July 11th, 2024 – Hurricane politics in Texas and the storm around Biden’s presidential campaign

Intro: 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 raise her hand or her voice to be recognized? over the male colleagues in the room.

Jim Henson: 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. Happy to be rejoined today by Josh Blank, Research Director for the Texas Politics Project. Happy summer, summer morning, Josh. Happy summer morning to you. Happy in Austin means, you know, we’re, we’re going around while it’s only 90 or maybe even high, high eighties.

Jim Henson: And I know you’re going to give us that glass half full right

Josh Blank: now. Well, no, it is, you know, listen, Hey man, it’s not barely been 105. You know, if it’s like 90, 95 degree, I’m wearing pants. You’re in a suit, you know, that’s

Jim Henson: because, you know, we have duties. So, you know, today we’ll focus mostly on, on the, uh, the Texas perspective on the dominant story in national politics right now, the state of Joe Biden’s reelection effort and, you know, the pressure on him to drop out or not drop out, or, you know, we’ll sort through that over concerns about his age and health.

Jim Henson: That have continued but were certainly catalyzed by his debate performance on on june 27th Which you know, which has now been a couple of weeks

Josh Blank: Well, I was gonna say I mean, you know time’s a funny thing, but like on the one hand, you know It’s crazy. It’s been two weeks. It’s crazy that it’s only been two weeks because in some sense, you know the amount of like Psychic energy that’s flowing around in different circles about this You would almost think that, you know, I don’t, I don’t even know what I would think.

Josh Blank: And that’s part of like, did this happen? You know, this feeling has happened a month ago. Did it feel like it happened yesterday? Like it’s just so present in the political space right now that it’s, it’s kind of, it’s weird defies a certain amount of logic.

Jim Henson: So we’ll, we’ll, we’ll come back to that. Well, you know, I mean, in the abstract, I guess, but once it happened, it, you know, um, but I think, you know, we can’t do a, a, a second reading podcast without noting the.

Jim Henson: A similar or a concurrent or follow up uptick in state politics in the aftermath of, um, the impact of Storm Beryl in Southeast Texas. You know, at one point, over two million people without power, which is a soft spot in Texas politics right now. Whatever the cause, you know, we’ll unpack a little bit, I suppose.

Jim Henson: And what was going on in terms of state leadership, uh, Governor Greg Abbott, you know, who, You know, we were talking about this earlier, and we can unpack this a little bit more. I mean, like most governors, I mean, I think Governor Abbott knew from the beginning that natural disasters are Um, you know, a time when the governor is out front and center, you know, with their emergency jacket and stuff, you know, um, being, you know, Johnny on the spot in these kinds of situations, uh, Greg Abbott is out of state, was out of state when the storm hit out of country or out of the country on, yeah, even on a trip to, to East Asia, which was, uh, essentially an economic development trip opening up

Josh Blank: an economic development office in Taiwan.

Josh Blank: Yeah. If you want to, if

Jim Henson: you want to. You know, read to my mind too much into it, but, you know, the fact that, uh, you know, this also seemed to, you know, burnish his profile as somebody who could handle himself on the international stage, but that has, you know, been complicated. So that, that left Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick as acting governor and You know, the initial storm, you know, cone for this and predictions for this storm had it sweeping through Texas after it made landfall, but had it, you know, a few weeks out, including probably when there would have been the decision point for canceling this trip, had it.

Jim Henson: hitting in Northern Mexico and the storm track, you know, moved farther, farther east and wound up hitting, you know, pretty heavily populated areas of Texas. Uh, there have been deaths and, and, you know, as we record this on Thursday morning, a few days after the storm hit, uh, last I saw, there were still about at least a million people in Southeast Texas without power.

Jim Henson: It’s very hot. There’s a heat warning and there has been then come out of this. Some, you know, some political maneuvering that, you know, not to downplay the severity of what people are suffering, but if you follow politics, it’s been somewhat interesting in that. The argument coming from the White House has been that the Texas leadership was asleep at the switch in asking in advance for a declaration of emergency and all the federal support that would come with that.

Jim Henson: That’s been, partially at least disputed by the state’s legislature in no certain, no uncertain terms. And, and President Joe Biden, you know, went as far as to, you know, call a couple of reporters at Houston Chronicle and, you know, sort of, you know, make the point that, you know, he didn’t hear from anybody.

Jim Henson: He was trying to get in touch with the Texas leadership. Couldn’t get in touch with anybody again. There’s been hard pushback from that to be fair, lieutenant governor, Patrick said, you know, I was standing next to a bunch of FEMA guys. They could have called those guys. And you know, a lot of other things, but You know, based on some reporting by Jeremy Wallace in the, in the Houston Chronicle yesterday and reporting slash looking back at the history of these disasters, you know, as of now, it does suggest that whoever should have made the call, right.

Jim Henson: Getting the advanced declaration of a, of a, of an emergency or disaster from the federal government, which would have made resources more quickly deployable seems to have been a little late and not happened on the usual timetable.

Josh Blank: Right. And, you know, That’s all interesting. And we’ll find out, we’ll

Jim Henson: probably find out.

Jim Henson: Yeah. We’ll

Josh Blank: find out more about that. That goes on. I mean, the pure pot and again, you know, you’re right to point out, I mean, look, people have died. This is very serious. Let’s take a step back from that and just talk about the politics of this for a second, which is, you know, this was an opportunity for Abbott to.

Josh Blank: I’m not afraid for Biden to stick his finger and Abbott and Patrick and really every Texas officials. I because if you follow Texas politics, I mean, it is without, you know, a day does not pass, which Biden is not blamed for every, you know, any and every ill under the sun, including, you know, uh, Any sort of assault or murder that’s made anywhere in the country by any undocumented immigrant, no matter when they came in the country, right?

Josh Blank: So like, you know, if anyone wants to say, Hey, that’s, you know, that’s untoward, that’s playing politics. I say, well, like, let’s just, you know, I mean, let’s be realistic

Jim Henson: here. This ain’t beanbag.

Josh Blank: And to the point, and this is, you know, maybe, maybe is a good transition here is, you know, one of the strengths. Of, you know, the, you’d say, well, why did Biden now decide to sort of, you know, throw his stones back?

Josh Blank: And it’s like, well, because this is actually a very soft spot, right? And we’ve seen this in our polling, even in our most recent poll, we saw, you know, large, you know, high percentages of Texans who were concerned about, uh, being asked to conserve energy, concerned about rolling blackouts, concerned about other blackouts.

Josh Blank: And though this is a natural disaster, you know, one of the main arguments that Democrats have really been. Hanging their hat on and trying to mobilize in the last few election cycles, and I expect to continue mobilizing is that, you know, essentially that leaders are asleep at the wheel, that they’re not taking care of sort of the basic necessities here when we talk about the safety and reliability of the grid, we’re talking about responses to natural disasters, you know, you can think back to Hurricane Harvey and sort of the mixed messages that were coming out of different parts of government.

Josh Blank: Now, look, we were talking about this this morning, you know, the governor Very astutely has already pushed back and, you know, both on the direct charge, but also about where the responsibility lies, saying, Hey, you know, maybe Houston could get a little better at this. Maybe Harris County could get a little bit better at this.

Josh Blank: And I think that’s a pretty, you know, it’s a pretty familiar

Jim Henson: play.

Josh Blank: Yeah, it’s a familiar play, but it’s also, again, we’re talking about politics here. Makes sense. Um. But this is why I think, you know, if you say, why did Biden stick his head up, you know, to kind of go at Texas this time, it’s like, because this is a soft spot, you know, well,

Jim Henson: and, you know, I would think that the Biden team and Joe Biden himself are, you know, very alert to opportunities to change the subject from what we’re about to talk about.

Jim Henson: Well, let’s talk

Josh Blank: about, so which

Jim Henson: brings us to, you know, The situation with Joe Biden, um, he will be here next week. Who will be in, in Austin on Monday to celebrate the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act at the LBJ school in a speech that is not open to the public. Um, You know, you can only fit so many people into the, you know, I think he’s doing it in the auditorium, so it will be an invite only event.

Jim Henson: Um, mine

Josh Blank: must’ve been lost in the mail,

Jim Henson: but you know, nonetheless, this is, you know, he’s coming Monday, you know, and there are a lot of different places we can start. I mean, I don’t think we have to sort of recount what’s been going on. If you’re listening to this, you probably have a pretty good view of it.

Jim Henson: Uh, this morning, there’s a new Washington post ABC news. Ipsos poll uh, that is not particularly good news for Joe Biden.

Josh Blank: forces of politics and right. Yeah, and that poll, majority of Democrats, fifty six percent said that President Biden should end his candidacy. Forty two percent say that he should continue to seek reelection.

Josh Blank: I think, you know, most, you know, I mean, that’s real troubling. I was going to say maybe even more troubling was seventy percent of independents think that he should end his candidacy.

Jim Henson: Yeah.

Josh Blank: And, you know, when you think about it, you know, a national polling only tells you so much because really we’re talking about the state polling.

Josh Blank: We’re talking about Yeah. Outcomes in a handful of states. But this is where that, that seven and 10 number among independents becomes really problematic because those elections are incredibly close and if he’s not pulling well among independents in those states, it’s going to be really hard to, to match his, his outcomes from 2020.

Jim Henson: And, and I think, you know, this, you know, with all the, you know, with all the Duke caveats, one poll.

Josh Blank: Yeah,

Jim Henson: et cetera.

Josh Blank: And if I were the Biden people right now, what I would be saying is, yeah, but those, you know, this is what they would, I think would say is, yeah, but those 56 percent of people will vote for me anyway, but the 42 percent might not vote for somebody else would be the argument that I think I’d be making.

Jim Henson: Yeah. And, you know, I think, you know, and there will be various rebuttals to that. I was going to, I was going to seize on that number and say, you know, that, you know, that it is just a particularly. You know, that just pours a little more kerosene on the fires burning over this in the Democratic Party right now, because, you know, in, in, in many ways, just because of the, you know, the little debate you kind of presaged there, which is probably already going on as we record this, you know, if more than half say you should end your candidacy.

Jim Henson: And so that, that flies in the face of what the Biden arguments have been from Biden himself,

Josh Blank: right?

Jim Henson: That, look, this is completely an elite phenomenon,

Josh Blank: right?

Jim Henson: The voters have cast their votes in the primary. This is decided, you know, Joe is their guy. Well, you know, this is, you know, You know, I mean, what they’re going to fall back on is what they’ve fallen back on proofs like, well, these public polls, our polls are not showing this.

Jim Henson: Internal polling is not showing this. The polls are wrong. They were wrong before, et cetera, et cetera. You know, and so I think, you know, this is, you know, we will see, I don’t want to pre judge, you know, what the empirical analysis, what the empirical research will show, but this is not going to be the last bad poll for them on this subject in the next couple of weeks.

Jim Henson: And. You know, it may be that, you know, Democratic elites are a little more in line with the Democratic base now, 56%, big number, but in, in some ways, not big enough. Yeah, I mean, In terms of people wanting to make the argument to, to the president that he, that he needs to drop out of the campaign.

Josh Blank: Right. No, I mean, it’s a bit of a coin flip.

Josh Blank: I mean, I think it’s also something, you know, without more data, you’d say it could be a bit of a soft attitude. You know, in the sense that, I mean, there’s two things I think about this result, just to throw it out there, just from a pollster perspective, one, it is a snapshot in time for sure. However, I think it’s pretty safe guess that had this question been asked three weeks ago,

Jim Henson: yeah, before the debate,

Josh Blank: there would have been a significantly lower share than 56 percent saying that he should end his candidacy.

Josh Blank: That’s a little bit unfair. But the point I’m making is, is it right now that, you know, we can guess what the last result was bit would be. We can look at this result. We’ll see some more results in coming weeks about this. But ultimately I imagine this is on a trend line that’s probably going to get worse before and or if it gets better.

Jim Henson: Well, and it’s a, you know, it’s a common observation, but it’s worth saying, I think that, you know, the problem that drives that is that this is not a new issue, right? That, you know, we, there have, there is a lot of polling out there. We’ve done some of it, you know, in various states. It’s kind of, you know, the poll questions about Biden and Trump’s age are out there.

Jim Henson: Yeah. And, you know, this. This line of, you know, the debate and the subsequent line of public discussion, this, you know, the scrutiny, you know, how, what Biden’s performance, public performances look like under increased scrutiny now reinforce the narrative, the biggest problem the campaign had. Put it that way.

Josh Blank: Right.

Jim Henson: Because his age and his suitability for, you know, his capabilities in office itself were the biggest problem. Yeah. That they had going into this. This reinforces that problem.

Josh Blank: Yeah. Why don’t we jump into some data with that just to show where it is. I mean, the only other thing I was going to mention on that one result is just to say, you know, you get 56 percent of Democrats saying that Biden you were to imagine a, a bigger, more robust exploration there in terms of what if the were so and so.

Josh Blank: Yeah. What did the candidate were so and so my guess is, is that there’s almost no candidate who would actually outperform that 56 percent potentially given how close the numbers are. And that’s not to say that there’s, you know, some, you know, I mean, I think the point is there’s no magic candidate out there.

Josh Blank: We’ll kind of come back to that in a second, which is important because, you know, to say like, well, yeah, he shouldn’t, it was cancer. It’s like, yeah, but then who? And we’ll come back to this because I think that’s something a lot of elected officials might be asking themselves to going back to, you know, what we were saying, what you were saying there about, you know, this.

Josh Blank: I mean, one of the thing reasons that this was such a devastating, you know, debate for Biden largely was because it was confirmatory for so many people. You know, we asked in June before the debate. Uh, about a number of traits, uh, among, uh, Biden and Trump and they’re, you know, and it’s interesting to see both, you know, sort of the way I’m looking at this is where’s Biden among Democrats.

Josh Blank: And one of the things we want to do in this, because this is really about how Democrats feel about Biden. In

Jim Henson: this moment, it’s really, this is what we’re, this is what we’re

Josh Blank: focused on. So as a way to sort of look at this, what I want to say is look at these traits and say, well, Okay. Cool. Does Biden, sorry, do Democrats feel that Biden has this trait?

Josh Blank: And then as a comparison point, do Republicans feel that Trump has this trait? Just to give us a sense of like, and so the areas where Biden is strongest are the areas that kind of make sense. He’s strongest on honesty. 80 percent of Democrats think he’s honest. Only 63 percent of Republicans think Trump is honest.

Josh Blank: Does pretty well, you know, cares about people like you. 78 percent of Democrats think Biden does compared to 73 percent of Republicans about Trump. Again, less of a gap, still a little bit. And temperament, 81 percent of Democrats think that Biden has the temperament to be president. 78 percent of Republicans think that Trump does.

Josh Blank: So we’re getting a little bit

Jim Henson: closer. That’s more on a par. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Blank: And then we think that’s in where it’s really on par. Knowledgeable. Are they knowledgeable? 86 percent of Democrats say that Biden’s knowledgeable. 87 percent of Republicans say that Trump is knowledgeable. But then we start to get to this is where the problem starts to come in.

Josh Blank: Is he competent? Now, competence means a lot, but I think it’s taken on a certain. You know, it’s probably taken on a certain meaning, you know, I think, as we move forward in this race. Having to do with

Jim Henson: age and health.

Josh Blank: Right. And we’re going to ask specifically about age, but competence, you know, let’s say as a proxy, 74 percent of Democrats, so three and four, think he’s competent, which is not great, given that 88 percent of Republicans think that Trump is competent.

Josh Blank: Right. So it’s, yeah. To give a point of comparison. Strong leader, 68 percent of Democrats think Biden is a strong leader. 91 percent of Republicans think Trump is a strong leader. So over a 20 point gap there. And then in the sort of the Bain thing. Is he too old to be president in 2025? Only 17 percent of Republicans think that about Trump.

Josh Blank: 45 percent of Democrats before the debate thought that about Biden. And when we looked in prior polling, uh, you know, and we asked Democrats specifically, are they concerned about Biden? We saw significantly higher rates of concern, uh, among Biden supporters. Right. So April polling found. 42 percent of Biden supporters said that they had a concern about his candidacy.

Josh Blank: Again, this is well before this debate. Only 29 percent of Trump supporters had concerns about his candidacy. And when we look at their concerns, uh, basically the number one concern was age. Competent, you know, basically mental health, you know, mental ability, competency, health. And so this is where this confirmatory piece of this comes up.

Josh Blank: And then I’ll add one more piece to this, which is why, again, this was sort of before you add that piece, please. I just wanna

Jim Henson: note that you know, I mean, nothing else competed in the Biden item, you know, in that open ended question about Biden’s, right? You know, about concerns that Biden supporters had about him.

Jim Henson: I mean, 63%, you know, said, you know, age, health, medical situation, et cetera. Everything else was in single digits, right? It’s the concern among Democrats,

Josh Blank: right? And he went out in the debate and he said, Oh, it basically was, you should be concerned. And here, essentially. Yeah. And so, and here’s the thing that’s, you know, and I think this is something you could kind of have a, a moment of departure, I think in how you look at this other result, but I think it’s kind of important.

Josh Blank: So in June we, we asked a question we’ve asked before, you know, so among Biden supporters, you know, essentially, are you voting for Biden because you want him to be elected president? Mostly, primarily, or because you don’t want Trump to be president. And we’re looking at this, uh, June polling only 53 percent of Democrats or Joe Biden supporters that they were voting for him because they wanted him to be elected president and almost equal share 47 percent say they were basically voting against Trump.

Josh Blank: And I, and I say that, and again, I think you could, you could take that in a couple of different directions. You could say, you know, for those Democrats who are sort of saying, no, we got to stick with Biden and sort of the, the, you know, it’s a certain set I have in my mind, but we’ll leave it alone. I won’t classify say, you know, I would vote for a dead Joe Biden over a Donald Trump.

Josh Blank: They exist. Yeah. Right? But, you know, I think the other way to look at this result is to say, you know, if Biden already didn’t have overwhelming support for his candidacy on its own merits. Where does he stand now that his candidacy looks so damaged?

Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, I, I think this is, you know, herein lies, you know, one of the, one of the difficulties, one of the core difficulties here for Democrats is that, you know, Democrats are, you know, they’re pretty closely divided.

Jim Henson: A lot of these things that we’re looking at, you know, are, you know, you know, 53, 47 or, you know. Yeah. allow some don’t knows or whatever, you know, you’ve got a little more of, you know, half of Democrats thinking a lot of things on one side or the other. Yeah, it’s both concerned about his age on one hand, but also saying they’re voting for him and not, you know, not, not going with a kind of more negative partisanship, anti Trump thing.

Jim Henson: And that means that the It fuels, it makes the argument a perpetual, you know, it adds fuel to the argument without providing a clear winning argument based on evidence for either side.

Josh Blank: Yeah, I think that’s right.

Jim Henson: And I think that You know, all this really does is illustrate trouble.

Josh Blank: Yeah, you know, and I’ll say, you know, and one of the things I think is important here is, you know, I think these are You know, pretty.

Jim Henson: And again, we should emphasize these are all before the debate.

Josh Blank: Right. And, and, and that’s the thing. And I would say, you know, the second, when we pull these number again, I expect them to get worse. Now I should say this, this is in a context of, you know, a president who is reasonably popular, like with, with his base.

Josh Blank: Right. So if we look at June, 2024, before the debate, we look at his approval ratings among Democrats, 77 percent approval. 13 percent disapproval, you know, 35 percent over a third have strong approval. So not, you know, not a huge problem. You know, one of the thing we might come back to when we talk about some of the groups in this, you know, when we look at, uh, you know, sort of job approval and favorability by ideology, you know, one of the things like, oh, you know, well, maybe he’s, you know, Biden has been weak among liberals and there’s a lot of reasons people say this, which can go back to 2020 and carry through.

Josh Blank: We could, you know, it’s a whole other thing, but. Honestly, the most supportive of his, of his, you know, the most supportive of the president tend to be the most liberal voters. The people who are extremely liberal approve of him more strongly. They have more favorable views of him. And so there’s not like, that’s really where it’s coming from.

Josh Blank: I mean, and to me, the whole point to make here is that, you know, it’s not as though the democratic electorate is turning on Joe Biden yet. It’s just that they had serious concerns that have now been verified as worthwhile.

Jim Henson: Well, and the other part of that, I think, is that if you look at that by party ID intensity, I think you see a similar pattern, right?

Jim Henson: In which, you know, support for Biden is strong, is strong amongst strong partisans, right? But that also sort of helps buttress the argument. That if strong partisans are among his strongest defenders, they’re also probably the least likely to defect if he’s replaced. Well, you know, and

Josh Blank: that’s the Unless

Jim Henson: the replacement process is just completely screwed.

Josh Blank: Yeah, and I’ve heard some analysis, you know, in the last few weeks, where, where, And I think this is a reasonably smart hot take, which is to say, you know, the debate didn’t matter and the reason didn’t matter was because of partisanship because of negatives of partisanship because the vast majority of Trump supporters were going to support Trump, no matter what, no matter how many, you know, lies or dissembling, whatever.

Josh Blank: And the same thing for Biden, because Trump’s the other guy on stage, there’s nothing that Biden can do to turn off these, these voters. You know, so therefore the debate didn’t matter. And it’s like, yeah, but like, and I, we kind of touched on this, but like, we have close elections, like these are close elections.

Josh Blank: And the fact is, is, you know, that may be the case. And there are, there is some share of Democrats or some, you know, let’s say, let’s say there’s a third of the electorate. Let’s, I would say is a good place to start who will vote for Joe Biden. He could die before the election. They will still vote for him on the ticket.

Josh Blank: Nothing is going to stop them from voting for the Democratic ticket, whoever it is. Yeah. But there’s a ceiling and it’s not far off that.

Jim Henson: Yeah

Josh Blank: And that’s I think sort of the issue here is that it it’s not about the people who are diehard partisans It’s about the people who are You know weren’t necessarily as apoplectic about the trump presidency, but maybe didn’t like it You know and as of right now i’ve forgotten most of that because most people do kind of move on And now what they’re hearing about is that The questions about whether the president is currently competent to even do his job.

Josh Blank: Well, that’s not, you know, that’s not really a winning coalition

Jim Henson: in an environment with, you know, lingering economic uncertainty that, you know, presidents pay for rightly or wrongly. Exactly. So, you know, let’s think a little bit, let’s talk a little bit about the, you know, the contingency if there is a succession.

Jim Henson: You know, there are two, you know, kind of broad schools of thought out there, you know, and I, and this is, you know, there’s a lot of variants in here, but, you know, one broad school of thought is that because of her position as vice president, because of the politics of the democratic party, that, you know, Kamala Harris has to be considered kind of the most likely and the most legitimate person to replace Biden in this scenario, yeah, that’s one.

Jim Henson: The other broad school of thought is no, We need to come up with some kind of process to open it up a little bit more, in which, you know, President Harris would certainly be, you know, considered one of the leading contenders. But you know, many of the other Democrats out there on the bench and you know, you can.

Jim Henson: You know, talk about who said they do or don’t want to do it. Strengths and

Josh Blank: weaknesses, et cetera.

Jim Henson: Well, and yeah, exactly, but that there has to be some kind of process. Right. And there’s a, you know, some ideas, crazier than others, uh, former Clinton consultant and what are you gonna buy? James Carville, you know, just called the guy.

Jim Henson: James Carville almost killed me in a freeway in Louisiana once. Let’s save that for another podcast, another podcast. But, you know, and I know it was him because I could see him behind the wheel. you know, suggested, you know, some kind of series of town halls or something, you know, or, you know, other people can, you know, debates at the convention.

Jim Henson: That was, you know, kind of a dumb, like Don Stewart idea. Yeah. Sorry, John. Um, but that was silly way to think about it. Um, but there are those two things going on, but I mean, I think, You know, I’m pretty persuaded that I, you know, you’re going to have a hard time not considering Kamala Harris the most prominent choice should Biden sit, step down.

Josh Blank: Yeah.

Jim Henson: You know, and I’m not saying that the arguments that we should have, that there should be a more open process or right or wrong or whatever, but I mean, the politics of the situation are, are. Pretty hard in the Democratic party. So what do we, what do we know about Kamala Harris? Yeah, let’s do that.

Josh Blank: We’ll come back. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think one of the interesting things about, about Harris is that, you know, the sort of, I don’t know, sort of public drumbeat, you know, often against her. And I mean, part of this to say is just, you know. You know, vice president is a hard job and most vice presidents kind of lose stature as the job goes on, you know, due to some oftentimes, you know, sort of the ineffectiveness of the position, right?

Josh Blank: I mean, so high profile ineffective people usually, you know, it doesn’t work out very well. But the interesting things about her is that, you know, despite. You know, what you might kind of expect her polling numbers aren’t really that bad in Texas. Um, you know, and, and, you know, in June, 2024, again, overall favorability ratings, you know, she was 35 51.

Josh Blank: Again, this is a Republican leading state, but Biden was 39 53. So she wasn’t really, you know, sort of far off where he is thinking more about the groups were thinking about net right now. Democrats, right? She was 71 favorable, 14 unfavorable among Democrats. Biden was 81 12.

Jim Henson: And we should say that, you know, within the democratic subsample, that’s outside the margin of error, but not a lot.

Josh Blank: No, not a lot. You know, among liberals, uh, you know, Biden was 75 favorable, 18 unfavorable. Harris was 69, 15. So only really six points off his favorability number. And again, probably within the margin, almost among black voters, Biden was 67, 20 among all black voters. She was 64, 19. Now, in some way that could be seen as a weakness that she’s not stronger, but also she’s not the candidate.

Jim Henson: Yeah.

Josh Blank: And so ultimately. You know, if you sort of sub her, you know, if you were to say right now, we can just, you know, Democrats say, Okay, snap your fingers, sub her in. You have a candidate who has, you know, one, just say, you know, doesn’t have some of the baggage that Biden has in terms of, you know, owning everything that’s gone on in the first term, I would say.

Josh Blank: She has basically similar ID numbers to Biden. And she doesn’t have the baggage of his age. It’s not a crazy argument, right? I mean, I, I, I, there’s more to it than that, but

Jim Henson: well, and I think this goes to, you know, the earlier part of the discussion, which is, or, you know, I mean, we were talking about this with a colleague before we talked about this a couple of times.

Jim Henson: Yeah, sure. And again, this is not a novel thought, so I’m not presenting it as such. It’s been two weeks. We’re here. But one of the problems that, you know, the core problems here that the Biden campaign has and that Joe Biden has. Yeah. As we said earlier, is that, you know, this is confirmatory of the most negative narrative around the campaign.

Jim Henson: And the flip side of that is that it also completely undermines the core rationale and the core strategic impulse of the Biden campaign, which is to make the campaign about Trump, his unsuitability for office. You know, age was, you know, but, but also, you know, age was not a big Part of that, obviously, because the Biden campaign is not going to go there.

Jim Henson: But you know, we talked about those, that perception of competence in the Trump battery we did. So, as long as Joe Biden is on the ticket, that, that strategy, I think, is fatally compromised.

Josh Blank: I think it’s almost impossible to execute.

Jim Henson: And so, if you, if Biden, you know, you find a way to, to exit Biden from the candidacy as gracefully as possible,

Josh Blank: you

Jim Henson: know, you do to some degree over, you know, give yourself a shot of overcoming that problem.

Josh Blank: Right.

Jim Henson: Right. And, and it makes, you know, and I think when you look at the numbers you just read and, you know, I had a note card somewhere with, you know, some national, you know, that’s not very different than the national numbers

Josh Blank: in terms

Jim Henson: of Harris relative to Biden. And whatever the elite complaints are about Harris and there have been plenty and, you know, complaints about her performance in the, in the 2020 presidential primary, she was not a bad candidate.

Jim Henson: right? And she’s more experienced now. And I’m not making the case for her, I guess what I’m more making the case for, is that I think there’s a, there’s an assumption out there, that Kamala Harris is automatically a weak candidate. And that she, You know, if she does get the candidacy because of, you know, racial and ethnic politics and coalitional politics inside the democratic party,

Josh Blank: which we’ll get to in a second or

Jim Henson: the avoidance of, you know, a full blown internal fight before the convention, you know, you know, I think one has to be careful to deploy an unspoken assumption in that discussion.

Jim Henson: Yeah. That You know, if we could, we’d just get, you know, we should just get rid of her.

Josh Blank: Yeah. And I

Jim Henson: think that’s out there. And I, and I understand why some people find that, you know, sexist and racist and, you know, various mixtures because, you know, the evidence at hand, and you can talk about other, you know, how she’s handled this or that, you know, but I mean, the polling evidence at hand.

Jim Henson: And I think the macro level evidence at hand really suggests that she’s, would, is a much better choice than a lot of Democrats think.

Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, you know, I read something from, from Madaglacius, you know, sort of thinking about this and I, I liked the way that he put it. It’s a bit of a sports metaphor, which I’m, I apologize for, for, you know, For you and maybe some other people, but you know, they talk a lot in sort of advanced analytics and sports about like replacement level and the idea, you know, that he was making was, you know, in 2020 in particular, you know, Biden was much better than your replacement level Democrat.

Josh Blank: If the goal was beating Trump, essentially pick a random, you know, average Democrat out of the barrel, you know, Biden’s way better at this point. Biden is probably not better than a replacement level Democrat, you know, at this point, because of his, and just because again, not because of his history. I mean, just because of his liabilities at this point.

Josh Blank: Right. Yeah. And. So one, I think he says, Harris better than a replacement level Democrat. And the answer is yes, absolutely. The polling numbers tell you that, you know, regardless of what you want to say about any sort of specifics. But the other thing, and it’s something I always, Harp on when thinking about, you know, public opinion and, you know, it’s sort of things.

Josh Blank: A lot of things in general is like compared to what and the thing is, when Harris was being compared to all of the other options who could go up against Trump. Yeah, she came up lacking right now. She’s not being compared to all the other options going to be under. She being compared to Biden. And so what I think you’re going to see is, I think, you know, one thing I wouldn’t be surprised by in the coming days is A little bit of a, of a reassessment, especially among democratic voters about, you know, Hey, is Harris really the person I thought she was?

Josh Blank: Cause she might not be that bad.

Jim Henson: Yeah.

Josh Blank: And I think you’re going to see that. And again, whether that’s real or soft or it doesn’t really matter, but her case is probably going to strengthen as time goes on. Uh, you know, to where you started on that, I think is interesting and gets to the coalitional stuff a little bit more is, you know, this idea of there’s these two paths, right?

Josh Blank: There’s one path. You know, the people kind of think, which is sort of a

Jim Henson: throw it open and have some democracy.

Josh Blank: Yeah. I was going to set aside first the Harris one, which is, you know, there’s some way that Biden steps aside and anoints her, you know, when, how there’s a bunch of legal stuff that we were kind of messing around talking about earlier.

Josh Blank: We won’t get into that here, but just imagine, you know, again, all the states have their own rules. So we’ll just sort of put that out there. Anyone who says, and this kind of goes to the other piece that there’s some simple way. You know, or some way that that the process will be opened up. And I think there’s a reason Democrats are talking about that, right?

Josh Blank: I mean, the sense of if democracy and representation is going to be one of your big themes, it’s a little weird to have like a backroom decision about who the nominee for the party is going to be.

Jim Henson: Yeah,

Josh Blank: you know, I mean it kind of so that’s a little bit problematic. You can understand why the impulse is there having said all that You know for those of us who you know So those of you who listen to this podcast and texas politics and follow texas politics closely and thinking about you know Speakers races and other things, you know There are a lot of people who would take that job and there are a lot of people with a lot of clout You have different, you know in in the amount of Multidimensional chess and resource throwing and backstabbing and politicking that needs to go on inside whatever process they establish is like just so mind blowingly monumental that anyone who thinks like, well, no, they just, Biden just steps down and then the convention will just throw it open.

Josh Blank: It’s like, yeah. Uh huh. And that’s like, before you even talk about the state level rules that we’re just mentioning that like, you know, maybe the ballot set, I mean, there’s all kinds, there’s all kinds of other stuff out there. So in and of itself, people talking about that are a little bit, it’s a little bit too just kind of like, well, we just do the normative, we just do this and then it’ll be fine.

Josh Blank: And I don’t think there is a, this out there right now that’s like clear, legal, obvious, whatever. At the same time, you know, just some kind of talking about some different sort of final big picture thoughts here. You know, this is part of what I think is, you know, what you’re seeing is at least up to this point, the reluctance among a lot of elected Democrats to step forward relative to the volume of chatter on the left about Biden.

Josh Blank: Having to leave the ticket. And I think part of it is, you know, if you’re an elected official one, you’re risk averse

Jim Henson: Yeah

Josh Blank: by nature and a big question. I think any elected official needs to ask themselves or would be asked as well Who are you replacing him with and you know, it depends on your position in the party your position in your re election campaign And also again who the candidates gonna be?

Josh Blank: I mean, you know, it’s a different answer if you’re a moderate You know sort of who’s in a swing district versus, you know, your AOC your Greg Kassar You You know, whatever. And

Jim Henson: that’s, you know, you’re obviously seeing that play out as, you know, some of the, you know, people like Jon Tester in Montana, you know, some of these senators that are in very close races in swing states or in red, you know, outright red states and Senator Tester’s case.

Josh Blank: And a lot of people are coming

Jim Henson: out and saying, yeah, this is, you know, he should go.

Josh Blank: Yeah. And I think if you’re a lot of the people who aren’t in one of those situations, I mean, one of the, you know, sort of team player things you do is to not come out and say what you think, because it really is. You know what I mean?

Josh Blank: Not to say like. There is, what does John Tester want? Here is actually a relevant question in this. Yeah. You know, if you’re a Democrat who’s likely to get reelected, you know, the other sort of interest, you know, a couple other interesting things about this, you know, the role of the Black Caucus in all of this.

Josh Blank: Yeah. Right. I mean, they’ve come out firmly in the house. Yeah. In the house. They’ve come out firmly behind Biden as of right now. Uh, you know, just looking up the numbers and Texas among, uh. Black Democrats, Biden’s approval was 74, 13, 83 favorable, seven unfaithful, pretty similar to Harris. I’ll say she was 81, 10.

Josh Blank: I think it just, that’s about, that’s about name ID difference. Not much. Uh, you know, 60, you know, I said before 53 percent of Democrats want Joe Biden to be elected president, 65 percent of black Democrats want Joe Biden to be elected president as opposed to 35 percent of want to keep Donald Trump from being elected.

Josh Blank: So there, you know, the black caucus is an interesting position here. I mean, both in terms of, you know, Joe Biden’s sort of. Reliance on and, uh, credit given to the black caucus and black voters for his nomination in 2020. They’re so, so core, you know, sort of to, to his, his identity here, you know, at the same time, I mean, I think, you know, if many, you were pointing this out earlier, I’m not want to state your argument, but I mean, basically if they can keep buying in for a long time, ultimately Harris becomes eventually the de facto alternative, which I think would be fine with the black caucus too.

Josh Blank: And to add on the piece I was sort of saying before, also a lot of the. Members of the Black Caucus come from districts that are safely Democratic. And so, you know, they’re not really thinking about the coat tale issue about, you know, a, a ballot. At least not in their own

Jim Henson: self interest. Yeah,

Josh Blank: not in their own self interest.

Jim Henson: Uh. Or at least not directly. I mean, I think that’s, Yeah. It’s another thing that’s, that’s brewing here. Yeah. I mean, Is. I mean, look, you can, you know, it’s not inconsistent with that argument to say that, you know, if you’re a senior member in the Congressional Black Caucus. Right. You know, you are very interested.

Jim Henson: Yeah, I mean, I think the question is, is it a good thing that Democrats are taking I think that, the Democratic Party has, has had a very, very good shot in what is a very reasonable, was, was anyway, a very reasonable shot at Democrats taking the house back.

Josh Blank: Yeah. And I should add, you

Jim Henson: know, that’s, that’s good for your self interest.

Josh Blank: And I should add, and you know, you didn’t mention this in the Harris discussion, but just to put it in here too, you know, the idea of the Democratic Party Leaving Joe Biden, you know, whether he initiates it or not, how it gets initiated, what happens and passing over Harris is just, you know, it’s hard

Jim Henson: to, you know, it’s just,

Josh Blank: it’d be politically suicidal,

Jim Henson: very difficult.

Jim Henson: And I think that’s why people that don’t want to see hair, you know, look, just cause you, you may like Kamala Harris and still think that the internal selection process for a potential replacement should be more deliberative and participatory than just.

Josh Blank: This person. Assuming that the

Jim Henson: vice president is the next person in line.

Josh Blank: Yeah. Sure.

Jim Henson: You know, that said.

Josh Blank: Yeah.

Jim Henson: You know, there are also strategic reasons. I mean, I think. You know, some of the people that are calling for this more deliberative process are trying to find a

Josh Blank: workaround

Jim Henson: without coming out and saying, you know, I don’t think she’s up for the job.

Josh Blank: Right. I think that’s right.

Jim Henson: You know, so,

Josh Blank: you know, we mentioned, you know, sort of the liberals in the party already a little bit, you know, in the sense that, you know, Biden’s numbers are relatively good amongst sort of the most liberal voters, you know, but it is notable, I mean, other than sort of Lloyd Doggett, the left wing of the party has been pretty quiet.

Josh Blank: If anything, they’ve. Biden, you know, it’s been the opposite.

Jim Henson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the, uh, AOC, you know, was an early, you know, you know, somebody who could, you know, was an early buck up with our guy

Josh Blank: and I might be cynical here, but I think to some extent, you know, if you’re a liberal in the Democratic Party after a number of years, you know, you’re not looking to have this blood on your hands and you don’t need to because it’s not for you again.

Josh Blank: AOC is in a safe district. You know, most of the people in the squad are coming from pretty safe, pretty liberal districts where, you know, Right, the ones that are in trouble

Jim Henson: are

Josh Blank: already in trouble

Jim Henson: and we’re not hearing from them anyway. Exactly. Yeah.

Josh Blank: You know, let’s, George Clooney, let’s throw him out there.

Josh Blank: Yeah,

Jim Henson: you know, I mentioned Clooney in the beginning, I, you know. I mean, I think you’re right. And, you know, the, to the extent that this is sort of insight into a donor decision, but there was, you know, there was interesting, you know, gossipy coverage this morning, either in political, I think it was either a Politico or a Punchbowl that, you know, Clooney apparently did have a conversation with former president Obama and let him know he was going to do this.

Jim Henson: And it’s not like, You know, President Obama can control what George Clooney does, but the spin on that was that Obama was kind of, you know, got to do what you got to do. So, you know, it’s kind of the implication of,

Josh Blank: yeah, well, I think ultimately, you know, it’s a weird, you know, and this is sort of, it’s something that I think is could, you know, it’s a mixture of something that sounds cliche and cynical.

Josh Blank: So I’m really excited to say it. Oh, good. But, but, you know, although the George Clooney op ed is stupid, it does, it does speak to, you know, the importance of the donor universe in this. Like, I understand that Biden and his, and his internal team, it’s easy to dismiss a bunch of second term congressmen as not knowing what’s up.

Jim Henson: Or, you know, Obama, former advisors. I mean,

Josh Blank: yeah. People who, you know, you were never tight with to begin with. It would have been

Jim Henson: critical, you know, I mean, David Axelrod has been critical of the Biden administration. You know, I mean, not. I think not horribly so, but you know, enough that it bothered the, the Biden people and Biden himself reportedly.

Josh Blank: Yeah. And again, not knowing Biden personally, you know, I do nonetheless wonder, you know, if he’s not going to be getting, I mean, like one of the things I think that they’re tracking in addition to the polling numbers right now is the impact this has had on his campaign finance. Yeah. You know, to the extent that small dollar donors are declined, you know, declined because of this, to the extent that the people who write.

Josh Blank: million and 10 million checks to the party to the super PACs decide, you know, like I’m not gonna make this investment and ultimately it is an investment. It’s an investment. Yeah, I ship my

Jim Henson: investment elsewhere to place. I think it’s more important. There were some early reports of donors, big donors, saying that they were going to shift their emphasis to Contributions to congressional races, the House and Senate races.

Josh Blank: And that’s right. And I think, you know, that’s something where, you know, if you’re Biden, you’re thinking, okay, like, am I going to be able not only, you know, physically, mentally, so that is it. But like, do I have the resources to compete or am I not going to be able to do that? I think that’s something that’s actually going to push them more than Another house Democrat saying they’re not, you know, they’re not sure about Biden.

Josh Blank: I mean, and there’s this, there’s a flip side to this too, that also relates. I mean, I think, you know, as much as, yeah, some of those donors will shift their money. One of the things that, you know, Biden can’t do right now, and I don’t know if he’s going to be able to, is he can’t go and do big money fundraisers for down ballot candidates right now.

Josh Blank: I mean, I don’t think there’s a lot of Democrats right now are saying, Oh, Joe and

Jim Henson: for him to come, yeah,

Josh Blank: come to their district. And I mean, that’s just, you know, and you think about. um, a ticket.

Jim Henson: Yeah.

Josh Blank: That’s not great. So, I mean, maybe, you know, that’s a good place to kind of come to one last thing, which is the Senate race here in Texas, right?

Josh Blank: Yeah.

Jim Henson: And, you know, I think eventually this play, you know, this has some kind of impact on this race, but this race is also so Still kind of underdeveloped at this point, you know, I you know, I’m reticent to to say too much about it Honestly, I mean, I don’t you know, I’ve been reticent about this race all along Yeah, I mean numbers have been a little bit weird.

Jim Henson: The polling itself has been a little bit weird We’ve got a lot of likely voter polls out there that yeah, you know quote unquote that Show this race closer than we’ve been seeing it in the general RV polls. Yeah And, you know, but, you know, the one consistent characteristic is that if you take out forces and things like this, there’s still like not, not a lot of attention being paid this race by partisans on either side.

Josh Blank: You know, that’s important though, I think, to the analysis here, right? Which is if you take out the forces, you know, it kind of looks a little bit wider. If you start to look at these LV polls are coming out, you know, you’d think the race is kind of tightening up. But it’s not. But this is actually the issue here.

Josh Blank: You know, uh, there’s already been a pretty notable enthusiasm gap in the polling that we’ve done. Right. So over half of Republicans in last poll said they were extremely enthusiastic about voting the 2024 election, 55 percent compared to only 39 percent of Democrats. And so, you know, I mean, this is a whole other discussion.

Josh Blank: In some ways, there’s a lot we could, we could talk about here, uh, because that gap has been growing throughout the year between Republicans and Democrats. And the thing is, what’s happened in the last couple of weeks is not likely to increase Democratic enthusiasm. Now, some arguments would be that I think I’ve seen floating around, which I think are smart arguments, but I think a little bit decontextualizes this idea that, you know, in Texas right now is the top of the, you know, sort of a question or a statement is the top of the ticket really driving results because we’re seeing, we’ve seen House candidates in the legislature, you know, Overperformed the presidential ticket.

Josh Blank: We’ve seen John Cornyn and key areas overperformed the presidential ticket. So there’s a question of who’s leading who. A lot of people look to, uh, better works campaign and sort of say, you know, if you look at that, you’d actually say that really, you know, what’s going on at the sub level against Cruz is really what’s going to do this.

Josh Blank: It’s not going to be about the presidential race. And I just, I’m just going to kind of throw my hands. Like, I don’t think so. Like, you know, I mean, real quick, just to remind people and I, Hey, I’m just going to real quick. Worked it really well. Cause he was a high quality candidate. I think all reds, a high quality candidate.

Josh Blank: O’Rourke had the fortune of running in Trump’s first midterm election, right? Very,

Jim Henson: very good context for his election. Very

Josh Blank: good context for Democrats everywhere. And I’ll add to that one other thing, which was that same momentum that pushed O’Rourke into the race that pushed, you know, him sort of as an anti Trump sentiment among Democrats.

Josh Blank: It also pushed tons and tons of down ballot Democrats to run in races they hadn’t been running in all throughout the state. So the number of, you know, House candidates went up, number of, you know, basically local candidates went up among Democrats. And, you know, the benefit of that is you’re running campaigns everywhere.

Josh Blank: I mean, Aurora can be in one place. Democrats were really running that election cycle and it, you know, against Cruz, that came close. The idea, therefore, though, that that race is going to kind of like drive things and therefore the presidential is not going to be as like, I’m just a little, I’m a little skeptical because once you put Trump on the ticket.

Josh Blank: Put Biden on the ticket that is going to be driving the discussion, you know, I mean, we’ll see, but I’m just the idea that, you know, there’s going to be a huge divergence between the presidential ballot and the Senate ballot in Texas. I just don’t, I don’t see a huge divergence happening, but we’ll see.

Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, it’s not clear like what the. I mean, I think a lot of people in advance have seen what happens, what the why is for that scenario. Yeah, and you also

Josh Blank: have to play this out. And you know,

Jim Henson: people will make the argument and somebody will, you know, if anybody hears this they will write us and say, look here’s the argument, and that’s great.

Jim Henson: Um, but,

Josh Blank: It’s just hard to play out an argument where, you know, let’s say Biden is a nominee. He underperforms, you know, past democratic nominees or, you know, we see a deviation from the trend line of tightening election cycles, but nonetheless, Allred somehow, you know, tightens that up with Cruz. I mean, that’s

Jim Henson: just, you know, I might accept the argument that Depending on what the Biden replacement looks like, you know, the Democrats could ultimately get a little bit of a boost out of this and that could help the Senate race, right?

Jim Henson: Yeah. But to your point, I still think that is a Can you the ballot down phenomenon, is not a bottom of the ballot up phenomena. Yeah. Absolutely. I think that’s right. You know, I think a step back to close it out, I mean, what I, you know, the problems that the Democrats have right now are so big. I mean, you know, as we sit here and we talk about, well You know, there’s this line of discussion about this, you know, but the Herod, the succession, the line of discussion about what the right thing, you know, who owes by what is, what is loyalty, right.

Jim Henson: Um, versus, you know, you’re just, you know, we’re forming a circular firing squad

Josh Blank: or what’s even in everybody’s self interest. And when you say everybody is like the electorate, the elected officials, the part, I mean, all

Jim Henson: of those discussions, you know, are counter to the campaign that. The Democrats and in particular, Joe Biden and the Biden campaign have laid out for themselves, right?

Jim Henson: And I think there is no going back to the strategy that they wanted to pursue in this race. And that means that the way forward, you know, is going to be fraught, even if Joe Biden Digs in and won’t listen to anybody and and

Josh Blank: even if he performs better

Jim Henson: and yeah, you know And it does not get out of the race That strap, you know They need a new strategy now because I don’t think there’s gonna be a way to go back to the old one Mm hmm, and it goes back to you know, one of the guiding lights of this of this podcast Which is we’ve been swimming around for the last 45 minutes.

Jim Henson: Yeah in

Josh Blank: Yeah.

Jim Henson: Right. What we’re doing is chasing down all these, you know, rabbit trails and, you know, old ones are, you know, some of those trails are caving in and some of them are opening up, you know, it’s even more frequently than day to day.

Josh Blank: Yeah.

Jim Henson: Yeah. And so I think, you know, at this point, the uncertainty around this, you know, is kind of the, the Democrats biggest problem, all of those, and that’s kind of what I was trying to get out when I was talking about all of those, you know, 52 percents,

Josh Blank: you

Jim Henson: know, among Democrats pick your measure, you know, um, or even the ones that are, you know, 70, you know, there’s, there’s not going to be an easy consensus here.

Jim Henson: And it’s also going to take trying to get some elites and some voters and especially Joe Biden, you know, this maybe shows my handle. But, you know, to look at some very hard realities. Yeah on that, um, because the path forward for Joe Biden seems to me, uh, You know, any, uh, the path to victory if one exists is, you know, just very, very, very narrow.

Jim Henson: Yeah. And I just don’t think they have an argument for that at this point.

Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, anecdotally, at least,

Jim Henson: at least not a persuasive one.

Josh Blank: No. I mean, anecdotally, I think, you know what, what, what confirms that? So clear is what we haven’t talked about since the debate. And by we, I just mean, I just, hasn’t been a story, which is Trump’s conviction, right?

Josh Blank: That was, that was exactly what, you know, democratic campaigns were waiting for. They were waiting for the convictions to come down. They’re ready to, you know, sort of run on that message. And that has been totally pushed aside to talk about Biden. And that’s like the exact, I mean, I think

Jim Henson: that’s one aspect of that, that, you know, the fact that, you know, we were going to make this a focus on Donald Trump, that was going to be one of many negative things that made, you know, out of tribute to president Biden, who’s, you know, Taking on a lot of water in the last couple weeks, you know, you know his off repeated, you know Don’t compare me to the almighty compare me to the alternative.

Jim Henson: Well, the problem is He’s not he’s not squaring up to the alternative. Yeah. Quite the way that they, they had hoped to frame this election. And I, they’re going to have a very hard time going back on that. So with that, thanks for being here, Josh. As always, thanks again to our excellent production team in the Dev Studio and the College of Liberal Arts here at UT Austin.

Jim Henson: All the data that we talked about today, you will find at texaspolitics. utexas. edu. Thank you very much for listening. We’ll be off again for a couple of weeks. It is summer, but there’ll be doubtless a lot to talk about when we get back. But after that, we’ll be back in a couple of weeks with another Second Reading Podcast.

Outro: The Second Reading Podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.