October 6th, 2022 – Second Reading Podcast

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

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. Very happy to be joined today by Josh Blank, Research director of the Texas Politics Project. Say hello so that the audience can hear the contrast. Josh, Hello. Hear me and my clarity

So, uh, as you can tell, Josh and I are not in the same place. I am on the road in Dallas this week, uh, having given a couple tar couple of talks here. So I’m, uh, on the road hold up in a hotel room with the wrong cord to connect my microphone to my laptop. So, uh, our apologies in advance for the differential sound quality.

But, uh, the, the content will be same as always, and I’ll lead that to, to your discretion to, to the judge. So as we enter October, the, the campaigns are really churning. Um, It’s funny, Josh, I was thinking after months of going, Okay, well we’re coming up to the, to the part where the campaign really starts.

We are in the part where the campaign really starts. Right? You know, it’s funny, we were talking about that for so long. I, Well campaign doesn’t start yet, and then it was like, you know, it happened and I was like, Oh, I guess the campaign started , right? And so we find ourselves, you know, less than 30 days from election or about 30 days from election day, give or take.

Um, somewhat less than that from early boating, starting of Texas and I starting in Texas. Um, you know, if you are watching TV or have any exposure to mainstream electronic media of any type, you can’t miss the fact that the gubernatorial campaigns, allied organizations are spending a lot of money and a lot of resources on, on advertising, on outreach to boaters on mobilization Now, It’s been a couple of weeks since we podcasted Josh and I, and I think the nearest touch point we need to talk about it, you know, at least briefly.

Although I think, I think I kind of, What I think we can do is put a slightly different spin on, on what’s been said about this, and that’s the debate that took place last Friday night between Governor AB and, and Federal O’Rourke. You know it, it’s funny, the aftermath of the debate has had a weird kind of, Betray falls in the middle of the forest and nobody sees it.

Dot, dot feel. Mm-hmm. , you know, I think cuz the date didn’t seem to yield either big media ready moments that could be replayed afterwards, including, you know, no big mistakes or gaps. A lot of people have kind of moved on as we record this a little less than a week later. I felt like it was already this way earlier.

I was around a lot of political professionals in Dallas earlier this week on, on Monday and Tuesday. And it really reinforced that impression. I mean, one really old hand lobby communications person kind of dismissed the whole thing to me as a nothing burger. But I think for today we want to, we wanna unpack it a little bit more than that.

I mean, even if we’re just unpacking why so many people in the business, quote unquote, have that impression. Um, you know, I thought, I thought the debate. If nothing else, a pretty good representation of both candidates for better or for worse in both of their cases. And, and that may be part of the reason why it probably didn’t change the dynamic.

I mean, what did you think? I mean, does that make sense to you? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, when I was sort of kind of writing down my reactions, uh, after the debate and sort of having a little chance to process it, you know, I think the first thing I wrote down was, you know, that basically. Both candidates reinforce the themes of their campaigns, kind of reinforced who you know, kind of who they are, reinforce the dynamic between them.

And you know, in an elector in which, you know, the vast, vast majority of voters have a pretty solid opinion about Abbott, have a pretty informed opinion about O’Rourke. It didn’t really seem in the moment like it was something that was. Do much. And I mean, to your point you were talking to Political Professionals Week.

I mean I was talking to a couple reporters, you know, over the weekend kind of after the, and even by kind of Sunday it sort of felt like, well I guess, you know, we should talk about this. But it doesn’t really feel like, you know, this did anything cuz And I think to me the reason I don’t think it did is cuz it was, it was more of a reinforcement I think, of what people thought.

Nothing happened, that debate that would lead anyone to necessarily say, Oh, I should really cons reconsider what I’m thinking about this election potentially if you had paying any attention at all. Yeah. I mean, I think along those lines, one of the things would interest you is just how much continuity there was in the messaging for both candidates.

I mean, if you Yeah. You know, look at a Petto O’Rourke, you know, he returned to the message in a lot of ways that launched the campaign in various forms and you know, we can talk about what that looked like in different issues. Mm-hmm. , but from 30,000 feet, you know, the core argument was Governor Abbott has been governor for seven plus years.

