October 20th, 2021 – Second Reading Podcast

October 20th, 2021 – Second Reading
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[00:00:00] Jim Henson: 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. So 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. The point must a 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 for the week of October 18th. 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. How are you today? Josh? I’m doing very well. Thank you.

[00:00:52] Well, I’m good as a you, you know, but our listeners going on him, uh, for the first time we’ve done been, since we started doing this podcast, at least actually that’s not true for the first time since the pandemic started, I’m actually back in the studio at UT. Nice to see our very essential crew in. Um, so that’s one thing that’s happening this week.

[00:01:13] Another thing that’s happening this week directly to the point is that the Texas legislature adjourned Cindi die this week. Um, I think technically Monday morning and despite the anxieties of staff lobby, legislators. MI you mean, you know, mostly everybody paying attention, I think with maybe one exception, uh, it does seem that the third special session was the last one, at least for now and not for all time, but certainly, you know, for the 87 session now, there are some rumblings out there that were, you know, I think maybe magnified by a Patrick’s Vtech story in the Texas Tribune yesterday that the governor.

[00:01:56] Call another one, a little bit later down the road, maybe, you know, between now and the primary. And maybe we can circle back to that. I’m, you know, color me skeptical. But, um, you know, we’ll see, it’s been a very long session, I think for anybody that either follows this, but you know, certainly to be fair.

[00:02:16] You know, in the large scale of things, they’re the most important people in the universe, but certainly for people in the process, you know, th th this has been quite a travail and, and quite unusual in terms of the link that went on. And, you know, the back-to-back nature of this is it’s been a while. I mean, Unprecedented as I think we discussed earlier on the podcast at some point, but it’s been a thing for people in the process and, and given the output of the legislature and the dynamics at work, um, honestly the Democrat.

[00:02:48] Quorum break seems like it happened years ago. Right. And you know, it, it was not, it was June. So, but, but, but that underline the point being a lot has gone on. So, you know, I, I thought that today would be a good time, um, after watching this all unfold through the summer and into the fall and, and it being a recurrent theme here, you know, that it would be, you know, a reasonable thing to step back and kind of.

[00:03:16] Looking at the session overall, what it, what it wrought. And I think we’ve talked a bit, quite a bit really about the policy stuff, but we want to, now, now that there’s a marker on it all, you know, what, what came out of this session? How would it tells us about the political system? You know, what kind of politics run display?

[00:03:35] You know, what it tells us about the, not even just the political system, you know, thought of institutionally, but the kind of political universe in this. You know, including, you know, some assessment of, you know, how, how we’ve understood this. And I think whether, you know, the, the logic that we’ve seen there holds up and, and, and how we expect it to play.

[00:03:53] So, you know, let’s start a little bit by just talking about, you know, what they did. And I think, obviously the thing we’ve talked about the most has been, you know, the, the consistently very conservative to reactionary, frankly, content of. Of the legislation and I think that’s a fair place to start. And I think, I think it’s a fair characterization.

[00:04:17] Yeah.

[00:04:19] Josh Blank: I agree with that. I mean, if you kind of go down the list, right. You’re talking about, you know, the SBA and the abortion limitations, talking about the unlicensed care of handguns, you know, all of the new election and voting laws, you know, multiple attempts and at the last minute success on a bill targeting transgender student athletes.

[00:04:37] Um, and I, you know, oh, Texas funding of the border wall. I mean, I’m probably forget, oh, critical race theory. I just, you know, you kind of. Oh, right in

[00:04:46] Jim Henson: that. Yeah. Every, every time I make this lit a list of this for a talk or whatever, I realize, I ha I read some, I hit the list and then go, oh yeah. And then there’s also, um, yeah.

[00:04:59] Right. I mean, so when you look at this, I mean, what really sticks out to you? I mean, is it, I mean, I, you know, I mean, I’ve found myself as I talk about this. Realizing that I’ve been thinking about it a lot, kind of in Toto, you know, and what the big picture and how it all puts together, you know, how it all fits together and the impression it creates.

[00:05:22] But I think when you talk to individuals, a lot of people out there. I want to talk about, you know, things in particular, right. And, and either because they’re personally find it most, I think, offensive or threatening or disturbing or whatever your negative reaction is. Sure. You know, in some cases, This is probably about sorting to some degree.

[00:05:47] You know, there are people that are, you know, that supported this agenda that have their own kind of pet achievements. But I’m wondering, just kind of a gut level thing for you. Like, you know, when you look back and you think about this, you know, what really sticks out to you? The list of right-wing kind of

[00:06:04] Josh Blank: thing, the particulars, cause I’m like you, I immediately go to like, kind of, what is this all mean to me?

