There was a time when Barack Obama was the kingmaker of the Democratic Party.
That time, however, as seemingly passed.
That is bad news for liberals, who have a rising star in the party they think can steal a Senate seat in Texas.
The primary race for Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-TX) seat is going to be a nasty one.
Current polling has Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton at 34%, Cornyn at 33%, and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) at 22%, with 11% of the voters still uncommitted.
As a Texan, I can tell you, this is not an ideal field.
Paxton comes with baggage that Democrats will exploit to try to steal the seat, and Cornyn is an establishment player who is not very well-liked. This is not an ideal situation, considering that the Democrats have a political rising star in the fight.
In 2018, Beto O’Rourke, who was backed by Obama, went up against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to try to steal the forever-red seat in the upper chamber, and he failed.
O’Rourke had the entire party behind him and a ton of money in his coffers, but he still fell short.
This was a real scare for Cruz, who only won the race by 2.56%, which equated to about 215,000 votes, far closer than anyone had imagined.
But the bottom line is that Cruz won. However, it did inspire O’Rourke to run for governor, a race in which he was trounced by current Gov. Greg Abbott, losing by nearly 10 points.
On O’Rourke, Obama stated, “What I liked most about [O’Rourke’s] race was that it didn’t feel constantly poll-tested. It felt as if he based his statements and his positions on what he believed. And that, you’d like to think, is normally how things work.”
He continued, “Sadly, it’s not … The reason I was able to make a connection with a sizeable portion of the country was because people had a sense that I said what I meant. And that’s a quality that, as I look at what I’m sure will be a strong field of candidates in 2020.”
Now, Obama feels the same way about James Talarico, a rising Democrat in Texas politics, stating, “There’s this young state rep, James Talarico… He’s terrific. Really talented young man.”
That may be all that is needed to scare voters away from Talarico, and I hope that is true. Texas is not as red as it used to be, with a recent influx of Californians moving here, and I can tell you flat-out that most of our major cities are overflowing with liberals. If we don’t put the right candidate on the ballot in this Senate race, we could lose this seat, which would be an absolute disaster for the GOP and Donald Trump.