Any problems that are in the state that anybody’s talking about are his to own. Um, and any promises to solve them should be viewed in light of the fact that he’s already had a while to do it already. Yeah. And if anything, I think that’s sort of, you know, is, is maybe the. That, you know, the clarity of that message, you know, is sort of, to me is sort of the, the, the way that you can see the campaign shifting from summer, you know, from, you know, let’s say, you know, spring and summer and fall in some ways.

You know, we’ve been talking a lot, you know, about the idea that, you know, there’s no. There’s no, uh, limit. There’s not really a limited number of, there’s a good number of issues. Let me flip that around. There’s a good number of issues that O’Rourke could choose to sort of highlight, you know, his campaign against that.

But even if it’s gonna be difficult because of the issue environment that we’ve been talking about. But, you know, a lot of the value in that is in this sort of more summative argument, which is to say, look, you know, if your issue issues abortion, if your issue is guns, if your issue is the border or transportation or housing, you know, ultimately, You know, there’s only one party that’s been in power throughout most of this, you know, sort of the contentious era around a lot of these issues.

And so, you know, it’s, it’s finally kind of making this sum of sort of closing argument saying, you know, you should evaluate Abbott on this. Now, I don’t know if that’s. Gonna work, you know? And I don’t think it probably is at this point, you know, but it’s certainly not happening in a vacuum. It’s certainly not happening in a vacuum, that’s for sure.

But I mean, but I think this is kind of what we’ve been waiting for, right? Is this sort of final, you know, the summative argument of, you know, , add up all the things that you don’t like about the state, and let me tell you where you should point your finger and, you know, we’ll see. I mean, I don’t, you know, I think that, I think that that has been the argument that we expected them to be making and that they kind of started with and have come back to with the focus on the grid.

Um, but that was certainly, I think a, a clearer statement of what has been the theme if it hasn’t been as explicit. Yeah. And it, it’s been interesting to me. I mean, we, you know, we talked a a bit about the grid. You know, we’ve talked a lot about the grid as an issue. Since that all happened in February of 2021, and you know, I think we have a sense that distance and a lack of further failure was likely mm-hmm.

to help the governor deflect that argument. That’s certainly how they happened. You know, they, they played it in the debate. They said, We have done things, legislature passed laws, everything’s held. We have more generating potential now. Right. Cetera. But we are seeing at least if, if not the O’Rourke campaign, though they are mentioning it, you know, we’re seeing this third party group could have been worse.

Mm-hmm. , um, which of course, you know, it’s a, is a take off on, on Governor Abbots, you know, unfortunate comments immediately after you’ve feel you’ve, all these shooting, you know, they have a, a pack, you know, an ad out by the superPAC and nobody’s clear yet to my, to my knowledge, Who is actually paying for all this?

It’s a group that’s registered in Delaware where you can’t, you know, it’s hard to find out the information because of the corporate registration rules, et cetera there. Um, but they’ve, you know, been broadcasting an ad with a pretty good ad buy that is focused on the grid, pretty hard hitting and punches both at, at Abbott and at, uh, the lieutenant Governor and the Attorney General.

But again, I mean, I want to come back to what you think about that as mobilization versus persuasion. Right. But I think we also have to, you know, sort of before we move on to the basic dynamic of the debate. You know, I mean, it’s not as if Abbott didn’t have a response and I thought that, you know, the, the tone of a lot of their responses was, was interesting too.

It was, had a couple of dimensions, but certainly in the first 15, 20 minutes of the debate and sporadically through. The strategy was clearly to hit hard on, uh, O’Rourke’s existing negatives. Right. You know, those attacks were both political in terms of trying to portrayal work is out of the mainstream.

Something Rourke was also doing that. Mm-hmm. , uh, aside of polarization, if nothing else, but it was also personal. I mean, there was a, you know, Repeatedly, you know, saying that AUR was a lawyer, was a liar. And, and I think early on him, just the first few minutes, reminding voters that he had lost in 2018 and in 2020 kind of a, a Trump white attack in the sense of basically saying, Look, this guy’s a loser.

