Yes, Talarico has some unusual pluses. But read his weak website, and some of his positions in the past - like “six sexes”. I suspect he does not have the gravitas to challenge Cornyn
I use Oath.vote to decide which races to donate to. Their home page states: "Maximize the impact of your donations. We analyze thousands of elections from President to school board to find which candidates need your support the most. We provide our recommendations for free and we don’t sell or share your contact information." Every week, they pick 5 races that are most in need of funding and will have the maximum impact. You can also get recommendations based on issues.
If Shumer was so smart he'd be the majority leader and not have people clamoring for AOC to take his seat. He's an old fart trying to win with an old fart mentality.
Unpopular take - Dems shouldn’t go all in on Texas if Cornyn is the GOP nominee. Iowa, Alaska & Ohio are far more worthy of investment. James Talarico is an attractive, energetic candidate for sure but his copious history of staking out cringe inducing stances on race and gender politics, plus his “God is non-binary” Christian theology will repel too many moderate to right leaning voters for him to win. If Paxton somehow overcomes Trump’s non endorsement and becomes GOP nominee, then Talarico might have a chance.
I think this is the same kind of advice pushed by Democratic "strategists" for years, resulting in the current situation, where Democrats haven't fully competed in some states for decades. There is no state where Democrats should cede any race. I also think the importance of money is seriously overstated and of online messaging seriously understated. Conventional campaign strategies are outdated and ineffective. This is why Trump built himself a personal social media outlet that he uses non-stop for propaganda that is in turn disseminated by his collaborators on other platforms. It's why he sat for hours with the vacuous Joe Rogan, targeting a specific voting bloc. Where does all that campaign cash go? In Texas, if Cornyn prevails, the topic should immediately turn to his age, as he's yet another aspirant to be an octogenarian Senator. In Maine, while I believe Platner is a risky alternative, Janet Mills would be a 79-yr-old freshman. Of course she was the one Schumer lobbied for. How many times do voters need to convey the same message? Either play or go home!
Thanks for reminding all of us to spread our love and resources around to other, lesser known candidates. As much as I love Talarico, I am going to keep my eye on these other candidates, as well.
Not for nothing, but I no longer think money is really what will matter. Money helps run campaigns, but neither wins nor loses them.
When I was worked in the apparel industry, I saw that no matter how great your supply chain, your store windows, your cash register and other tech, or even your customer service if no wanted what you were making they didn't buy it.
I think candidates are the same as shirts in that way
When a wave occurs, there's usually victories for the beneficiaries in unexpected places. Maryland and Illinois for Republicans in 2014, Oklahoma and Kansas for Democrats in 2018.
But make no mistake. If Talarico wins, that will be the only reason.
As a Texas dem I understand how expensive it is to fund candidates here. I also understand how expensive it is in the long run to not fund candidates here. Dallas county changing the rules is a typical republican move to disenfranchise voters and someone on Crockett’s team should have been educating voters about the changes to voting sites. I don’t understand Crockett saying she doesn’t know if her voters will get behind Talarico. They clearly would if she told them to. He won the primary and now it’s about winning the general election. While the republicans are still beating each other up in the runoff, dems should band together and work towards winning in November. I’ve lost a lot of respect for Crockett because of how she ran her primary campaign, but she could win back respect by working with her voters to support Talarico. Winning is the only thing that matters.
Platner is going to be another Fetterman…..this is going to be a huge mistake on the voters part. Maybe his past can be said to be a mistake…..not what’s happening currently…..
If talarico sticks to these issues first: Inflation/prices, Jobs and the economy, Health care... and then I daresay as long as its going well possibly badly -- the war -- mainly that its a rudderless forever war, in which we the people have had NO SAY IN IT AT ALL -- are points to be made. And that trump ran on no war and lower prices, and a good economy for all is a good thing to point. Then i suspect this will resonate not with just dems but independents and even some gop. because that's what the dang polling says at least over at the economist. and since its behind a paywall i'll try to summarize. Of the first three issues above, everyone agrees on them. They've converged. These are good things to talk about it then it seems to me -- talk about them a lot. Im inserted these two - war say and trump fails on campaign promises. firstly i would not say anything that suggests he wants US to lose a way -- but just pointing out that american people have a right to a say in it seems entirely reasonable. And then pt out this not what trump campaigned on -- seems again a reasonable thing to say to anyone. Stats in texas -- the 2024 voter disapproval is -2.4% according to its tracker in texas. And it's a whopping -18.7% for all adults (most of whom could vote if but they would). Ok after that -- there's 3 remaining big issues - 2 of them run in parallel but haven't converged -- immigration (r=16%,d=3%), taxes/govt spending (r=10, d=3) and finally the very divergent civil rights (r=1%,d=16%)... those then should be discussed with care because what the base wants to hear and the general public seems to be at least more qualified.
