April 13, 2022 – Second Reading Podcast

Welcome to the second reading podcast from the university of Texas at Austin, the Republicans were in the democratic party because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution.

They have become the norm at what. Must’ve female Senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

And welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin. I’m very happy to be joined again today by Josh blank research director of the Texas politics project. Welcome back, Josh. Thanks for having me back. We’re here in the studio at UT.

And when we were last year, we took last week off because we sort of decided to take weeks off now. And again, when we were last here just a couple of weeks ago, the politics and border security and the COVID pandemic kind of briefly harmonizing in Texas, uh, was our topic with, you know, governor Abbott’s synchronized renewal of disaster declarations in both areas.

Um, You know, the plot has only thickened since then. Shall we say, um, maybe a little ahead of the curve. So I’d love to get used to they’re harmonized. Yeah. Well, I mean, for him, I think it kind of was at least at the moment in terms of the, you know, the, the release of those two renewals and the fact that nobody really picked it up.

And, you know, I talked to a couple of reporters about that sense of then, and they were like, well, he kind of has to regularly do this. And so it’s not really news. It was kind of the implication. I think news is not just the thing itself, but in the context, I mean, there’s, I have a version of a response to that, but I want, I think I’ll, I’ll save it for later and in different areas, I think we’ll be able to come and put a pin in that one to put a pin in it podcast.

So since then, there’s been a, you know, just to follow up on the, you know, a decidedly, less synchronized, you know, collision of the two issues of COVID and border security in Washington, you know, last week and, you know, certainly the last 10 days or so. I mean, at the national level, it was very interesting because on the, on the, to me anyway, I, you know, on the, on the following, up on what happened in Texas with these.

To quietly laid out disaster declarations disasters. Oh, there’s the quiet disaster. Like the quiet storm. Um, you know, two things happen in Washington at the, you know, centered in the democratic Congress and the Biden, uh, the, the Biden white house versus the announcement that the CDC plans to end the title 42 COVID 19 immigration policy.

That required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases were being adjudicated. And, you know, CDC made what they said was a pandemic, you know, public health driven decision to end this policy because of the winding down of the pandemic. Now, Yeah, probably, you know, and, and that was on the, you know, and so that’s on the calendar now for May 25th, but coincides with the upsurge, you know, the uptake, you know, the upsurge in migration that we expect seasonally this time of year, you know, there was a kind of surface distancing from the white house on that.

That seems, I guess, plausible. Well, yeah, I mean, I think this is where the criticism is being laid so much among at the Biden administration and democratic there’s less surface level sort of, you know, criticism coming from Texas now. I mean directly, but this has been the issue is that, you know, it’s kinda hard to, you know, circle the square as we like to say sometimes here.

Right. Where kind of figuring out exactly what the policy dynamic and the political dynamic and whether the two are, are even an intersecting really like, honestly, like as much as they probably. Normatively here in a way they’re not, I mean, there’s part of me like, looks at this and just says, you know, if we just take a step back for a second saying, okay, so panic air, Panda pandemic, era restrictions that basically close our borders to asylum seekers, regardless of seasonal flows, migration.

Cause they’re gonna happen no matter what, like, so we’re supposed to keep those in place. Forever. I mean, you know, so there is a question here, as we’re winding down from the pandemic that we do have to like resend these, you know, these sort of pandemic or rules, and the point is kind of becoming clear.

It’s like, well, which rules, and it kind of depends on who you ask and here, you know, there’s one side. This is like, well, this is a clear political opportunity because of seasonal migration. And now because of, you know, basically what is a winding out a pandemic or a rules you’re creating a political crisis that can be exploited.

Right. But the fact is it’s so clear that. Visible that this was going to happen. What makes people kind of question who is at the wheel here and, and, and in terms of use the sheer politics of it, you know, this is a, this is an associate, this is a policy that was associated with Donald Trump. Um, and in which, you know, The general sense when this was put in place was that there was a rationale for it, you know, in terms of public health, but that, you know, Democrats felt like the Trump administration doing this was in bad faith.

Well, yeah. And people have been writing for months about the fact that they feel that, you know, so at least in sort of democratic activist circles, that the Biden ministration does not move fast enough. A lot of these Trump area, Trump era policies. Whereas on the other hand, if you’re a moderate, if you’re one of the handful of moderate Democrat, Or put it this way, Democrats elected from moderate districts and there are several of those, the only thing, or, or even, you know, or setting aside ideology in Texas, you know, Democrats elected to border districts.

