January 12th, 2022 – Second Reading Podcast

January 12th, 2022 – Second Reading Podcast
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[00:00:00] 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, Toronto and 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.

[00:00:22] They have become the norm. At what point must have female Senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

[00:00:34] 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 joined again today by Josh blank research director for the Texas politics project. Good morning, Josh. It’s still morning. Good morning. Morning. Late morning. Well, it’s morning still.

[00:00:53] Yeah. Yeah. After morning. Um, but not afternoon. So we’re back after a extended holiday hiatus. Uh, you know, it’s odd. I was thinking about the things that have changed and the things that haven’t from, you know, when we were meeting, we last recorded, I think in early December, um, be that as. 2022 is upon us, meaning that in Texas, in the Texas political world, a huge amount of everybody’s bandwidth is going to be taken up by the midterm elections, uh, primaries, uh, March 1st, you know, really very soon early voting starts on Valentine’s day.

[00:01:31] Yeah. What a great date, um, for some of us, uh, Nationally most of the attention right now in terms of the election is being paid to the fight for control of Congress. Uh, in Texas, the main focus, you know, probably at the media level is on the governor’s race. Obviously legislative races are important to people, you know, in the, in the business.

[00:01:57] Um, combatants is a friend of mine used to call people that work in the political world. It was a good division between combatants and non. I’m a non-combatant, but I’m interested. Well, you know, yeah. We’re sort of in the middle there, um, you know, this person was a, it was a lobbyist and he was kind of being disparaging about a non-combatant somebody’s non-combatant spouse.

[00:02:20] So. But we talked a lot about the governor’s race, uh, and the election in the podcast. And w I guess this week, what we thought we do was, you know, take a first cut at the agendas that are likely to dominate both of the major party campaigns at the top of the bow at top of the ticket. And I guess some of the context here is.

[00:02:41] There’s a lot of news coverage. And you know, we’re talking to reporters, you know, that kind of reporter attention ramping up for both of us. And, and as people start to cover the campaign and come back from the holidays, you know, there’s others, there’s an often, there’s a desire to say, what is this? What is this campaign going to be about?

[00:02:57] Yeah. Or every time a new issue comes up to to get the question. So, so is this what the campaign is going to be about? Yeah. This is the thing, right? Is it about marijuana? It’s like now, now. It’s not about marijuana. So, you know, as we’ve talked about this and we’re, you know, sort of been gathering some data for me for a blog post, or, you know, a research note on this.

[00:03:16] It seemed like a good time to regroup on, on what, where, you know, what the struggle over the agenda is going to look like, you know, on the assumption that the campaigns aren’t going to agree on that the campaigns try to set the agenda to their advantage. Um, and we should probably flag at this stage a little bit of a caveat, but not much really at this stage, you know, despite the fact that Greg is.

[00:03:40] Um, has to be given a substantial advantage in any reasonably clear-eyed assessment of this race, um, in the general election race between he and probably bitter or Rourke, the party primary elections still have to take place. And there’s a little, uh, a little bit of an irony there and that the party primary election is probably is a bigger consideration for the governor than it is for better or Rourke.

[00:04:01] Are there a good reasons for that? But there is a funny, I was thinking about this last night. There’s a funny, slight disjuncture there. That’s easily explained, but on the surface, I think probably to people that don’t follow this, you know, if the governor is so favored, why is, does he have to worry a little bit more about his primary?

[00:04:18] Then the democratic candidate does. I mean, yeah, there’s a really, a really, really simple answer that doesn’t look nice for a big struggle, things like this, you know, he has slightly more well known and more well-funded primary challengers. Right. And not only does he have more well known and more well-funded primary challenges, but they have been declared candidates for quite a while.

[00:04:36] They’ve been very active, uh, especially. Yeah, former Senator Huffines more so than an Allen west, but, you know, I mean, that just makes a big difference if we were to go and even go to, you know, reporters and PBMs, even for we’re to go to combatants in the process and say, Hey, can you give me a list of all the Democrats running for governor right now?

[00:04:55] They’d say, well, Beto O’Rourke Joe Diaz, right? And then they’d kind of say, and there’s the four Forester guys running it, you know? And that’s the thing here. And so that’s one aspect of it. And then the other piece is obviously. Given the relative balance of influence of the party, the Republican nomination is a lot better prize than the democratic nomination.

