February 2, 2021 – Second Reading

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] 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 point must a female senator raised her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the

[0:00:30 Speaker 1] room?

[0:00:36 Speaker 0] And welcome back to the second reading podcast for the week of February, The 1st 2021. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. And today I’m joined again by Josh Blank, research director for the very same Texas Politics project. Good afternoon, Josh.

[0:00:55 Speaker 1] Thanks for having me back.

[0:00:57 Speaker 0] Well, we missed you. Well, both of the previous guests sent their regards.

[0:01:02 Speaker 1] Well, I’m glad I still have a job,

[0:01:04 Speaker 0] You know, you have this one anyway. Eso um So we had Josh back today. The big event so far this week. If you’re in the world of Texas politics is Governor Greg Abbott, state of the State speech we’re recording Tuesday midday, and he gave it last night on I say last night. And there’s the asterisk on that. Like so many other things, a speech was not the usual state of state. It was delivered in the early evening via a network of local stations owned by next star Andi, delivered from a location, a business in Lockhart, Texas, rather than the usual format, which is to be done live at the capital before the Legislature. And, you know, in one of the, you know, various kind of oddities that I’m sure will come up in this or may come up in our discussion. You know, legislators were piped in via video platforms which were displayed in a grid, and I think with cutaway shots. Is that right? I mean, it looked like

[0:02:05 Speaker 1] there were a few cutaways, but not too many.

[0:02:07 Speaker 0] Yeah. I mean, well, you don’t want to get away from the main show, but I digress. Well, e get ahead of myself. So, uh, eso so it was. It was an unusual status that led to all kinds of speculation that maybe we’ll get to a swell. Um, but, you know, lay the groundwork is most listeners to this will know. You know, this is an address that during legislative session years, is typically used by governors to announce what are the so called emergency items and I think seems like, you know, most every legislative year it some point or another, you have to. You have to explain why emergency is kind of a term of art here. Um, you know these items Air constitutionally defined is quote unquote emergencies because they have a special status in the process. The Texas Constitution prohibits the House and the Senate from passing legislation during the 1st 60 days of a regular session unless each chamber suspends the rule by a vote of 4/5 of the membership, which, of course, isn’t unheard of for certain housekeeping things. But substantively don’t really happen very often. And that rule holds unless the legislation is, is ah applies to a matter that is declared by the governor to be an emergency and for the footnote readers among you. That’s an Article three Section five of the Texas Constitution. Now, as Governor Abbott illustrated yesterday, and as you should be able to take from this, what constitutes an emergency is really anything that the governor wants to be prioritized in in a given session. So for Bill was related to a governor’s emergency items member can do, you can decide to vote on it and earlier in the session to move it through the process earlier. So you know, in most ways you know, most of the time when I think about this and when we talk about this at the you know from from academic. But also a practical perspective. The emergency items, you know, give the governor a shot early in the session at a kind of procedural, you know, at a procedural effort to manage the agenda or to try to to shape the agenda by setting these things aside that can be handled earlier in the session when everything else essentially has to wait, you know, less procedurally. It’s also ah, mechanism for signaling. That is, as we saw last night, I think, related to the governor’s ability as the head of state and as the you know, the person in state government who occupies the quote unquote bully pulpit to signal to other political actors what he or she is interested in. So last night, the governor laid out five areas that he classified his emergency items. Broadband expansion, passing laws to prevent cities from defunding the police bail reform. And he’s one in one of the few areas of real specificity. He cited the Damon Allen act, which we can talk about on probably the broadest category. He talked about the need for the emergency quote unquote of election integrity. And then he talked about civil liability protections for individuals and businesses in the context of Cove It. So, you know, that’s kind of the overview. And those are the things he laid out, and he laid them out very generally. So you were watching closely last night, Josh. I’m wondering at first cut what really stood out to you Or you know what your big take away Wasilla’s is. You watched from home. I assume you were No.

[0:05:40 Speaker 1] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, I think the biggest thing that stood out to me really was was the I guess I would describe it as the narrow definition of the cove in response through the use of the emergency items. Right. So the emergency is really one way to do this. I mean, not everything that’s important is going to be an emergency item. But I thought, you know, listen to the speech overall last night and knowing that, you know, Cove, it is the issue that the state is facing is it’s the also the issue that the country is facing and really, you know, practically most of the other things, you know, that you would wanna have happened. You know, sending kids back to school is getting businesses up and running requires, you know, more containment and more response to co vid what was sort of interested about here. And I think, you know, you know, I’ve been talking about this for, you know, least, you know, probably a couple weeks now. But, you know, I’ve been thinking about you know, what is what is the legislative response to covert look like? And what I mean by that is I don’t necessarily mean, you know, even what are they going to do behind the scenes? And I assume there’s been a lot of stuff that goes on about, like, you know, various technical matters that aren’t really interesting to most people that are important, But the issue is that if voters say, Hey, look, you know the states still reeling from co vid the Legislature is now just showing up because of our system to make a response. What are the the visible and the tangible sort of legislative delivery bols that people could say, You know what? The Legislature did a good job, you know, trying to fix these problems caused by Cove it and I don’t know what those are. And I was kind of hoping last night that the governor could help me out a little bit. But when I look at that whole speech is, you know, in some total it’s like, Well, what are the Kobe specific things? Well, you know, it’s civil liability protections. On the one hand, you know, for businesses. Okay, you know, we’ve been talking about that. The national level alcohol, the ghost sales seemed to be the most. I’m not trying to tongue in cheek. I’m being serious. That seem to be the

[0:07:26 Speaker 0] other thing that you mentioned. It explicitly e words in his mouth. Well, it’s most direct, want to say is the most

[0:07:31 Speaker 1] directly covert related because the other two that seemed covert related broadband access. Um, and, uh, what was the other one I’m thinking of? There’s another one besides broadband access that you could say, Oh, telemedicine, those air to issues that have

[0:07:44 Speaker 0] been that related They’re

[0:07:47 Speaker 1] related. But they’ve also These were not new issues. This we’re not. It’s not as though we weren’t talking about these before Cove in. We’re talking. Last season, we would’ve been talking about broadband access, the session, whether cove it happened or not. There not been an emergency item. But so I think, you know, that sort of thing really struck me. I mean, I was sort of I’m still kind of wondering again, you know, you know that the governor is ah is a politician, And politicians are always, you know, seeking advantage in sort of public perceptions, which I think is a good thing. I’m not saying that is a negative, but there’s a bunch of other elected officials who just showed up, and I’m kind of still wondering how that’s going to play out and what that’s gonna look like. I don’t think the governor really provided into the state of the safe speech like a clear, uh, sort of definition of what the Texas response is gonna look like through the legislative channels.

[0:08:30 Speaker 0] That sort of what struck me

[0:08:31 Speaker 1] first e Just say you were there. You were. Actually, you’re you’re lucky. You lucky enough to be in Lockhart last night? I mean, what was it like being there on the ground? What’s what stuck out to you

[0:08:41 Speaker 0] last night and all morning

[0:08:43 Speaker 1] s

[0:08:45 Speaker 0] for people that weren’t, you know, didn’t watch the whole production or or, you know, only watched on the Internet or something. You know, I went up doing being part of a brief round table after the governor, state of the state and what we haven’t mentioned yet. The Democrats response, which was pre recorded with Sally Hernandez and Josh Hinkle, who worked for cake saying, Here in Austin, um, Sally’s and anchor and Josh does the morning show their morning news show on on Sunday mornings that focuses on Texas, Um, and with state representative Jeannie Morrison and state Senator Royce West, who also ran unsuccessfully for the Senate nomination US Senate nomination in the last election. Um, and you know, so I did, you know, get to see the production from on the ground, which you know, really, actually involves, You know, a lot of rehearsals that wind up not helping. Enormous amount, because the political leaders weren’t there wasn’t not helpful at all. But, you know, without the elected officials that we’re gonna be on the panel

[0:09:45 Speaker 1] there. They they seemed to have no problem.

[0:09:49 Speaker 0] Yeah, no, they did not have any problem. That would be That would be correct. And And that which is, you know, fine. Which, you know, you should have anticipated. I certainly did. Um, but, you know, I think, you know, other than that it involves a lot of waiting around is, you know, from having done these, you know, use a debate during the last election cycle and things like this. So, um, you know, I mean, you know, I was struck by I think, you know, a couple of things that, you know, maybe evidence on the ground there, You know, one is, you know, the high level of production value that went into doing this. You know, in this new format, which is, you know, there was there were a lot of people thrown at this. It was clearly something, uh, that had been discussed. Quite a bit in terms of production design. Now, you know, we’d be we’d be criticizing them if they hadn’t. If it had looked like, you know, they did this in a barn or, you know, in somebody’s desk or a Facebook live, we’d be saying, you know, how come they didn’t put more into this? But But I think it was, you know, you had to be struck by the fact that this was this was a pretty big production. And, you know, the governor was heavily staffed while he was there. Thanet the the network was heavily staff, so, you know ah, lot went into this. Um, and I think that fed frankly, some speculation that the governor has larger ambitions. You know, we’ve talked about that a lot. Maybe it will come back to it. I you know, I’m a little skeptical of that, but, you know, nonetheless, you know, they don’t think they would have made it. Wouldn’t have made any sense to do this in kind of Ah, you know, half past sort of way. And so, you know, nonetheless, it’s hard not to be struck by just all the labor going on there. Andi, what was going on. I mean, and I think, you know, in terms of the substance of this, I mean, I’m struck by a couple of things. I mean one, you know, related to what you’re saying. You know, the degree to which, you know, there was an interesting to my mind mismatch from a pure policy perspective from, you know, the rhetorical flourishes in the speech itself and and in the governor’s delivery of the speech, I think, um, you know, committee, You know that that that flag, the seriousness and the unusual nous of the pandemic and the degree to which you know 2020 is everybody’s saying was a tough, an unusual year. Um, but in the end, the lack of actual policy delivery on that, you know, and you and I’ve been talking to, as you mentioned, we’ve been talking about Well, you know, what are they going to do? Well, you know, you know, I think you know when we’re looking at A at a vaccine distribution system that has ramped up very slowly. When we looked at a testing system which has got gotten better but still seems to be not quite as throws, it could be and the fact that we don’t seem to even be talking about, you know, sustained contact tracing. Now experts will say the contact. You know, we’ve missed the boat on contact tracing, but it does seem to me that there are things in terms of health care response and and, you know, for that matter, education. You know the educational situation very much on people’s minds in terms of equipment, I think, to reduce all that to basically broadband and civil liability protections struck me. As you know, I said odd, but what I would say it struck me a strategic and and it kind of commitment that I’ll be interesting to see the results off. Um, because, you know, we we’ve said on this podcast, and I think we’ve said in writing that You know, there is this impression that particularly since the vaccine was discovered and you know there’s there’s the the sense that you know, eventually people will get a vaccine a lot. Eventually is getting stretched out. In some ways, it seems like it’s been a little bit of waiting game of a waiting game from the state from the state leadership and that you know they will be doing, you know, and that that a lot of state leaders are essentially kind of waiting out the vaccination in terms, you know, in order to avoid making, you know, risky policy commitments. And we say risky, given the you know, what we know about public opinion.

[0:14:15 Speaker 1] What opinion? What do you mean by risky, Paul? I mean,

[0:14:19 Speaker 0] well, you know, what I mean by risky is that there are still, you know, there are still, you know, substantial, but not, um, you know, not a majority, but to put it to the other way, not a majority, but still substantial elements of the governor’s political base who are skeptical about the about the seriousness of the of the virus and skeptical about, you know, the degree to which government should aggressively get involved in addressing the virus. And in many ways, you know, that was the political story of 2020. And, you know, you’ve done the most recent polling in because you did the Lyceum poll. So does that, you know. And so the Texas Lyceum Poll, which you also serve as director for and you can talk about the Lyceum to a greater or lesser extent, his background. But I You know, you guys released a poll just in the last week or so about a week ago, right?

[0:15:14 Speaker 1] About a week ago. Last week.

[0:15:16 Speaker 0] Ah, no, it seems like a long time ago, but I think it was just last

[0:15:19 Speaker 1] week. Just last week, last

[0:15:21 Speaker 0] Thursday, not even a week ago. That did have, you know, you know, a ton of data on, you know, perceptions of economic impact. And so I still think that that pattern of you know, big differences between Republicans and Democrats is holding out. Um, I right about that.

[0:15:34 Speaker 1] But see that you’re right. And I mean, I think you know, this reminds me something reminds me something you said. But I’ll just I’ll just take it. I mean I mean, you’re right. I mean, I mean, the thing is that we are still seeing these partisan differences and sort of, you know, the views of the pandemic. It really was, You know, the seriousness of it. You know, it’s not as though you know Republicans. I’m always want to say I should say this is very important. It’s really a very small share of people in general who deny the seriousness of the pandemic. It just so happens that they’re they’re more likely to be within the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. The overwhelming majority of Democrats, 80 90% depend on what kind of item you’re Look at. Whatever. Take the pandemic seriously. Think it’s a serious problem, are doing everything they can for Republicans. It’s, you know, it’s more mixed in some things, too complicated. But But the thing is, this is why I guess I’m a little surprised that there wasn’t a little bit more emphasis. And, you know, let’s say last night is that you know, the economic evaluations or negative across the board on DSO. You know, this might be a wayto this May. Maybe that’s what this is a personal I mean, it all lines up with what you’re saying, which is, You know, part of the deal here is to not get businesses went away and wait it out until everybody gets vaccinated. The problem is, you know, I think this is true for any politician, right? Like, how long can you sit with the sagging economy? How long can you sit on it? Inefficient vaccine distribution, which is your primary response to a major crisis and, you know, and sort of remain elected. Now again, Texas is a different place, you know? I mean, but ultimately, you know, I mean the thing that sort of struggling just to kind of come back to what struck you was interested in all this is you know, on the one hand, you know, the other items that Abbott brought up, you know, talking about, you know, and even the emergency. But just generally emphasis. Talking about abortion, talking about religious liberty, talk about gun rights and and bringing up immigration and making sure we’re touching on all these things. I mean, I was thinking about how this fits and sort of, you know, you go from, like the 2017 session to the 2019 session to the 2021 Session in 2019 was so widely interpreted as a response to the 2018 election that was very close. And, you know, Democrats saw gains. We go and we’re looking at 2021 session. We’re looking to set of priorities, and it’s like, Well, it kind of feels like we’re returning back to, like, 2014. You know, in some ways, right?

[0:17:41 Speaker 0] Unless you’re e mean. Put it this way if you’re from basically just the center of the political spectrum moving rightward. There was a little something for everybody in this speech right now. I think there was the most was for people from center, right to the right. In terms of all those things you talk about. I mean, you know, in various places, I made lists and checked it, and I was marking up the draft of the governor’s speech and all this kind of thing. But, I mean, it’s a pretty comprehensive list. If you were to go back and look at the most important problems facing the state cited by Republicans in our polling, you know, you got abortion, you’ve got the Second Amendment and guns. You got border security. You got police. Um, you know, I’m probably leaving one or two things out. I mean, it was a really, you know, good pinata, like, busted wide open. If you’re a conservative legislator looking for signals from the governor now, this is not new. And this is something, you know, put it in the speech. You know what I mean is just like a state of the Union speech. Having a little something for everybody is something that executives do all the time. So we don’t wanna be naive and say, you know, he’s out there making promises, but he’s sending signals and, you know, in the legislative context, he you know the signal. This is not promise. Hey, I’m gonna help you do the heavy lifting on this, but it is a suggestion that if you do this, if you can get this to my desk, I’ll sign it.

[0:19:15 Speaker 1] Maybe even give you a little pat on the head, huh?

[0:19:17 Speaker 0] And those two things are not the same,

[0:19:20 Speaker 1] right?

[0:19:21 Speaker 0] Right. And so then you go to the emergency items, which looks to me like, you know, you could could make a lot of parenthetical comments on each one of these items in terms of parsing out the audience. And, you know, the broadband expansion, you know, is you were implying. I mean, this has been around long before. I mean, he the governor pitched this mainly last night in terms of the cove in crisis, because you say linked at the tele medicine and to something that I think you know, e learning And, you know, people having working

[0:19:50 Speaker 1] also easily the most bipartisan thing on here.

[0:19:53 Speaker 0] Right? But, you know, one of the reasons this bipartisan, I mean, and I was thinking about this, you know, the broadband expansion is the closest thing we have this session, two previous sessions. You’re mentioning, like, you know, 2014 2015 of the things that were kind of infrastructure business, right where where coalitions have been building for a long time, this is kind of the water and transportation of 2021 in

[0:20:17 Speaker 1] some sense, is you know,

[0:20:19 Speaker 0] you know, Thio, if you’re talking about business environment and even if you’re talking to, you know, regular folks, that air, you know, just irregular enough to pay a ton of attention to this. You know, it seems like a sensible infrastructure move right, And it makes sense to people and it, you know. And it also, you know, does avail itself to the kind of broad stakeholder building that we see in these big issues like transportation and water. Because, you know, broadband access has, you know, a couple of different basic dimensions. There’s the dimension that we hear of most often in rural areas of there being actual pipes and actual bandwidth. Yeah, but then there’s also, you know, for the people in the in the governing position the trickier question of, you know, sort of urban access, where infrastructure is not as much of the problem as is pricing and other and other modes of access. Um, and so you know, the broad back when he speaks

[0:21:25 Speaker 1] thio equity overlay there, that

[0:21:27 Speaker 0] I’m just gonna Well, that’s Yeah, that’s Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s what I mean by price. Yeah,

[0:21:32 Speaker 1] z different things. I mean, I would say,

[0:21:34 Speaker 0] Well, pricing connects to to the to the equity argument. Right?

[0:21:38 Speaker 1] So,

[0:21:39 Speaker 0] um and then you know, the defunding the, you know, passing a lot of prevents cities from the funding police. We talked about that a lot that has obvious constituencies in in the Republican Party. It obviously speaks to, you know, things that we’ve seen for the last, you know, almost decade in terms of state government that the conflict between state government and localities and then has the more recent overlay, which again has very little to do with the cove in crisis of you know how How the law and order issue public safety and how it’s lining up. And it’s a

[0:22:15 Speaker 1] great, you know, just it’s such a great symbolic issue for the

[0:22:18 Speaker 0] governor, E you know, talk about, you know, what was I said? You know what? What would have shocked me? Yeah, would have been had this not been an emergency item. Absolutely right. And we could go down the list and take, you know, bail reform has a constituency again, kind of closely related to that. But also, um, you know, there are some interest group actors in the legislature very involved in that election integrity. Obviously, um, you know, very undefined, but has a really meaning for Republicans that is very different than the meaning that it has for for for Democrats. As we talked about a lot in our polling showing a lot and then civil, you know, civil liability protections for individual businesses. You know, the anti torch. You know, the tort reform, you know, anti. You know, anti litigation crowd in the legislature, very powerful, very influential in the Republican Party. And and this has been something that’s been out there in the business community that links small and large businesses together on that has been out there in the national conversation. So you know all of this. I mean, there’s a certain, you know, if you take this and then you also combine that, as we were saying before the podcast with, you know, the kind of golden oldies of, you know, conservative favorite. You know, uh, you know, kind of favorite issues that you can map the different elements of the Republican Coalition. You know, you could almost take cove it out of the picture completely on. There’s a certain kind of Groundhog Day nature to this in which it all seems very familiar, is a way of stitching together different priorities for different elements of of the capital community, different elements of the Republican coalition.

