August 24th, 2021 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] Welcome to the 2nd 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 point must a 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 for the Week of August 23, 2021. I’m Jim Henson, director of the texas politics project at the University of texas at Austin and happy to be joined again today by josh blank research and polling director for the same texas politics projects. Howdy. So just there’s a lot going on kind of, I guess. Yeah, jeez, I don’t know, it’s uh it’s a long list, a laundry list of things going on. Well, I think for the last couple of times that we’ve done this, we’ve we’re kind of tracking public opinion and the rise of the pandemic and its impact on people and policy and politics in the state. And I think for shouldn’t shouldn’t somebody Good one. So for the last few weeks we um you know, we kind of said, well, you know, well, and there’s also all this stuff going on in the legislature, but they were kind of stalled out because of the Democratic Corum break and I think a couple of times we stopped to talk a little bit about filling in, you know, some of the blanks there and talking about some of the some aspects of that, but, you know, here we are, the legislature appears to be back in business uh after the end of the Democratic corn break that had paralyzed the legislature for the entirety of the first special session, called the Governor Abbott immediately upon the end of the regular session and which carried into the first couple of weeks of the second special session called also called, of course by the governor. You know, as democrats seemed to as a group be trying to figure out whether there was a shared strategy and if so what it was, I think they’re still trying to figure that out a state that is continuing. So, um you know, at the end of last week, enough democrats came back to the floor of the House to for the House to barely make a quorum, you know, the it’s a matter of dispute among some, some democrats and progressives with train’s left the station. So we’re gonna set that dispute aside only, you know, the note that, you know, the threshold was even lowered by a member because there are two vacancies in the House for for various reasons right now. Um but making a slightly reduced quorum was enough to enable the House majority to refer bills to committee and to start the process of addressing some of the the agenda items that were on Governor Abbott special session call though, you know, with only two weeks left in the session, it’s unlikely they’re going to get to everything. Well, I well, you know, note given, You know, the pace and the agendas and the speed with which the committees are meeting and going through their agendas. They’re going to give it the college try not that everybody believes in college is good, don’t get me wrong. Yeah. If the college try means 40 minutes of testimony, for example. So, you know, on monday, you know, and then in terms of the politics to this, on on monday of this week, more democrats returned, you know, which, you know, making it look in some ways as if the democrats efforts to derail or or delay the process, at least at the state level was played out. Now, to be fair, there was always a national political play at work here and I, you know, we’ll come back to that. But you know, I mean, in terms of seeing where the legislature is right now, the most telling thing is that the catalyst for the Corum break the Republican sponsored voting bill is moving and and moving with due speed. It seems to me the house version of the bill, which differs slightly from the Senate version um passed out of committee late monday is expected to go to the floor after what I would expect to be a very brief stop in the calendar’s committee um, like that probably shouldn’t even take off its shoes that bill. It’s gonna, it’s gonna go in there and then get ushered out a rolling stop. So we, yeah, so we think that that’s going to be no later than next week. There’s a bunch else on the agenda, right? It also seems to be moving. That’s right. I mean, I think, you know, we’ve, we’ve sort of hinted at this before and I think we’ll talk about a little bit today. But I mean it’s not as though the voting bill is the only thing on the special session call, obviously if you’re listening to this, you know that, but I mean, the politics of it are all pointing in the same direction, which is that in addition to the voting bill, which the democrats have. You know, again, we’re willing to leave their homes in the state for months on end to derail. There’s also a bunch of other stuff that, you know, this is probably equally, are very close to equally as distasteful to democrats of that. So, you know, we’re talking about big increasing border security spending, you know, strict regulation of what teams transgender kids can play for tryout for should they want to, uh, you know, still more limitations on abortion. You know, still more legislation talking about, you know, curriculum to relate to the teaching of racism. So there’s, you know, and I think that’s, I think that’s all that it’s hard to tell