Right. So the, you know, there, yeah, there were a couple of different groups of, you know, several different groups of Democrats that, you know, kind of said, maybe this isn’t the time to do this. And the middle ground that emerged and suggestions from some of them was no, we definitely have to undo this sort of acknowledging the humanitarian.

Piece of this, but also saying perhaps we should wait and there is, you know, and they had at least a little bit of the, the cover of the spread of yet another variant that is, you know, spreading it, you know, a little more prominent in the Northeast as we’re recording this, certainly, you know, whole other topic, a real issue in China right now.

And in parts of Europe, et cetera. But, you know, I termed it a collision, not just because of the collision on that, but also that as this as CDC and the CDC announced this. A deal had been cut for after a lot of back and forth on a $10 billion COVID relief bill that the Biden administration had been working very hard to pass.

I think the original allocation was closer to 15 billion. They pared it down to 10 billion. It was a bipartisan deal. Mitt Romney had helped, you know, would have been one of the brokers, you know, to set the stage of pass the house was about to go to the Senate. And as soon as this was in. You know, Romney released a letter saying, yeah, we’re going to have to talk about this sooner.

That’s now on the shelf right now. And this also plays into another, you know, and this is where you get, you know, to my mind, that kind of collision and attention here and that on one hand, the policy pronouncement is CDC saying. You know, we are, you know, it’s time to end this policy for all the reasons we’ve talked about.

On the other hand there, you know, by the administration is going to Congress and saying, we need billions of dollars because we’re out of the previous money and we need to move onto the next stage of fighting the pandemic. So that’s very easy. I mean, look from a even reasonable. I mean, I don’t think you have.

Policy sophisticate to see that the two things are not necessarily inconsistent, that much of the pandemic money was to work on next level vaccines. It’s a, you know, things that weren’t necessarily emergency response. Like we’ve seen a year ago where we’re going out and buying masks and you know, this kind of thing, but the surface level.

It’s easy to, it’s easier for your hostile to the Biden administration to look at this and kind of go, like, what are you guys doing here? Yeah. I mean, the thing is, and this dovetails with the conversation last week where it’s really sort of, you know, odd and sort of having followed the local politics to, you know, the statewide politics and the COVID response for the last number of years, and then just the habit again, sort of quietly renew the disaster declaration necessary or not, but acknowledging the fact that we’re still getting.

You’re still in a pandemic, but at the same time, sort of, you know, having downplayed it for, you know, the better part of the last couple of years. So, I mean, this is, you know, it’s funny. I mean, it’s really, you know, it’s like, it’s sort of a, who wore it better. I mean, they’re both kind of sitting here can deal with, you know, similar but dynamics, but from different, you know, different sides.

Right. And I want to underline that. You know, there’s a grownup way to look at where we are in the pandemic that acknowledges the facts on the ground that can say we still have a pandemic situation, but the parameters. The situation are different now than they were a year ago. And it was significant way.

And, but there’s also an election in seven months. And then there’s this whole thing about that little election. So which brings us to the way that, you know, to my mind, these fans have been flamed, you know, in Texas in the last week. So governor rabbit. You know, jumped in the reaction to what the, what the Biden administration was talking about in terms of, uh, ending the remain in Mexico pro uh, pro program.

Um, you know, at the, at the top, with the most general level, you know, it was among the many who criticized it in general. Sure. You know, uh, you know, although, but opposition party that’s right. But this was an area where, you know, we’ve talked to it various times about Greg. Navigating the space between making sure that he is not leaving too much space to his right.

And yet being fairly calculating and in, you know, all this talk about sometimes his judicial temperament. Well, I think this was more the former than the latter in this, in this circumstance. Although, you know, one can make, you know, cause you know, he announced some new measures and, and, and announced them.

Well, some pretty raw, you know, red meat rhetoric, I would say. Yeah, I would say so. Right. I mean, so what are, what are the, let me just get in, let’s just get into those. It says, so the first was, you know, it’s a very clear, we’re gonna, we’re gonna bus these migrants to DC. Right. And then later we found, well, you know, I remember we were talking about some of it and I said, you know, I don’t, I don’t know if you can just like put someone on a bus and like, just send them to another state.

I’m pretty sure, you know, Maybe not legal, maybe not legal now again, I’m not a lawyer though, but turns out, you know, very quickly it’s like these are voluntary trips, you know? Uh, so obviously we’re not forcing, you know, basically busloads of migrants to DC. Uh, and then there’s this policy of increased inspection of Mexican trucks crossing the border.