[00:06:09] You know, kind of, kind of thing. But if I was going to get it, if I was going to pick out some of the particulars, you know, I think there are some, you know, I guess the lens through which I look through it is, is this, which is, you know, I think, okay, we’re talking about a lot of right-wing legislation. The question is, or what among this legislation do I think Democrats are gonna want a high.

[00:06:28] Come November is one kind of way to think about it, you know? And also what kind of legislation do Republicans want to highlight or maybe not highlight come November is kind of where I’m sort of would probably think about it. And I guess, you know, the things that I guess kind of stick out to me in some cases, I would say maybe, you know, You know, attempting to say the unlicensed carry of handguns and maybe the abortion restrictions.

[00:06:49] Although, you know, I think the unlicensed, the former is probably a little bit more remarkable than the latter. Only in that, you know, knowing what we know about public opinion. We’re, we’re a state just like pretty much every other state in the country where almost 90% of people with support universal background checks.

[00:07:02] And this seems to be, you know, squarely in the opposite direction of that. And I think that’s. You know, problematic. And I also think you have better work runs for governor and you know, one of the big knocks against him is going to be the comment about him coming and taking, you know, AK 40 sevens. I actually think this is probably, you know, the best opportunity for him to take a conversation like that head on because of this policy.

[00:07:22] I think it allows him to say, yeah, okay, fine. But you know, let’s have a conversation about it. I’m not sure that anybody’s going to necessarily want to. I’m not sure whether either party is going to want to talk about abortion as much as, as activists and some might want to, but I’m not sure that that might be something that really carries through.

[00:07:38] In fact, I think, you know, it’s a good chance that is an initiative that kind of continues to carry through the election. And then I guess the other one is something that they sort of did more quietly. It wasn’t even right-wing in some ways, but it’s just sitting out there, which is, you know, what happens if we have another winter storm?

[00:07:50] And we have issues, you know, I think there’s that kind of functional government stuff. And I mean, that’s sort of goes to the meta in some ways, it edges into it a little bit, but you know, for me at least, but I think those are the things that really stick out to me. I suppose the other issues are just, you know, more difficult, more niche and nuanced.

[00:08:09] And, and, you know, I think in general are kind of just a little bit less likely to activate. Large shares of voters or be, you know, kind of continue to carry a lot of weight to my mind.

[00:08:19] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, I think just, you know, if, if I stick to, you know, what we put in the large bucket of ideologically driven measures, you know, I mean, and I’ll, you know, I’ll get to the power outage thing in a minute, but I, you know, I, I think that the.

[00:08:35] You know, the manner of, you know, the, the matter of the abortion law is, is the biggest X-Factor here within this bucket of things. I mean, I, you know, I kind of agree with you at your, with that kind of half twist, maybe on the, on the handgun thing, that everybody flags, that the issue of guns could be better or Rourke’s, you know, from the moment he uttered the, the, the quote about taking.

[00:09:00] You know, AK 40 sevens. Hell yeah. Or whatever it was. Um, yeah. Some, you know, mild cursing. I think that’s already pretty baked in. Yeah. You know, I don’t, I don’t think, you know, I mean, other than, as an attack line and as a mobilization point for, you know, for Republicans. Kind of in the abstract. I don’t see that as being too unpredictable right now.

[00:09:22] I think the, you know, the, the path of SBA and what happens in the courts, what the response is, you know, I, you know, I mean, N of two, but in the couple of talks that I’ve given in the last. You know, a couple of weeks with, you know, not random samples of people to be sure, but, um, you know, the abortion laws, the thing that seems to come up and to come up with the most intense.

[00:09:47] Yeah. You know, it’s coming up very consistency. It’s the question that I think, you know, somewhere in the range of informed observers to borderline participants have, you know, without it being all, you know, totally insiders. Um, and I just, you know, I, you know, I think there’s a lot of unknowns and I think, you know, you know, when you said you don’t neither, party’s going to want to talk about it.

[00:10:09] You know, I don’t know. I mean, I think depending on how the politics play out, you know, rightly or wrongly Democrats may decide that they want to talk about it more. I think that’s

[00:10:20] Josh Blank: probably a fair way to put it in some ways, which is, you know, it’s a, ultimately I don’t think that Republicans, once they get past the primaries are going to want to talk about it too much.

[00:10:28] But I think Democrats, you know, it’s going to be a decision how much they want to emphasize that issue. I mean, I think, you know, you think back it look times have changed, but. I think Democrats still feel burned by Wendy Davis and the abortion filibuster launched to a gubernatorial race. And I mean, it, Republicans are more than happy despite all the all, I mean, despite the multiple dimensions of change that have taken place in society between then and now, you know, I still see the abortion Barbie reference come up, which is, you know, problematic multiple levels.