[00:05:19] I would say it’s a much better prize cause yeah. Right. Cause you’re most likely going to win. But then the other thing I actually thought you were going to say there too, is that. I think is, you know, about the Republican primary, that makes it a little bit more of a challenge or more of an interesting contest is the fact that it revolves around a set of disputes and grievances that are kind of perpetual in Texas politics on the right, which is basically this question of, well, who’s the real conservative here.

[00:05:42] And even though Greg Abbott is clearly very conservative. And if anything, if you’d say, if there, if you’d say though before, before this all started, well, you know, there’s, there’s an outside lane on Abbott’s. Where he could be criticized, you know, I would say with the legislative session and everything that went on, he basically carpet bomb that lane.

[00:05:58] Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I was going to stick with the lane metaphor and say, you know, he’s basically put his RV in that lane and he won’t move, you know, and they keep trying to pass him and he, he veers over into the other lane and then veers back over his people are trying to pass them. And so, you know, you do another one now.

[00:06:19] So I think it’s good to have that out there as you know, cause I think we inevitably, you know, we’re inevitably in the course of this conversation going to do. To sounding like the primaries have already happened, but just, you know, when we get to this and we’re about to pivot here to the more we talk.

[00:06:35] Well, we said we were going to talk about the, the agenda discussion, but I mean, one of the things that I think the agenda discussion makes clear, is there sort of what we now, like, what are the set pieces here? What we know based on public opinion data, what we know about how based on how the parties are constrained, that kind of can tell us a little bit about what to expect.

[00:06:49] And then there’s a bunch of stuff. I don’t know these sort of, you know, things that could happen, that’ll affect things. The thing about, you know, Abbott’s position in the primaries, he’s in a very strong position, but as we get closer to actual voting, You know, is, is not, Huffines gonna put down, you know, $5 million on ads that make wild claims.

[00:07:07] That Abbott feels he has to respond to, you know, Alex at least that much, but we’ll see. Yeah. Alan West is very good at generating media attention and that kind of stuff he has, I think, had more of a direct line into some of the more activated, you know, people in the party, you know, is he going to say something that is getting, going to eventually require Abbott to respond so far?

[00:07:24] He hasn’t had to, but that’s kind of the thing that’s still out there that I think, you know, we’re just, we’ve got to wait until. Yeah. I mean, the Abbott campaign is, you know, if the past is prologue for the present, um, the Abbott campaign. We’ll show a lot of discipline and have so far in doing a pretty good job of responding to the signaling without acknowledging them explicitly.

[00:07:45] So, you know, and, and we’re, and we are now in the, in the phase of the campaign now that, you know, as I started with saying, okay, we’re in 2022, you know, we’re, now this has been kind of speculative and pretty subterranean in a lot of ways up to this point. I mean, you know, in some ways this campaigns have been going on.

[00:08:03] You know, pick, pick your point, but you know, certainly since the early period of the pandemic, when governor Abbott responded in, you know, what we in retrospect was a relatively, even handed pragmatic way to the early stages of the pandemic. Say, March, April, May, 2020. And then got punched on from the right by none other than Don Huffines now in west.

[00:08:33] Right. Um, so this has been going on for a while, but you know, in the last week or so, you know, we saw the governor do a couple of events. It really actually launched the campaign, the formal launch of the campaign, at least as they put it, which seemed odd to me, but, okay. Um, was it, you know, Um, th the fictions, the fictions that politics, you know, forced us to expect sometimes particularly campaign politics, but, you know, board, you know, grab it did a big event.

[00:09:00] It is his announcement that emphasize the border was in Mukalla. And I guess. And west punched back at him right away in a pretty big way by, you know, using his kind of vector is a, you know, discharged former veteran, um, or discharged the veteran in former officer, um, and criticized Abbott’s border policies.

[00:09:24] And the execution of it emphasize the. Well, I think has been a very interesting story recently that is the difficulties among them at the state and national guardsmen deployed at the border, which is all kinds of cross pressures, their drug use it, et cetera. Um, you know, poor conditions the next day he did something on, on law and order and, you know, kind of a public safety thing, but also made some comments on a COVID, you know, Huffines took that as an opportunity to S you know, punch on.

[00:09:54] COVID response, you know, going back to those early stages, um, encapsulates the difficult really here, just to finish on, you know, just also, you know, and, and, you know, it was interesting, I think in telling that, I mean, how far Heinz bid for attention was to make sure everybody knew that, you know, he had not and will not be vaccinated.