Obviously the federal government already inspected. Every truck that comes across the U S Mexico border. Uh, they do with a lot of technology. They do it pretty comprehensively, as I understand it. Uh, the Texas policy is a little bit different because Texas can’t actually go and start opening up trailers.

So what they do is they do mechanical checks, which is what’s the, there are you allowed to do the same way that you can’t just throw people on buses? You can’t just stop trucks. Doing what you want without some semblance of probable. So this isn’t a S so even though the policy’s ostensively been, you know, basically proposed is look, we need to stop all the drugs and all of the people who are being pulled in through these commercial trucks, the reality is the ones that get through.

The federal check, really, all they can do is kind of, you know, make sure that the trucks actually are compliant with Texas roads, right? So they’ve gone from all their safety checks and they used to be basically random, more or less. It sounds like now they’re being comprehensive. And so, you know what people are saying from what I’ve read is, you know, trips that used to take, you know, it could take 30 minutes are now, do you have truck drivers are sitting there for, you know, 3, 6, 12, 20 hours and some number of them also then.

Sideline completely if they don’t pass the safety check. And so that’s led to a reaction. So I don’t know if you’d would call it a, is it a trucker protest? Well, I don’t know. Anyway, this is confusing truck driver protests on the Southern border. It’d be a dissertation or at least a master’s thesis somewhere.

I truck, her activism. I yes. Post post globalization and the trucker activism, colon modes of protests in the right. So drive it’s the drivers on the other side of the border are now basically protesting, which is stalling traffic going back. Of taxes and that’s focused in far Reynosa instead of people don’t know.

I mean, just as an aside, like a ton of the Overland trade in the U S I mean, a huge, huge percentage. And last time, I don’t want to say a percentage, cause I kind of have one in my head from the last time I looked, but it’s still kind of guessing, but it’s the majority of Overland of trucking trade is coming through taxes.

That’s coming through these borders. Like this is a big thing. Uh, so obviously this is, you know, resulted in slowdowns, pushed back on the Mexican side and, you know, It’s kind of aggravate supply chain issues so much so that, you know, even some Republicans, notably, Sid Miller of all people is coming out to say, Hey, maybe this isn’t a good policy, right?

Yeah. Well, you know of the candidates, if you were to come to me and say, Hey, name me three or four people that you think will, you know, make a statement on this. Uh, the commissioner probably would’ve been number one. I mean, that’s true about anything, right? Number one. And number two, it’s not the fact that he’s making a statement.

It’s the, it’s the acknowledgement that, you know, the sort of same kind of response to this is coming from Sid Miller. Right, right. Oh yeah. Okay. So what do you know? I mean, there’s so many things about this that are interesting. I think to us in the way that we think about this, right? I mean, look, you know, You know, the most obvious reading, I heard a, there was a story on NPR this morning, and I’m not sure if it was produced into, I think it was produced in Texas by one of the Texas stations.

I only caught the end of it. So I was getting ready. But the, you know, had a guests, you know, sort of a sound bite from somebody saying somebody opposed to the policy. No doubt. Um, yeah. This is about the politics, you know, and, you know, beginning and yeah. You know, now I think that’s probably a little reductive, but the politics are a necessary, but not sufficient part of this explanation.

Well, here’s the thing for me. Like, I, I, I find myself basically agreeing with that because the policy itself is so distant and unrelated to the actual problem that supposedly spring the policy, like if we were looking for, you know, my roots being, you know, again, ferried across inside truck trailers, well, we’re not actually doing.

Right, right. Uh, you know, ultimately if this is about drugs and all the other stuff I’m using that what operation Lonestar is supposed to be about. And then we know about the reporting of that and kind of how loose they’ve been with, with sort of their success in terms of this. So maybe it’s related to that, but ultimately is any of this related to the CDCs lifting of, you know, rules that relate to refuge, you know, to basically asylum seekers, it has nothing to do.

Yeah. To quit this mortar, I always say, is, is this a policy. To the policy problem, which is 42 that supposedly instigated this and the answer to that has to be, I think, yes, no, no. And so that’s, you know, that’s fine. It is what it is, you know, we’re all adults here. Right. You know, when you study politics, but to pretend it’s anything else, it’s kind of like, okay, let me, I just can’t start from that proposition.

Right. I mean, well, this is also, I mean, this is where, you know, we don’t have to do it again per se. This is where we though, you know, as I kind of, you know, To quote myself. I’m trying to think of how many I’m not quote myself. Right. I mean, I get, you know, I was on a panel last week at, um, the lone star legislative summit in, in Nacadocious, which was great and a very fun experience, a lot of great people in Nacadocious.

So a lot of political folks and a lot of legislators, very, you know, very good event and enjoyed myself. But, um, in which, you know, we kind of came around to this in a panel discussion. I was on, I said, look, eh, At some point you have to just acknowledge that immigration is kind of immigration and border security are kind of the Rosetta stone of, of Republican politics.

You know, if you need to figure out like, you know, when you look at some high visibility measure or any policy measure related to the border, you know, you can map it into the coat, the Republican coalition and in particular its ability. To bind people and bring people together and get the kind of reaction we’ve talked about.

The, you know, the polling date on here a million times. I mean, the, you know, the fact that, uh, you know, simply put. Most Republicans are liable to tell pollsters that they think repo either immigration or border security, the most important problem facing the state. It’s a very solid 70% of Republicans, every poll we can dock.

So it’s very salient and there’s very little, there’s a lot of consensus on. The direction and the substance of the opinions that fall out of that attribution of it as a problem, publicans favor, you know, strong enforcement, restrictive, you know, restrict restrictive immigration policies, et cetera. So there’s the three quarters, pretty much anything.

Right. We have to get that out there just as the groundwork here for anybody that, you know, maybe you’re a new listener or something. Right. So groundwork laid. So I think something else that, you know, I’ve said before, probably on this podcast, is it. I did, when I expected at this point in time is, is a version of what we’ve seen.

And what I mean by that is, you know, Abbott ran pretty far to his right, you know, throughout much of the primary season to fend off as challengers. And then the question becomes, okay, you know, we talked about how far is too far. We’ve talked about, you know, this idea of like, well, what would a pivot look like?

Right. And I’ve said before, you know, I think the pivot for Abbott is going to be back to the border, not to the. But to focusing on this issue and we’ve read a, you know, actually wrote about this last week. There’s actually a week before last, there’s actually a piece on the website on the kind of lays out some of the logic with some of this data on why immigration and border security represent not only a good move for Republican seeking to shape the general election agenda.

Um, You know, but also make the point you were just making that, you know, the pivot is, is not necessarily on the left, right. Spectrum is where the emphasis falls in terms of the issue agenda that you’re trying to put in front of the electorate. Right. And that’s, and that’s valuable for Republicans for at least two reasons.

One, look, if the election is about securing the border, no Democrat is winning. I mean, just play that thought experiment out however you want. It doesn’t matter. Right. Um, you know, And so, so that’s kind of, that’s the, where we start. So then the question, but then the thing about like last week, I would say, or this, this sort of what’s happened here.

Uh, I think this might be an overreach. Well, let’s, let’s make, let’s make the case first. No, no, that’s okay. Just the other, you know, the other eight to 10 pieces of that, that make this seemingly a positive strategic move or one, obviously, you know, the general, you know, the general midterm election environment that we’re in right now, there was a, there was a Democrat in the white house.

Border and immigration policy right now are owned by the Democrats. And it’s the thing that Biden is rated the worst on all the issues we tested. Widened is not getting good ratings on that from Texans or from America’s, especially from Texas, there’s no small share of Democrats. You think he’s doing a bad job and it’s a good issue with independence, et cetera.

So being able to, you know, hang this on the, on the byte administration is a good piece of this and. You know, because the border issue attracts national press, um, you know, whatever you think of Greg Abbott’s long-term ambitions or whether that’s, you know, makes sense or not, you know, this does. Governor Abbott and Texas Republicans in the New York times in the Washington post in the national press as a response to the Biden administration and highlights.

This is a problem. I think it was an Axios and Politico this morning, et cetera, to go down that road for any longer than we have to. It also distinguishes him from Ron DeSantis. Do anything like what Greg out I can do on the border? Cause he doesn’t have a border like that with Mexico. So it’s just different, different, you know, it’s, it’s a way differentiate, you know?

And so obviously we’re talking about, you know, I mean, we haven’t said it, but we should, we have to say it explicitly. So, you know, it raises this notion of Greg Abbott having national political ambitions, whether it’s running for president or being a national political figure. Yeah, a subject for another podcast, right?

And one, that’s not going to be resolved in the near term. Anyway, I would also say even if that, even if you set that aside, he’s also following a very, very long held playbook of positioning himself as others have in the same position is fighting backs against the federal guard. Failure, at least when Democrats are in control.