[00:10:58] But I mean, you know, I think that speaks to why Republicans might not want to talk about it as much. And why Democrats still feel. You know, probably reticent to make that to central, but we’ll see. I mean, as the courts decide and all kinds

[00:11:10] Jim Henson: of things, well, I guess that’s where the X factor is, is that I think there’s going to be some democratic residents based on, you know, our.

[00:11:18] You know, historical learning, but one of the things that has been, you know, tricky in the last few sites, it’s always tricky to some extent is, you know, being able to figure out the extent to which the context has changed. Yeah. And, and whether, you know, and clearly the context has changed here, but. Has it changed enough to change the calculations that underlie, that reflects a desire to talk about it some but not too much.

[00:11:45] And I, you know, and I don’t know, I, you know, I don’t, you know, I mean, you know, we’ve talked about this and you, you know, dug in those numbers and I think the polling gives you some indication, but it doesn’t, it’s not definitive given where we are with this, you know, because of the, the kind of unprecedented nature of the, of the bill, when a couple of different ways and, you know, Well, things were getting more polarized than 2014.

[00:12:07] They’re still more polarized and still more sorted now than they were, you know, in 2014 in the, you know, and really we’re talking late 2013, early 2014, the diet, the political dynamic at that point was, you know, not a completely different universe, but it was. It was definitely different, you know, we’re, you know, for the Marvel fans out there, you know, not quite a different, completely different timeline in the multi-verse, but getting close.

[00:12:33] Um, so I think the other thing that, that really sticks out to me, you know, because it doesn’t stick, it hasn’t stuck out much, otherwise, other than the initial response, You know, is the politics of, of funding the border wall. On one hand, as we’ve said, a million times here in print to reporters, friends, enemies, whoever, in some ways, a no brainer given all that we’ve talked.

[00:13:02] And we talked about this on the podcast all the time, given the science of immigration and border security, the direction of a Republican public opinion, the attitudes among particularly ideologically intense conservatives. And so. On the other hand, uh, you know, as we mentioned at the time, you know, the, the fact of the monetary commitment here and the way that there just seemed to be no real speed bumps on this, on the Republican side, you know, is really telling us.

[00:13:35] Curious to see, then this is probably more of a medium to long-term consideration. And I think another thing that we probably have undersold a little bit as we’ve discussed this in terms of public opinion, up to this point is also the, the, you know, the government economics of this. There is so much money flowing through the legislature right now.

[00:13:57] And certainly while that federal money was not given to Texas to build a border. You know, the, the, the Texas,

[00:14:04] Josh Blank: so we could send checks to homeowners. Right. You know,

[00:14:07] Jim Henson: what would you, well, which is a good compare, which is a, you know, sort of anticipates the point, which is, but there’s been a lot of flexibility in that money.

[00:14:14] And, you know, that’s, what’s great about money is it is fungible. And no matter how much they wrote into some of the, the strings on this money, You know, you couldn’t substitute this out. It’s clearly, you know, you couldn’t use this money and, you know, to replace general revenue or et cetera, you know, all of this money has clearly led to a very different attitude towards spending, as we saw in this last session and the discussion of, you know, how to allocate the federal fund in the fact that they’re sitting on some of those funds to talk about tax relief and then in the near future.

[00:14:50] And I think that that is, you know, bearing on how. You know, I, I think the plans that they have for funding the property tax relief such as it is this time into the future, you know? So, so I think that really, you know, so, I mean, in terms of like, just tying off this part of it a little bit, that is kind of, you know, when I look at the list of all this deeply conservative stuff, you know, the, the border wall piece really is pretty interesting.

[00:15:14] And in the way that, you know, that has become just kind of normalized, it’s like, yeah, we’re going to allocate $2 billion in the budget for. Border security, including building a wall. Yeah, sure.

[00:15:26] Josh Blank: Well, you know, I mean the two points are related, right? I mean, everything’s related, I mean, if we’re just going to everything’s indogenous as we like to say, but I mean, but I mean, I think those two points are actually really directly related.

[00:15:35] I was thinking about this a little bit this morning, the other conversation we’ve been having a lot as a sort of how far is too far. And a lot of that is in relation to, you know, just this long list of extremely conservative policy. And one of the questions that I think, you know, You know, I, I don’t know if you’re not, I’ve heard it a couple of times, but it’s sort of half-hearted.

[00:15:54] I think people aren’t there yet is sort of like, okay, so Sue Abbott wins the primary, right? And then the question becomes, you know, what is the pivot look like in the general election? And I was thinking about it this morning, a little bit kind of preparations pockets. Well, the pivot and the general election is not to the middle it’s to immigration and border security and property taxes.