'University of Montana president Seth Bodnar announced he was running for Senate as an independent, after former Democratic Sen. Jon Tester reportedly encouraged him to do so.'
Bodnar is a good candidate, and the MAGA crowd in Montana has a very libertarian bent, but taking down Daines is a big ask. I get why he's running as an Independent, but Tester needs to get some cash out of the Dems for Bodnar to have any chance.
If Trump wasn't actively doing his best to blow up the country I would have less hope for the Senate, but Trump's behavior is also causing a great deal of collateral damage to the GOP and they were already doing an adequate job of destroying themselves. Dems now have a fighting chance in some very strange places.
Typical defeatist, scared Dems. Yes TX is difficult for us. But good grief, when you have a good candidate, which is rare, back him or her up…. Don’t pull your punches. Yes Beto lost….but only by 3 points… and I’m from TX and fully backed Beto. But, imho, that Talarico is a better candidate… I’m going to send my few dollars to him and Gino Hinojosa and the rest of the Democrats here. People in this state are not happy… but give good candidates your support.
Agree 100%, and my daughter lives in Dallas where all the voting place confusion happened. Instead of the national Democrats learning a lesson from Talarico, their first reaction is to preemptively shoot themselves in the foot by saying, “we can’t win Texas so why bother?” As for whatever Chuck Schumer said, why does anyone even bother to listen to him anymore? Jon Stewart said it best when he characterized Schumer as “a human flat tire”. I’m on fire for Talarico and will be donating to his campaign. I’m also going to donate to Alexander Vindman, even though I don’t live in Florida (another state written off by Schumer). The Democrats are like the gang who can’t shoot straight. As a national group they’re worthless.
Ps - Kamala Harris endorsing Jasmine Crockett was the kiss of death for Crockett.
The results of the November senate election in Texas is either going to be a win or a loss. And it will be of a varying margin of votes. I'm not saying we can't draw some conclusions from previous and future Texas races, but there is no point worrying about getting our hopes up. Literally does nothing. It won't indicate that we're making progress, or that we're losing momentum, because that's too hard to prove in a vastly variable system like politics.
In the scientific method, you come up with a hypothesis, run an experiment multiple times, make observations, and do that without changing a single variable. After several runs of the same experiment, you change ONE variable and run the new experiment (and observe the results) multiple times again. This is a very controlled environment for testing/evaluating a hypothesis. You can't ever 100% prove something, but you can get so close that it doesn't matter. In politics, however, the massive amounts of variables to every campaign, policy decision, bill, etc make it too difficult to be confident in our decisions. Mix in the ever changing current events and millions of people making thousands of individual decisions every day, and you have so much variability, that you'll never know for certain what the right or wrong call was.
Texas Democrats chose Talarico. If he loses in November, it won't mean that he was the wrong choice, or that we should have picked Crockett. Who knows, she could lose by more, or we could have tried ANY one democrat in Texas and found that no one gets as close as Talarico does to winning. It could also be the opposite. Unfortunately, we don't have the ability to rewind time and repeat the same experiment with singularly changing variables to find out.
It's not really about hope. It's about where to allocate resources and the opportunity cost of those resources. If trying to flip a Texas Senate seat takes the resources that could affect 2 or 3 other Senate seats, you have to run some serious cost-benefit and probability analysis before you write those checks.
I'm in Texas and I really hope Talarico wins. But at the same time, I would be among the first to tell the DNC that it should fund the other races first, because Texas will be a long shot. Every time Democrats seriously threaten a major office in Texas, the Texas GOP mobilizes and it has way more local resources at its disposal. As most famously stated by Admiral Ackbar, "It's a trap!"
Yes, Talarico has some unusual pluses. But read his weak website, and some of his positions in the past - like “six sexes”. I suspect he does not have the gravitas to challenge Cornyn
Many young reporters made their journalistic bones by reporting from a War Zone.
I think the Bulwark should have its first war reporter - maybe Sommer or Egan?
I'm sure Schumer would be fine for a few weeks if you reported from Tel Aviv. Let's face it - Schumer LOVES Tel Aviv!