Mm-hmm. . Um, and so that dynamic was out there and I, and I think was used by the governor a lot to counterpunch and kind of step around some of the critiques. Were saying have been the major theme of the OR campaign? Yeah. I mean, I think I had said this to you earlier and, and you know, one of, you know, sort of in sort of hot, you know, hot take land after the debate, there was sort of this question of what stood out to you and the thing that sort of stood out to me in this, on this dimension the most, you know?

Yeah. I mean some of, some of these attacks were personal, calling him a flip flop or a liar and, you know, the extremist sort of, uh, painting we’ve been talking about for a long time, and that was, was to be expected, you know, as a little surprised by on this front was the extent to which, you know, And I think it fit in over Abbot’s overall strategy, but to really kind of go to the well and, and sort of go to back to, you know, sort of some classic kind of attacks on, on Democrats generally.

You know, basically the idea being, you know, the exam exemplar of this would be, you know, that saying that O’Rourke supports, you know, abortion basically, you know, up to the moment of conception kind of on demand. I think on demand in term of. Yeah. Right. And exactly. That’s not a new term. This has been around a while.

It’s not even necessarily particularly related to a works candidacy, you know, or, or much, much of anything else. But it also spoke to me, to this end that, you know, you kinda look at Abbott, Attacks here. And you know what, what strikes me as a takeaway is you could see a candidate looking at this as sort of, you know, for all else, for everything else going on here, kind of a traditional Democrat versus Republican race right In, in a state that has been majority Republican in an election cycle that favors the Republican party.

And so, I mean, even though there were some personal attacks and there was, you know, a little bit that I think they got in, you know, and to be your point, Purposefully in the first 15 minutes while people were still tuned in who were watching, you know? But also, I mean, so much of it was so generic that I think you could see in that a certain strategy, which was, you know, we’re leading in the polls by seven to nine points, or five to nine or whatever.

We’re comfortable. We’re not too comfortable. But ultimately, you know, if we ride the national sentiment and the state fundamentals, we should be okay here. If O’Rourke is basically just a Democrat, he doesn’t even have to be, you know’s, worse than your average Democrat. He just has to be a Democrat. You know, and, and, and to that point, I think one of the things that was interesting, and, and this was in some of the coverage, and again, this is the kind of thing that, you know, is more for the wants, I guess, than it is, you know, in terms of making good excerpts or good sound bites, was the degree to which, you know, offered the chance to play slightly to the middle on some of these issues.

O’Rourke is trying to mobilize Democrats on, particularly on abortion and on guns. He declined to, to give an itch, right. Which I thought was interesting. I’m not saying it’s super surprising, but you know, if he took no opportunity and, and to create any kind of, you know, oxygen between a positions in play right now on abortion and guns, predominantly among Republican elites and policy makers.

And I guess the theory of the case here is that they think it does more harm than good, than good to have stories about him shifting positions, even though people have made some a about that agree to which some of these positions are out of step with even Republican majorities. Yeah, I mean, you know, I guess I would frame it just ever so slightly differently, although maybe it’s, maybe it’s the same.

We’ll see, I mean, You know, I, I think what surprised me, we, you know, you mentioned earlier in this discussion about the fact that, you know, in the one, you know, Abbott really, you know, he didn’t need to be on the offensive in this debate. Ultimately, you know, he needed to get out of the debate, you know, in a quick, in a, in a brisk hour and have, there not be a lot of news.

And as we said, he’s kind of succeeded. But he succeeded on two fronts. One was the one you already mentioned, you know, he didn’t, you know, there were no gaffs. There were no. That, you know, were viral. That took, you know, the audience beyond the debate. But the other one, I think that was also really important given the nature of, you know, the way the Republican primary was this year.

The nature of some of the policies that, uh, the legislature, uh, pursued last year and the, and the negative reactions among the public is that Abbott did a, a pretty def job of, you know, coming to some of those issues without creating any sort of friction for himself, either with, you know, the far right of his party on the one hand.

