort to convey some of the historical context of the news:
