TX-SEN 2024 megathread: The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer

[Mr. Smith]

Really sleeping on Royce West here.  Or Tzitzun Ramirez for that matter.

[Mr. Smith]

Texas is such an electoral handjob for Democrats. It's always almost there but it never quite gets the result we're looking for.

That's North Carolina.

[Mr. Smith]

I sincerely doubt that Ted Cruz of all people is gonna outrun Trump

He won’t. He’s probably the safest bet of any Republican Senator to underperform.

Unfortunately, that's likely far from enough to even make him not well-favored for re-election. But your post here is intuitively correct to me.

All it would take is Biden to lose Texas by around 3% or so, and I think that would be enough for someone like Scott Kelly or any random Democrat veteran to topple Cruz. I think in a Biden v. Trump rematch, -3% is well within the range of likely outcomes.

I don’t think the accelerating trends in DFW and Austin are showing any signs of stopping. Houston is the big wild card.

Trump winning by 3% feels hard to conceive. The state seems to be moving towards Ds, but not quickly enough to make that feasible.
If Beto got within higher single digits or so like I anticipated before Election Day 2022, I would probably be more optimistic here.

Texas by under 10% wasn't considered feasible as recently as 10 years ago, then Hillary arguably carried the popular vote very much on the back of Trump not replicating Romney/McCain in 2016.

[Mr. Smith]

Does Ronald Gutierrez support gun control? That could be his Achilles heel in a state like Texas.

He is from Uvalde.

Not sure if that neccesarily helps him, remember Beto was from El Paso but his gun control stances still hurt him. It is very likely this is the issue Cruz will focus on against him assuming he becomes the nominee.

Not to diminish the El Paso tragedy but the victims of the Uvalde massacre were kids.

Yet Uvalde County still was contestably in the Abbott column and likely remains that way.

[Mr. Smith]

The discussion going on in this thread really highlights the odd predicament right now for a Democratic candidate in Texas.

On one hand, a prominent candidate like Allred would do wonders to boost confidence for the state party and move forward the future potential of Texas as a purple or even blue state. Much like Beto in 2018.

On the other hand, folks are confused or possibly adverse to the idea that a prominent Dem would step up and sacrifice themselves for a seat they think has no chance of flipping.

I guess what I'm getting at is that you can't just will a state like Texas or Georgia into flipping. You need folks like Allred and Warnock to step up and take a crack at it.

People said the same thing about Arizona leading up to 2018 and same thing about Georgia leading up to 2020. Now it’s Texas’s turn.

It's almost uncanny how much this thread reads like the 2020 Georgia Senate threads so far.

Counterpoints: Maine, and NC [this one is really inexcusable considering the guy was the runner-up from a decade ago], and even Florida 2018 for a time...especially when one considers Hillary's performance in Miami-Dade.

Well he's better than Hegar at least...

Hegar was coronated by Chuck Schumer and the DSCC, which certainly contributed to her underperforming Biden on the same ticket. I just hope that Schumer and/or the DSCC can once again refrain from coronating anyone early on in the election cycle (they only abandoned the "early coronation" practice for the 2022 cycle; before that, they used to do early coronations for every cycle from 2006 to 2020) so that someone can emerge from the primary who can at least run roughly even with Biden or even overperform him.

Not really, she had a lane to herself whereas Royce West and Cristina Ramirez split the vote...it's just a pity it wasn't Ramirez that made the run-off. She might well have pulled a Sestak.

Also, it cannot be overstated how much Dems after 2012 seemed to like trying to win over and flip Repubs rather than turnout the base, persuade true swing voters, and most critically, turnout the truly apathetic and disconnected...this pretty much meant there would always be a lag at the expense of the Senate...if the base didn't fall in love. The GOP were better at staying uniform.

Maybe 2022 is the wake-up call needed.

[Mr. Smith]

Too bad Cristina Ramirez and Royce West bowed out this time, but these aren't a bad batch. Still doomed unless Biden can get the state within 3 points.

[Mr. Smith]

While Allred is certainly an underdog, I feel like people are acting as though Texas is Mississippi or Missouri. It wouldn't take that much of a Democratic trend or an underperformance on the part of Cruz for him to be in trouble.

2018 was the best opportunity to flip this seat and Beto was as good a candidate as anyone, so I remain skeptical about this seat flipping just yet. I think this may be the last cycle that Cruz hangs on and he retires before 2030 because he'll see the writing on the wall.

The frustrating thing about Texas is Democrats can win, and “have” just not at the same time. Mixing the 2016/2018 coalition with the 2020 coalition should have democrats win, or come winning spitting distance.

Pretty much what happened with Georgia from 2008-2018 until 2020 came around.

[Mr. Smith]

Gutierrez is getting smoked tonight. It will be Allred vs Cruz confirmed now.

...It's Hegar v. Cornyn all over again.