[00:16:12] Jim Henson: Yeah, it’s a, yeah. I mean, and I think we, I think we even talked about this a couple of weeks ago, a little bit, or began to kind of scratch at it some yeah. I mean,

[00:16:22] Josh Blank: That’s the one area in some ways where, where I would think, you know, there just to take a step back. I mean, just to like just a little, a little more around this is that, you know, I mean, I think the one thing, and we’ll probably talk about redistricting at some point here, but the one thing that I would say sort of at a meta-level surprising about the session is the volume.

[00:16:38] It’s all the stuff that we’ve seen. It’s the fact that it was abortion and. You know, stuff about race and immigration and voting, and we left no stone unturned left, no stone unturned. And, you know, like, you know, sort of a, you know, a lesson that I had learned from the previous five sessions that I’d watched with various degrees of very close precision, uh, was this idea that like, you know, well, generally speaking, they’re not going to take on all the issues, all the divisive issues at once, right.

[00:17:08] And generally what that looked like, was it. Just to be straight up there was the house. The house would say would, would not would elect speakers who basically would only allow so much to come to the floor because the speakers would know that this is extremely divisive members and competitive districts would be forced to vote for the especially Republicans, these, these bills to stay, to basically win their primaries.

[00:17:27] But we would then be endangered in general elections, especially in competitive districts. And so you would, you would have one or two things, but not all of them. And so one thing is sort of just the volume of all of this. And to me, I mean, that’s sort of directly tied to redistricting, right. In a lot of ways, which is to say, yeah, I mean, you’re basically moving into a situation where you have less fewer members to protect them, needed to be protected last time.

[00:17:48] But now they’re being moved into significantly safer Republican districts. And so basically. The yeah. It boiled over in some ways.

[00:17:57] Jim Henson: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, you know, I want to go back to something you started that I was going to jump in on before you went on in that direction. But, you know, we’ve been thinking about it the conventional way that we think about, you know, a pivot after a primary, you know, in the, in the period from the primary to the general election is often.

[00:18:15] You know, there’s, uh, you know, we, we think about it in issue space and, you know, ideological space and, you know, that’s there, but you know, the trick this time in part, because of the huge cluster of things that Republicans or, and for that matter Democrat, the Republicans can choose to run on and Democrats can choose.

[00:18:36] To criticize is going to be a struggle of what are the top three things on the agenda that you want to take up campaign space and discussion, right? And there’s going to be, I think there’s always a degree to which that’s there, but I think that’s going to be very, there’s going to be a real sharp distinction here in which Republicans are very much going to be wanting to talk about a few things.

[00:18:57] I think the, you know, the things that you were talking about, property tax, obviously immigration and border security. And then the national stuff, right. You know, failure of the Biden administration, socialism and how tech, you know, and then positioning Texas in contrast to that. So, I mean, I think that’s one of the interesting thing that comes out of a crowded session.

[00:19:18] Like this is the ability to do that. So, so you mentioned redistricting, let’s move on then to thinking about, you know, as we think about what happened in the session, I think. You know, it’s ironic that we talked about all the other stuff for Hearst. Um, and I think that’s sensible, but obviously, you know, from.

[00:19:38] Going back, you know, is, you know, as far as the 2018 election and thinking about, and the election season in 2020, this was always going to be the redistricting session. And, you know, obviously it loom large. And, but I mean, I think, you know, I think in, in now with a pause, at least if not an end to this session, you know, I think it’s fair to, to, you know, to point out that, you know, the, the Republicans were very successful, however, Much the combination of the census and the Democrats quorum break made them way in making adjustments to the electoral environment, writ large to their advantage between.

[00:20:21] The changes to the election laws and the way that that was driven, largely, you know, just a couple of, you know, with a few deflections by what Republicans wanted, they’ve largely got what they wanted and then some, and then a redistricting process in which they were able to by and large, uh, dominate the process and, you know, within the constraints of demographic change and, you know, without the restraints of.

[00:20:50] The degree of federal supervision that they’ve had to, to, you know, maneuver around in the past really did succeed this session in resetting as much as you know, was within their power, their electoral advantage going into the next decade.

[00:21:06] Josh Blank: That’s right. And instead of being, it’s hard not, I mean, I think, you know, it’s hard not to think.

[00:21:11] Kind of watching the session serve as an intuitive thing before redistricting happened, that this was influencing some of the policy decisions and political calculus, you know, that they were making all along. I think what’s interesting about it in some ways is that, you know, the one district that doesn’t get changed as the state of Texas.

[00:21:28] Right. And so it raises the question, you know, in some ways, to the extent that, you know, Abbott on the other side of this was pushing so much of this, you know, legislation. I mean, one of the things that kind of sticks out to me is what does that say about. His view of the electorate, going ahead, we know that for a house, if you’re a house Republican and you were sitting in a district that used to be plus 16 Republican, and then it was plus eight, and then it was plus three, you know, The 2019 says, she said, you know, let’s, let’s just take, uh, let’s, let’s do some serious stuff, but then obviously you get to 2021.