[0:24:00 Speaker 1] So, like what? I’m tryingto what I’m trying to figure out in this, and I mean, I know it’s all these things. I’m trying to think about the various sort of weights. You know how much of this is just a continuation again? We’ve written a lot about how ah lot of the attitudes of people are now associating with, like, trumpism or something, you know, whatever that means pre existed Trump. I mean, especially, we know that in Texas, for sure we could go down the list of areas and items of results. We have a block post. It kind of does this a little bit of, you know, trump issues that were around before Trump even existed. So they’re sort of like a path, this dependency argument, you know, they’re in 2018, maybe in the 2019 session. Maybe we’re a blip on the path dependency. Let’s say there’s that. Possibly there’s this other side to me that things well, you know, Trump has now gone and change things right to sort of look in the past, like in the future, in the sense that you know he’s taking these things that were Republican issues and he’s really given, you know, I would say greater voice and emphasis to them is how I’ll put it, and in some ways you know what Texas gets to do now. But But he didn’t have a lot to show for it. Ultimately, there weren’t a lot of legislative victories. There’s a bunch of executive actions of the Bible administration is gonna overturn immediately or soon enough, but Texas is different. I mean, that’s kind of the I mean, there’s some aspect to this where you know,

[0:25:07 Speaker 0] a chance of sticking here. Maybe so. Get it done, you know?

[0:25:12 Speaker 1] But that’s but that’s the thing. I mean, there’s there’s an aspect of this where, you know, it’s I don’t mean I don’t even mean this critically. I just you know what I can think of? There’s an aspect of this is sort of so unimaginative, you know? I mean, it really is just, Hey, let’s let’s deliver these things to people, you know. And then there’s another aspect to it that I’m kind of trying a way in, which is, you know, you got asked on the show after the debate, you know? Hey, his Abbott just run is this is this habit running for president, which I thought was an odd question for the after? I don’t have to. The debate after the State of State. All that was an odd question in the context, because I don’t think any you know anybody launches their presidential bid from their state of the state speech, generally sleepy affair for most people, for people like us. But it’s hard not to look at this set of issues and say, You know, Abbott’s protecting his right flank for 2022 when there’s already been noise on the

[0:25:56 Speaker 0] right from, you

[0:25:58 Speaker 1] know, Republicans who are unhappy with their feeling that he’s been heavy handed with his pandemic response

[0:26:04 Speaker 0] Right on.

[0:26:05 Speaker 1] So there’s a lot of noise, you know out there. I mean, I’m not looking at the 2024. I’m just thinking, you know, there’s a lot about this. Looks like 2022 then the other piece I think about this is, you know, the 2019 session with such a sort of ah ah constrained session by, you know, close election results. Ultimately, you know, 2020 wasn’t, you know, it was still a close election. The legislative, you know, chamber didn’t change in terms of, you know, the composition that that the partisan composition. But what’s going to change is those seats, and it’s gonna become more Republican.

[0:26:34 Speaker 0] And so it shouldn’t be Ever get the census data. The redistricting will heavily favor Republicans, and it will be reset. So

[0:26:42 Speaker 1] this is like the four kind of broad factors I’m tryingto way out and kind of manage when looking at this and thinking about the overall strategy here and going going

[0:26:50 Speaker 0] forward? Yeah, well, and I think whether Greg Abbott is gonna run for president or thinking or what his chances are I mean, I’m gonna save that for another day, I think. But I would say this that whatever the answers to those questions are, questions are it does not hurt Greg Abbott for people to think that he’s presidential material or that he’s thinking about it. Or that it even makes any sense that anybody is talking about it. Particularly if you think about all these factors that you’re talking about without laying them out again, you know? And so you know, is it, you know, is it is it just perfectly fine if, because of covert, they have to do they decide they’re going to do this from a studio? And they do this high production, You know, at least, you know, take a take a stab at a high production value speech and, you know, in quote unquote, you know, close to prime time in the evening, all the words, you know, I would I would say 11 thing about the you know, as much as it. I think I kind of conveyed this on the air a little bit, but, you know, you know, this week we probably even said it here. You know? You know, I’m not very interested in talking about Greg Abbott running for president right now. You know, I think the chances of him ultimately winning were he to do so are pretty small and, you know, so all of that. But I would say this that for people that are, you know, are looking at this, This is probably being inflected by, you know, historical memory that some people around still have in which, you know, the Lord, which seems confirmed by primary accounts, is that George W. Bush’s congressional legislative agenda in 1999 was very much aimed at a presidential run that they were already planning to make on that and that there was a certain amount of contingency, the contingency there. And they thought that success in Texas in certain areas would provide a necessary foundation for a later run. Now, I don’t think that maps on you no one can find all kinds of ways in that in which that is not somewhere but it’s just structurally similar enough that you know everybody since then, his kind of map that onto whoever, the sitting governor, I mean, that was a huge consideration, you know, and thinking about whether Perry was gonna run and how he governed and all that. So I would just put that on the table, was giving people, you know, a little bit of slack. I don’t think it makes an enormous amount of sense, but in terms of just thinking about the sociology of like, yeah, how people get, you know, ideas in their heads, I think that’s, you know, that’s something I want. I want to add one more thing that you know, is also then I think, interesting to the point that you raise about, you know, how we think about is this, you know, a shift towards aim or, you know, e mean in conventional terms, a less bipartisan, less practical kind of agenda in 2021 compared to 2019. And that is, you know, I would turn that, you know, a little more conceptually than chronologically, and, you know, and and bring up something. Last night that came up on the air, which is which I think there is no way that people that are in the capital community, if they watched, that did not notice. And that was the degree to which Senator Democratic Senator Royce West, who was running for the Senate Democratic nomination in 2020 appeared very conciliatory and ready. At least conciliatory is maybe too strong a word, but certainly ready to bargain with the governor and and, in a sense, stuck up for the governor and in terms of like what it was like to be there. You know, a bunch of the data I prepared was to really underline the different the different perspectives that Democrats and Republicans have on co vid on Ray in a particular on race. And the discussion really turned towards, you know, everybody sort of working together and and based particularly on Senator West, saying, you know, is he And he said this on there that, you know, he had just talked to the governor about adding, you know, accountability measures for police, you know, in the way of balancing the kind of, you know, anti quote unquote defunding. The police measures that that the governor had declared as as a special item. Now I think that was a very it could be a passing moment. But in terms of this kind of conceptual contrast I’m talking about on one hand, you’ve got this notion of increasing polarization and the fact that now it’s actually more unusual than usual for there to be some kind of middle ground and sense of horse trading and working together in the Legislature. But there’s also interesting things going on in both of those coalitions, and I think it’s hard not to look at Senator West. And I mean, I don’t think he could have sent a signal any clearer that he was willing to play ball with. The governor of the governor was going to play ball with him. Certainly that’s now that doesn’t determine anything. I mean, Senator West is, you know, in in a minority that has become a numerical minority in the Senate that has become, you know, increasingly powerless under the reign of Dan Patrick. And you know, the cooperation of the of the Republican majority and ceding authority to Patrick is we’ve talked about on this podcast before. But my every expectation was that that discussion about race was going to be a position where Senator West drew very, very clear contrasts. And that was not what happened.

[0:32:36 Speaker 1] Yeah, I mean, but going to your point. You know, really? I mean, if you’re in the minority party with no power, I mean, you’ll take a trade for record votes, even if you know you’re gonna lose most of them anytime, right? I mean, ultimately, Democrats from you’re forced to make all kinds of votes on, you know, measures aimed at protecting police and, you know, reducing the ability of cities to basically control their police departments. And he would love to trade that with forcing Republicans toe take votes on, you know, measures that would, you know, let’s say, hold police officers accountable for misconduct. Right? And the truth is, you know, one of those things is definitely gonna happen. The other one probably isn’t right. Um, but, you know, I mean, the other thing, I think you know, I just you know, we’re kind of into the end here. We’ll wrap this up. I mean, you brought this sort of the presentation stagecraft of it all. Maybe this kind of goes back to the presidential. I mean, you know, the question seems sort of inappropriate at the beginning of legislative session, we’re just gonna start at the same time. I mean, what you bring up, it’s sort of also unavoidable. You know, we have a prime time address, things like multimedia presentation of, you know, we’ve got the farmers in the background, you know, we’re highlighting the various Texans and all this kind of stuff the Democrats come back with, like, basically a campaign commercial which, you know, was was, I guess, basically the deal that they got out of this. And so the

[0:33:49 Speaker 0] whole thing did feel,

[0:33:50 Speaker 1] you know, I mean Mawr, like a continuation of the campaign season than it felt like, you know, a kind of sleepy constitutional exercise where the primary audience is usually the legislators in the community. E

[0:34:03 Speaker 0] I will say this. And, you know, we’ve talked about this before, and I will give this Thio, you know, to Governor Abbott into his team. You know, they seem to be, you know, pretty good at picking the, you know, it recognizing these opportunities and taking them, you know, you think back to a couple of sessions ago, I guess when they chose to announce, you know, one of their big legislative achievements. I can’t remember what it was. You may remember, um, that they had worked on. That was also a big priority of Lieutenant Governor Patrick’s. And they announced it in a in a Facebook live. I think it was. I think it was to show me your papers, law, but

[0:34:43 Speaker 1] I think it was, Yeah, it was like a day and then, like immediately he did that. Well, I mean, he did that a couple times and that

[0:34:48 Speaker 0] I mean, that’s going on, in other words, and so, you know, I mean, so you know, we should give them credit for that. I think you know, now that’s not always, You know, one could quibble, Shall we say over, You know, the the the final, the comprehensive execution of all that. But but but it points to two are things that will take up Maura’s. The as the session goes on and one is, you know, there were signs last sight of the continuing, you know, constant war of maneuver ring among the big three among the speaker, lieutenant governor and the governor. And, you know, there’s a lot that could be read into some of this on Ben also. You know, I think we’d be remiss to not mentioned the degree to which Senator West kind of struck out, you know, on his own Last night is a sign both of you know, his experiences a legislator. Um, but also with somebody who some would argue got treated a little shabbily by the Democratic Party in in the last election in the primary election, when he was in that race with M J Heger was some people may remember. So I would say

[0:35:53 Speaker 1] not just in the primary election, but then in the aftermath, going into the general election campaign was really

[0:35:57 Speaker 0] eso. Yeah. So there was a lot, you know, and so I think there were a lot of interesting subtext in that that, you know, you know, I’m sort of, you know, putting pins in Azaz. We move forward in the session. So with that, we have wound up another discussion in the second reading podcast. Thanks to Josh for being here today. Ah, special name. Thank out shout out to Jacob, who was doing our production today from the liberal arts development studio in the College of liberal arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Thanks for thanks to you for listening, and we’ll be back next week and stay safe and healthy. Second Reading Podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project and the Project 2021 Development Studio at the University of Texas at Austin