Especially, you know, he was courting, especially during the primary season, but he didn’t really say anything that really put him necessarily at odds with some of the more moderate Republicans that would necessarily lead them to think, Oh, maybe I should take a second look. And I think that was a pretty good success on this point.

You know what I mean? I think you’re right. I mean, there’s no reason for him to shift position, cause it probably does create a lot more harm than good for him. But he also didn’t really even double down either. If anything, I think for the most part, you know, you could say that, you know, some people have said he’s doubled down by, you know, implicit.

You know, is, is one argument you could make and people have made it. I think Harvey made that. Harvey Kremberg made that argument. There’s sort of an implicit endorsement of these policies in port. Having said that, he didn’t do it explicitly, and unless he does it explicitly, that’s not a campaign ad that’s not, you know, something that you can kind of churn out and mobilize even, you know, whether you’re a Democrat or even if you’re a dissident Republican.

And so I think, you know, that was one of the things he did really well, you know, from a political standpoint in this debate. Even though it was kind of surprising in the context that you raised that you know, this is the chance to see like someone moderating or moving to the middle or, or what have you.

And Avid both didn’t do that, but he also didn’t really. Not do it, I guess . Yeah, no, I know what you’re saying. I mean, I think he didn’t, he didn’t go out of his way to a firm or even try to, you know, look, you know, in this environment it’s not as if particularly an abortion, there isn’t a faction, uh, on the far right edge of the Republican party that is now looking to push even further.

Right. You know, in terms of things like enforcement or, you know, regulation of, of the availability of, of, you know, medical abortion resources, et cetera, that he didn’t go in that direction either. And look, I mean, I think he did have the recent example and it’s not, you know, something that, that most voters are going to notice.

Mm-hmm. , but it is the kind of thing that reporters notice. Right. And so, you know, in the example I’m thinking of was a couple weeks ago at Tribune Festival, both, you know, Dave Feelin and an interview with Evan Smith. Let the slightest amount of light open, not for himself, but certainly for, you know, the body to perhaps possibly revisit the issue of exceptions on abortion for rape and incest, that he didn’t say they were gonna do it, but just even mentioning it as a possibility.

Opened up, you know, a bunch of criticism from familiar quarters that wound up getting some press coverage. Senator Robert Nichols kind of received some of that incoming as well. Not as much as, uh, uh, as the feeling did, but I mean, I, I, I suspect they’re very aware of that and that, you know, it’s not something they need right now.

Um, and I think it does speak, you know, I, I mentioned the mobilization persuasion. You know what I, you know, I, I think what we did see was kind of the classic. Manifestation of the relative positions of the two campaigns in that debate. Mm-hmm. where, you know, per that, the point you were just making into RAF O’Rourke in that as well.

You know, for Governor Abbott, they are not. Feeling the need to persuade a lot of voters. Wow. If they can mobilize their base, mobilize a reasonably predictable share of independence, then they are fine. It’s, it is the Toro who needs to move some voters away from Abbott. And I think that informed these strategies that we’re talking about.

Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. You know, and, and to that end on a theme we’ve been discussing on the podcast, each play to their advantages on the issues, I think, you know, or work. Tried to, to hit Abbott on abortion guns and to move some voters on, on those issues. And, and then the grid, of course, um, Abbott hit or work hard on immigration border security.

Tried to paint him as an extremist on guns based on, you know, the now infamous 2020. Uh, be quote on, on AR fifteens and AK 47 of basically automatic weapons. And mentioned, of course, Joe Biden and association with O’Rourke many, many, many times. Right. You know, and I think all of that, you know, is also what made it seem fairly predictable to people.

Um, you know, one thing that I thought was, was, was interesting on immigration that we had talked about was the fact that I. Governor Abbott did in a sense, kind of spring the trap on the busing policy. Mm-hmm. , you know, and that when, when he took criticism from Beth O’Rourke on that, um, he came back and said, and did say, Look, you know, communities all over Texas, including his hometown are busing migrants.

And it really was an illustration of something I think we talked about a few weeks ago, that you know, that the criticism of the Abbott policy, that there’s insufficient support. In the busing program and that it’s being done, you know, purely for political purposes takes a bit to explain and I think a worth was going to try to explain that it was one of the moments when, you know, the, the format didn’t allow for it.