[00:21:59] And the idea is we’ll, we’re going to come back. And now all of a sudden you’re back in a plus 16 plus 18 plus 20 Republican district, it really changes the approach, but Abbott hasn’t changed and the state’s still competitor. And so the thing that strikes me, something that you were saying before, which is, you know, one thing that’s really kind of come through in this session that I think is sort of, you know, a bit of a change.

[00:22:16] I mean, I think, you know, to the extent that like, I think over the last 10 years, we might say, well, you know, tech, the Texas legislature is a little different, you know, the way that they approach politics is a little different than the national environment. But one thing that we’ve seen we’ve talked about in this podcast is, you know, the wholesale almost sort of nationalization of attitudes in Texas whereby I mean, you know, Democratic disdain for any Republican elected official in Texas is as high as it was, you know, basically for Donald Trump at the national level.

[00:22:41] Right. And so at this point, you know, one of the things that’s kind of, you know, clear when you look at this to me, at least, is, is that, you know, at this point going forward, you know, you don’t, there’s no reason to expect. You know, I would say Greg add or any statewide Republican to be trying to run a serious, you know, persuasion election going out and try to get Democrats and even democratic leaning independents to vote for Republican candidates.

[00:23:04] So long as the Democrats have a serious candidate, which I just need to put that out there

[00:23:08] Jim Henson: claim as a press time still pending. Yeah, I think that’s right. And I, you know, I, you know, and something else, you know, in terms of thinking about what the actors in the system. The governor and, you know, other, you know, really anybody who’s going to get involved in the electoral game, but, but certainly thinking for a moment at the statewide level and at the macro level, you know, something that occurred to me as, as Ross and I were kicking this around, you know, in public yesterday at the headliners club, Ross Ramsey of the Texas treasonous roster.

[00:23:39] Yes, Mr. Ross Ramsey of the Texas Tribune, whose final days, interim editor in chief was this week. So a welcome to Sewell Chan the new editor. I don’t know what the title is. I think it’s editor in chief and something else, but who’s now, you know, basically, you know, running the show at the Texas Tribune at the operational and strategy level.

[00:23:56] So welcome. Sule if you hear it, if you hear this, tell him, I said, tell him, we said hi, but I think that one of the things that kind of occurred to me is. You know, for all this time that we talked about Texas being more competitive and particularly the whole, you know, again, the demographics is destiny, which is almost become not quite a punchline, but kind of close.

[00:24:19] Um, you know, certainly seem that way in 2020, but that redistricting as really gives us almost a better gauge of that than anything else. Because if you look back to. The way that lines were drawn in 2011, and we’ve gone over this in detail in the podcast. I want to beat it to death, but you know, the extent to which the gut that the Democrats or Republicans were able to draw themselves, what they thought were 95 seats at one point or another, that actually became at one point later on, that actually became 102 seats.

[00:24:51] Right? And now this time, the benchmark seems to be that Democrats have drawn themselves. 85 seats. Now there’s a bunch of caveats to this argument, but that in itself is actually a more realistic assessment of the degree to which demographics are destiny. Then most of the other things that we look at, you know, like, you know, the projection of the ethnic breakdown of the, of the population, which in itself is subject, you know, w when you say demographics or desks, Based on the growth of the Latino population.

[00:25:25] I think we’re finding that in a lot of, a lot of those cases, there were some, shall we say, unexamined assumptions about the partisan behavior identification and voting behavior of Latinos baked into that. But the degree to which Republicans felt like they could draw X number of really strongly advantage, majority districts, even allowing for.

[00:25:50] The degree of ambition, which had been kind of what we had. One of the ways I’d been talking about it a lot was, you know, the kind of, they swung for the fences in 2011 where they do so again, I’m still not sure exactly what the answer is. Um, I think they probably, and from talking to P people around at least closest to the process, it does seem like they were a bit more on defense this time, but not so much that this isn’t kind of a, this doesn’t underlying the degree to which.

[00:26:20] Yeah, the debt, the changing demographics of the state, both ethnically, and more importantly, as we’ve talked about a lot, geographically are a natural constraint on this, but it’s also a more realistic view. I think of just, you know, what the democratic advantages are and how, how. Yeah. I mean, the demographics are destiny.

[00:26:41] I don’t think you could draw 85 Republican seats, even if you’re a great gerrymandering. And I know, you know, the responses as well, that’s because they’re gerrymandering and they could have drawn them.

[00:26:50] Josh Blank: They’re packing and cracking and all that kind of is. But the thing is, I mean, you know, if you go, you turn the seats into percentages, you know, percentage of the seats, and then you start to look at, you know, the percentage of the seats as a comparison until the sort of the percentage statewide vote distribution.

[00:27:04] Yeah. Again, I’m not saying like, what is a big number? What does a small number? You’re talking about deviations of like, oh, this is like maybe like 6% off. Right? It’s it, it translates into a large and receipts. And obviously at the end of the day, it translates into completely different policy directions.

[00:27:18] So it’s not to say unin consequences. But you’re right. I mean, I th I mean, I would add and just serve as a question or a prompt for you. And then, I mean, I wonder, I’ve been wondering also how much of that had to do with the fact that the, in the last round of redistricting Republicans had so many more mouths to feed and that they were starting with such a larger majority.

[00:27:34] It’s not like they could have said, well, you know, we’ve got 90, some odd seats. Let’s just make sure we have 89. Safe ones. The rest of you guys see you later. Now they did that a little bit, obviously in fun ways, which are fun to watch, but you know,

[00:27:49] Jim Henson: on its own gain, which Kyle Biederman is announced that he’s not running for reelection in his previous district.

[00:27:55] We’ll just throw that in as a possible

[00:27:56] Josh Blank: illustration or someone who maybe voted against the speaker. You know, just for example, but, but I mean, the thing is, is that, you know, I think both things can be true, which is that one, you know, th they did have fewer mouths to feed. They weren’t trying to create, you know, significantly more districts, at least in the house, because one, but also because they probably couldn’t have.

[00:28:15] Yeah, because the other piece here, right. And that’s the rub and that’s, what’s interesting. I think about all this, you get to the end of this and we were at this 30,000 foot view and you get to sort of say, we’ll take it, you know, take it into subtotal. When you look at the actions of the actors in the process, what does that tell us about what they think about what’s going

[00:28:29] Jim Henson: right.

[00:28:30] And, and, and it’s an interesting, you know, and I, and I don’t, you know, I don’t, you know, this is a half-baked. Thing for sure, but the half baked podcast and I don’t suspect, and I, and I don’t put it forward as a, you know, as a measure per se, but I think it’s a, you know, it’s an interesting heat check, you know, and, and it’s a better heat check than what either one of the parties are telling you, you know, certainly the Democrats, to be honest, but so I think in the, you know, we’ve, you know, we’re at about a half hour, but I, you know, I think I do want to end on sort of the, the politics of this.

[00:29:04] Bob Garrett had a piece in the Dallas morning news, which is I, you know, I like Bob’s perspective. Uh, he’s been around for a long time. He’s the, you know, he’s the right mix of the, of the familiar and with a little distance, but also a crotch neediness to his view of these things. Um, that I, that I appreciate even, you know, uh, I appreciate period.

[00:29:26] You know, but, and, and I, I kinda don’t like the winners and losers template very much. And he did a kind of who won and who lost column on a storage story on the legislature in the last couple of days on the Dallas morning news. But I think it is a. You know, it’s been interesting to watch the relationship as always between the big three this time, that is between the governor, Lieutenant, governor, and the speaker of the house.

[00:29:52] Um, and to see, you know, how unstable and still unresolved that all those relationships. And how much of that I think is still really coursing below the surface in most of this. I mean, I think, you know, I mean, exhibit a, and that was really in the last couple of weeks of the third session, as you know, the governor seemed to be very responsive to.

[00:30:16] You know, some combination that’s not entirely clear of input from, you know, Donald Trump, Dan Patrick, the far right. You know, his, some of his, you know, detractors on Twitter on the left and the right of said Don Huffines and the, the, you know, the real tension that has revealed yet again, between the governor and the Lieutenant governor and, and the degree to which the speaker has really been a first term speaker in a very difficult session, trying to find his.

[00:30:45] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, the way that the Bob put it, I thought was, you know, again, I agree with you, if this were a winner losers thing it’s to loser. Yeah. I was going to say there’s one that I, I mean, there’s one that I like that we can come back to you. I mean, the, the continuity and change frame, I kind of liked in terms of thinking about this stuff a little bit more in some ways, but, but yeah.

[00:31:01] I mean, it’s hard not to look at this and sort of, you know, say, okay, but, but if you think like, okay, who won, who lost or who’s strong or who’s weak or that kind of thing, it’s kind of hard enough to come out of this and think, you know, You know, I would say it looks stronger than ever in some ways. I mean, I think, you know, after sort of some various kind of, I would say various attempts to exert his will on the Senate.

[00:31:20] And then I would say also on the process overall, I would say this seemed like the session in which he kind of really hit his stride on most of those things that he was at least were important to him. I mean, there was some, you know, some weird hiccups here and there, but that’s to be expected with 10 months of legislating and, you know, dealing with every single issue on the docket.

