Friday, October 30, 2020

"That's Right, You're Not From Texas!"

I’ve seen a lot of articles about Texas and voter turnout, and they are all still frustratingly and annoyingly from far above and far away.  I read one this morning that noted that Beto O'Rourke ran in 2018, but he spent $80 million and lost, so, you know....Texas.  Texas is a monolith in American politics.  A stereotype of sage brush and oil wells, still.  And a one-party state, still.  An ATM for politicians, nothing more.  and Beto is not a player; he lost.  He's a loser.  Losers disappear.

It's the view from the coasts, and Texas is the biggest single state in flyover country.

Let me explain Texas political history, briefly, from the ground.  Texas was a one-party state since Reconstruction, and that party was the Democrats.*  Yes, Texas was conservative,* but conservative in East Texas didn't mean the same thing as it did in Central Texas.  Or North Texas, West Texas, South Texas, the Coastal Bend, the Trans-Pecos.  Are you getting the point?  Texas is regional, and there are several regions.  I didn't even mention the Panhandle or the Valley.  Texas is conservative, except every border county in Texas went for Clinton in 2016.  Every one.  The urban counties went for Clinton, too.  57% of registered voters in Texas are in the urban counties.  
Over 9,000,000 votes have been cast in Texas as of October 29. 1.3 million of those votes, or over 14%, have been cast in Harris County. Contrary to popular perception outside of Texas, Harris County is so blue it makes Travis County (Austin) look purple.  Now, why are so many people voting in such numbers so early?

Beto O'Rourke.  Missing in all the analysis of Texas turnout is that Beto O'Rourke has been running a grassroots campaign for two years to register voters across Texas, and to mobilize voters to vote.  What you are seeing in Texas is the result of his efforts, and the efforts of thousands of volunteers working with him, and donors giving him and them the money to do it.  I started off talking about Texas' political history.  Yes, Texas was a one-party state, and that party was the Democratic party.  LBJ was a Democrat.  He took his lessons in politics from FDR, and from life lessons in Central Texas.  The LCRA and Pedernales Cooperative were projects LBJ helped set up.  There are hospitals in Johnson City still serving the public because LBJ knew people needed basics like healthcare.  He championed education across the country, because he was a teacher in Texas.  Democrats in Texas were conservative.  But they also knew to take care of each other.  Conservative politics eventually dominated Texas, and most voters (who don't register by party) felt they didn't leave the Democratic party, it left them.  So Texas became a one-party state, but now that party was the Republicans.

And frankly, after Ann Richards, Democrats in Texas didn't know what to do with themselves.  They had Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower, but Ms. Ivins was not a politician and Jim Hightower was never the charismatic figure he thought he would be.  The energy simply ebbed out of a party which had taken its dominance for granted after a century-plus of being in the only real game in any town in the state.  Republicans began to run politicians who claimed they had better ideas and could do better, and the Democrats had literally nothing to offer, and no idea how to recruit people who could offer anything.  Texas governors were literally a joke for most of my lifetime.  The job was a sinecure, a gold watch, handed out to party hacks.  Bill Clements finally broke that chain, and Ann Richards was the first, and last, charismatic Governor the Democrats ever ran since I was born.  And she only lasted one term.

Then came Beto, and people began to be interested in Democrats again.  Yes, he lost, partly because so few believed he could win, or even believed their own eyes, that there was an alternative to Ted Cruz and Dan Patrick and the arch-right wing of the Texas GOP.  And Beto figured out one thing:  Texas is a low turnout state, not a deep red Republican state.  If he could mobilize the voters especially in the urban counties, Texas could elect Democrats statewide, not just in isolated pockets or districts carved out to give Democrats something to win.  Now everyone outside Texas says what's happening can't happen because:  Texas.  And they can't figure out why it's happening so they say:  Trump.  Well, it is Trump.  People who didn't vote in 2016 now realize their vote does count, because look what happened when they shrugged and said "He can't win, I don't need to bother."  And Trump has run relentlessly on how "rigged" the election will be, proving the bedrock act of citizens in a democratic republic is to vote.  And Beto O'Rourke has galvanized people to bother, to act, to go or mail or do whatever it takes to vote.  There's a reason Harris County kept 8 polling places open starting Thursday morning, and won't close them until early voting ends in Texas today at 7 p.m. CDT. There's a reason Harris County has set records for voter turnout in Texas, and why Texas is leading the country, still, in early votes cast. And that reason is turnout; and the reason for that turnout is the people.  Not ads, not the internet, not even the disaster that is Donald Trump.  If there is one single person responsible for that turnout, he is Beto O'Rourke.

But, of course, to know that, you'd have to come to Texas.  Much easier to see this through the lens of BosWash or El "A".  Much easier to get it wrong and assume a narrative that suits pundits in Atlanta or New York City.  Much easier to believe there is a one-size narrative that fits all, and anything that doesn't fit that narrative is irrelevant and invisible.  This may be the year Texas breaks that narrative.  It will be interesting to see how much energy is expended into repairing the narrative and "proving" Texas didn't really break it after all, but just affirmed it.  Interesting, and a little disturbing.

What will be even more interesting is if Texas denies Donald Trump their 38 electoral votes, and in doing so denies him another four years of disaster and dysfunction in the White House.  Texas often feels it is far away from Washington and either coast; this year, it may prove it's just as important as California or New York State.

"That's right, you're not from Texas.  But Texas wants you anyway!"
*Democratic because of Reconstruction, which was far more brutal and damaging than it should have been.  The real tragedy of Lincoln's death was not the brutality of the murder (Jackie Kennedy and Mary Lincoln have that much in common; they both saw their husband's brains get blown out as they sat next to them), it was the failure of the nation to be healed thanks to Andrew Johnson.  And as for conservative, the Texas Constitution was a direct and almost total product of Populism, which gave it great strengths and great weaknesses, and when oil replaced railroads as a source of money (= power), all the ideals it was meant to enshrine were blithely ignored.  History is always far more complicated than what you remember from your lifetime.
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