Right. Yeah. I mean, I think we’d explored the possibility a couple weeks ago in discussing the fact that, you know, you could support this policy from a purely, you. Uh, nativist or even racist viewpoint. You could also support the busing policy from a purely humanitarian viewpoint, especially if you strip away details about the policy and its effectiveness and coordination and all of that kind of stuff.

And, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s one of these things that. I think, you know, I mean the more that I, you know, watching this election kind of unfold and, and kind of unfold into, you know, I think a familiar pattern, it’d be easy to over interpret, you know, what, what looks like the results are going to be because of the fact that there are national conditions, right?

There is a Democrat in the White House. We are still, you know, recovering from, you know, economically from. The pandemic and from, you know, other events, you know, beyond that, you know? Right. Just make us, that would just, again, that would favor the Republican Party under any circumstances. And I think that’s important to acknowledge here.

I mean, you know, sort of in a corollary, you know, everyone who sort of said, Well, you know, there’s a lot of sort of, after Donald Trump lost, you know, there still is a lot of this, but like, how could he lose? And I’d say, He was the president in charge of a bad economy during a pandemic that he didn’t take seriously.

It doesn’t matter what party he’s part of, that’s a hard election to win, right? There are just, there, there are na, there are are broader environmental forces that affect this election. Um, you know, but the thing that I think you can take away from this, and I think, you know, I think one can take away from this debate, and you can see this now taking place in other countries too, is that, you know, aur.

In general, but the left in America and other countries in particular need to figure out how they’re going to respond to the issue of immigration because they’ve, they’ve seeded so much ground on this that it’s to the point now that, you know, I mean, to your, to your point, you know, if you’re looking at the Abbott campaign and, and really even the state governments.

Current communications around the busing policy and around other issues. I would say, you know, there’s a, there’s an undocument, undocumented immigrants who are recently shot and killed in Texas. One was killed, one was injured and put in the hospital basically by some people. Um, and the response was to raise the humanitarian crisis taking place at the Texas Mexico border.

And I think that’s an important, you know, distinction. The fact that now, you know, through the busing policy and this sort of shift in. You know, the idea that, you know, the border being talked about as humanitarian crisis, which used to be sort of the, the way that Democrats would talk about the issue when they were talking about it is being, uh, repurposed by Republicans partially because of the absence.

I think the vacuum that’s being created by Democrats and that they. You know, and just they’re, they don’t really have a response to this issue at this point. And I think it’s gonna hurt, you know, it’s gonna hurt O’Rourke seriously, but it’s also gonna hurt any Democratic candidate in Texas until the Democratic party has a way that they can talk about this issue that, you know, both seems plausibly serious to voters, but also can do so in a way that doesn’t, uh, violate the nature of their coalition.

Right. And the coalition expectations, which include both the, the diversity of their coalition, but also the, the progressivism within their c. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think in some senses, uh, you know, and this is not to, you know, I wanna phrase this a little bit carefully, but I mean, you know, the intractability of this issue has played to the advantage of Republicans.

Mm-hmm. , because you get to emphasize the problem, and particularly when you’re not in the White House. Mm-hmm. . Um, and that was part of the, the political value of. Whatever we, we think of this and IRBs, you know, look frankly absurd. It was at various times, that’s where the political value of Trump’s wall argument and mm-hmm.

the way that the wall became a trope for doing something about an intractable, an intractable problem. Whether it, you know, made sense or not, it filled that gap. When republicans had a Republican in the White House. Democrats need something. Like that. And, but it’s harder to do if, you know, you have the kind of constraints and the kind of coalition and, and other considerations that you’re talking about.

So, before we get completely out of the debate, I do wanna give you a chance, I mean, uh, you know, bracketing, you know, for the moment whether this had an impact in terms of, you know, viewership and sustained attention to the highlights, which it doesn’t seem to have. I suppose we could find out later that it, that it might have.