[00:31:37] You know, Abbott on the other hand, I would say it’s sort of weird. Absolutely. He sort of seems to be a, this is, you know, weak but powerful, if that makes sense. Yeah. You know, I mean, he certainly has the ability to influence the process, you know, in, in ways that are like, you know, in some way, I think in some cases people would say, this is clearly to his advantage and to the disadvantage of those, he’s asking to do you know, the bidding, but he still got it done in most cases.

[00:32:00] So

[00:32:01] Jim Henson: yeah, I think if I had one kind of probably, you know, thing that I would disagree with. With, with Bob on or with, you know, the perspective of the piece. It w it would be, I think Abbott’s relative position makes it easier to say, oh, he lost in this relative to where he’s been in the past, but that’s not really how I would read it.

[00:32:23] You know, I think that’s probably a. That’s much more of an inside perspective. I think in the, I, you know, I think it’s, you know, we’ll see, you know, we’ll be in the, you know, we’ll have new polling relatively soon, but you know, what exactly is the criteria for Abbott having lost? I mean, the fact that he’s being challenged.

[00:32:40] Yeah.

[00:32:41] Josh Blank: Well, and it’s weird because it’s sort of like the behavior that he’s chosen to, to the behaviors he’s chosen to follow, or, you know, whatever the impulses he’s chosen to follow the people that, you know, whatever, somehow that’s supposed to display that he’s lost. But the truth is, again, if we’re just sitting here right now saying, well, handicap.

[00:32:57] 22 Texas elections. Who do you thinks going to text with governance thing? I think Greg Cabot’s most likely to win right now for lots of reasons. He’s got, you know, 55, $60 million in the bank. It’s kind of hard to call him a loser. You

[00:33:08] Jim Henson: know, you know, if he’s, if he’s, if he’s looking like a loser and particularly vulnerable he’s curiously, be raft of bear, have serious challenges to his position or.

[00:33:22] And either party, you know, however much, you know, I mean, I think you, you know, we said this last week, I think that, you know, it makes sense to take Don Huffines seriously to be a rookie mistake, not to, you know, but I mean, I don’t think anybody really expects that Don Huffines is going to be Greg Abbott or we’ll leave and drive them.

[00:33:40] You know, I mean the worst case scenario, driving him into a runoff. But I even that I think is not all that likely at this point, but, but I think the, you know, You know, the, the point that I, you know, I’m sort of most interested in this and you kind of, you know, you, you sort of got it. This is, you know, what did, what did Greg Abbott want from this session?

[00:34:02] Right. And I think he wanted to maintain his position going into reelection for the governor’s race. Uh, he wanted to not provide. You know, any more attraction, you know, as much as he could any traction for challenges from his right. And he was able, and he was willing to bear short-term costs to do that.

[00:34:21] I don’t see any evidence that those goals were not achieved. Yeah. Now his structural position, you know, may, you know, turn out to be, you know, there are so a lot of things that could happen. I got to, I got to use. I got to, I got to poke Ross Ramsey yesterday at that you’ll, you’ll appreciate with, at our event yesterday with, you know, that there are still exotic shocks out there that could happen to change the terrain.

[00:34:46] Um, but you know, and, and I, and I think, you know, we’re gonna run out of time to get to it and maybe we’ll come back to this, you know, in, in coming weeks. But, you know, as we’ve said on here, I mean, I think the underlying issue of governance based on the power outages, And the COVID response are potential weaknesses, but at this point, I think there are more potential than real pending events in the next year.

[00:35:11] And they’re certainly not heard. And then, you know, the power infrastructure issue. Could hurt him should say, in fact, we have another February, like last February, let’s put it that way, but I think, you know, the probability of that is you don’t have to abandon the position that mistakes were made to say that, you know, the triggering event, the weather was an outlet.

[00:35:32] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, when I take sort of the big picture takeaway from all of this at the, at the moment where we’re kind of standing, setting aside exogenous shocks and sort of, you know, what stood out in the legislation to me the first is did the volume, let me say this as a set piece. I want to say, I think the 2022 elections will be about mobilization.

[00:35:47] This is not about convince this point. There’s no convincing Democrats at Gregg average reserve reelection. There’s no convincing Republicans to vote for better. Let’s just call that a day and you know, let’s see how much Republicans can turn out. Rural Texas, south Texas are working, increase their vote margins, how much Democrats can increase turnout in urban and suburban areas to their advantage.

[00:36:04] That’s, that’s what this election is going to be about. So then you look at kind of three big picture takeaways. One say the high volume of legislation. I think that helps it helps add it. That helps, you know, mobilize Republican voters. There’s no reason for, you know, a single, let’s say a second. Primarily primarily second amendment voter to say, you know, I’m not I’m saying this one out, cause they didn’t do what I wanted.

