The Democrats Find Their Tea Party Movement

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)

This week, Rep. Jasmine Crockett announced she was running for the Senate race in Texas.  We've talked about Crockett before, but she starts out as the prohibitive frontrunner for the nomination.  She's a sitting congresswoman, one with a national profile, and likely will have both heavy fundraising and she'll have access to tons of free media.  She'll also, if she's the nominee, lose in spectacular fashion.  There have been a lot of bad faith actors on social media who have been saying criticism of Crockett isn't fair, saying that "we don't know what the Democrat who finally breaks our losing streak in Texas will look like" and while that's not entirely untrue (the entire gamut from Wendy Davis to Beto O'Rourke to MJ Hegar, all different ends of the political spectrum, have run statewide in Texas & still never won), if the Democrats who ended longstanding Senate losing streaks in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, & Colorado this century are any indication, it will have been with someone who ran as a moderate (all four of these states that's what happened).  Leftists and hard-core left wing voters dismiss this idea out-of-hand, but we run their types of candidates all the time in red/pink states...they just never win.

Democrats do have a better candidate.  While State Rep. James Talarico isn't as moderate as Rep. Colin Allred (who dropped out to make room for Crockett), he cuts a more moderate profile, speaking about trying to win over Republicans & disaffected voters (Crockett foolishly said that she won't need Trump supporters to win, something that is factually untrue given even in the best of circumstances at least 10% of a winning coalition will have voted for Trump in 2024), and he also has experience running in tough elections (he flipped a red seat in 2018 when he won in the State Legislature).  I don't know if Talarico can win, but he's the better of the two candidates, and unlike Crockett, I could see him winning in the right circumstance.

Crockett's entry, though, alongside Graham Platner in Maine, is yet another look at what might be emerging as a Democratic Tea Party.  The Tea Party is frequently talked about in terms of the conservative movement that it brought about, ultimately morphing in some capacity into MAGA.  But in 2010 & 2012, it was more well-known for something far different: costing Republicans winnable Senate seats.  During this time frame, 5 Senate races came up where a moderate ran against a Tea Party conservative, and in all five races two things happened: the Tea Party conservative won, and (despite polling that showed otherwise) the Democrat ended up winning the seat.  Across the two cycles you had three in 2010 (Delaware, Colorado, Nevada) and two in 2012 (Missouri, Indiana).  While these seats vary in terms of the course of their race (with one featuring an incumbent as the moderate, others having everyone from gadflies to members of the House as the Tea Party challengers), all of them had some clear distinctions.  

First, in all five cases Republican voters knew what they were getting into.  None of these races had someone running as an extremist only after he or she won the primary.  All five of the Tea Party challengers (Christine O'Donnell, Ken Buck, Sharron Angle, Todd Akin, & Richard Mourdock) ran to the right of more palatable general election candidates on the backbone of being a Tea Party conservative.  While some (like O'Donnell & Akin) would have opposition research leak about them in the weeks that followed the primary win, any Republican voter who complained had to know what they were getting into-they were making a risky bet.

Second, polling underlined this fact.  One of the only general election polls to test both Moudock and Richard Lugar (the moderate) in Indiana showed Mourdock tied against Rep. Joe Donnelly, while Lugar led him by 21-points.  Research 2000 had Chris Coons up 16-points on Christine O'Donnell, while Rep. Mike Castle (the moderate) was ahead by 12-points.  In all five of these races, it was framed how the moderate was the path to victory, and giving this seat up was putting the seat needlessly at risk.

And third, and most importantly-these losses proved consequential.  Had either Akin or Mourdock won, the Affordable Care Act would've been repealed during the first Trump administration (that was decided by one vote, let's not forget).  The Senate majority would've been on a knife's edge for 2010 & 2012 (it would've been tied both times) had they cleared all of these seats (which, I'm going to be honest, they likely would have), and much of President Obama's second term agenda would've been a pipe dream.  These losses mattered, not just in the election that was in front of them, but for years that followed.  Republicans have not won a Senate seat in Delaware since, and incumbent Michael Bennet is still a US Senator in Colorado.

Polling in this race is limited, but the legitimate polling that has leaked shows Talarico in a better position than Crockett.  But even if you dismiss polling as premature, the types of campaigns they're running are critically different.  Talarico is running the kind of campaign that Castle & Lugar ran-inclusive, open to ideas from both parties, and willing to welcome Republicans into the fold for a "one-time" exception to vote for a Democrat (generally how you win in a situation like this), while Crockett is running against Donald Trump (who won the state overwhelmingly last year), and has made the campaign about herself, not extending a hand to Trump voters who might be willing to look the other way this one time & vote for a Democrat due to frustration about the economy.  Putting it bluntly: Crockett is the Tea Party, cathartic but ultimately more interested in her own self-aggrandizement than actually winning a seat, her eyes feeling less focused on a Senate seat and more on the cushy job of an MSNBC contributor, while Talarico has spent years trying to get to this exact moment, ready to be the moderate that might eventually paint Texas blue.  The assumption is that Crockett will win, and that in the process the Democrats will have had a true-blue Tea Party moment, giving up a potential Senate win just to make a point...but my hope is that our party is smarter than the Republicans, and unwilling to be so idiotic.  In the coming months we'll see if I'm right.