There’s an older gentleman who rides his bike around the neighborhood. I see him pretty regularly when I’m out walking the dog. We always wave hello as we pass by. On Sunday he pulled his bike over to the curb as I was out with Dexter, to talk to me about the election. We’d never engaged beyond a smile and wave before then, but I presume he’d heard from other neighbors that I was a Politics Guy and he was feeling understandably anxious and wanted to know what I thought. I told him I was feeling optimistic because I was, and I think he felt some reassurance after we were done.
And so now I feel guilty about that. He wasn’t the only person who had expressed similar feelings to me in recent weeks – I mean, we all felt that way to varying degrees – and I would respond with my generally positive vibe because that’s who I am and that’s how I felt. To say the least, I don’t feel that way right now.
There are lots of obvious reasons to feel upset and more right now, but one of them for me is that I didn’t see what happened in Texas coming. For all the discourse about polling, the national polls were reasonably accurate. It was a close race that ultimately tipped one way. But the polls here were way off. We had every reason to expect something in the range of the 2020 election, with Trump carrying the state by five or six points. Maybe at one end it’s like the Hillary result in 2016, down nine, and maybe at the other it’s like Beto in 2018, down two or three. There was nothing in the polls, statewide or the polls we got of Harris and Bexar Counties, to suggest a 14-point margin. Or that any Democratic countywide candidate here had anything to worry about.
The shock of that, on top of everything else, has me reeling. I thought I knew some things, I thought I understood some things, but I was a fool. At some point I’ll be able to study the numbers, but I don’t know how much that will help. Everything I thought I knew was wrong.
I don’t know where we go from here, and I don’t know how much I can offer on that. Maybe I’ll feel differently when the shock wears off, or when we’re forced into defensive mode. For now I’m just trying to find my footing.
I will make two observations for now. One is that the Republicans did what they did this year by more or less hitting their vote marks from 2020. Jane Bland was the high scorer in 2020 for the GOP with 740K votes. Four statewide judicial candidates plus one appellate court candidate got between 744K and 752K this year, with David Schenck getting the top tally. The downballot Republican judicial candidates did a little better overall than in 2020 but with numbers that wouldn’t have come close to winning that year. The Dems on the other hand lost around 100K votes from 2020, which unsurprisingly roughly matches the drop in overall turnout from 2020 – 1,656,686 four years ago, 1,558,304 this year (that figure is likely to increase as provisional ballots get cured). Whatever there is to understand about what happened this year, that’s where to begin. Colin Allred was the top votegetter with 835,445, which would have been on the lower end of the 2020 scale. Kamala Harris just nosed above 800K – she’s now at 803K – but no one else got there. The low score in 2020 was 814K. There’s your problem.
And on the subject of judicial races, remember the celebration of “Black Girl Magic” in 2018, as a historic number of Black women were elected to the bench in Harris County? Whatever the opposite of that is, it’s what we got: Of the ten Democratic district or county court judges who lost on Tuesday, seven of them were Black women; the others were Nicole Perdue, Allison Mathis, and Robert Johnson. Make of that what you will. (The incumbents who lost were previously elected in 2020 and possibly 2016, so they’re not the same as the class of 2018.)
(Note: As of the 8 PM update last night, Nicole Perdue trails by 1,261 and Elaine Palmer trails by 2,342. It’s at least possible that provisional ballots could have an effect on their races.)
I’m going to be posting at a slower rate for the next few days at least. I’ve got a few drafts from before Tuesday that I’ll get to, and I’ll get back into the news-watching stuff eventually. Thank you for sticking around as we get through this.
Well, when a horrible, incorrigible, incompetent, convicted felon like Trump defeats you (again), the first step in corrective action is to look in the mirror and figure out why. Beyond Trump, why the red wave across the nation?
To start, Democrats need to find out why we are losing so much of the Hispanic vote. If we don’t address that problem, Texas will never turn Blue. Anyway, to fix a problem, you first have to acknowledge that you have a problem. I hope the Democratic Party is willing to make the changes necessary to appeal to more voters and win future elections.
This is a good read:
https://www.popehat.com/p/and-yet-it-moves?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark
You’ve earned a break and you’re nobody’s fool. Grateful to read your analysis anytime you’re ready to share it. It sucks so bad right now, but we will have a chance to reflect later.
The Court Jester had two roles: to entertain and to tell the king he was wrong.
Many of the Democratic Party elites, particularly here in Harris County, sit in their ivory towers and make decisions with no one allowed to contradict the group mentality. Unfortunately, they don’t have a court jester among themselves.
They should go outside their ivory castles and mingle among the common folk.
Bernie Sanders stated it differently:
“Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday accused the Democratic Party of largely ignoring the priorities of the working class and pointed to that as the biggest reason for why they lost control of the White House and Senate.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders said in a statement about the results of Tuesday’s election.”
I don’t care for Trump, but he keeps his promises more than most politicians do.
Fagan, you are correct. Trump won the popular vote or probably will have to wait for all of California to count all the votes.
TEXAS HIGH COURT RACES
Looking at the unofficial election results for Harris County as of Nov 7, we can see the following:
A majority of Harris County voters favored the Republican candidates for the Court of Criminal Appeals in all three (3) contested races.
As for the Texas Supreme Court races, the Democratic challengers received majority support in two races, and plurality support in one in which a third-party candidate was also running.
Tentative conclusion: Dems need to listen to dissenters such as Greg Summerlin and think about their stance on crime.
Jane Bland wasn’t a top scorer even among Republicans (Jimmy Blacklock did better), but that is probably due to the presence of a Libertarian candidate in her race, who garnered 3.29%. This is also why Bonnie Lee Goldstein (DEM) only received a plurality rather than a majority of votes in Harris County (48.59% vs. 48.12% for Bland). Note that, ignoring the third-party candidate, this was an extremely close race between two female candidates in Harris County. Justice Bland wrote the SCOTX opinion in Lilith Fund for Reprod. Equity v. Dickson, 662 S.W.3d 355 (Tex. 2023), resolving it against the abortion Fund.
Tentative conclusion: Dems might do well to rethink their strategy of campaigning on the feticide issue. It does not seem have worked. Perhaps it even backfired.
Note also that notwithstanding his ample vilifiction by varies outlets, John Devine did as well as Jane Bland, even a little better. Make of that what you will. It’s just a fact, no doubt unpleasant to acknowledge for the bulk of the readership here. Keep in mind that these are the numbers for Harris County only. So this has nothing to do with voter sentiments in the heavily red “provinces.”
SCOTX-4 D CHRISTINE VINH WEEMS (DEM) 775,037 51.77%
SCOTX-2 D DASEAN JONES (DEM) 754,368 50.22%
CCA-0-Presiding R DAVID J. SCHENCK (REP) 752,297 50.30%
CCA-8 R LEE FINLEY (REP) 749,001 50.45%
SCOTX-2 R JIMMY BLACKLOCK (REP) 747,759 49.78%
CCA-7 R GINA PARKER (REP) 745,367 50.02%
CCA-7 D NANCY MULDER (DEM) 744,824 49.98%
CCA-0-Presiding D HOLLY TAYLOR (DEM) 743,301 49.70%
CCA-8 D CHIKA ANYIAM (DEM) 735,721 49.55%
SCOTX-6 D BONNIE LEE GOLDSTEIN (DEM) 727,419 48.59%
SCOTX-4 R JOHN DEVINE (REP) 722,052 48.23%
SCOTX-6 R JANE BLAND (REP) 720,395 48.12%
SCOTX-6 O J. DAVID ROBERSON (LIB) 49,204 3.29%
Note: Different races are ranked in descending order by raw vote count, not percentage/win margin. Unit of analyis = candidate).
The prez race? Jeff St. Clair at Counterpunch has the best wrap on the many ways Harris blew it. And, yea, a Josh Shapiro in 2028 would be some mix of scary and disgusting. https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/06/chronicle-of-a-defeat-foretold/
State races? Maybe official Dem-dom will finally admit that demographics aren’t destiny and other things. Maybe, just as Genocide Joe was shoved out, Skipper Gilberto Hinojosa of the SS Texas Minnow will get the boot.