What Matt Rogers Got Right About the Texas Senate Race

Bowen Yang & Matt Rogers

I am insanely picky about my podcast choices.  I like what I like, and will own that it's a short list.  This means that most discussion-based podcasts (again, unless I really like them) don't get into my phone while I'm working out or driving, and that includes Las Culturistas, a podcast a lot of my friends set their watch by, hosted by Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers.  I have watched many clips of the two on social media, but I don't know enough about the two of their podcast format to know whether or not it was a surprise when they started to discuss politics.  Rogers, though, brought up the Texas Senate race, where Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett is in a competitive primary against State Rep. James Talarico.  Rogers is famously loquacious, so I'm going to trim his quote a bit for the sake of brevity, but what he said was "She's not going to win a Senate race in Texas y'all.  If Beto O'Rourke couldn't do it, Jasmine Crockett is not going to do it.  And it's nothing against her...she is a politician that is very well-defined already and I think that we're going to need someone who is less defined at this time...I'm interested in this Talarico guy from Texas...it would be hard to define him.  He's a guy we can't define already."  He also said "don't waste your money sending your money to Jasmine Crockett-do not do it" which Yang replied "I have to agree" and then Rogers concluded by comparing Crockett to Sara Gideon, the failed Senate candidate in 2020 in Maine.

Rogers has since walked these comments back, as has Yang, and they've done so because of an almost instantaneous backlash from the Crockett camp online, as well as left-leaning figures on TikTok and Twitter.  Both men were accused of being racially-motivated in attacking Crockett, who is a Black woman, over Talarico, who is a white man, and accused him of saying that a Black woman cannot win in the state of Texas.  This backlash, and the uproar that it caused for Rogers & Yang belied a particularly important point in this conversation, one that you'd think would be worth mentioning before it closes, and so I wanted to before this left the news cycle entirely: Matt Rogers was right.

I have talked about Crockett a few times on this blog in not complimentary terms when it came to her decision to run in this race, and so I do want to point out, like Rogers did, before I start that I think she's an asset to the party.  Crockett is more left-leaning than I am, but I also think that's okay-I think having Democrats to both my left and right is good as it pulls the party toward good ideas, and she's very talented-you don't stand out in a body of 435 people in the way she has without that talent.  I also think it's important for the party to have people who know how to capture social media's attention, and is willing to fight fire with fire (like her run-in's with Marjorie Taylor Greene).  Crockett does that-I truly wish she was running for reelection so that she would continue on as a member of Congress.

Because Rogers point was not about her being a Black woman, but instead about her being too defined as a liberal, and an outspoken one at that, to win in Texas.  Were, say, Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders running in Texas (both white men), I'd make a point of sharing that neither of them can win as they're also too liberal.  The closest anyone has come in that time was Beto O'Rourke, and he did so because of three key assets: he was relatively unknown (so people could project on him rather than know about him), he was running in a very strong cycle for the party, and he was running against a uniquely unpopular incumbent.  And for the record-he still lost.  So it stands to reason that, as Rogers said in so many words, you try to replay that playbook-pick a virtual unknown, one who has talent but the public doesn't know well, run him against an unpopular candidate (which the Republicans are helping with), in a blue wave year, and hope this time close becomes a win.  James Talarico fits that description as if he was made in a factory.

Saying this is about race seems disingenuous, for two reasons.  One, Rogers isn't the only person who has said this (it's been said by dozens of pundits and even some politicians), and two, the criticisms here are not really connected to Crockett being a Black woman.  No one said this about Lisa Blunt Rochester when she ran in Delaware in 2024.  No one (other than her opponent) said it about Angela Alsobrooks that same cycle, nor about Robin Kelly or Julianna Stratton this year in Illinois.  People practically begged Lucy McBath to run for the governor's mansion in Georgia.  Were Crockett running in, say, Washington or Maryland, we wouldn't be having this conversation...but she's running in Texas, and a candidate who famously has gotten into fights with Republicans is not going to be the sort of person who can attract hundreds of thousands of Trump voters to vote for her.  It's just not-pretending that this is about race is really unproductive and dangerous because it means that we have to pretend that what Rogers said is wrong when it's not.

It also makes Crockett's general election campaign even more challenging.  This sort of campaign tactic won't work in a general election.  Crockett isn't trying to win over people like Matt Rogers & Bowen Yang, people far more petrified of liberals not liking them than whether or not they are right; if she wants to win, she needs to win over voters who voted for Donald Trump but want to give her a chance.  Crockett has alluded to running to the left being a path to win apathetic or non-voting members of the Texas population (a strategy that has never worked, and has been tried countless times with everyone pretending they're the one who can strike the right tone).  A campaign based on calling out people making a valid point about your campaign (that your past history as a liberal poster child is damning for your chances) by calling you racist & sexist might win you a Democratic primary...but in a general election on a secret ballot, you're going to lose, and you're going to lose in a major way.  And that leftists would rather call out someone like Rogers who is just trying to help a Democrat (any Democrat) win and punish him publicly, rather than admit that what he said has credence (just because your favorite candidate is hurt by this truth), is a scary sign of what we're up against on our left flank in the midterms and 2028.