Texas swing

[Lief 🗽]

There's a lot of Travis County that's very Republican, especially the western parts which are white suburbs. A Democrat can't really get much more than Obama did in 2008 there.

For a Democrat to win Texas, two things need to happen that are not happening right now: 1) Hispanics have to turn out a lot more, which is a problem of both the Texas Democratic party being underfunded and incompetent AND the Texan Hispanic population being disproportionately under-18 and non-citizen and 2) Democrats have to do significantly better with whites than Obama did.

Mikado's description of the TX Democratic Party is also very true. IIRC, our Senate candidate against Ted Cruz was a member of this class.

[Lief 🗽]

2. They can't find a Kathleen Sebelius-type candidate who can steal away enough Republicans to win an election. I'm not talking about Paul Sadler-types from rural East Texas. I'm talking about a centrist from a major city who has private sector connections to facilitate fundraising and who can win over white suburban voters.

Well Bill White was supposed to be that, but then he lost by double digits to Rick Perry anyway.