WTF Happened?

Thoughts on the Texas Election

Like most of you, I am sure I am at a crossroads between anger, fury, and some state of fight or flight. This election was brutal. I ventured out yesterday for the first time to Trader Joe’s and walked by people thinking, “Did they vote? Did they vote for that man? Am I safe here? What does safe even mean anymore?”

I can’t stomach news shows, podcasts, or newspaper op-eds. They all enrage me with their theories of what happened and the blame game. The sell-outs have already begun. People are moving their chess pieces for a piece of power already. It kinda makes me deeply angry. I can relate to one of those fire-breathing dragons from Game of Thrones. I want to burn the whole thing down I am so mad. Working through it is going to take time.

I am going to give it to you straight. What happened was a perfect storm of EVERYTHING!

• Racism

• Misogyny

• Economy messaging

• Lies and propaganda from the far right

• Citizens United full-on oligarch take over of our elections

• Kamala didn’t have enough time

• The DNC lied to us and led us to believe Biden was up for the run when he wasn’t

• We wasted time waiting for Biden to step down

• We never addressed the border issue

• We never addressed and messaged around the trans issue correctly

• We have volunteers who would rather write postcards and paint rocks than knock on actual doors

• Journalists normalized Trump

• The Judicial system turned a blind eye to all of Trump’s legal issues

• Lack of civics education

• People have the memory of a squirrel and only think in 30-second increments

• We still haven’t discovered the secret sauce of how to get non-voters to the polls in Texas.

It was everything! And the Republicans didn’t even work that hard to win.

Today, I read a post from a top national messaging person blaming big-city Democrats who live in a bubble. Meanwhile, I think, “WTAF, you were in charge of messaging for the presidential campaign. You bragged about it. Shouldn’t those fingers be pointed at you?”

What the hell is wrong with these people who are pure opportunists just waiting to make a buck?

Here’s what I saw:

• TX GOP has been testing issues for the last few years with the hopes that the messaging is so strong it influences the Presidential election. It did! Greg Abbott purposely sent immigrants to swing states, and blue states to chip away voters by making citizens in those states feel like the immigrants got more support and money than they did. The GOP is playing the long game.

• Texas Democrats are respectful of one another and their territories to a fault. Let me explain. We desperately need border messaging and bills around immigration in Texas, but Texas Democrats don’t feel it’s their place to write these bills unless it’s their district. This means that all the responsibility for messaging and border bills lies on those legislators from border districts. The thing is that most of them aren’t dependable Democrats. As I keep saying, most Texas Republicans don’t have a uterus, but they all jump on board with bills about women’s uteruses as if they do. Why the hell can’t Democrats work together on this issue?

• We can message about Trans issues without dehumanizing our trans community, but it seems like no one tried to do this. Also, there are ZERO trans athletes in Texas sports right now, and. If people knew this, then maybe they would have seen what the Republicans were trying to do.

• Colin Allred started campaigning too late. He didn’t really start campaigning till after August, and then he only hit a few counties. He ran a moderate campaign, and time and time again, this strategy does not work in Texas, and when are people going to learn? Also, quit hiring consultants that use this strategy over and over in Texas and always lose. They literally make a killing from losing. A friend’s son worked on the Allred campaign over the summer, and he quit after 2 weeks because no one was ever at work in the office they didn’t even tell him the office was closed on Fridays, so when he went to work, the doors were locked. Lots of people do not want to admit it was a mess, but it was a mess.

• We were ahead in key races for the Texas House, then Abbott poured millions into these districts, and the results were a blood bath.

• Not addressing the Israel and Palestine conflict hurt Democrats, and it probably lost us GenZ Voters.

• When Democrats pass bills that do good things for Texans, we need to talk about it more. I’m talking about town halls, mailers to every house, etc. We need to be a constant roadshow of accomplishments to show people we care about them, and Democrats are not the boogie man.

I, for one, think Kamala did the best she could, and the online social media team at Kamala HQ was amazing. The energy was great! Black women deserved to have a Black woman win the presidency. I am heartbroken that we didn’t deliver that to them. My heart is still breaking, thinking that so many Americans chose fascism and oligarchs over democracy. But here we are.

Love you all in resistance,

Nancy