Waddya think?
PS I thought you'd be all over the 2024 hidden autopsy report after part of it leaked?
I use Oath.vote to decide which races to donate to. Their home page states: "Maximize the impact of your donations. We analyze thousands of elections from President to school board to find which candidates need your support the most. We provide our recommendations for free and we don’t sell or share your contact information." Every week, they pick 5 races that are most in need of funding and will have the maximum impact. You can also get recommendations based on issues.
If Shumer was so smart he'd be the majority leader and not have people clamoring for AOC to take his seat. He's an old fart trying to win with an old fart mentality.
Unpopular take - Dems shouldn’t go all in on Texas if Cornyn is the GOP nominee. Iowa, Alaska & Ohio are far more worthy of investment. James Talarico is an attractive, energetic candidate for sure but his copious history of staking out cringe inducing stances on race and gender politics, plus his “God is non-binary” Christian theology will repel too many moderate to right leaning voters for him to win. If Paxton somehow overcomes Trump’s non endorsement and becomes GOP nominee, then Talarico might have a chance.
I think this is the same kind of advice pushed by Democratic "strategists" for years, resulting in the current situation, where Democrats haven't fully competed in some states for decades. There is no state where Democrats should cede any race. I also think the importance of money is seriously overstated and of online messaging seriously understated. Conventional campaign strategies are outdated and ineffective. This is why Trump built himself a personal social media outlet that he uses non-stop for propaganda that is in turn disseminated by his collaborators on other platforms. It's why he sat for hours with the vacuous Joe Rogan, targeting a specific voting bloc. Where does all that campaign cash go? In Texas, if Cornyn prevails, the topic should immediately turn to his age, as he's yet another aspirant to be an octogenarian Senator. In Maine, while I believe Platner is a risky alternative, Janet Mills would be a 79-yr-old freshman. Of course she was the one Schumer lobbied for. How many times do voters need to convey the same message? Either play or go home!
Thanks for reminding all of us to spread our love and resources around to other, lesser known candidates. As much as I love Talarico, I am going to keep my eye on these other candidates, as well.
Not for nothing, but I no longer think money is really what will matter. Money helps run campaigns, but neither wins nor loses them.
When I was worked in the apparel industry, I saw that no matter how great your supply chain, your store windows, your cash register and other tech, or even your customer service if no wanted what you were making they didn't buy it.
I think candidates are the same as shirts in that way
When a wave occurs, there's usually victories for the beneficiaries in unexpected places. Maryland and Illinois for Republicans in 2014, Oklahoma and Kansas for Democrats in 2018.
But make no mistake. If Talarico wins, that will be the only reason.
As a Texas dem I understand how expensive it is to fund candidates here. I also understand how expensive it is in the long run to not fund candidates here. Dallas county changing the rules is a typical republican move to disenfranchise voters and someone on Crockett’s team should have been educating voters about the changes to voting sites. I don’t understand Crockett saying she doesn’t know if her voters will get behind Talarico. They clearly would if she told them to. He won the primary and now it’s about winning the general election. While the republicans are still beating each other up in the runoff, dems should band together and work towards winning in November. I’ve lost a lot of respect for Crockett because of how she ran her primary campaign, but she could win back respect by working with her voters to support Talarico. Winning is the only thing that matters.
Platner is going to be another Fetterman…..this is going to be a huge mistake on the voters part. Maybe his past can be said to be a mistake…..not what’s happening currently…..
If talarico sticks to these issues first: Inflation/prices, Jobs and the economy, Health care... and then I daresay as long as its going well possibly badly -- the war -- mainly that its a rudderless forever war, in which we the people have had NO SAY IN IT AT ALL -- are points to be made. And that trump ran on no war and lower prices, and a good economy for all is a good thing to point. Then i suspect this will resonate not with just dems but independents and even some gop. because that's what the dang polling says at least over at the economist. and since its behind a paywall i'll try to summarize. Of the first three issues above, everyone agrees on them. They've converged. These are good things to talk about it then it seems to me -- talk about them a lot. Im inserted these two - war say and trump fails on campaign promises. firstly i would not say anything that suggests he wants US to lose a way -- but just pointing out that american people have a right to a say in it seems entirely reasonable. And then pt out this not what trump campaigned on -- seems again a reasonable thing to say to anyone. Stats in texas -- the 2024 voter disapproval is -2.4% according to its tracker in texas. And it's a whopping -18.7% for all adults (most of whom could vote if but they would). Ok after that -- there's 3 remaining big issues - 2 of them run in parallel but haven't converged -- immigration (r=16%,d=3%), taxes/govt spending (r=10, d=3) and finally the very divergent civil rights (r=1%,d=16%)... those then should be discussed with care because what the base wants to hear and the general public seems to be at least more qualified.
