Can Democrats Actually Win in Texas?

27:01Your skin is black. You're probably going to vote for me. I don't have to work on it or earn your vote or spend time in your community. You know, that's one of the great sins committed by this party. Jasmine was able to electrify, energize and turn out people who felt like they had been taken for granted by the Democratic Party before. Four, if she and Tallarico can work in tandem to make sure that these voters know that they are a priority in this party, not just in the primary, but through the general election, I really think we have something there. And that hopefully is going to be the other side to the story that you've begun to tell today about this division within our party.

27:42These two people coming together, bringing the rest of us together, I think could just be the most positive thing to happen for Texas. and given the outsized role our state plays in our national politics for the country as well. You keep reminding us of the size of Texas. And as obvious a point as that is, it's really important to keep in mind. And sometimes people in the rest of the country just, the idea that Texas is not just massively large in physical space, but so overwhelmingly populous. I did not know the point you just made that there are more black voters in Texas than in any other state.

28:11If you'd asked me that in advance, I would have guessed that question wrong. So that's another reminder. But let me test a theory on you. One of the consequences of the vastness of Texas and the fact there are so many different large metropolitan areas means it just takes a lot of money to mount a competitive campaign. And Texas then becomes a magnet for money from all over the country and especially from national donors who are much more progressive than Texas voters. And so you get this push of candidates farther to the left that really suits the Texas electorate. And one of the reasons the Texas Democrats have not done well since the time of Lloyd Benson and Ann Richards is they are pushed, unlike Benson and Richards, away from the Texas voter by the national donor.

28:55And when you look at Tallarico, he seems to have staked out a lot of issue positions in pursuit of donations that are not going to suit him as he becomes a general election candidate against whoever the Republicans produce, especially if it's John Cornyn. Yeah. You know, I guess I'd compare that to Colin Allred, who ran against Ted Cruz in 2024. I haven't put their voting records or their positions on given policy issues side by side. But my gut is that Colin is a more conservative politician, more conservative candidate, and has not really staked positions to the left of the center of our party.

29:34You know, James Tallarico, perhaps a little more progressive or a little more liberal, as you suggest. You know, I don't know all the dynamics that took place in 2024, but Colin Allred lost by a lot more than I did to the same man in the same state. That might in part be a test of whether centrism can work in Texas, although there are a lot of other variables and factors. You know, the thing with Tallarico, I'm sure you saw his Joe Rogan interview. I'm sure you've seen his clips of his engagement with Republican colleagues in the state house or speeches that he's given or his performance in the debate with Jasmine Crockett.

30:12I think he really has a way of bringing a lot of people into a shared position by finding the common ground on the issue. He really made his name in Texas in large part by fighting for public education. He's a former public school educator. He helped with Republican colleagues to rewrite our public education financing and then led the fight against vouchers, which is the privatization of public tax dollars, taking those monies away from public schools and sending them to private schools. He also helped to cap the cost for insulin in the state of Texas at$25 for a copay. These are very popular and maybe even populist issues that don't just play well in Austin and Houston and Dallas, but maybe even more so in remote, rural, and even red counties where the public schoolhouse is the largest employer in that given county, where public hospitals have shut down because of Medicaid cuts, And where these two things, public education and reducing cost of prescription drugs, are just incredibly popular, regardless of your party affiliation.

31:22I think if he can keep bringing us back to those things that bring us together, that most of us care about, regardless of where we live or who we voted for for president in 2024, he's going to continue to do well, even if he scores to the left of the middle of the Democratic Party on a few hot button political issues. But even with those, I think he's got such an incredibly calming manner of listening to people, demonstrating respect and then trying to find the common ground on those issues. So, I mean, you're right. This will be a test. And I think the AB is all red in 24 in Tallarico in 26. Well, let me push you a little more on.

32:01Sure. It seems to me. And again, I'm looking at this from outside. But the theory of the National Democratic Party is the way you hold together a coalition is you find candidates who give the progressives what they want on the issues, but have some biographical element that in theory should appeal to non-progressives. And that's how Tim Walts found himself Harris's running mate in 2024. He's very, very progressive on the issues, but former football coach. And he had this kind of, you know, shuffling dad from TV comedy show demeanor. And that and so he would the bio, the biography, the physical presence would appeal to the center and the right.

32:37But the positions would appeal to the left result failure. You can't blame it all on him, but it obviously didn't work. And there seems to be some similar theory about Tallarica, which is very liberal on the issues, much more so than you were in 2018, but he speaks a lot about religion. He's a seminarian. And the theory of the case is that by talking about religion and his background in seminary, that will offset the issues. He's a much more refined version of the Tim Walts proposition, but it's the same proposition. And what do you think of that theory? I don't know. And I don't know how calculated this approach is.

33:11I really like to think that this is authentic and genuinely James Tallarico and his approach to the world. But I understand how it can seem programmed, right? Like you're going to be a straight white male who's conversant in Bible verse and New Testament theology and has a way of breaking through to audiences and parts of the electorate that maybe were unavailable to Democrats before and might also kind of buffer the impact of liberal or progressive ideas on hot button issues. What I think that people want even more than that package is change from what has failed them so far. And James Tallarico is just so different than anything that we have seen, or at least that I have seen in the state of Texas, that package that you just described, you know, his extraordinary ability to connect with audiences, whether he's doing it on TikTok or Instagram, you know, digitally through a screen or in person in large gatherings and town halls in rural communities and big cities alike.

34:20This feels different to people because I think it is different for all of us. And if 2024 was a change election, I think 2026, I guess they're all change elections. But I think the premium on change and something different is going to be greater than perhaps at any other time. So I think he's going to represent that to people. And kind of interestingly, just from my experience, and we're very different in many, many ways, but running in Trump's first midterm in 2018. You're right, David. I had probably one of the most bipartisan voting records in Congress. I was in the minority the entire time I was there.

34:59The only way to get anything passed was to find Republican colleagues with whom I could agree on and then to get Donald Trump to sign that stuff in the last two years that I was there. But I would go to communities where people would say, man, I love you because you're one of the most progressive guys I've ever seen here. And I'd go to other communities and people would say, I love you because you're so conservative. I was different than anything that they had seen before. And they would pin their hopes to somebody breaking through a system that had so badly failed them wherever they happened to live across the state of Texas.

35:33And I feel that same energy as I travel the state right now in 2026, as I did in 2018, but perhaps even more so. So, you know, I don't know that this is in any way a conventional year where conventional theories of the case are going to apply. Well, not to speak for you, but isn't the difference, to put it a little crudely, that your message in 2018 was actually, if anyone cared to look, moderate content, but a progressive affect, whereas Tallarico was trying to do it the other way around. I don't know. I never thought about it that way, but that could be the case. But, you know, I think that the greatest success accrues to those candidates who are most genuinely and honestly themselves.

36:14And so whether it's, you know, an effect or not, I think this is this really is Tallarico and people really believe that and respond to that and it energizes them. And in this competition for eyeballs, this premium placed on authenticity that is so richly rewarded Trump, who, you know, no one believes that anybody has written any of those speeches for him or the crazy things that he comes up with. I think having somebody who's equally honest and authentic, but is coming from a good place, who says things that we can agree with, make rational, logical sense, and hopefully bring us together at a time of extraordinary division, that might be the ticket in Texas.

36:54I had a chance to talk a little while ago to a member of the House of Representatives who was a Democrat who had won in a Republican-leaning seat. And I was able to ask him, so what's the secret? What did you do that broke through? And he said, I ran my race for the House as if I was running for mayor of my district. Every water project, every bridge, every bad pothole, I knew them all. I knew the leader of every community group, every chess club, every church. I ran as if for mayor. And he ran on very local issues. He had strong national views, but he ran on local issues and won. Now, does that formula work for the Senate?

37:31Does it work in a year like 26 when the country is so in an uproar about what the president has done nationally and when now there may be a war on or there is a war on, maybe a big war, maybe still on in November? Or is that kind of is that always the right formula for breaking out in unlikely places like a Democrat in red Texas? Yeah, no, I think there is so much to that. It's a challenging moment, though, to pursue that path because of what's happening in the country. I mean, everything is on the line in November. If Democrats don't win a majority in the House and perhaps Texas pick up the 51st seat in the U.S.

38:06Senate, this slide to authoritarianism and fascism, I think, is unstoppable. I really there's there's no argument that has convinced me that we can get this country back there. That Republican majority Congress will roll out the royal red carpet for a Trump third term or for his designee. We will no longer have real elections in this country. And that's very much on my mind. It's very much on the mind of Democrats across this country. And I think it's what's driving to a point that you made earlier, so much of the donations and attention and interest and national media that some candidates like Tallarico are enjoying right now.

38:44But to your other point, which I think is absolutely excellent, the way that you win on the ground, the way that you win these votes in a general election is by ensuring that the people in this state know that you know who they are and where they live. When I went to King County in 2018, for example, small rural county in Texas that voted for Trump 96 % in the 2016 election, I knew it wasn't perhaps going to win a whole bunch of votes there. But meeting the county judge of King County, other people who lived in that community and understanding their water issues, their water is literally undrinkable.

39:22And they were pissed off at the EPA that had come to impose a solution without asking the people of King County what was on their minds or how they would want to address this in the first place. I knew if I were to win that Senate seat, that that was going to be a priority for me. And the people in King County knew that I was going to make that a priority. And I did that 253 other times across the rest of the counties of the state of Texas. So David, yes, those were my issues. I wanted to make sure that every single person in every single county knew that I was going to fight for them because I had met them where they lived, listened to them, understood their challenges, and we'd agreed we were going to work on these things together.

40:01I think that was so much of the success that I enjoyed. It wasn't my position on reproductive health care or foreign policy or any other issue. It was that I had been to every county. I had opened these town halls to any person, whether you liked me, didn't like me. Republican Democrat had a gun on your hip or came unarmed. You were welcomed into our meetings and there were two microphones so everyone could have a say. that became the story. That's what you knew about me. If you knew nothing else in that 2018 race, that fucker went everywhere. He showed up for everybody, um, wrote nobody off, took nobody for granted.

40:37And that's the way that you run for mayor or city council. I was a former city council member here in El Paso, Texas. They aren't partisan issues. It's, do you know my neighborhood? Have you been to my door? Have you seen the streetlight that's out on my block? Those are the things that matter to people in their day-to-day life. So it's being able to do both of those things, run a national campaign because national dollars have to flow into the state in order to win five of the most expensive media markets in America, right here in Texas. And then to win the actual voters, you've got to be in their communities, meet them where they are and reflect their concerns and their aspirations in the campaign that you run.

41:15Let me end by asking you to lift your eyes a little bit out the time horizon. There's going to be a census in 2030. Texas is a growth powerhouse, both for wealth and population, increasingly dominant state in the country. What does American politics anchored in Texas look like in the years after 2030? You know, some people look at Texas as a state that would be nice to win. To your question, this is a state that we must win if Democrats are going to be a national party. In the 2030 presidential contest, if we have one, the Democratic nominee could win all of the so-called blue wall states. But if they don't also win the state of Texas, there is no viable path to the White House.

42:01After the 2030 census and the reapportionment, those states will lose population electoral college votes to the benefit of Texas and other Sun Belt states. This is a state that we have to win. And you cannot start working on 2032 in 2032 or even in 2030. You have to be working on it yesterday. And that's what so many of us have been doing. You know, the Senate race in 2018, the governor's race in 22, the work that we're doing on the ground, organizing with Power by People. This is all trying to build the voter power that I wish had existed in 2018 when I took on Cruz in that very close contest.

42:41So, you know, you mentioned this kind of a zero sum equation on national Democratic dollars and where they flow. We've got an important Senate race in Michigan, one in Georgia, another in Maine, another in North Carolina, and then this one in Texas. And I understand people who are saying, hey, can we really afford to invest in Texas? I don't think we can afford not to invest in Texas. This is the path to the White House. Last time that a Democrat won it, as you know, was 1976. Jimmy Carter, as you mentioned, Lloyd Benson, the last Democrat to win a Senate race here in 1988. If we're in the wilderness, it's not just to the detriment of the Democratic Party.

43:26It means we may not have democracy in America. This state is absolutely critical. And thank God that the people of this state have not been waiting for the rest of the country to figure it out. I mentioned James Tallarico and Jasmine Crockett getting after it, risking their political careers on this prize. In November, 150 state house Democratic contenders, you know, 16 state Senate, 38 for congressional seats. This state is doing everything it can with what it has right where it is. As national Democrats also pitch in, I think that this state will ride to the rescue of the country in 2026 in 2028 and then importantly in 2032 when i think that the democratic nominee for president can actually win texas peter o 'rourke thank you for joining me today on the david from show thank you david a few months ago i invited atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel onto the David Frum Show.

44:29As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live. Not just the obvious stuff, but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe, how we talk to each other, how we see ourselves and our neighbors. If you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online. Galaxy Brain is worth your time. It's thoughtful, surprising, and a little unsettling in the very best way. Find it wherever you listen or watch.

45:26This season, we're exploring the often fraught, always changing relationship people have with technology and examining the ways our devices affect our connection with one another. New episodes of How to Touch Grass come out every Monday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. So as mentioned at the top of the show, we're doing something a little different in the book segment this week. 2026 is the 250th anniversary of a lot of events in English literature and English political theory. Not just the Declaration of Independence, of course, in 1776, but as we discussed earlier, February of 1776 saw the publication of the first volume of Edward Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

46:08And March of 1776 saw the publication of The Wealth of Nations. Rather than just talk about The Wealth of Nations myself, I thought I would take advantage of the fact one of my oldest friends in the world, is one of the world's leading experts on the philosophy of Adam Smith. Sam Feischacher, as I mentioned above, teaches at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and he is the author of a 2004 study of Adam Smith's philosophy. And I'm going to ask him to back me up on my limited knowledge of things Smithian today. Sam, thank you for making time. Oh, thank you very much for having me, David. All right.

46:40So let's start with, I'm hoping we can get to two questions, but here's the one that is most important. I think a lot of people have a mental model of Adam Smith as a kind of early libertarian, someone who thought it's all about the individual engaged in business and transactions and laissez-faire, nothing to do with society. Is this an accurate reading of Smith? So I'm tempted to say it's totally inaccurate and has his picture of human beings exactly reversed, but that's not entirely fair. There is some truth to the picture. Smith was very insistent throughout the wealth of nations on the advantages of having individuals make their own economic decisions about what to invest in, how to run their business, and what to buy.

47:26This is as against sumptuary laws that restricted especially the purchases of luxury goods among the poor. On all these things, he thought government should leave people alone and let them do what they think is best in their own situation. So that idea and the idea that governments actually just don't have the knowledge base to run an economy, that isn't Smith. And if that's libertarianism, that part of it is correct. But his picture of human nature is perhaps the most socially constructed or most socially shaped that you're going to find among the thinkers of his time and place in mid-18th century Scotland and England.

48:10Let me pause you there. What do you mean, his theory of individuals? Do we need a theory of what an individual is? Well, philosophers think we do, and he was a moral philosopher first. And in his theory of moral sentiments, which is his great book of moral philosophy, he says we don't even recognize ourselves as a self until we start interacting with other people. We're always concerned with how other people are looking at us. We start incorporating into ourselves a kind of a spectator, an impartial spectator, he says, that watches our actions, which is built on the people around us. And we want to be the kind of person other people can approve of.

48:48So in that sense, we're very intertwined with other people. We have benevolent feelings towards them. Friendship, he thinks, is the most important thing in human life. So in these senses, he's not at all a believer that everyone should just do their own thing, that individuals are on their own. And he really sees us as enmeshed in a society and relating to other people. And you've always insisted that you have to read both books, not just one. The two form a unity of understanding how the individual works in the world. Yes. And actually, that goes with his life, where these books come from. He was a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow following his own teacher, Francis Hutchison.

49:34And he taught a year-long course, which started with moral philosophy, then went to philosophy of law. He never published that part. And that ended with a discussion of policy, mostly economic policy. So he published the beginnings and the ends. He published the moral philosophy as a theory of moral sentiments. He published the economic stuff as the wealth of nations. he didn't put in the law stuff in between, but he saw this all as one large project. And I think, I mean, among other things, if you do see the project as a whole, you realize for one thing, why he doesn't want governments to run our lives morally.

50:12That's also something that he, a core of truth in the libertarian view. He didn't think government should impose religion. He didn't think they should give moral instruction. And one reason for that is that he thought everyday social interaction with your friends and neighbors would do that better than government could ever do. So he was someone who believed maybe in what would be recognized today as a libertarian approach to governance. But the libertarian psychology of the autonomous individual, the master of his domain, the Ayn Rand superhero, that he had no time for. Exactly. In fact, he spends a lot of time arguing against that.

50:50And then I should add, his big concern as regards libertarian governance is that government shouldn't pick winners and losers in the economy. They shouldn't favor one company versus another, and they shouldn't favor one sector versus another, manufacturing versus agriculture or vice versa. He did not think government should refrain from helping the poor. So the whole issue about welfare policy, it wasn't really on the table at the time, but to the extent that it was, he supported the English poor law and he supported public education for poor people. So he certainly wasn't in any way clearly on the side of libertarians.

51:32And I, as a kind of social democrat, welfare liberal, I claim Smith as an ancestor. And I think both libertarians and welfare liberals can pull on different pieces of him for that. It's just not his issue. Now, he's got one piece of good luck, which is thinkers are often remembered for things they didn't say. Charles Darwin never said survival of the fittest. But Adam Smith did mention the invisible hand. What is the invisible hand? What did he mean by it? And why is it different from modern thinking about pure autonomous markets that don't need any assistance from anybody? Right. So this is fiercely debated to this day in Smith's scholarship.

