To what extent should Biden invest in Texas?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Cases For:

-Dems winning Texas in 2024 and beyond makes a GOP path to EC victory basically impossible without significant changes on the GOP's part
-Texas is probably Dems best and possibly only Senate picks up opportunity
-Texas has disproportionately low turnout in it's heavily Dem urban cores, some of the lowest in the country. Increasing these turnouts to more normal levels would be powerful
-Overall, its clearly been trending left relative to the nation since the early 2000s
-It voted for Trump by a little under 6% in 2020. States regularly swing more than 6 points between cycles

Cases Against:

-Texas is just a large state; serious investment would take a ton of resources
-Even if Texas is theoretically winnable, it's not needed to win and will almost certianly be to the right of the tipping point
-Texas (probably) won't have many competitive House seats in 2024 due to the gerrymander
-Trump won it by about 6% in 2020. Abbott just won re-election by 11%. That's still quite a deficit to erase

[ProgressiveModerate]

Worth noting that between 2012 & 2020, Texas swung D by 10 points, more so than Arizona, Georgia, Colorado, and Virginia. It absolutely could be winnable in 2024 under the right national environment.

Obviously the first priority has to be defending AZ/GA/NV/WI and making sure Michigan and Pennsylvania are solid, but after that I think working to boost turnout in Texas cities is absolutely a worthwhile investment. It might not lead to a win, but could make a difference in the Senate and lay groundwork for a win in 2028.

I feel like losing TX would actually be a huge blow to the GOP whereas AZ/GA/CO/VA drifting away from the GOP are just cuts they can still make up for. Right now, I don't think the GOP has any sort of realistic electoral path without Texas (assuming Dems also carry GA and AZ), which would really force the party to do some soul searching.



This map is still a narrow D electoral win, and MN, NM, NH, and ME-AL are stretches.

[ProgressiveModerate]

A fair bit, but it's even more important for the Texas Democrats to start building themselves up bottom-to-top. The party's really lacking on Mexican-American outreach and representation and could use a strong reformist platform to speak to the concerns of the (sub)urban, multiracial majority, going after the entrenched one-party rule of the same landed aristocrats who've dominated since the drafting of the 1876 constitution by Confederate veterans and the Grange. The 2021 Freeze absolutely didn't have to happen and it's a prime example of the need for change. Texas itself has changed dramatically and that needs to be taken into account, balanced with exploitation of the beef between business conservatives and the activist Republican base.

Tl;dr, focus on the state level to make it an actual swing state, maybe even a blue state, or it might just flip once nationally as an anti-Trump fluke

One thing that makes Texas a bit trickier for Dems than some of these other states is that they're actually reliant on several metro areas, each with very distinct cultures and needs. Trying to appeal to all of them at once is def a challenge, especially once you factor in RGV. And also from the racial lens, you basically have to do well with both liberal and moderate whites, Hispanics all across the spectrum, african americans, and a growing Asian population.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I feel like losing TX would actually be a huge blow to the GOP whereas AZ/GA/CO/VA drifting away from the GOP are just cuts they can still make up for. Right now, I don't think the GOP has any sort of realistic electoral path without Texas (assuming Dems also carry GA and AZ), which would really force the party to do some soul searching.

I feel like we're too polarized for a party to be locked out of the electoral college like that, I think that if the Democrats are consistently winning Texas, they're making up ground elsewhere.

While I think Texas is winnable for Dems, it'll still be a while before it actually votes to the left of the nation so in the hypothetical scenario, I'm describing Rs are consistently losing the PV.

I think Rs issue long term is that right now, they're so used to losing the PV and relying on institutional biases to carry them over the line, but when those biases no longer work in their favor they'll be in real trouble and they'll have to do some pretty serious rebranding.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Triaging Florida gives him some room but Texas is not there for democrats in 2024.

In reality, Ds will have plenty of money to contest Texas in 2024 even without actually triaging Florida (and while also heavily contesting states like NC and GA and AZ). Plus all the obvious traditional states like PA, MI, and WI will obviously be fully funded.

I would definitely say that GA/NC/AZ should be the primary focus among those non-midwestern states, but throwing extra money into states like TX and FL won't detract from the Dem campaign in the other states, since the other states will already be at saturation anyway.

One thing about TX Dems though is that the party infrastructure doesn't exist in the same way it does in a lot of these other traditional swing states, meaning it'll take more money to be just as effective.

GA is a good example of a state where over the years, Dems have built up a pretty strong network that means that black areas in and around Atlanta actually show up at really solid rates close to that of many white parts of the state.

In Texas on the other hand, Black and Hispanic parts of Houston and Dallas really lack any party infrastructure and as a consequence only showed up at like 30-40% rates in 2020. Infact, I believe TX-29 (heavily Hispanic parts of western Harris County) had the lowest turnout of any CD in the Country in 2020.