Colin Allred’s failure should remind Democrats that many Americans are not Republicans

The brain sending commands to the fingers typing on the keyboard and writing this story has thoroughly rotted due to two unsuccessful sources. The first corrosion comes from spending too much time on the Internet, something I’ve done since I was 10 years old, and the second comes from trying to follow Texas Democratic Party politics, which I’ve been doing since October.

For these reasons I can identify with Olivia Julianne A 21-year-old Houston social media-focused influencer and activist who rose to prominence in 2021 with using his huge online audience to raise $2 million for abortion rights. Apparently there are real people behind the phones she’s so good at talking to, but at Colin Allred’s election watch party I saw her trying to rally the troops in flesh and blood. The unwinding of what ended up being a decisive, if not embarrassing, defeat for her audience did not go smoothly.

“The amount of people who mobilized to get people to vote early, we’re doing a great job,” these words are most easily believed when you’re enjoying the endless loop of positive feedback on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) “because we managed to create one “a strong coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents, and it is this coalition that will defeat Ted Cruz,” she said.

This coalition did not defeat Cruz. (He also didn’t outperform Donald Trump.) He performed worse. compared to Beto O’Rourkewho also lost to Cruz, but not as badly as Allred lost on Tuesday night. It is becoming increasingly unlikely that such a coalition exists in Allred’s state or country. Does this coalition even exist? This is an open question, at least it was until Election Day.

There is not much one can “learn” from watching the results of this Democratic Party, just as there is little one can learn from attending this very sad party. The muted applause I witnessed at every Kamala Harris victory in Connecticut and Oregon while Congress and the White House slowly faded away doesn’t tell us much about our country that I wouldn’t learn from watching cable news. . It’s a pretty sad scene as Allred voters watch their party slip away.

But I’m grateful for Julianne’s words because they sum up a tactical mistake that we hope America is strong enough to withstand until the next campaign by Cruz, Vance or, let’s go crazy, Trump. It’s critical that if the Democratic Party wants to exist, it must demonstrate that it believes in something far beyond what you think will help attract Republican voters angry at our next president. Because how Zeteo Prem Thakker wrote on X so succinctly“Why vote for the Republican Diet when you can vote for the Real Diet?”

As Allred addressed the crowd, he emphasized that his campaign was worth the fight. Even though his campaign set your MSNBC-watching mother’s money on fire – Allred raised a million dollars more than Cruz – I agree. But I don’t agree with his premise about why struggle exists. “We are a great country,” he said. “No one needs to make us great again. We are great because we are good.”

Simply put, few people believe in this. Republicans like Allred and Julianne say they want to be part of their coalition, but don’t believe it will happen.

Obviously, this implies that their party’s slogan is dominated by the name “Make America Great.” Again – but it is also evident in their willingness to suspend natural revulsion towards a man who rapes and hates because he is willing to tell voters that there are scapegoats for their problems.

Moreover, trying to appeal to these voters by leaning to the right and spending time accepting and modifying Cruz’s talking points will never work.

Borrowing from Cruz’s misguided and aggressive approaches to transgender people – don’t forget that Allred parroting Cruz’s “boys in girls’ sports” trope allowed the sitting senator to correctly portray his opponent as a spanker compared to the legislation he was trying to hide. As of 2022 64% of the country believe that transgender people deserve an increase legal protection. Allred didn’t close the gap, he just angered his most hopeful and vulnerable votersand his party hopes the dedicated voting bloc will be just as motivated or more motivated to get out the vote in the next cycle.

Likewise, Allred had the opportunity to burnish his reputation as one of the few voices in Congress question America’s unlimited military aid to Israel since the American ally is functionally funding what the United Nations describes as “indiscriminate and disproportionate” bombing of Palestinians. Apart from the fact that I tend to very popular policy to ask I believe this would be an extremely popular political play among Colin Allred voters tired of endless wars and unmoved by, say, Liz Cheney’s endorsement. I’m more confident that taking a stand would mean peace to Arab and Muslim voters worried about how little the ruling party seems to value their lives.

But in almost every subsequent commentary on Israeli behavior in the Middle East, Allred, like Harris, continued to insist that Israel had the right to defend himselfwithout any conditions.

Perhaps offering a clear alternative, rather than veering toward a direction that doesn’t awkwardly tie the GOP social issue framework to the Democratic Party’s campaigns, will always be a losing proposition in Texas. I say this humbly because I’m new here and I’m reminded of how O’Rourke stuck to his guns by promising to take some of his voters away from him. On the other hand, Beto’s close defeat was much better than this defeat.

Democrats in Texas and America absolutely need to keep knocking on doors, as Julianne said. I’m very curious how many of those doors are apartments without elevators, housing projects, and crowded single-story homes of people who may not represent the donor base but are also dissatisfied with the current state of our politics. I’m also curious how many of the people who came knocking were from these communities, willing to speak their proverbial or literal language. With an entrenched presence and policy prescriptions that suit their immediate needs, these houses have votes that can be won. Meanwhile, if the likely Republicans the party was courting weren’t literally slamming doors in your face, they were definitely doing it in the voting booth.

Fortunately, no matter how grim the day may seem for Democrats, Allred said Texas is worth fighting for. And they can win if they remember that Republicans aren’t the only Texans. Or Americans.

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