[00:10:13] Right. Right. Which also tells you a lot. Go ahead. Yeah. It’s an odd litmus tests we now face, right? No, but I mean, I think that encapsulates the difficulty. Right. Which is that ultimately, you know, for, for someone like Huffines or west to claim that Abbott is not conservative, they have to say, well, wait, but like, you know, two years ago, Or we’ll, you know, but like Texas just got constitutional character.

[00:10:36] It’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah. It happened. I should’ve done this sooner. I, yeah. I mean, that’s basically the argument is, well, you know, it would have happened sooner and that’s, and you know, it’s just pretty small beer. I don’t think you’re going to get, you’re not going to get a lot of traction on, you know, saying that I don’t think, but, you know, and so, I mean, so I guess, you know what this means, obviously, You know, Abbott facing, I would say notable, but you know, you know, I, I want, I want to be too mean here, but you know, likely irrelevant primary chow challenge.

[00:11:03] And O’Rourke really facing, you know, I would say similarly, you know, nominal, but probably even less effective primary opponents, you know, at this point, I think what you can look at them and say, both candidates are. Looking at the general election. I mean, you know, it’s interesting in some ways more so than Nathan is the general election has, has begun and that’s not, yeah.

[00:11:21] That’s not an exciting observation, but it allows us to start to learn something. And part of the reason I think, you know, we’re interested in the agenda from, from our perspective is two things. One, you know, it’s, first of all, it’s about an observation about, you know, oh, let me say this. Why is it so important to me, I would say is the fact that it gives us an insight into how campaigns are looking at the electorate.

[00:11:38] Yeah. You know, the issues. You know, basically decide to emphasize, give us a sense of where they see opportunities and where they see liabilities and how they want to form this out. Now, ultimately, the second part is, is that in all else equal, you know, forget about the fact that, you know, how, what percentage of people identify as Democrats and Republicans just think about the fact that, you know, the election is about securing the.

[00:11:59] Abbott’s going to be in a pretty good position, right? If the electric is about, if the election is about shoring up the electric grid, you know, rock is probably gonna be in a much better position than you would have been. So this is just the basic logic, but this is obviously a fluid space and it’s not like it’s one issue.

[00:12:13] Right? So let’s just use that as the point of departure for, you know, sort of unpacking this a little bit. So let’s start with like the preferred Republican agenda, as you say, immigration and border security, you know, as we’ve said repeatedly to anybody that asks. To some people that haven’t, um, you know, is the core unifier in the chorus or the, you know, these are the core issues for any Republican candidate and probably, you know, in terms of this whole primary, general election thing, an ideal issue to land on because, you know, it works really in a lot of ways in both the primary and the general election to me, you know, immigration and border security is, is just it’s.

[00:12:52] So. You know, winning strategic issue, all else equal for Republicans. And, and I think, you know, and part of it is number one is you already said it overwhelmingly United Republican party voters, uh, 68%. So that immigration or border security was the number one issue facing the state in October of last year, 60%, almost 70%.

[00:13:13] If we were to take the top democratic issues and add them all up, it would take. To 10 issues to get to 70% of democratic voters and such, it gives you a sense of there’s no, there’s no loss. And focusing on this, um, you know, and then not to mention the fact that the fact, you know, that essentially people are going to continue coming to the border.

[00:13:30] The numbers are not changing. They’re not going down in terms of the number of migrants being apprehended at the border. And so when we also asked, you know, in terms of on this question, do you think you, we should, the state should be spending more. Is it spending too much, too little, the right amount on, on border security voters overall are about split, but among Republicans, almost 60% say that we’re still spending too little on border security after, you know, increasing the amount we’re spending dramatically in the last session.

[00:13:53] So on. So on the Republican side, there’s no, there’s no lack of appetite for this. It’s not going to go anywhere. The, the policy space isn’t going to change in some way. It’s going to make this, that’s going to take the attention off the agenda. It’s an albatross for Democrats, right. In the sense that, you know, the Biden administration is being, it has a Dem Texans have a very negative view of the Biden’s administration handling of this Republicans overwhelmingly, but also increasingly Democrats too.

[00:14:16] Yeah. And the issue just is just not a winning. I mean, just be honest, know, it’s not a winning issue for Democrats. I mean, if you think I’m thinking about, I’m thinking about just the, the, the framing of this, you know, Greg Abbott is building a wall to stop. Full-stop for Democrats, you know, they serve against we’ll wait, are we talking about asylum seekers?

[00:14:34] Are we talking about undocumented? What are some of the people who are already here, but aren’t documented the people who want to come. And I mean, there’s something I think about this this morning, but I mean, it’s an issue that kind of reminds me of homelessness a little bit in the sense that for Republicans, it’s easy to say, well, the problem with homelessness is having homeless people downtown.