with within the, the broad confines of special session calls and I think there’s a couple other things on there that for sure democrats are not pleased about addressing like, like changing the corn breaking rules. Well, they well, that’ll never happen. I mean, we’ll see, I mean that seems pretty unlikely to happen, but I mean, I would say more so, I mean, the thing that I think of as you know, there’s something in there that I think is probably the shell for limiting the ability to effort of cities to require paid sick leave, right, things like that. So there’s there’s plenty not to like if you’re a democrat coming back. Yeah. And I think, um, you know, to foreshadow or you know, something else will hit on. You know, there are a lot of things that the democrats don’t like. But I think what’s interesting is that not all democrats dislike all of those things with the same intensity and that’s that’s causing some friction right now, which will get too. But for now, I mean, in terms of thinking about, you know, where where things stand for the democrats, I mean, critics of the democrats, I mean, you know, republicans with a certain amount of shopping for it, but even democratic, you know, critics who of course there are always many because, you know, that’s the nature of the democrats, Internal critics, you know, are saying, you know, did this make any difference? And you know, the democrats have an answer, I, you know, how persuasive do you think it is? Well, let’s look at that, I guess we should, you know, to be fair, look at the answer, give them okay, we’ll give him a fair, a fair shake. Right? So, so the answer as far as I read it, and I think the point that you’re making is there’s no one answer first and foremost, because they’re different democrats who are saying different, we’re wrapping what they’ve done in different packages. So, but I mean, they sort of tend to center on a couple couple sets of arguments is one, you know, this drew a lot of national attention and I think I’ve heard, you know, some say it actually reset the national conversation, especially by democrats going to Washington wasn’t just even about texas, it was about making sure that there was a face to the republican efforts to limit voting access across a lot of states. Texas is a big state is a dramatic act on tv a lot on cable news, like clearly drew attention. You know, in a way that was not just about texas the same time drew a lot of attention in texas. I mean, this is what a lot of the news coverage around politics has been really focused on over the last month and a half. And I would say republicans have spent much of the last month and have really trying to reframe the debate around the voting and election bill because of all that attention. So really, which is actually further, you know, lead to more attention. Um, you know, I would say additionally, you know, it has run down some of the clock. I mean, you know, the governor has promised to call multiple special sessions until, you know, his priorities are passed now, it’s not clear how many of his priorities or his like one a priorities and how many are kind of like one B, one C and two that we could maybe not deal with until the next time. But there’s, you know, there are some, I would say, you know, I would say there’s a reasonably hard deadline coming up and it’s called the election and then redistricting is a big part of that. So ultimately, you know, there are only two weeks left in the second called special session that’s going to limit how much they can do within that time period. The House is not the Senate, Even if they move stuff through committee really quickly, they’re still going to have delays in getting this stuff worked out because, you know, they’re a rowdy bunch and because they just have more rules they have to follow. But also redistricting is coming up and that’s going to take a lot of time and attention and I’m not sure that they’re going to want to be dealing with the internal politics of redistricting along with the nastiness of all this other stuff of the exact same time, So I think there are some things that they’ve accomplished, I would say in that sense, that would be sort of the argument. I think I’m seeing something. I mean, I think it’s funny, I mean, is i this is only now sort of occurring to me. Not really, but I mean, I think that democrats all along, I’ve said that this was taking an ethical and moral stand that would be important to their constituents, whether they won or lost. And I think it’s fair to mention that whether it’s, you know, whether they’ve achieved that or not, I think, you know, again, with all of these, I think all of these are kind of arguable in terms of, you know, the I mean, there was definitely a kind of call and response that went on between the republicans and I’m sorry between the democrats that left and the governor and other republicans, but particularly the governor, and in some ways just definitely kind of got out of hand, in the sense of, you know, in the sense of the governor decided to veto the legislative such a you know, the legislative article of the budget and picking a fight with, you know, seemingly unnecessary unnecessarily with potentially, you know, the entire legislature, certainly with the House. Um and so, you know, there was something about provoking your enemy when you’re gonna be out soon Sue or somebody about provoking your enemy when you’re weak. You know, if one might argue that they got some short term gain out of that, but I, you know, so if you’re asking if there’s other things that I could put on the list if I was, if I was going to make the case, I, you know, and if I don’t sound persuaded, it’s because I’m not entirely, but it’s funny, so I think it’s fair to mention a couple of those things, You know, it’s funny, I’m sitting here thinking how, how, you know, cynical, I am sitting here saying, oh well, and also their constituents, Hey, that’s so they’re representing their Yeah, of course, of course that to know. Well, and that’s right. I mean, I’m kind of, yeah, and I’m kind of blinding up for, I want to go next a little bit because I think that was true, but I think that’s also fed some unintended consequences given the fact that it’s ending up the way it is. So, you know, one of the big unintended consequences is that, you know, if we focus on the House again, since that’s where we’re all focused right now, I mean, the Senate as I don’t remember when the last time the senate met was because they passed all the bills and and God, they actually are getting a little bit of summer, they don’t like Austin right now. So um well, I guess it’s, I guess it still smells enough like liberty out there to, to enjoy yourself. But, um, you know, one of the unintended consequences, this is really added additional kind of, you know, fishing more fissures and there’s more fracturing in a house that was already fractured. And I don’t even mean, you know, just between democrats and republicans. I mean, it’s kind of all over the place in the sense that, you know, on one hand, you know, we’ve seen as much, uh, nasty public infighting among democrats in the House as, Yeah, I’ve seen in a long time, uh, you know, I mean, look, this stuff is all, you know, there’s always agree this stuff going on in the background and, you know, you know, the somebody punching somebody out in a caucus or something like this, but but the kind of public criticism of the democrats that came back by democrats, that, that weren’t didn’t approve of that tactic was very direct. And, and it’s now picked up among some of these democrat, you know, some some democratic interest groups, you know, and that’s kind of a, you know what I was alluding to when we talked about, you know, a lot of the other issues on the agenda are important to democratic constituencies, but they’re not of equal importance and that’s really coming out in terms of some of the criticism that the democrats who are in the first wave or two of returning to the House are receiving now, look, this is on social media, we’ll see if, you know, people put their money or their candidates, their, their their primary challenges where their mouths are on twitter, but I’m, you know, there are a lot of, there are a lot of pre registered candidates, Jeff blaylock’s text in elections, texas, election source, you know, was mentioning that there the cheat sheet that they’re compiling, where they compile everybody, you know, who is expressing direct interest or is registered, um you know, has a lot of entries and it’s on both sides. Yeah, and it’s interesting in the sense that, I mean, you know, I think we’re kind of, we’re used to the, what we often refer to as the dissident right, you know, the out of power, you know, I mean, this is an important part of this conversation will set aside everything but the out of power republicans who are criticizing republicans within the process, no matter how much they do for not doing enough. And this sort of national conversation, you know, sort of, you know, with the, the figurehead being, you know, alexandria Ocasio Cortez of new york, and this idea of uh, you know, primary challenges of moderate democrats from, from progressive democrats and sort of, you know, the fissures that creates, particularly this has been more sort of in the Northeast uh, in some other place, we hadn’t really seen too much of texas a little bit, just cause this narrows down there in Congress, but not a lot and, you know, you wonder, you know, is this going to be the catalyst for more of that, and, you know, this is one of the many questions that kind of, remains to be seen, right? Yeah, I think that’s right, and, you know, that, yeah, that’s kinda what is getting that, that, you know, I mean, it’s kind of, broken out in the open, in a way that it’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out, and, you know, this is, you know, and and and we’re also seeing this in terms of the, kind of, institutional, far right contention, uh, in the Republican caucus, in between, I’m gonna dissident conservatives in the House, or, you know, just that it might even be wrong, and this, you know, militant conservatives in the House and the Speaker, um, you know, for those that were watching, you know, the House floor yesterday, uh, you know, some of the most, you