Much like how a sailor, lost and withering at sea, at least gets the chance to see the world, Texas’ ailing Democrats will get the chance this year to recreate some of the magic of the 2018 midterms.
You know the drill: Donald Trump’s in the second year of a presidential stint, and his megalomaniacal unsuitability for public service is catching up with him. Off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey have given Dems new reason to believe. Congressional Republicans are heading for the exits in telling numbers, while the possibility of a weak GOP candidate in Texas for U.S. Senate looms. This go-round, there’s no real chance of the suite of downballot flips that occurred eight years ago, when that decade’s electoral maps had overripened; still, it’s time now to take out your color wheel and start studying the liminal shades of what constitutes “blue,” plus your lidar scanner (what do you mean you don’t have one?) to start distinguishing calm waters, ripples, and waves.
Paying casual attention, you might not feel Texas Democrats are fielding the A-team that this moment calls for. By this time in that long-lost cycle when Senator Ted Cruz was so nearly ousted, El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke had already been running without real primary competition for the better part of a year. In contrast, this year’s marquee Dem nomination process has been slow and fitful. That fact, however, belies the comparative strength of the slate that’s likely to solidify in the coming months.