[00:14:48] We need to get it out of there. Whereas for Democrats, they say, no, the problem is, is really difficult, but if you’re a voter and you think that this is a problem, whether it be homelessness or immigration, You probably give the advantage to somebody who has a seeming solution versus somebody who clearly doesn’t.

[00:15:01] In other words, there’s dissatisfaction, there’s dissatisfaction with the current problem from both left and right. Which makes it a difficult issue to deal with. You know, even, even if Democrats or democratic voters are unhappy with what Abbott is doing or can be, you know, you can put something in front of them.

[00:15:21] They go, yeah, well, that’s not the solution. It’s still a problem, but it’s still a problem and it’s not clear what the democratic solution is at this point. Right. And I think that’s, you know, that’s going to be a real problem for, for, for Beto O’Rourke. Okay. Let’s talk a little bit about public safety and I think this is a little bit more and morphous and I’m not sure.

[00:15:37] I, you know, I sometimes get the sense. We’re not maybe, I don’t know. Maybe we, we look at this slightly differently, but it seems to me that this is almost. You know, this is almost like the reserve issue that for, for Republicans, you know, Abbott can talk about this. There are a lot of good touch points for conservatives that activate, you know, a pretty well-developed.

[00:16:01] Partisan and cleavage and, you know, competing partisan positions on this. Some of this is very backward looking in a sense, it looks back to 2020 and the way that in that moment, the back of the blue defund, the police dynamic seems to have helped Republicans, particularly at the state at the state level.

[00:16:21] They certainly talked a lot about it in campaigns. Um, You know, Republican consultants from Dave Carney down, you know, were pretty clear that they felt like they had good polling on this that gave them a good sense of where the general, the general election electorate was on this, let alone a Republican electorate and they still seem, you know, ever ready to go, you know, to go to that, to go to that issue.

[00:16:45] I think on one hand, some of it is cooled a little bit. I mean, I think, you know, the. To the extent that it existed, the defund, the police moment has kind of passed, you know, for the most part, you know, and again, I mean, I, you know, there are still elements of it out there, but that particularly residue of it still exists, even if the movement is right, but it’s not like it’s not as, you know, And part of it is that, you know, enough Democrats, you know, it’s kind of become a very standard democratic position to go.

[00:17:14] No, that’s not what we meant for a lot of them. Not all, but for a lot. That’s why it’s such a great Cleveland at Trisha. You know, I was looking back at our data on what people wanted with respect to police spending in their local areas and, you know, not surprisingly. That’s 60% of Republicans said it like their local police bars.

[00:17:30] They thought the funny should be increased either a little or a lot. But I think, you know, a sort of simple look at this would be to say, you know, the public safety issue is, you know, it speaks to suburban voters. We talked about a lot of competition in the suburbs and, and this is something that can kind of be a wedge issue among, uh, Suburban voters.

[00:17:45] But I think actually, you know, it’s also a wedge issue amongst urban voters. And if anything, if you look at those numbers, what you find is that, you know, there’s overwhelming support for increasing police funding in rural areas, but just a little bit, but then there’s actually more support for increasing police funding in and around cities then in and around.

[00:18:00] And among racial and ethnic minority and among racial, ethnic minorities, and other people have noted this who look at public opinion about the fact that, you know, the people and we’ve noted this to serve in Texas, but you know, the people who are sort of most gung-ho at the outs and I’m sort of defunding the police were, were usually white liberals.

[00:18:14] But if you looked at the majority of democratic voters who are nonwhite, they said, We don’t want to do that. Now, this makes a lot of sense. Ultimately, if you think crime is an issue, you know, you, you want more police and that’s, and that’s true in Democrats have kind of painted themselves into this terrible corner on this.

[00:18:30] Right? And so this is an issue that, again, I don’t think, you know, it’s just not an issue. They have good messaging on because ultimately for the messaging, for them to become successful, they need a tragedy to happen. And there was, and there was an objective or, you know, not, you know, there is a, you know, uh, structural, conditional piece to this, which is.

[00:18:48] Allowing for the usual mystery of nobody really knows that much about what drives crime. Yeah. But you know, the crime statistics are showing more crime. Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think that, and that’s the thing. And the truth is, you know, public opinion towards crime and actual crime has had, they don’t really relate to each other, but right now there is more violent crime in America everywhere.

[00:19:08] Texas cities, other cities it’s going on. And this is an issue that allows, I think, you know, again, for, for Republicans to be hypercritical of, especially urban areas that tend to vote democratic in the state, but to do so in a way that allows us to say no, but we’re trying to fix and not to kick the Democrats more like they need more kicking, but you know, I mean, you know, the, the, the modal position on this is not that hard.

[00:19:33] To understand part of this does speak to the polarized discourse in the environment and, you know, what’s out there and the media sphere and you know how hard it is to deploy nuanced positions in politics. Especially now it’s always a little hard, but you know, it’s not that, you know, intuitive that people that live in, you know, say, you know, majority black or Hispanic neighborhoods, um, You know, want to have good policing.

[00:20:04] They just want the police to be fair and. Yeah. You know, that’s not very complicated, but I think if you just think about like a simple math problem here, you know, it’s like there’s a lot more crimes committed in areas with high crime than there are instances of police, you know, vile, you know, aggressively violating the civil rights of people.

[00:20:23] Just by the numbers. I mean, this is just the nature of it. And so if you’re in an area with high crime, obviously happens, obviously happens. But if you just think about people’s lived experiences for the most part, if you’re an area of high crime, and even if you say like, you don’t necessarily love the police, you probably still want the police there to deal with the crime.

[00:20:40] And that’s, that’s the thing that’s underpinning this. It just makes it very difficult. And so we’ve got a couple full of other things and we need to move on, but I, uh, you know, for the, for Republicans, I mean, What else is in the wings. I mean, I, you know, obviously public education is a lot of discussion of this, you know, both in the press, but, you know, I’ve had a lot of discussion with kind of the consulting, you know, combatants class, if you will, about.

[00:21:03] The Republicans kind of using the critical race theory, you know, in Texas, you know, in some other states, you know, the content of instructional materials, books, and libraries, you know, as a, as a Republican effort to take this issue from Democrats and Virginia, the Virginia governor’s race was the touchstone on this, but that seems to be out there.

[00:21:23] I, you know, I don’t think that. Yeah, but I think it’s, it is something to watch. Anything else come to mind? Well, I mean, I just think, you know, obviously, you know, continuing to attack the Biden administration inflation, I think, you know, I mean, I’m not an economist, but I’ll leave that alone. But I mean, you know, you just expect that with, by, you know, with the difficulties of governing with COVID, with everything going on and, you know, just the expectation that the Democrats, you know, the president’s party is going to have a hard midterm election.

[00:21:49] Yeah, I skipped over. That’s obviously a major, you know, I mean, the default is going to be in and it feeds back into the public safety and immigration issues. The default is going to be non-stop attacks on the Biden administration and hanging national Democrats around state democratic next, the public education thing that’s interesting to me is just, you know, basically you take these, these two.

[00:22:09] Issues really, which is like sort of race and social issues in America and sort of the rights of LGBTQ plus people, which you can broadly classify as like social change and, you know, um, And then you cross that with this issue of basically, well, what are parents’ rights and roles in their children’s education?

[00:22:26] And, you know, the problem is, is that, you know, for Democrats, I think let’s remember this is the Republican, just as you know, you kind of get, you kind of apologize for us. These are the Republican agenda items. There’s a reason these are the issues they want to talk about, which is why, because Democrats don’t have an advantage, but on this issue with, you know, parental rights, basically, you know, you’re forcing the Democrats and the car saying, no, I don’t think parents should have a say in their kids’ education.

[00:22:46] That’s the thing you have to think. How these issues work is that there’s a bunch of issues. We’re not going to say that either party really wants on the agenda. And part of it is taking that next step and say, well, what would you say in response to that gives a lot of Democrats yet another reason.

[00:22:58] Unhappy with Terry McAuliffe, um, who helps sell, you know, not all his fault, but he did a particularly inept job with that. Um, so, okay. So the, the democratic agenda, um, you know, or work has clearly signaled this, I think since the day he announced his candidacy and in the, you know, what seems to be his stump speech since then, uh, you know, the binding concept of all of this is to try to.

[00:23:24] To, you know, get voters to respond to an argument that the Republicans, but particularly Greg Abbott has been a bad steward of, of what’s going on in Texas. You mentioned grid reliability earlier and kind of the, the lead into this. Obviously they are trying to lean on that and data from our points supports what seems to be.

[00:23:45] I think the emerging consensus on one hand Texans are concerned, right. And skeptical about what’s been done so far. Yeah. 60% express a disapproval, uh, in October 20, one of, of how the state leaders in legislature handled the grid thankfully to 78% of Democrats, but also include 45% of Republicans, only 31% of Republicans approved of how the state handled the grid.

[00:24:08] And so, and this was actually, this is worse. Then when we measured sort of a June at the end of the regular session. So, I mean, this is definitely a big area of, you know, you know, this is certainly an area of concern for Republicans, but I think, you know, Abbott’s may clear on this, right? There’s a gamble here.

[00:24:23] Unless we don’t have a big storm in the power stays on. I can still say I fixed it. If nothing else goes, nothing happens and I fixed it. And let’s certainly enough to get you through 2022, which sort of speaks to why that’s a, a good but narrow path, but it supports the larger argument of, you know, do you like the way the state’s being run?

[00:24:38] Right. And I, you know, part of it is that, you know, the. A little bit of a paucity of other candidates. And so, you know, you are stuck with kind of gambling on this. You know, the other performance issue is COVID response now, you know, on the upside, you know, we’ve had what, more than 70,000 Texans die from COVID or COVID related, you know, related illness.

[00:25:01] Um, you know, as part of the response to the criticism on the right, Greg Abbott has. Very little about the pandemic. Yeah. You know, I, I’ve not gone and looked closely at this, but you know, you know, licking my thumb and testing the wind. I’d say. You know, it’s been at least a year since Greg Abbott gave any kind of major address or any kind of, you know, commentary public event on COVID certainly not.

[00:25:26] Nothing comes to mind that wasn’t, you know, sort of in a more political, direct response as in, you know, indirect response to the Biden administration vaccine run date, or yeah, no, no, but let’s put it this way. Yeah. No public health address. Right. We haven’t seen him with the doctors somewhere, you know, I’m to press.

[00:25:43] But, you know, I, you know, this has, you know, the Democrats have the same problem with this. They have the grid reliability, right? I mean, or a similar problem, right. On, in terms of the reliability of the grid in the absence of a more recent stimulus, he needs something to act. That lack of confidence. And that’s where the gamble part you mentioned.

[00:26:01] Well, yeah, I think, you know, Macron is really a great example of this right now. I mean, it’s, it’s rampant, you know, I mean, and, and, you know, and if anything, you know, depending on, you know, your social circles, who you hang out with, where you go, it could either look like a ghost town, or it could look like business as usual.

[00:26:18] And so there is a certain, mentally people have gotten used to this. So it’s hard to imagine at this point, what would be like the shock? Yeah. I mean, that’s why she, they’re kind of similar, but not, you know, I think, I think the thresh, I mean, th th th th the similarity is you need something to really jolt people.

[00:26:33] The difference is that the grid reliability issue came from. You know, one major event that is now receding in memory with no subsequent reinforcement. The COVID thing is a little bit the opposite in which people become desensitized. If you were already inclined to be. You know, not especially concerned about this sort of discount, the threat, or to see other things is outweighing it.

[00:27:01] And you know, as much as the numbers on OMA Cron have, you know, sort of thrust this back into public attention, you know, the interpreter frames of this from people cognitive, they’ve already been. You know, if you were, if you were, if you were inclined to under estimate the threat or the, you know, to, to see the threat is not that huge, or to see it as, not that, you know, not as big a deal or, you know, something that you’re just taking into account in your normal life.

[00:27:28] If you’re taking it into account at all, you know, this isn’t doing much for you. Yeah. I mean, to me, the thing about. The focus on COVID again, I think it only makes sense in the broader sort of, you know, the broader concept of stewardship, you know, the broader survey has been job as, you know, sort of the Aurora going out and saying, well, are you better off now than you were four years ago?

[00:27:49] Right. Kind of thing. And I think this fits to that right. In the sense that, you know, obviously, you know, you take through the democratic and Republican views on COVID. Partisan polarization around the issues. Okay. Whatever put them in their camps. But there are definitely, I think a lot of independents we’ve seen in our polling over the course of the poll who kind of looked at the way that Abbott’s response was clearly guided a lot by the politics around COVID more so than the science around COVID.

[00:28:13] And at some point said, well, this is, you know, this is a problem. And you see that in negative evaluations. Now the question for Oregon seems to me is, you know, is that one, is that attitude durable? Is it, is it just among independent among independents? Is it determined? Right. And, you know, can’t and part of that is, well, that’s kinda up to the campaign.

[00:28:30] Can they keep that in front of people now again, is that a hundred percent of the campaign? It depends on the people too, right? Depends on what else happens. But I think the idea there is to see, you know, can we keep this sort of mismanagement idea in front of people? For as long as we can. And I think this also Vista this that we’re not talking about, which is, we’re not talking about a bunch of the issues that came through the legislature, which I think, you know, if your Democrats, you know, I think you may have, at some point said, oh man, there’s so many things we can campaign on in this state.

[00:28:53] We’re going to campaign on voting rights from campaign on abortion. We’re going to campaign on guns and we haven’t really brought up any of those three issues yet. Right. Well, and I think that’s been out there in the. The O’Rourke discourse. And there parts of that that are, I think, are in the speech. You know, the kind of Greg Abbott is out of the mainstream and not listening to not listening to.

[00:29:13] And that’s the version of it, right. Is to say, cause I think, you know, again, this goes back to the whole wiring, are we not? I said, well, look, you know, does our work really want to litigate his position on guns? I don’t think it’s as bad as, as, as people think it is, uh, given the, the, the steps of the right that the state has taken, you know, does he really want to litigate, you know, exactly where he thinks when, and to what point he thinks, you know, a woman should be able to obtain an abortion.

[00:29:33] He might and he might have to, but I don’t think Abbott really wants to have that conversation either. I think that’s kind of is an exogenous shock. As we say that you throw that into the campaign and make that a big thing. It’s not clear exactly how you know, that’s going to shake out for either side.

[00:29:47] Um, and so for our work, the best thing is to package all that together and say, look, Abbott’s not focusing on the right thing. This is about stewardship of the state. This is about keeping the state as great as it is, et cetera, et cetera, you know, with the legislature did it. His prodding was, uh, was, was way out of the main.

[00:30:04] Do you want more of that? Well, and it seems to me that, and it’s still early and we’re still in the, you know, we’re still in the, in the primary phase, you know, and it’s, I’m just sitting here thinking about it. I, you know, there’s kind of a two-step message that is, would be helpful to, or Rourke all things being equal, which is another thing to consider before we get out.

[00:30:24] But, you know, it seems to me, if you could say, you know, as you were saying, Are you better off than you were four years ago? I’m sort of, I’m sort of making the campaign ad in my head, you know, block letters of, you know, X amount of Texans without power, without health insurance, without health insurance, X amount of.

[00:30:44] Texans dead from COVID, you know, what’s his risk, you know, you know, you know, you know, own your record. I kind of own your record argument and kind of try to make Abbott, look like somebody who doesn’t want to own his record and just wants to blame Joe Biden. Right. You know, take respon, you know, why won’t Greg Abbott take responsibility for his record, not the governor of Texas.

[00:31:05] Right, exactly. So, you know, now do I think. I don’t think that’s the magic bullet, but I think as of now, that’s probably what they need to do that. And again, you know, we always say this, you know, that’s not going to happen in a vacuum. I’m sure. You know, I suspect. You know, the, the Abbott campaign will have gained that out and we’ll have responses well, and in some ways they already have, right.

[00:31:29] I mean, their first, their first ad, the first ad, the first workout, you know, the wrong way. O’Rourke ad based. Now you look, it’s not like, it’s an amazing insight to say, oh, you know, we’re going to call him a socialist and say, he’s, you know, too liberal, but they are trying to get in front of it. They’re trying to say exactly that, which is, yeah.

[00:31:45] I mean, you know, you can say that, but look at the jobs, look at the growth. Look at the unemployment rates. You know, everybody’s moving to Texas, this guy is going to ruin that. Yeah. You know, so I guess the, you know, the, the thing is, can you, you know, can you redefine the it and ruin it? And that’s a pretty tall order given, you know, a lot of the predicates.

[00:32:05] So, I mean, you know, now we do all the caveats, which is, you know, the context of this right now, clearly, you know, supports, you know, is favorable towards Abbott, towards repo the same way as favorable towards Abbott towards Republicans nationally. The governor and Texas Republicans get to enjoy some of that.

[00:32:24] Um, you know, they’ve used their incumbency to secure their position in the electoral system and to, you know, shore up their advantages to redistricting. And while one can argue about. And the extent of the changes in the voting laws, you know, the changes in the voting laws that came in the last session, you know, don’t do anything to help Democrats in on-balance advantage Republicans.

[00:32:48] And I’ll just say this, they probably give it a Republic. In reality, they probably give a Republican say a slight advantage. And a sense of, you know, the effect on whatever the vote share might be as probably, you know, I would expect it to be pretty minimal just knowing what I know about the effect of these types of laws.

[00:33:01] But I think that’s kind of the point here is that, you know, this is a competitive state and we’re talking about this and, and w you know, I think what’s interesting in all of this is the fact that, you know, I could, you can look at these agenda items that we’ve laid out and you can see, you know, who the target is.

[00:33:16] Right? I mean, immigration and border security is a good issue because our unites Republicans, it’s something that, you know, he’s gonna be strong with among independents. And you know, there’s gonna be some Democrats who have immigration workers, what they’re concerned about. Yeah. They’re probably gonna cross.

[00:33:28] Right. Public safety. Similarly, Democrats don’t really have a good response to the public safety argument from Republicans that they’ve no response really to bide and especially if they can’t pass more laws and if they do pass, you know, a big, you know, another big, uh, social policy that doesn’t seem like they will, they’re gonna have to defend it.

[00:33:45] So that’s, you know, there’s nothing really there. Um, so. Well, I think what that all sort of elaborates is, you know, that structural advantage in the environment is still there and, you know, absent kind of some dramatic change in context or a, uh, kind of bolt from the blue. You know, I mean, the handicapping on this race looks like it is.

[00:34:08] And I think that’s, you know, I think, you know, what I interpret what you’re saying is that’s expressed in these agenda items. Yeah. I mean, what’s expressed to me, I think more than anything is the fact that both, both candidates. That they have the support of almost a hundred percent of their partisans.

[00:34:22] And we know from previous elections, that support from a hundred percent of your partisans and good turnout generally means we’re going to have a relatively close race here. And by, by relatively close has been somewhere between zero and 10 points. You know, Abbott’s not going to win. And I just I’ll sit her down.

[00:34:35] I don’t like to make predictions because I think it’s stupid. I don’t think you know, Greg, Abbott’s gonna beat better. I worked by 20 points, right? You know, it’s like we can kind of get that I’m comfortable saying you can put that in your little Matt Yglesias style prediction meter, or whatever, whatever they’re calling it.

[00:34:48] 90% certain pundit check that day that, uh, uh, Got Dave, Dave Weigel gets credit for doing that. I remember when he did that in slate and it was a big thing. Well, I’m not doing that. Well, I try not to make predictions and I, you know, yeah, I don’t want it, but any, but the main point here I was just, it would make is that, you know, I, I want to do it for other people though, but, but you look at this and you say, you know, public safety kinda touches the suburb is kind of a wedge issue.

[00:35:11] Education kinda touches the suburbs is kind of a wedge issue or Roark and kind of asking the sort of more general question. Look, Democrats are not voting for Abbott’s this general question about, you know, stewardship that’s again, it’s reaching out to independence. It’s reaching out to people who they’re trying to define this election for, uh, who may not vote regularly.

[00:35:28] And I think all the activity you’re seeing down around the border, all the work that Republican party is doing all along the border to try to find new voters to, uh, Local candidates up for local offices. Uh, all the focus that our work is having on the border of this time, as opposed to lesson, that’s all a reflection.

[00:35:43] I think of, of trying to find, you know, again, loosely attached voters and the reason I just think that’s important in this is that one, it reflects the fact that they know how to turn out their voters and that they know that if they do that, it’s relatively close. So who’s laughed. Right. But then I think the other piece of it is when you have loosely attached voters, what do you have?

[00:35:57] You have people who aren’t really, they’re not paying attention to it. Uh, psychos. So this is why the agenda really matters because for those people, when you say, if you don’t really pay attention, a ton of attention to politics, but you’re going to vote in 20, 22. Well, is this election about securing the border or is this election about, you know, bringing back, let’s say, you know, competency to state government, if it’s the first one you’re probably going to vote for Abbott.

[00:36:18] It’s the second one. You’re probably gonna vote for a roar because you don’t have much else. Right. And that’s why. That’s why this agenda control thing is so, both important, but also kind of telling well, yeah, exactly. And it’s, and it’s also why we’re seeing so much attention to even the hint of less loosely attached voters, for example, in the RGB.

[00:36:36] And that’s foreshadowing to something we’ll talk about in the future. So, uh, with that, uh, Welcome back to, uh, the second reading podcast after we’ve been on a little bit of a hiatus, but we’re kind of back in the saddle now. Uh, thanks to our, to Josh for being here. Thanks to our crew in the liberal arts development studio in the college of liberal arts at UT Austin.

[00:37:01] Thanks to you for listening and tune in for future podcasts. Second reading pocket. Is a production of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin.