Texas is in complete danger for Ted

Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has officially completed his bid for a third term in Washington with a lead of about nine points over his well-funded Democratic challenger, Congressman Colin Allred. While this victory is narrower than Donald Trump's 14-point loss in the state (the Democrats' worst presidential result in Texas since 2012), it is still another devastating disappointment for Democrats. Given the dire state of affairs in the national Senate for incumbents elsewhere and some fairly promising polls in the final stages, Democrats had hoped that Allred would be able to engineer the overthrow that Cruz narrowly avoided six years earlier when Beto O' Rourke came within three points of victory.

But while Trump was gaining everywhere and with virtually everyone across the state, while Kamala Harris was falling everywhere and with virtually everyone in Texas, Cruz rode Trump's coattails well enough to make Allred's slight overperformance insignificant.

Texas Democrats' path to statewide competitiveness nearly failed Tuesday as they not only failed to turn out particularly large numbers in blue districts, they also lost recent gains in the fast-growing suburbs and, according to exit polls, support lose color among voters. Most importantly, according to the exit polls (one should exercise at least a little caution), they appear to have lost the Latino vote to Trump and Cruz by a significant margin.

Allred, a congressman from Dallas who flipped a GOP seat in 2018, ran a carefully tailored campaign focused primarily on independents and moderate Republicans, with a message focused heavily on the harm to Texas women caused by extreme abortion bans of the state arise. This post-Dobbs The strategy failed here – and with Democrats across the country – in the face of the reactionary forces invoked by Trump around the economy and immigration.

Allred's prototypical red-state Democrat approach of various and superficial political maneuvers and tens of millions spent on television advertising failed to make gains among independents and Republican voters in Texas, and his notable lack of grassroots momentum failed to achieve it , rallying the liberal base to take out Cruz — and mobilizing volunteers.

While Allred raised a record sum – over $80 million – and performed decently enough in public polls to maintain a sense of viability until Election Day, there was none of the organic enthusiasm that Beto O'Rourke generated in 2018 with his 254th election – Odyssey of mass rallies in the district. This was sold as some kind of clever strategy on Allred's part. Keep your head down, don't make too much noise, and maybe you'll sneak through without waking the red monster. In hindsight, the strategy may have been more to disguise the fact that few would bother to see the former NFL linebacker on the stump.

His GOTV rallies in places like Houston and Dallas were disappointing — even with the help of high-profile surrogates like Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock — and coupled with even more made-for-TV rallies round tables. Meanwhile, Cruz ran the same scheme as in 2018 with the simple message that Texas is tough (and so is he) and must stay that way by standing up to radical leftists like Allred. Cruz spent the final weeks of the campaign traversing rural Texas on a multi-week bus tour, preaching the anti-woke gospel to throngs of crowds and spending tens of millions on attack ads focused on transgender children in sports.

Although O'Rourke's roadshow strategy was dismissed as naively wasted stray power or his constant Facebook livestreaming as nonsense, it was new, novel and wildly successful at getting people to tune in and show up. Overwhelm the major TV advertising markets with primetime commercials about how you're not actually a crazy lunatic, but actually tuff on the border is neither new nor convincing – nor a replacement for shoe leather campaigns and basic charisma.

Given the nationalization of politics, it's becoming less and less impressive (or important) for a Texas Democrat to raise tons of money. But there is no amount of campaign money that can make up for the fact that Democrats have no rule book (let alone a track record) for running successful statewide campaigns, and that Republicans in Texas are actually very good at winning elections. After the blue surge in 2018, the GOP machine adjusted accordingly and immediately went back on the offensive. Meanwhile, Democrats have failed to repeat this year in three consecutive election cycles.

It's not just Allred – if the Democratic presidential candidate narrowly wins Harris County, the cornerstone of the party's electoral strength, we are dealing with forces that go far beyond questions of campaign tactics and messaging. And like other Democratic Senate candidates, Allred outperformed Harris by several points. While Trump flipped the Rio Grande Valley, Allred continued to dominate the region.

It's hard to imagine another Democratic candidate doing so much better than Allred in this atmosphere (though, to be fair, no one saw O'Rourke coming in 2018 until he arrived). What's easy to see, however, is that Texas Democrats still have a lot of soul-searching to do before they'll even consider loudly asserting again that Texas is the largest battleground state in the country. Right now it is the largest red state in a large red nation.