I’m under no illusions- I do not think any Democratic candidate can win the state of Texas for Senator or Governor in 2026, and probably not in 2030 either. Texas is a red state, more red than the nation as a whole, because Texas Republicans have been more competitive with Latino voters than their national party has been overall. Yes, Democrats could very well do better in 2026 because of actions Trump has decided to take, but what does that mean? Kamala Harris lost the state by nearly 14%. Joe Biden lost it by 5.5%. Hillary Clinton lost it by 9%. So I guess we’re just debating how bad the loss will be. Beto got kind of, sort of close in 2018 against Ted Cruz, but still lost by a margin well beyond a recount. I’m giving you the reality up front- Texas is red, and it’s not going to change very soon.

I have no strong opinion about Jasmine Crockett as a candidate. She will raise money and motivate the Democratic base, probably more impressively than her primary opponent, James Talarico. Does it really matter though? One may argue that she’ll maximize turnout and therefore be closer. Another might say a Democrat can’t possibly win Texas without persuading some Republicans, and Talarico may be better to do that. In the end, I think they both lose. You would need to be prime Bill Clinton to even have a chance to do both strategies at once, and even then you probably lose Texas.

So I’m not losing sleep over Jasmine Crockett supposedly saying something about persuading Trump voters. To be clear, she said the following:

Q: How will you win over Trump supporters? Crockett: “I don’t know that we’ll necessarily convert all of Trump’s supporters. That’s not our goal.” Q: “Do you need to?” Crockett: “No, we don’t. We don’t need to.”

Let’s start by saying she’s factually correct. You don’t need to convince all of the other side in almost any election. Most Republicans are going to vote Republican. She doesn’t need them all. All true. Now, she was asked how she is going to win them over though, and she did dodge that question. She also doesn’t really need an answer in December of 2025. The election is 11 months away. She may be running against a very corrupt Ken Paxton. She also may not. There’s a lot of variables here.

The problem with Crockett’s answer is that largely after 2012 the Democratic position became to not do persuasion, and to instead focus on base turnout. That worked fine for President Obama, but he still did persuasion. The electorate has grown considerably since 2012, and the truth is that the lowest propensity voters don’t vote Democratic anymore, or at least it’s a lot more murky than it used to be (Biden’s super high 2020 number confuses things, but he was a persuader). Trump’s share of the vote grew with each election he ran. I think what a lot of people want to hear is that a candidate is thinking about why the Clinton or Harris campaigns didn’t work, and is going to try something different, and well, she didn’t say that. “Demographics are destiny” was an entirely failed approach, and we have to get back in the game of winning the hearts and minds of the impressionable voters out there. Ignoring them is a losing strategy.

Voter persuasion is expensive and hard. Yes, racial and gender bias can make the road even harder. It’s not impossible to do, it just probably requires a lot of luck in this case that is probably not going to happen. Math is math. For a state like Texas to flip, there has to be some societal level movement against the Republican Party, and I know you want to believe that’s going to happen, but it’s probably not. America is simply not offended enough by him to become a clearly center-left to liberal nation like it was before the 1960’s. They simply don’t like Democrats enough, when push comes to shove in an actual election. Some argue we need to move left, or pick more white guy candidates to fix that, but those things are not going to work. Republicans hate white Democrats plenty, and you’ll lose some of your base chasing them.

Look, what I’m saying is that people are going to get up in their feels about this primary. They shouldn’t. If Democrats have a chance at Texas, they’re probably already spending heavily in Ohio and Iowa, maybe even Florida, and just won’t have the resources to go into Texas. If we win this race, it won’t be because of which candidate wins the primary. At that point, it’s an act of God.