Right. Well, you know, one of the interesting things about this, I think historically, and this is a little, I will not degress too far here. I swear, but you know, if you go back over the last 20 years, this even emerges, this is a even emergency periodically as position taking by Texas governors in response to other streams in the party, you know, One of the first real public breaks and you know, people in, you know, the game knew that there was not a lot of love loss between team Perry and team George W.

Bush in the late nineties and early two thousands over various issues. But one of the first times that Rick Perry really kind of publicly. Cross the Republican president at the time, former, Texas, governor George W. Bush was over these issues. So, you know, it’s also, it’s also got this subtle element of, you know, sometimes.

Sometimes the Texas federal government friction. I mean, I think you’re right. It’s, it’s most pronounced as we’ve seen in the last 15 years between democratic and Republican, Republican, uh, Republicans in Texas and Democrats in Washington, DC, but it can also sometimes be a way of position yourselves internally in the Republican.

Yeah. Yeah, no, that’s definitely. So, you know, so that’s also a, you know, a thing, you know, in, in some ways, I mean, some of it is just, it kind of goes back to the Sam’s point a tiny bit, although that’s more about who has the opportunity to do what the Sanchez just doesn’t have any border with Mexico, which I’m sure he’s, you know, he might’ve been well, he might invade Louisiana from the panel to try to.

Well, he wants to free that he wants to free the Cajun folk who really see themselves as Floridians. Right, right. Exactly. You know, and then, and then kind of get into east Texas. And once you’re in Louisiana, while east Texas, you know, it’s like the whole golf should be yours. Right. And this is, you know, there’s a funny thing about how Perry had to dial back the busing thing quickly, because one of the things that avid had to dial back the bus and he, because one of the things that was in the ether was peop there were people going well, isn’t that what Putin is doing?

Ukrainians and rushes making them get on buses and go to Russia. I mean, I actually heard that. So I brought up the issue of the fact that, I mean, there is some optics about the idea of like, oh, so you’re giving free rides to undocumented immigrants to get out of town. Yeah. The fall back position. And, and I would say that after the initial rush of attention to this, it’s kind of gone away in the last five, six days.

It was a quick hit at a more meta level in a, in an explicit. Transition, you know, when you’re talking about kind of thinking back over the 20 years and kind of the Perry, Bush dynamics, and then kind of, you know, I mean the one thing that sort of strikes me, this is true about like politics generally is how short people’s memories are.

And this is important because I think, you know, you’re someone who listens to this podcast, you probably are like, well, you know, let me tell you about what Anne Richard and like, And it’s like, and now these people are saying this, but Adrian was like, no one cares. And I, and I love that. And I want the detail.

You can have coffee with me. You can tell me all about it and I’m interested. But when it comes to like thinking about voters, it’s like what happened within the last like six to, you know, 18 months is kind of something that happened. That was big. I mean, get exact well, that’s the thing, you know, we’ve seen and there’s some polling out right now than in like, you know, and I, we don’t do this.

I think it’s a stupid question. I’m not going to point fingers at anybody, but like, Figure out, you know, how do we assess blame here? Like who, who should we blame for inflation? And it’s like, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Congress. It’s like, or the news media. And it’s like, yeah, this is stupid. Of course, for the Russians.

It’s like, well, yeah, of course. You’re gonna say Joe Biden, like, he’s the president. It’s a stupid question, you know? And so. Anyway, but I actually think, you know, the question then becomes, so Abbott’s pivoted to the middle, but it raises this kind of this broader issue about like, you know, we’re, we’re living in something right now.

And the question, if you say right now, you got a norm, you know, just sort of your average kind of voter, right? And you say, Hey, you know, what’s a bigger issue right now, inflation or immigration inflation is going up. I think for most people, if you put in a head to head, now, I’m not saying it’s not, you know, you see what the national, but, but here’s the thing, but here’s, here’s I know you’re, you’re shaking your head now, let me just say pondering ponder it because here’s the thing I would say.

But part of that is because of something that I think is kind of interesting about this environment, right? Which is the. You know, going back thing, Joe, Biden’s been in office for less than two years, and somehow he’s responsible for all of the immigrants at the border and all of the inflation that we’re experiencing in his, you know, 14 months in office.

Fine. I don’t care. As I said, you know, politics is politics. Greg Abbott has been an offense since 2014 and apparently bears no responsibility for any of Texas’s sort of lackluster recovery from the pandemic. I think that’s great for Greg Abbott, but then the question becomes, why would I engage in a policy that could directly contribute to inflation the economic issue in search of a pie of an ineffective policy to show that I’m still as tough as I said, I was on the border, which again, no, one’s really like, no, one’s trying to compete with you on the.

At this point. So to me, it’s like what I think, you know, early on the path you brought up the whole, the, as Astro declarations and Abbott at various points has played with this idea of like, can we mix this immigration border security? And COVID issue is sort of one thing which has always been curious, cause it’s like, COVID is not a big deal if it’s in Amarillo, but it is a big deal if it’s coming from across the border and he’s been playing with that idea and stuff, but now you’re bringing inflation into this area of immigration and border security.

And so I think, you know, if you, again, if someone goes and reads the agenda piece we read and we talked about, you know, so what’s Abbott trying to do, right. He’s talking to set aside some time. You might want to think about a couple of settings. Yeah. It’s a long read. But if you look at, you know, what we talk about from, you know, the O’Rourke campaign, the strategy for the Aurora coat campaign is to try to make the election a referendum on Abbott.

You focus has been on the winter storm. It’s been on the COVID response, but ultimately like right now, All polling is really negative. National polling is really negative. State level. Polling is really negative. People are unhappy with the direction of stay. They’re unhappy the direction of the country.

They’re negative rate, uh, uh, ratings of the economy. They have native negative ratings of their own personal economic situations. And to the extent that, you know, Abbott’s basically taking this sort of quixotic border security, you know, thing, and moving it into a point where you can say is this actually making the economic situation?

Whereas it seems to me that. Silly risks to take. So what do you think about that, Jim? Um, I mean, look, you know, I, I’m probably about 75% there with you, but in this case, this, this might be about. Yeah. Not, not finding the Venn diagram, but getting the cable all the way to the house, you know, I’m not sure what I mean by that is yeah.

I mean, I think all of this is sort of shortsighted and, and a little riskier than we’re used to seeing Greg Abbott be perhaps in that sense. Right. Um, because I, you know, I don’t disagree with the fact. You know, particularly the part of the argument that, you know, I have no doubt that in the next poll we do, which will be pretty soon, we will see the economy.

Competing pretty strongly with people, you know, in, in people’s estimation of the most important problem facing certainly facing the country. You know, but I guess the question is, I mean, I mean, as you were, as you were laying that argument out, I was kind of thinking, well, I guess we’ll see. Now, now it’s not the same.

One-to-one trade-off setup that yet, but I mean, you know, the most important problem response will be a slight heat check on that argument. But I guess the other thing that I would say would actually go back to what you were saying a minute ago, which is, you know,

I think people do have pretty over simplified. Understandings of things like inflation. Right. Right. And, you know, and so, you know, how am I, you know, I probably judge the risk here a little bit lower than you’re suggesting, although you didn’t, you know, in terms of this going south on Abbott, just because I think that, you know, um, You know, as, as you know, a political science, I think it was attributed to Brenda.

This was a pretending to what’s his name, Brendan and I, and on Twitter. But I do think that that your average voter does have what he has called or is attributed to him, the green lantern theory of the presidency in which, you know, the president is expected to have magic powers to solve every problem.

And therefore, any problem that comes up other political entrepreneurs can readily. Yeah, you know, blame them for that problem. So, you know, to the extent that this goes south and, and, you know, look at, you know, uh, John Moritz had a story carried on the wires this morning or late yesterday that, you know, deal work campaign, not surprisingly is integrating this or work, had a big event yesterday talking about the economic damage, trying to, you know, make the argument that you’re making.

I, you know, but it goes back to a broader problem. We’ve talked about. I mean, you have to be able to, you know, actually it’s a problem that we’ve talked about a lot and I don’t, I don’t have a clear kind of sense for which is. You know, how do you balance two things, right. On one hand, there’s powerful tendency for people to look at these, you know, a big macro economic problem, like inflation have enough of an understanding to see what the inputs are and to realize that there’s, this is multicast.

And that you shouldn’t just go, you know, whose fault this is, or, you know, I shouldn’t say you shouldn’t, it’s useless to say that, but you’re not, it’s, it’s a faulty explanation to go, you know what? The president caused this inflation, the president could fix this and he’s not. Yeah, no to saying, well, you know, Greg Abbott is making it worse by, you know, doing this, you know, by, by, you know, imposing these, insert, these, these inspections, but the other, you know, but the one other piece I would add to that is also, well, let’s, let’s stick with that.