know, three or four of the most conservative republicans were at the back mike doing their best to, uh, you know, spoil the moment for Speaker feeling, I think, in a certain way, you know, standing back and, you know, calling up making parliamentary inquiry after Parliamentary inquiry, because they want to get to punishing the democrats, they say right away, or at least they want to demonstrate their will to do so on camera. Now, those things are not mutually exclusive, but clearly this went from, okay, we’ve got a quorum, we’re gonna get we’re gonna get some business done. We’ve warned the democrats out there back to, you know, the republicans and the, you know, the republican backbenchers giving the speaker a hard time about not being tough enough on them, so, you know, letting them get away with it. Yeah, and that’s kind of why I call, you know, talking about fragmentation, that that’s, you know, it’s not just, you know, the opening up of, you know, just, you know, the democrat, you know, this fisher, as you say, is similar to the national division between, you know, that we’re seeing in democratic politics uh at the national level in Congress, but also among republicans, but, you know, you and I we’ve talked a bit recently and been digging around on some of the backdrop to this right, which, you know, doesn’t explain all the institutional fighting, you know, that has to do with institutional design in politics. But the ideological, you know, kind of polarization of the parties in the state has a kind of interesting character that shows up in our polling, right? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, one of the things that that I would, you know, say if I’m just describing the right for a second before I jump to the left, you know, if you’re thinking about sort of conservatism in the state, you know, I would say the consistency of the conservative identification among republicans is just a notable feature of texas, public opinion and really what’s kind of shifted is not, you know, I would say the opinions of republicans in the state, but it’s actually the policy, right. And I’ve been saying this a lot actually recently, which is that as you get more and more conservative policy, you know, the only way to satisfy conservative impulses with still yet more conservative policy. And so we’re starting to see some interesting, you know, I would say light divisions on the right, but it doesn’t really compare to what we see in some ways on the left. It’s not about divisions, but it’s about, you know, so I think a shift in attitudes in texas that’s sort of notable and it really happened over the course of the trump presidency, where when we ask democrats, you know, how to how they identify ideologically, you know, unsurprisingly this is texas, it wasn’t like, you know, they were all jumping up and down screaming. Our progressives were liberals, you know, move the state to the left, but over the trump presidency, there was a polarization uh of democrats, you saw a lot less, a lot, much, many fewer democrats are willing to identify as moderates, many more were willing to identify as liberals and that has maintained itself into the beginning of the biden presents and we ask the question kind of directly, which as we say, you know, to democrats, you know, our our democratic, So we only ask the democrats, as we asked republicans, the inverse question for democrats. We say, you know, our democratic politicians in texas, you know, basically liberal enough to liberal or not liberal enough. And at this point, the plurality of Texas, Democrats, or, I’m sorry, back in 2017, of Texas, Democrats said that they were liberal enough, Uh, said not liberal enough today, it was 33%, say liberal enough in April 21. So that’s a drop of seven points. The share who said that they’re not liberal enough, increased a few points, and, you know, I guess, 9% say to liberal now, 19% they don’t know. So we’re kind of, shifting a little bit, and you’re seeing these sort of, these sort of Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think to, you know, to put a sharp, you know, the sharpen that point, basically, it went from, you know, a pretty clear plurality saying that texas, you know, but, but still not, not an absolute majority 3% when 40% say your liberal enough, and that’s the most frequent response, you know, you get the sense that, you know, that there’s there’s some stability in there, but, you know, that dropped by seven points in that period. And most of the migration went to not liberal enough, even though if you went to to liberal, which suggests that there are, you know, the gravity is shifting, but it’s not, it’s not, it’s not a wholesale rush. I mean, it’s just not a big tilt, you know, that you’re, you know, as you’re seeing the, you know, the kind of delayed following of the state Democratic Party and the National Democratic Party direction to oversimplify just a little. Um, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing this kind of friction a little bit more, particularly as the other party moves farther to the right. And it makes sense in the historical sweep to write, I mean, democrats become more competitive here and they’re becoming more competitive, you know, really on the backs of younger, you know, more diverse and more urban, you know, urban living voters in the state. You know, you’re bringing new voters into a party. I mean, I remember a couple years ago at a tribute festival and this is a story I’m telling you. I’m actually telling your story. So it’ll just good. You were, you were a tribute festival, that was somebody I won’t say who you can decide if you want to is a well known political commentator who basically was sort of Say, Hey, look, doing with the Texas, Democrats are gonna, you know, be successful. I think it was in 2018 maybe is that they can appeal to moderate whites again. And this has been, you know, this was sort of a discussion in the party for a number of years was, okay, you know, the democrats, they’ve got, they’ve got this, you know, difficult, you know, choice here. I mean, there’s almost a Sophie so it’s like, well, we can go and try to get the moderate whites, but then we’re not going to have the progressive young people and the people of color, it’s like, well, or we could focus on progressives and people of color, but we’re not gonna have a moderate whites. And that decision, I think has been made at this point. But I think what that decision has been made with us to some, I would say a statewide level, probably, but it has the effect that it creates that friction where you do see people saying no to liberal. Well, you know, what’s interesting about that? It’s funny, you would say the decision being made, because I, well, as you tell that story, which, you know, I love being peripheral, having a walk on role in, but there’s uh there’s a there’s a funny peace to that, which is that, you know, I think that discussion is still pretty active behind the scenes, even if the policy thrust that we see from elected officials is, you know, is, as you describe it, I think more clearly, you know, more more to the left, more liberal, more progressive, whatever. But there’s a piece of that, that’s really interesting, which is, have we really seen the litmus test of that until we have more statewide democrats who are really in, you know, the push comes to shove position of having to balance those those constituencies and balance those those impulses. I don’t think we’re ever going to find that litmus test, and I’ll tell you why is because the democrats are never going to win again. No, because no democrat is gonna win. No, no, I mean, no, I mean, I think it’s it’s partially that, but I mean, no, because no democrat is going to win by appealing, you know, as a moderate at this point. I think we’ve seen but, you know, I mean, just people win running one way and then govern another way. No, but there’s a specific technical reason, I mean, that I don’t mean that it’s not possible. I mean, I think we’ve seen a lot of, I’ve seen a lot of, you know, let’s say older school, you know, usually white male Democratic politicians run for statewide office, or at least try to get the nomination to run for statewide office over the last 10 years with with pretty limited success if there’s competition. I think the issue is I don’t think you can run as a moderate democrat appealing to sort of, you know, the moderate white voters in the state and get the kind of funding, you need to be competitive in that position. I think at this point, the money is behind the progressive candidate. So I think that’s where I would see it being difficult to imagine how it happens from a technical standpoint. Yeah, you know, I’d have to think about that a little bit more. Um Well, I just I just I just thought of it and just said it, I mean, I think it might be wrong, it depends a little bit on, you know, how you sort of, understand, you know, who the key, I mean, look, the candidates are going to matter, you know, to some degree, but also, you know, where that money is coming from. I mean, I think one thing that’s interesting about that is that it does, I mean, what’s, you know, something that buttresses that argument is that it’s likely that no Democratic candidate is going to be the breakthrough candidate here without outside money, Right, and that outside money is likely to be more liberal, but there are also, you know, interesting questions about the kind of, you know, the political economy of of raising money as a democrat, you know, within the universe of Democratic voters, and that’s like not. So, I mean, I think, I think part of what I’ve always been unpersuaded by by the, you know, we got to appeal to those moderate white voters. I mean, I don’t think there are that many of those moderate white voters, I think white voters are probably, you know, we should look at this as closely polarized as are everyone else. Um but it also, I mean, but it also just it’s just it’s sort of assumes that the democrats are already competitive and that they’re solid with their base and that they can just appeal to kind of the voters that they need to get them across the finish line. But we know from our own polling, we know from exit polling, the majority of Democratic voters in texas are people of color, there are women and that, you know, that kind of makes up, again, that makes up the majority, and then you have about, you know, probably about a third who are, you know, white liberals and then a mixture of the rest, so make up about the other 20% and it will be complicate that factor in with one more thing, which is that if you think about, you know, and again, this is not true on all issues, but on many, you know, take, for example, the police, the policing issue, you know, the white liberals in the party are as a group tend to be in on many issues more liberal than are the hispanic and black voters, they tend to be certainly than the hispanic voters. If they’re if they’re interested in winning elections, they tend to be a little bit out over their skis. So, you know, so that that’s another that’s another piece here. So we should wind this up because we’re running out of time. But, I mean, I think to go back then to circle back to where the democrats are. And, I mean, I think, you know, the state of play for democrats hopes of having something to show for this, I think are still in the hands to some degree, you know, in the final analysis of what’s going to happen in Washington, because, you know, they’re going to be able to make the argument that they moderated the voting bill which is going to pass, but they’re still going to be some things in there. The democratic constituencies are going to hate, particularly those that are focused on elections and and voting law. Um you know, there is no, there is nothing in this bill that is going to make progress texas or the texas civil rights project, feel like, you know, they really like brought home the bacon on this. Right? I mean, I mean, I think, you know, not to say that those people aren’t reasonable, they will recognize that the bill could have was worse in its first in stan shih ation back in mid May or, and that’s that’s that’s the new argument now that I think is kind of yeah, right now, and I think that’s what it’s good that that’s the new argument, cause that’s what they got, but you know, as we speak, you know, chuck schumer and nancy Pelosi are trying to get the trying to move the john lewiS funding rights act, which would then give, you know, a new set of legal tools, at least as written now to texas democrats to, to challenge laws like this, like they used to be able to prior to roberts court’s decisions that gutted the voting rights act. So I think that’s hovering out there, but that’s also, you know, I don’t know how much you’ve been following the national stuff, but um you know, there has been some brutal fighting going on inside the Democratic caucus at the national level. You know, the latest reporting today seemed to be that that the speaker had once again gained the upper hand as a lot of the insiders had kind of predicted she would. Um interesting and interestingly enough, the big meeting that was being held today was not being held in the speaker’s office, it was being held in Steny Hoyer’s office who is, you know, the second ranking democrat behind Speaker Pelosi at one time, a contender to be speaker, a competitor um but also by his nature, a much more moderate democrat, even though he’s been, you know, a team player for the democrats and all this to be confused about that, but I think it’s telling that his good offices are being used for the final negotiations hammering this out. Now. The the immediate thing is the relationship between the big spending bill and uh the infrastructure bill, but the voting rights, voting rights legislation got wrapped into that as a way of them trying to put pressure on the moderates, which I thought was politically very admirable and smart and you know, especially ruthless, which I kind of admired. Um and so I think we come up, we need to watch that because it’s hard, you know, to look at where we are now and think that this session is going to end without them passing that voting bill. And you know, without, you know, some republicans are out for some blood. And I think that, you know, in the in the texas house and I think there there’s going to have, you know, someone’s gonna have to pay a price and it’s going to be interesting to see who they are, you know, as you and I have talked about, you know, a lot of the people that broke away early from the Democratic resistance were people that were closer to management in the house and had more to use people that had chairmanships, people that had positions or people that had been part of the effort to get feeling elected speaker instead of another republican. And I think we have not seen all of the politics of that play out yet. I doubt it, you know. And so the next couple of weeks will be will be very interesting to see how that develops. We are couple minutes past 30 minutes. I’m going to thank josh thank our folks in the Liberal Arts development studio in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of texas at Austin. Uh we talked about a lot of data today. I urge you to look at the data we talked about and and much more at texas politics dot utexas dot e d u. And so thank you for listening. 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