Talarico is an ideal Beto O’Rourke. He actually walks authentically. And that plays well there, especially to Christians who feel the right wing zealots have hijacked Christianity into something it’s absolutely not. Beto’s problem is he wasn’t really authentic. I thought if there was anyone who could win in Texas at the time, it would be him. My best friend from high school said he was a socialist and I laughed at him. He did not think Beto would win even though I saw a grand total of 1 Ted Cruz sign on a weird tiny shack like house near a very good area on a trip to Fort Worth in 2018.
Talarico is the next generation of Beto, and he’s built to win. The question is whether he can. I think he can against Paxton. I’m not so sure he’ll beat Cornyn. It might be closer than Beto/Cruz but not much closer.
Imo, that’s not quite it. I think most of the things he espoused were things he believed in and he wasn’t (mostly) just saying things that he thought would get him elected.
A part of his problem is that while he is indisputably a native Texan, he doesn’t feel Texan. Tal absolutely does.
He didn’t say perfect candidate for TX, he said perfect “D” candidate for TX. As someone who voted for the very last statewide elected Democratic politician in Texas 36 years ago, I agree, though I don’t think Talarico was built in a lab. He’s just that guy.
Hahaha. I’ll tell you a secret. I tried very hard to cover up my Texas accent in my life even as a Texan (can do a great one if I want). I used to call it the stupid accent. That the people who had a thick accent were stupid. That’s obviously not true, as some of the smartest people to ever come out of Texas have quite a drawl, including my grandmother who was once curator of collections at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. But I just thought it was people being lazy.
At one point I said I might want to be a newscaster and my dad said how are you going to be that with that accent? I said what about Dan Rather? Needless to say now it would be pretty tough to know I’m from there unless you knew I was.
Ann Richards luckboxed one when her opponent made just about the most offensive statement about rape imaginable.
LBJ luckboxed an assassination and then had the incumbency advantage. Also, he’s from an era where Kennedy won TX, so not sure what we can take away from that.
I have spent a good bit of my life in TX. I’ve known plenty of people who don’t really have an accent most of the time, but when they go back it sort of comes out.