52:11There are some people who think he means the hand of God, governing the market so everything will work out right. I think that's clearly not true, especially in the wealth of nations, which never mentions God. Let me pause you. For those who are not familiar with the phrase, let's put this phrase, I'm not going to be able to quote it verbatim, but reconstruct the larger sentence in which the phrase invisible hand appears. So it appears in the context of his argument that you don't need to force merchants to favor their own country in their trading because they will do that anyway, because they want to keep an eye on their goods.

52:47And he says they are led as if by an invisible hand to do what is best for their society. Now, that's been read in many different ways. My own version of it is that Smith thinks the opportunities for any individual to make money in an economy are made possible by what other people around them need. So it makes sense that anything that you do to further your own interests will also help the society as a whole. This is actually, I think, part of his view that societies shape individuals so that even when you think you're doing something for your own interests, you might be and you might not be, but you're always helping your society.

53:29I mean, not always. You can do antisocial things. But when people are doing their normal economic transactions, and actually in many other respects as well, they are helping their society whether they know it or not. And that's the core of the invisible hand. We are in a world right now where the United States government has moved away from many of Smith's ideas. There are tariffs. There are efforts to pick winners and losers. Government is taking a share of particular companies and then favoring them. People in government are receiving streams of payment from companies, some foreign, some domestic, many foreign.

54:03And there's a kind of auction of government favoritism going on in Washington. What would Adam Smith think of today's America? I think he'd be appalled. You couldn't have a more unsmithian way of running the economy. He doesn't trust government figures. He thinks they're corrupt. And of course, we're seeing signs of that. There's nothing, no policy he hates more than tariffs. He thinks that that is really a way of government leaders deciding what should be imported and what should be exported. And in all cases, he thinks, tariffs wind up hurting the home economy more than they help. And that's even true when they're imposed for the sake of defense.

54:43At one point, he says defense is more important than opulence. So in some cases, maybe a tariff on goods that you need for defense purposes would be legitimate. But he actually elsewhere says that even those tariffs are unnecessary and they hurt your economy. So that's like, in his context, he was thinking, well, what if you have one cannon factory in all of England or one place where you make ship sales. You might want to protect that company, but even then, you'll be sorry on the long run. That's actually exactly his example. And he still thinks that you'll probably do better if another company makes those sales cheaper, you should import them.

55:21And at best, you'll do something that's useful for defense purposes, but it will have an economic cost. In no case does he think that a tariff will actually help the economy. Let's finish here with one more thought, which is reading Gibbon, which was published 250 years ago last month, that's a pretty daunting challenge. It's very long and a lot of it can be kind of obscure. But Smith reads today as powerfully as he did 250 years ago this month. People should go read them. I certainly agree. I have to say, it's funny that you say this. I was just reading yesterday a letter from David Hume to the publisher of both Smith and Gibbon.

56:01They had the same publisher. saying, I think that Gibbon will sell much better than Smith because Smith is very hard to read, and Gibbon is a nice story, a narrative. And Strachan, the publisher, sort of agrees, but it turns out that Smith was selling better than anybody expected. I think both are still relevant, but Smith maybe even more so. Thank you, Sam, so much for making time today. Thank you, David, for having me on. Bye-bye.

56:33Thanks so much to Samuel Fleischacker for joining me today to talk about Adam Smith. Thanks to Beto O 'Rourke for joining me to talk about politics in Texas. Thanks to all of you for watching and listening to The David Frum Show. As ever, if you are minded to support the program, the best way to do that and to support all of us at The Atlantic is by subscribing to The Atlantic. I hope you will consider doing that. See you next week on The David Frum Show. Bye-bye.

57:20This episode of The David Frum Show was produced by Nathaniel Frum and edited by Andrea Valdez. It was engineered by Dave Grime. Our theme is by Andrew M. Edwards. Claudine Abed is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. I'm David Frum. Thank you for listening. Logging off, rebuilding our attention spans, trading in smartphones for dumb phones. Why are people trying to get off their screens, and what are they really after? I'm Natalie Brennan, a producer at The Atlantic. And I'm Julie Beck, a staff writer at The Atlantic. This season, we're exploring the often fraught, always changing relationship people have with technology.

58:00and examining the ways our devices affect our connection with one another. New episodes of How to Touch Grass come out every Monday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.