"Texodus" Bodes Badly for Republicans

Like many Republicans who ultimately became "Never Trumpers," for years George Will served as an apologist for many of the forces within the GOP base - e.g., Christofascists and others who would use religion and a perverted version of "religious freedom" as a basis to harm others while grabbing special rights for themselves.  Then, of course, there were the dog whistle racists who paved the way for the outright white supremacists who now comprise a significant portion of the party base. Both of these factions of the GOP base helped hand Trump the nomination and helped him eek out an Electoral College win despite losing the popular vote by 3,000,000 votes. Belatedly, in my view, Will is playing Cassandra for the Texas Republican Party that has grown increasingly extreme and shamelessly panders to racists and the ugliest and often most ignorant elements of the evangelicals in Texas. The problem the Texas GOP faces is what has already happened in Virginia: the population has changed racially, become increasingly suburban, and finds the GOP's racism and religious zealotry disgusting and loathsome.  In a column in the Washington Post, Will warns the Texas GOP to learn the new reality before it is too late.  Here are excerpts:

I am a classically trained engineer,” says Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican . . . . And he sees portents that his blinkered party would be prudent to notice.

Hurd is one of six Texas Republican congressman who have decided not to seek reelection next year. Until this year, none of them had, since 2011, experienced the purgatory of being in the House minority. In the 2018 “Texodus,” five Texas Republican representatives retired (a sixth resigned) and two were defeated. Of the 241 Republicans in the House when President Trump was inaugurated, almost 40 percent are gone or going. See a trend?

His district, which includes 23 percent of Texas’s land and extends from San Antonio’s fringe to New Mexico’s border, is the state’s largest, encompassing all or parts of 29 counties and 820 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. It is 58,000 square miles — almost as big as Georgia and larger than Illinois and 25 other states. It is 69 percent Hispanic and just 4 percent African American.

Hurd, an articulate, assertive 6-foot-4 former CIA operative and the only African American Republican in the House, thinks voting trends “are moving so fast” that 2020 “has nothing to do with 2016.” Just as “U.S. economic and military dominance are no longer guaranteed,” neither is Republican dominance in Texas, a state that is hardly immune to national trends.

In the 2016 House of Representatives elections, no Republican incumbent from Texas lost . . . In 2018, there were eight losses, and 16 won with less than 55 percent. . . . Nationally, Republicans are decreasingly strong where two generations ago they were especially robust — in suburbs. Texas ranks high among the states in terms of the percentage of the population that is suburban. And statewide, whites are a minority.

In Texas’s most important 2018 contest for a federal office, incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz won by just three. See a trend?

If the Democratic Party can collect Texas’s electoral votes — 38 today, perhaps 41 after the 2020 Census — as well as California’s 55, it will reap 35.5 percent of a winning 270 from just two states. Then the GOP will have almost no plausible path to 270. . . .

And Hurd will repeat what he says today: Texas is “already purple.” Republicans “have to get out of our own way” because “if the Republican Party in Texas does not start looking like Texas, there will not be a Republican Party in Texas.”

Is Texas Poised to Begin the Shift to Purple?

The always foul Sen. Ted Cruz (R) faces a strong challenge from Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D).

years Virginia was a reliable Republican leaning state.  The two things happened: the Christofascists and white supremacists hijacked the Virginia GOP and the party base basically became something akin to a rabid dog.  The second thing that happened was that the voters in the growing urban areas finally decided that they were over the insanity of the GOP and its efforts to drag Virginia backwards in time.  The 2017 Virginia elections underscored the results of these two factors when Republicans lost the gubernatorial election by 9 points and 15 Republicans lost their seats in the House of Delegates.  Now, some believe - or at least hope - that Texas may be on the verge of a similar shift towards Democrats and modernity in general fueled by the growth of that state's urban areas and growing minority population.  The turn out in the Texas primaries today suggest a surge in Democrat voters - more, in fact than the Republican turnout. Here are highlights from a piece in the Washington Post:  

Texas polls have closed and the vote counting has begun in the first statewide primary of the 2018 election season, a major test of the elevated enthusiasm of Democratic voters in a Republican-dominated state.

According to figures published over the weekend by the Texas secretary of state’s office, of the 885,574 ballots already cast in the state’s 15 largest counties, more than 52 percent were for Democrats — a major jump from the last midterm primary.

In 2014, only 592,153 early ballots were cast in those counties, with Republican voters accounting for nearly 62 percent of the votes.

Tuesday’s voting stands to give a fuller picture of whether Democratic turnout in the state is truly outsized or whether Republicans simply waited till Election Day to cast ballots. Texas has routinely elected GOP officials in statewide races for a generation, though recently with declining margins. President Trump won the state by nine points four years after GOP nominee Mitt Romney beat President Barack Obama by 16 points.

Democratic turnout has been surging for months in elections around the country. Democrat Ralph Northam handily won the Virginia governor’s race in November, even though the Republican candidate, Ed Gillespie, received more votes than any GOP candidate in the state’s history.

Democrats have also been winning special state legislative elections around the country, including seats in states like Florida, Wisconsin and Kentucky that were once considered safe for Republicans. “WAKE UP CALL,” tweeted Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) in January, after a Democrat handily won a state legislative race in his state that Republicans won by 27 points in 2016.

The trend was set to continue Tuesday.

“There’s something different going on in Texas this cycle,” said David Wasserman, who analyzes House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “It’s a uniquely anti-Trump state, because it has a rare combination of diversity and a suburban professional class. And, in that sense, it’s becoming a little bit more like California every year.”

Top Republicans are taking notice of the trend, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R) telling state reporters even before polls closed that the new enthusiasm among Democrats, including his opponent Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D), had limited potential. “Congressman O’Rourke’s campaign is benefiting from left-wing rage,” Cruz said. “Left-wing rage may raise a bunch of money from people online, but I don’t believe it reflects the views of a majority of Texans.”

Others were more cautious about the coming danger.

“I think it would be malpractice if we didn’t pay attention and respond accordingly,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said Monday of the early voting results, suggesting that “we need to encourage the president” to email his supporters “and encourage them to vote in November.”

What Tuesday’s voting is unlikely to do is pick nominees in the most closely watched House races, many of which feature jam-packed fields where even the best-financed and best-known candidates will struggle to win an outright majority and avoid a May 22 runoff.

Rep. Joaquín Castro (D-Tex.) predicted Tuesday that the elections will reflect a rising wave of discontent in his home state not just with Trump, but also with state Republican leaders who have governed from the hard right.

Few things would give me more joy than to see Ted Cruz defeated in November.  I hope Democrats continue to push and organize their ground game.  I remain convinced that the Northam/Democrat ground game in Virginia provides a wonderful template for implementation nationwide.

What Hillary Clinton Learned From Virginia's 2013 Campaign

From Getty images

While the Republican presidential candidate field seems to have learned little from past defeats and continue to pander to a shrinking demographic of aging, homophobic, racist whites, some believe that Hillary Clinton is learning  from recent Democratic successes, most notably, the 2013 campaign in Virginia which saw the GOP slate of right wing candidates lose across the board.  With Virginia deemed a "swing state" one would think that the GOP would similarly be taking heed, but that might mean upsetting the ugly elements of the GOP base.  A piece in Time looks at what Hillary seems to have learned from Virginia.  Here are excerpts:

When Terry McAuliffe stormed the stage at a Virginia Democrats’ rally at George Mason University on Friday, Hillary Clinton followed on with an arm around her decades-long friend and political partner.

“I’ll tell you an honest story. When we’re on vacation, come about 6 o’clock at night, I’m ready for a cold beer,” McAuliffe told the crowd of 1,800 supporters, heaping unscripted love on Clinton as she stood smiling by his side. “I don’t go looking for Bill Clinton. I go looking for Hillary Clinton. Because she’s a lot more fun than Bill Clinton is, and I love him too!”

Clinton and McAuliffe shared more than just a stage and some kind words on Friday: they are now splitting the spoils of his successful 2013 race for governor of Virginia. Now in its third month, Clinton’s campaign for president has adopted key strategic lessons from McAuliffe’s gubernatorial race, including the finer details of a data-driven field organization focused on turning out the Democratic base and unmarried women, leaning into progressive Democratic positions and hiring many of the same staff members that helped McAuliffe win the governor’s mansion. And Democrats say that McAuliffe’s 2013 victory sets the stage for the state to go blue in the 2016 general election, when Hillary Clinton is the likely candidate.