'University of Montana president Seth Bodnar announced he was running for Senate as an independent, after former Democratic Sen. Jon Tester reportedly encouraged him to do so.'
Bodnar is a good candidate, and the MAGA crowd in Montana has a very libertarian bent, but taking down Daines is a big ask. I get why he's running as an Independent, but Tester needs to get some cash out of the Dems for Bodnar to have any chance.
If Trump wasn't actively doing his best to blow up the country I would have less hope for the Senate, but Trump's behavior is also causing a great deal of collateral damage to the GOP and they were already doing an adequate job of destroying themselves. Dems now have a fighting chance in some very strange places.
Daines has announced that he's retiring, so things may be looking up:
https://www.semafor.com/article/03/05/2026/daines-surprise-withdrawal-shakes-up-montana
This is a shock. Guess Daines didn't want to stick around and take the heat for losing the Senate to the Dems. Bodnar's hopes just took a jump up.
Glad to be able to share GOOD news for a change! 😂
Typical defeatist, scared Dems. Yes TX is difficult for us. But good grief, when you have a good candidate, which is rare, back him or her up…. Don’t pull your punches. Yes Beto lost….but only by 3 points… and I’m from TX and fully backed Beto. But, imho, that Talarico is a better candidate… I’m going to send my few dollars to him and Gino Hinojosa and the rest of the Democrats here. People in this state are not happy… but give good candidates your support.
Agree 100%, and my daughter lives in Dallas where all the voting place confusion happened. Instead of the national Democrats learning a lesson from Talarico, their first reaction is to preemptively shoot themselves in the foot by saying, “we can’t win Texas so why bother?” As for whatever Chuck Schumer said, why does anyone even bother to listen to him anymore? Jon Stewart said it best when he characterized Schumer as “a human flat tire”. I’m on fire for Talarico and will be donating to his campaign. I’m also going to donate to Alexander Vindman, even though I don’t live in Florida (another state written off by Schumer). The Democrats are like the gang who can’t shoot straight. As a national group they’re worthless.
Ps - Kamala Harris endorsing Jasmine Crockett was the kiss of death for Crockett.
"as a national group, they're worthless"
"Real nice" job of turning off potential donors.
Thanks Lauren. Helping
To clarify the broad landscape ahead!
The results of the November senate election in Texas is either going to be a win or a loss. And it will be of a varying margin of votes. I'm not saying we can't draw some conclusions from previous and future Texas races, but there is no point worrying about getting our hopes up. Literally does nothing. It won't indicate that we're making progress, or that we're losing momentum, because that's too hard to prove in a vastly variable system like politics.
In the scientific method, you come up with a hypothesis, run an experiment multiple times, make observations, and do that without changing a single variable. After several runs of the same experiment, you change ONE variable and run the new experiment (and observe the results) multiple times again. This is a very controlled environment for testing/evaluating a hypothesis. You can't ever 100% prove something, but you can get so close that it doesn't matter. In politics, however, the massive amounts of variables to every campaign, policy decision, bill, etc make it too difficult to be confident in our decisions. Mix in the ever changing current events and millions of people making thousands of individual decisions every day, and you have so much variability, that you'll never know for certain what the right or wrong call was.
Texas Democrats chose Talarico. If he loses in November, it won't mean that he was the wrong choice, or that we should have picked Crockett. Who knows, she could lose by more, or we could have tried ANY one democrat in Texas and found that no one gets as close as Talarico does to winning. It could also be the opposite. Unfortunately, we don't have the ability to rewind time and repeat the same experiment with singularly changing variables to find out.
It's not really about hope. It's about where to allocate resources and the opportunity cost of those resources. If trying to flip a Texas Senate seat takes the resources that could affect 2 or 3 other Senate seats, you have to run some serious cost-benefit and probability analysis before you write those checks.
I'm in Texas and I really hope Talarico wins. But at the same time, I would be among the first to tell the DNC that it should fund the other races first, because Texas will be a long shot. Every time Democrats seriously threaten a major office in Texas, the Texas GOP mobilizes and it has way more local resources at its disposal. As most famously stated by Admiral Ackbar, "It's a trap!"