The Democrats are said to have high hopes for becoming competitive, and eventually dominant, in Texas. Like they did in Virginia.
The Dems’ dreams could be realized, especially if enough people move from California to Texas — and forget why they left California. Texas is not Virginia, though. Not unless the federal government moves its headquarters to just across the border from the Lone Star State.
Meanwhile, several GOP mayoral candidates swept to victory in Texas on Saturday. John Fund has the details:
Steve has already mentioned the stunning victory by the Republicans candidate in McAllen, Texas. McAllen is 85 percent Hispanic. Republicans hadn’t elected a mayor there since 1997.
Fort Worth also elected a Republican. Fund reports:
Fort Worth is the twelfth-largest city in the country and has more than 1 million people. Only a third of them are Anglo. But 37-year-old Republican Mattie Parker easily defeated Democrat Deborah Peoples, becoming the youngest mayor of a major Texas city.
The race was ostensibly nonpartisan, but the divisions were clear.
“We’ve never had a race that was this partisan,” Kenneth Barr, the former Democratic mayor of Fort Worth, told Politico. “This particular election has moved as far in the partisan direction as any we’ve ever had.”
A Republican also prevailed in Arlington, Texas, a suburb of 400,000 people that borders Fort Worth and is only 39 percent Anglo.
Jim Ross, a former Arlington police officer, was endorsed by several police associations who liked his anti-crime platform. He defeated Michael Glaspie, a former city-council member who was endorsed by the Dallas Morning News and leading Democratic politicians.
Fund’s analysis of these results is consistent with Steve’s. He quotes Henry Olsen, a friend of Steve, as follows:
The results in South Texas show that the shift among Hispanics is more than just a response to the personal brand of Donald Trump. The Left’s emphasis on issues and language that do not support the working-class aspirations of people regardless of their ethnicity is hurting them.
Biden wants to placate both the hard Left and party moderates and keep everyone in his coalition. But there’s no way to [quell] the tension between the two wings. Some on one side or the other will jump ship.
Right now, it’s the working class, including Latinos, that is jumping — as well it should. Fund reminds us:
[Biden’s] major moves tilt to the far left, such as appointing critical-race-theory activists to high Justice Department positions, killing the Keystone Pipeline, dropping sanctions on Russian’s Nord Stream pipeline, and unleashing the forces of consumer-goods inflation. No one should be surprised that nearly one in five Democrats now tell pollsters that Biden’s spending binges are too much for them.
In addition, Biden triggered the current crisis at the border, which is of special concern in Texas. And woke Democrats helped trigger the wave of violent crime, which is becoming a concern all over the country.
Fund concludes:
The revolt of some centrist Democrats is small so far, and it remains largely ignored by the corporate media. But in places like Texas — with its varied populations of aspirational minorities — we can now see through a smudged political window how a potentially big problem for Democrats is getting bigger as the 2022 midterm elections approach.
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