I am going to add the other piece, just cause it’s. You know, it’s almost residual, but there is a, I think probably little understood, but I suspect very present feeling out there about, because these are a history of, this is a policy issue in Texas about Mexican trucks. We’re not just talking trucks, which a lot of your average highway drivers don’t like anyway.

And speaking of complex policy problems, I don’t know how many times you’ve been on the freeway and maybe even yourself and gone, oh, Athan trucks, you know, people don’t go, oh, that’s trucks, you know, he’s trying to get like good jeans. He’s trying to get products to so that I can get, I should say my wife was raised by a truck driver.

So we don’t say that. So you might have a diff, but see, we have a different view, but not just any truck. Yeah. A Mexican truck. Well, let me just, let me just throw this out there. I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but what I, what I would say is is that, you know, what started for a Rourke is a very difficult sell.

Right. Trying to link Abbott, uh, you know, link link, people’s dissatisfaction with the state, towards our Abbott stewardship of the state broadly, you know, we to look, you know, if it’s going to rely on the winter storm, you know, you’re kinda, you’re out of luck. I mean, that’s, that’s receding in people’s memories.

Like, you know, are barring some sort of other events, you know, that’s not really going to like activate people cause just too far away at this point. Right. But the issue of inflation. Ever present for everybody. It affects everything. It’s affecting jobs. It’s affecting housing, it’s affecting, you know, kitchen table issues.

And you see like the cost of gasoline, the cost of groceries of the things that are driving us. And this affects. Weekly basis now, you know, it’s one thing we say, well, operation, lone star, we’ve got all these people that are, well, you say, well, you know? Yeah. But like we do think the board needs to be secure and like, this is what the cost is.

So be it right. But now, and I’m sure economist already doing this, you know, very quickly, but it’s like, well, how much of the day does it cost to inspect every single truck? How much GDP? I mean, basically whatever, you know, if I’m, you know, the, you know, the word came it’s like, what is the largest number from among the things that GDP?

Is it, whatever is it last person, but now you can say, look. Abbott’s not addressing something seriously. He’s not focused on the thing that people in this state are focused on, which are the things that you’d imagine. Most of our focus on is they’re focused on, you know, housing, good jobs, you know, being able to get to, and from those things, basic state of kitchen table issues, we might call them kitchen table issues.

You say, but instead Abbott is mobilizing state resources to the tune of fill in the blank dollars per day. Right. And the thing, you know, and I was just like, you’re creating the bridge and I can’t get any, I can’t get any lettuce or I work in the Toyota factory and I can go to work because there’s no parts.

Right. All because, you know, he wants to get reluctant. He thinks this is going to help. I mean, it’s me. Like you are creating the bridge there that honestly, the org campaign really needs. And the thing is, I think the damage is already done because what happens either, they keep doing this and the costs keep adding up and it’s just becomes a big, big mess.

And he’s going to eventually, I would say, I mean, honestly look like a fool because of the cost of all this or the flip side is we, you know, the policy gets rescinded at some point, but then you say, okay, for a seven day political stunt or for a 10 day or a two week, the cost of the state of Texas was X billion dollars.

Right. I mean, look now again, you still have to land it. You still have to deliver all that. Yeah, but the point is, I think where there wasn’t a bridge before to make this point, you know, now you can basically take the bridge of like, look, this extreme is the extremism on these particular policy areas is actually affecting kitchen table issues.

It’s one thing for people to kind of passively say, yeah, you know, I’m more or less agree with this or whatever, but I think when you start to actually hit people in the place where they’re actually do have serious concerns, I think that, you know, I think that kind of throws a wrench into this, and I do think it creates a bridge for a Rourke, whether he can use it, whether he can mobilize all these things who knows, but I, you know, I’m, I’m skeptical that this is, uh, you know, I mean, I think it’s a bad policy idea, but from a political standpoint, I’m very skeptical.

I think that’s fair. I think, you know, I mean, I think it’s, we’ve been, we’ve said many times and you know, most everybody is saying this now because that’s kind of obvious, you know, that for bitter O’Rourke to, you know, have a shot at actually winning this rather, or even getting close, but certainly at winning this, you know, something in the fundamentals have got to change.

Right. So, you know, I mean, I think it’s fair to say. You know, one at one point removed, the, something could be, you know, the rise of inflation and the general. And we should also note, I mean, overall right now the general economy is actually in pretty good shape. Inflation is a big problem. Can I say something about that real quick?