[00:36:24] And

[00:36:24] Jim Henson: same thing covered a lot of base, all the bases really.

[00:36:27] Josh Blank: But the other two things that are kind of sitting out there is, you know, in terms of the things that surprised me from the session for big, for sort of, you know, the lack of any pretense about actually taking on serious issues. I mean for the most part, not to say that they didn’t try to plug some holes here and there, but I mean, even that’s kind of, certainly not in a public way that I think people are going to go and say, and from our old polio and I was like, well, they definitely took care of the,

[00:36:45] Jim Henson: well, ironically, a lot of that is more, you know, I’d setting aside the grid for a second, but on other areas, you know, they sort of inoculated themselves using all that federal money.

[00:36:56] You know, if you look at what they threw money at at the end of the session, a lot of that are things that, you know, enable them to say, no, we did something.

[00:37:05] Josh Blank: Right. Well, you know, w but we’ll see if the, we’ll see if being able to say that at the end of the session will carry through, you know, well, when overwhelmed, I’d say, you know, people’s experience of the last seven or eight months, I’ve seen it.

[00:37:17] Won’t, I’m just saying that’s a question. Right. And then the other one I think is sort of, you know, and I think about this in terms of, you know, independent. No true independent voters in Texas and Texas historically kind of

[00:37:27] Jim Henson: conservative local and the, and the small shred of presented of persuadable partisans that are

[00:37:32] Josh Blank: yeah.

[00:37:32] Right. And what I do think about is, you know, the lack of any sort of ideological Maureen’s to any of this, which you kind of highlight in terms of the whole, well, we’re just going to be start. We’re just going to start spending billions of dollars on borders.

[00:37:45] Jim Henson: Well, you know, what’s ironic about that. I think, is that what that underlines is?

[00:37:49] How detached that ideological, that ideologically driven agenda. Was from actual governance. Yeah. You know, and that, and, and I think that’s, and maybe that is why it’s a good place to arrive for today, I think. And I think maybe that’s, what’s kind of hovering out there, you know, the way you said, you know, will it get over, what’s going on?

[00:38:12] And what’s happened in the last seven or eight months? Well, we’ll see when we see what the next seven or eight, what? The seven or eight months before the general election. We didn’t even know what that, you know, what the question is going to be in that response regard at this point, whether it’s going to be, you know, I mean, I think what the Abbott team is gambling on that, he said it won’t be the.

[00:38:34] Questions that we’re talking about now, their number, you know, my guess is they’re thinking their numbers will recover. They’ll change the subject in terms of this agenda, split and barring again. That’s why we keep talking about some big external event barring that then there’ll be, they should be fine.

[00:38:48] Well, in the biggest,

[00:38:49] Josh Blank: the theory of the case, the. I think the biggest predictable, most of the biggest, most biggest predictable, uh, external events is just, you know, another surge of migrants at the border, which is something that plays into the hands of what they’re already doing. It’s actually, it’s a weak spot for Biden.

[00:39:07] It’s a weak spot for Biden among Democrats and I’m talking independence. And so that’s why, you know, I sort of. I think it’s more, you know, the pivot is not to like some moderate position that’s going to appeal to like, you know, some sort of independence and maybe moderate Democrats, because that’s just not happening at this point.

[00:39:22] The appeal is to, you know, for, you know, for basically, or the mood of the pivot to the middle is pivot back to something that unifies all Republicans, even the 30, you know, 20, 30% of Republicans who have reticence about a lot of these policy areas. They’re not the same Republicans, but they’re out. On the one hand and, you know, I think a fair number of independence and even, you know, maybe even some Democrats, again, I don’t think you’re gonna vote for, for, for, you know, for Abbott, but you know, maybe kind of generally turned off by, you know, the immigration

[00:39:49] Jim Henson: situation.

[00:39:50] Yeah. I can blunt the, you know, and, you know, look Bidens Biden’s approval numbers on immigration and border security of not. Yeah, very strong. And, and in that kind of scenario, you, I don’t think we can expect them to get any stronger. So I think with that, uh, thanks for being here, Josh. Uh, thanks to the folks in the audio studio here in the liberal arts development studio for having to be back in the house.

[00:40:14] Nice to be back, thanks to you for listening, uh, data, uh, and all kinds of other goodies that some of which are referred to in the podcast, some of which are not at Texas politics dot U, texas.edu. And you can also sign up for our weekly newsletter pretty weekly anyway, uh, that highlights data relevant to recent events in Texas in American politics.

[00:40:36] So thanks for listening and we’ll be back next week. Second reading Podcast Is a production of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin.