The United States continues to hurtle towards the 2020 elections — and Texas is perceived as in some respects up for grabs. Despite a long history of the state tending towards Republican candidates, in a round of polling released by Univision before the recent Democratic presidential primary debate in Houston, essentially every single leading Democratic candidate had more support than Trump, although in some cases their leading margin was less than others. Still, this weekend on MSNBC, the D.C. bureau chief for the Texas Tribune — not exactly a B-grade paper — insisted that state Republicans’ future is less than certain.
Abby Livingston shared:
‘What I think is key to remember here — I’m still very skeptical the Senate and the presidential race could come online in the state in a year from now. But enormous resources are being poured at the congressional and state legislative level. There is a shot that the Democrats could take the state House of Representatives and there is a shot that they could pick up more Congressional seats in the state. And that is party building, that is bottom-up party building.’
Check it out:
As the host noted ahead of her comments, at this point a full five Republican Texan members of Congress have announced their intent to not seek re-election in 2020, meaning that — in the case of what’s been nicknamed a Texodus — in five seats and counting in the already sometimes blue-tending Texas, Republicans have lost their incumbent advantage. Two of those seats are already rated as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report — and a third one is rated as leaning Democratic.
Asked what she thinks has opened the door for any Democratic gains in Texas at all, Livingston bluntly continued:
‘I think it’s Donald Trump. I spent the past weekend in Harris County, which is Houston, and when I got back to D.C., I started digging through the numbers and the trends — for twenty years, Republicans won that county, the Senate, presidential, and gubernatorial candidates, by an average of about nine points. You get to 2016 and it goes to Trump lost the county by twelve points, and then Ted Cruz lost the county in 2018 by seventeen points. The numbers are extremely dramatic when you start factoring in the presidential election of 2016.’
Trump lost many urban areas around the county in the wake of the harsh rhetoric he spewed about many of the marginalized communities who live there. He’s not stopping with the angry meltdowns — instead, as the 2020 election only gets closer, he just keeps burrowing into his racist rhetoric. He’s claimed storm victims fleeing the ravaged Bahamas could be harboring criminals, and he’s insisted that a group of progressive women of color in Congress should go back where they came from — they’re all U.S. citizens, just to be clear.
Many polls besides those released by Univision have shown Trump as hurtling towards a loss in 2020. He’s maintained losing margins when facing leading Democrats including former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) in many polls.
Featured image via screenshot