Just. And I think we’re also at a point, you know, maybe in sort of the measurement of public opinion and people’s yummy, you’re talking about, people’s simple the economy. We could spend a lot of time just talking about that, but I want to say, like, I think we’re kind of at a point now where we should just expect about half the population is always gonna be dissatisfied with the economy.

Yeah. I mean, and so that’s, so even this idea of like what, you know, like what is a measure of the economy that’s valid at this point? Well, it’s like, well, you know, I think it matters a lot more at the margins and in the main, you know, it’ll be interesting to see what. I think it’s me. Just see what happened with independence, you know, in the wake of all this.

So let me just finish that thought. I mean, I think. I agree. I mean, I, you know, look, it would be malpractice for the O’Rourke campaign to not see this as a possible opportunity. So maybe we’re just, you know, our, our difference in interpretation here may just be one of the magnitude or, you know, do I think they pro they might unnecessarily be giving the O’Rourke campaign, you know, a possible opening.

Yeah, probably D you know, if we really, you know, do the trade-offs, I think it’s a little too early to tell. I mean, as you were sort of implying, we’ll see how long they do this for, I mean, the Abbott campaign has also been pretty good about doing stuff and then just moving on and quietly, you know, and this is a sign of any good.

You know, anybody in a position of governance with some political sense knows how to quietly ramp down something. And I think they are pretty good at that, you know, and move on to the next thing and be confident that, you know, we’re just going to keep moving onto the next thing. And in that sense, I think this is a little.

Actually consistent, maybe a little bit riskier, a little riskier. Well, I just think it’s consistent with, you know, what we were saying. You know what we were suggesting in the piece, we wrote a couple of weeks ago, which is, you know, to the extent with a bunch of caveats, that one part of campaign strategy is to keep the policy agenda that is central to the campaign and to your messaging in areas that favor.

And don’t favor, you know, there’s, there’s an intersection here between, depending on how it shakes out that there’s a little bit of advantage for, for both campaigns, which is kind of what you’re suggesting. I think, I guess I’m just a. I’m pretty confident in the, in the Abbott campaign’s ability to continue rotating onto the next thing while, you know, the, the O’Rourke campaign is understandably trying to get some traction with this and trying to upset the dynamic.

I’m just not very confident. This is quite enough to do that. I’ll be quick. I mean, there’s a risk to both, right? And the risk is for Abbott that, you know, by bringing, you know, economic, uh, anxiety into the immigration, into the way that he’s prosecuted or seems to be, you know, Executing his, you know, sort of border strategy, you know, it, it re it risks, muddling the message in a way that could be disadvantageous to, but will require the, you know, the Orora campaign’s ability to like w get into the immigration area and then reinforce the fact that, you know, this is actually what you should be looking at.

The problem of course, is if you’re a Rourke, you have to get into the immigration area. And as you saw this very difficult, what did he do today or yesterday? He quickly, you know, distanced himself further from Biden, distanced himself further from, uh, the title 42 reveal revocation, right? And we know, and that’s the other thing too.

We know that. We already said it, but you know, Biden’s numbers and texts on immigration are poor. And so ultimately, you know, that’s the risk for, you know, I think our work here and obviously the reward for Abbott having said all that. Right. And you think like, okay, let’s say with just a coin flip as to who wins on this, on the shaping of this doesn’t mean they win the election on the shaping of this.

I think by. Safe to assume Abbott is going to, because of the fact that he has a lot of resources and a lot of success and, you know, a state that has backed kind of his approach. So it would be a sea change to see something else, which I think is why it is reasonable to assume that it won’t affect him by, I mean, I think another way of, of sort of putting all that is, you know, What the one thing that would help the Aurora campaign was to be able to end this battle for public attention and, and agenda setting in the campaign.

You know, is there something that would give the, your work campaign? The. Yeah. And not make them reactive. I just don’t think this is it right. I mean, it could be, but I, you know, I’ll be surprised and we’ll see what happens. I mean, I would say, I mean, the thing comes to my head is, you know, see what happens, the Supreme court rules on the Mississippi case.

Right. But that would be a different thing, right? That’s not, that’s not this. Okay. I think we have decomposed this to the nth degree. Uh, Josh, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, uh, good luck with your presentation this afternoon and I’m looking forward. And thanks to our excellent production crew here in the liberal arts development studio in particular, the crack audio team here.

Um, I’m Jim Henson and, uh, the material that we’ve referred to here in particular, the article on agenda setting, which we’ve been flogging, you’ll find at Texas politics dot U, texas.edu. Have a good rest of the week and we’ll be back next week with another second reading podcast.

The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin. .