One of the worst features of the primary electoral system in our polarized “red vs. blue” era is the tendency of primary voters to flock to the candidate they most want to “destroy” the other party, not the candidate best positioned to do so.
Let's say a zombie is scratching at your door. You have a shotgun, a pistol and your favorite frying pan. The shotgun has a better chance of success, the pistol, if one is careful and skillful, has a solid chance of working, and the frying pan? It probably won't eliminate the threat, but come on, how cool would it be to take out a zombie with a frying pan? So, get on with it.
In this extended metaphor, Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett is the Democrats' frying pan and prosecutor. General Ken Paxton is the Republican.
Given trends in media coverage, you're probably most familiar with examples of this phenomenon from the Republican Party. Remember Christine O'Donnell, the lame-duck Senate candidate from Delaware who had to run an ad in 2010 assuring voters, “I'm not a witch.” Or Todd Akin, the 2012 Missouri Senate candidate who got in trouble for insisting that women not get pregnant in cases of “legitimate rape.” More recently, there was Mark Robinson, the 2024 North Carolina lieutenant governor who dabbled in Holocaust denial and mocked school shooting survivors as “spoiled little bastards.” Only after getting the nomination was it revealed that he described himself as a “black nazi”on a porn site.
Democrats have a similar, if less colorful, problem. In many races, Democratic primary voters preferred the candidate who was most ideologically pure, most bellicose, or, in the era of President Trump, most committed to the “resistance.” Once nominated, they were not prepared to appeal to undecided voters in a general election.
Just a few examples of Democratic candidates who excited the base but not traditional voters: Mandela Barnes, the very progressive Wisconsin Senate candidate in 2022; Kara Eastman, the preferred candidate for “Justice” democrats”in the House of Nebraska's 2nd District race in 2018; Stacey Abrams, the two-time Georgia gubernatorial candidate who denied the election; and Andrew Gillum, the Florida progressive helpless who beat out more centrist candidates to win the Democratic nomination for governor, only to narrowly lose to Ron DeSantis in 2018.
Some of these races were really close. But the populist left and right learn the wrong lesson from the narrowness of their defeats. Like ugly Americans who think foreigners will understand English if they shout louder, each side convinces itself that if they had fought harder and wasted a little more money, they could have won.
To be fair, sometimes they are right. But even in those cases, they are simply making a down payment for larger losses to come. Because by electing bomb throwers and crackpots they damage their party's brand for the next election.
Which brings me back to Texas. The Senate primaries are heating up. On the GOP side, it's a three-way race between conservative, solid, reliable, moderately boring incumbent Senator John Cornyn, two-term Republican Congressman Wesley Hunt, and the turmoil, wildly corrupt (sorry, “ethically challenged”), populist demagogue and staunch MAGA loyalist Ken Paxton.
While nothing is certain given what could be a Democratic wave year, Cornyn will likely defeat Crockett, who most analysts and Democrats (when speaking anonymously) believe can't win against anyone except perhaps Paxton. But it can absorb a huge amount of money and attention.
Crockett is very smart, but in many ways she is a Democratic version of Republican bomb-throwers and social media phenoms Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert. In fact, Crockett has already registered trademark her insult toward Greene (whom she claims has a “poorly shaped, bleached blonde tomboy body”). Crockett has also saying that 80% of the “most violent crimes” are committed by “white supremacists”, black people They can't be republicans Since Republicans are racist, Latinos have a “slave mentality” and that police shouldn't prevent crimethey can only fix it etc.
This may work in a safe congressional district, but it is not the stuff of a successful statewide race in Texas.
When Crockett announced he would run, Rep. Colin Allred, a more moderate candidate who was positioning himself to be a safe alternative to Republicans, announced he would no longer run for the Senate.
And here we are. Two parties, once again, are about to nominate candidates so flawed that they stand a chance of losing to each other.
This is what happens in a polarized era when parties outsource their nomination process to the angriest voters in their coalition. They'd rather shoot with their favorite frying pan than shoot with that boring shotgun.
UNKNOWN: @JonahDispatch