Former McAuliffe aides are quick to say that their energy in 2013 was focused on getting their man to the governor’s house. But since then, the victorious McAuliffe campaign has become a ex post facto lab experiment for Clinton’s current bid for the White House.

A purple state that is trending blue, Virginia bears similarities to the general American electorate: its nonwhite population is growing and its voters are increasingly adopting liberal stances social issues. The swing state offered an ideal test run for the Clinton operation, combining vast rural tracts with midsized cities and expansive suburbs.

Central to McAuliffe’s campaign was his embrace of staunch Democratic positions on gay rights, abortion, gun control and healthcare a hard play for the Democratic base in Virginia that capitalized on the left-shifting electorate in his 2013 race for governor. Clinton has likewise embraced gay marriage, making it a central platform of her campaign messaging this year, just as public support has reached an all-time high. And she has fervently called for action on gun control at a time when a majority of Americans are in favor of universal background checks. Both have also embraced the Affordable Care Act . . . .

Those progressive positions succeeded in energizing the Democratic base without alienating Virginia moderates, also a central organizing tack of Clinton’s campaign.

Both the 2013 and the current presidential campaigns will rely on an army of volunteers, a flurry of commit-to-vote cards, targeted door-to-door canvassing and plenty of money to fund the efforts.

“The hallmarks of what Robby did in Virginia, and what he’s building now, is that the organizing occurred on the ground very early in the campaign,” Garin said. Beyond Mook, a bevy of key McAuliffe alumni have migrated to the Clinton camp.

And some of the key players organizing Hillary’s large ground operations in Iowa are former McAuliffe staffers as well, . . . 

“The campaign in Virginia relied on us not taking the bait on fights on anything in his public record. And you may see that with Clinton campaign.”

McAuliffe’s victory was due in no small part to unmarried women voters, whom he won by a huge margin of 67% to just 25% for Cuccinelli. McAuliffe blasted ads during the campaign framing Cuccinelli as a right-wing zealot on contraception and abortion issues. That demographic is crucial for Clinton, who tops unmarried woman over a generic Republican candidate with 66% of the vote to 29%, according to a recent Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll.

 

Virginia to be Presidential Battlegound Again

Virginia 2013 vote when Democrats won every statewide office

Once upon a time Virginia was so predictable in how it would vote in presidential elections that the elections in the state were almost boring.  Now, with the Republican Party increasing unable to win statewide - the urbanized areas now can out vote the extremists in the rural areas - and Obama having won the state in 2008 and 2012, things have become more interesting and tumultuous.  For political junkies, that's a good thing, even if more nerve wracking.  A piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at the coming presidential battle for Virginia.  Here are some highlights:

Virginia has so far mostly been flyover country for presidential contenders zooming between New Hampshire, South Carolina and Iowa - the early primary and caucus states in next year's election.

But it won't stay that way: Virginia is viewed as key to victory in 2016. As one of a handful of "must win" states, several in the growing field of presidential candidates are building campaigns in the Old Dominion.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz launched his bid for the Republican nomination in March at Liberty University in Lynchburg. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is the school's commencement speaker Saturday. Those appearances likely have more to do with wooing support from conservative Christians who flock to the school, founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, from around the country.

What isn't yet evident is the money that's beginning to flow and the strategies that are beginning to form as political consultants try to figure out the key to winning a state that twice voted for President Barack Obama.

Larry Sabato, a University of Virginian political scientist, stressed that it's "ridiculously early" to draw any conclusions about what might happen given the large field of [GOP] candidates. Three more Republicans entered the contest this week: former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former high-tech executive Carly Fiorina and neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

There no sense in trying to handicap the race at this point, Sabato said, noting that the parties' primary debates begin in August. "Some of these candidates won't even make it to Iowa," he said.
Nonetheless, says Curtis Colgate, GOP chairman for the 2nd Congressional District, "Your hardcore activists are already choosing sides."

The first critical decision may come in June, when Virginia Republicans will determine what method they'll use to decide whom to back at the national convention, Colgate said. The state central committee is expected to decide whether to conduct a preference primary on March 1 - as the Democrats expect to do - or to assign their national delegates through a state convention.

The convention can be moneymaker for the state party, as presidential candidates reach out to local party groups and individuals rather than conducting broad media campaigns aimed at all voters. A convention also can give committed GOP activists more say than a primary that is open to all voters.

In the competition for the Democratic nomination, Clinton has a lock on support from top state Democrats.

Sabato, who leads U.Va.'s Center for Politics, predicted that once the parties have their nominees, Virginians can expect to see a lot of them and their surrogates during the general election.
Virginia will be one of seven states that will decide the presidency, "unless it turns into a landslide," he said.

Look for the presidential campaigns and their supporting PACs to spend considerably more in 2016 than they unloaded in 2012, when a blizzard of ads and voter outreach efforts on behalf of President Barack Obama and GOP candidate Mitt Romney blanketed the state, Sabato said. The two campaigns collectively spent roughly $2 billion.

"Believe me, if I had the cash right now, I'd invest in any TV station in Virginia," Sabato said.

Is Virginia Going Purple?

As noted in the prior post, one of the problems for conservatives in Virginia is the changes in demographics which tend to favor Democrats particularly in national elections.  All of the population growth is occurring in more liberal leaning areas and shifting power for the rural and backward portions of Virginia which have for too long held the state back in terms of accepting modernity.  The big question is whether or not the changes have progressed far enough to spell the beginning of the end for  knuckle dragging members of the Virginia GOP.   Politico looks at what's happening (note that Republicans don't accept that the state is changing).  Here are highlights:

Virginia may have reached a tipping point in the 2012 elections.  Major demographic changes in the state over the past 10 years — including a sharp influx of Hispanics and single women in Northern Virginia and the changing nature of the outer Washington, D.C., suburbs — may have finally reached critical mass, permanently converting Virginia into a swing state in presidential politics.

“It’s not a red state any more, it’s a very purple state,” said GOP pollster Whit Ayres, who lives in Northern Virginia. “Northern Virginia has changed the complexion of this state completely.”

The new landscape began emerging in 2008, when Barack Obama won the state by 7 points over John McCain, driving up African-American turnout and winning Northern Virginia by 19 points.

But public polls in the 2012 race show that 2008 may not have been a fluke, but a more long-term realignment of state politics. Despite loads of time and money invested there, Mitt Romney is trailing Obama in Virginia by as many as 9 percentage points, according to a recent Washington Post poll. Tim Kaine is also leading George Allen in the Virginia Senate race. Republicans argue that their internal polling shows the presidential race closer.

In presidential politics, Virginia used to be firmly in the Republican column, having never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964 until Obama four years ago.    But Republicans were heartened by Gov. Bob McDonnell’s sweeping 2009 victory and felt that returning the state to GOP hands in 2012 was well within reach. Obama has privately told people that in a close election, Virginia would be the decisive state.

The biggest shifts are to the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. — which contain a high proportion of government workers, single women and Hispanics — all demographics that tend to favor Democrats. But the changes have also radiated outward into the previously reliably conservative counties. In 2008, Prince William went to Obama, who took 57 percent of the vote, compared to 2004 when George W. Bush won with 53 percent. Stafford County went to Bush big in 2004, with 62 percent of the vote, but McCain captured only 53 percent in 2008.

Loudoun County and Fairfax are also keys to any candidate’s victory. Bush won Loudoun County in 2004, taking 56 percent of the vote . But Obama captured 54 percent of the vote there four years later. And in Fairfax County, while it went to John Kerry in 2004 with 53 percent of the vote, Obama was able to drive up the margins there in 2008 and took 60 percent.

Virginia’s changing dynamics are also evident in this year’s Senate race, where ex-Gov. Kaine is outperforming ex-Gov. Allen. Allen operatives profess a lack of concern and say they’re counting on cross-over votes from those supporting Obama.

Romney is also far behind with women in Virginia — by 19 percentage points according to the Washington Post poll (compared to the sample of men that found Romney leading by 6 points.) And Obama’s campaign is doing everything it can to make the gap larger.