Did we learn anything new about these pretty well known candidates? I mean, had everybody seen the debate? Would they have learned, Would they have learned something new? I don’t know. I mean, that’s a, you know, it’s funny that’s, that’s like the toughest question we’ve addressed. I mean, in some ways, you know, I think one thing I would say, it stands out to me, you know, O’Rourke is certainly much improved as a debate.

You know, over some of his, his previous performances to, to my mind, I mean, you know, I think certainly much better than he performed against, uh, Ted Cruz, especially in the first debate, uh, in 2018. But, you know, To me, I think I, you know, I think we’ve kind of covered this ground mean, I don’t think I necessarily learned something new about the candidates.

I think, you know, what we saw as a reinforcement of, you know, kind of how we think they’re viewing this campaign. I mean, obviously, you know, O’Rourke still is trying to figure out a way to shift voters, you know, either orientation towards the election. Or to shift their views of Abbott, you know, pretty dramatically.

Um, you know, and in a way that mobilizes, again, his low propensity voters. And I think that’s all pretty consistently there. You know, for Abbott, again, you know, again, having watched him kind of, you know, become governor and operate through this, You know, it’s interesting that, you know, without a doubt, this is certainly, you know, one of the toughest races he’s going to, he has faced in terms of, you know, facing a good candidate with a lot of resources.

Um, but also, you know, this election is seeming to settle into a pretty traditional pattern. Yeah. In other words, not really. Yeah, I’m trying. Yeah. You know. No, no, no. I mean, I, you know, I mean, I think that’s fine. I mean, I, I, I think I sort of think the same. So let’s go back before we close out and talk about it.

You kind of, kind of raised that again. I mean, the way this debate unfolded even, you know, both for the, the pro, the way that candidates approach, the way it’s been received, you know, really does sort of confirm I think why these candidates are talking about the things that they’re talking about right now.

Mm-hmm. when it comes to, you know, where prominent groups in the electorate are, how locked in. Parties are in this environment. It just still seems like there is just not a lot of room for persuasion. And we, you know, we did a post that we put out, uh, late last week, I guess earlier this week is when we really kind of pushed it out.

That broke down group, you know, the positions of groups on issues, which issues are silent to which partisan voters, and then. Cut across the partisan lines and looked at moderates, looked at independents, looked at Hispanics, looked at people. The largest of those groups, people that are declare they live in the suburbs and there’s just doesn’t seem to be a lot of wiggle room out there.

Yeah, I agree with, I mean, I think the, the issue we keep looking, which , you know, we can’t really find it. Well, and, and even when you find differences, I mean, It, it’s hard not to find it reduced back to partisanship. And then you’re looking at independence who are not all that likely to turn out the vote.

Yeah. Or if you do look for differences, maybe they’re not as overwhelming as you think they would be. You know, like when we look at Right. You know, the issue of abortion in Texas, you know, abortion access, who, you know, who Texans think would do a better job. You know, O’Rourke gets the nod by a few points.

And so that’s sort of, you know, and I think there’s a lot of that where you’d say, you know, even if, even if the issue environment were to change dramatically, it doesn’t mean that the election outcome would change dramatically. It might move a little bit. I mean, the thing that sort of, I mean, and I’ll just, I’ll hit, I’ll say this again cause I just think it is, the thing that sticks out to me the most in this context is, you know, given.

The priority that Texas voters and, you know, especially certain voters within the Texas electorate, but enough Texas voters place on the issue of immigration and border security. You know, the difficulty I think, you know, that o Rourke faces in sort of shifting this is, is, is about the fact that, you know, it’s not just about mobilizing groups around abortion and about guns, uh, or about the grid.

It’s about, you know, convincing some significant slice of the electorate to shift their opinion about what’s important. Yeah. And that’s a heavy lift, right? It’s one thing to say like, you know, again, we always talk, there’s this thing in political science about, you know, I think it’s, you know, about sort of psychology and communications and stuff, and it’s like, you know, you can’t really.

Tell people what to think. You can try to tell ’em what to think about. Yeah. But if people are, But you know, people are thinking and thinking about abortion and people are thinking and thinking about the economy and they’re thinking and thinking about those things regularly. You know, there are a lot of companies, you know, global companies all over the world that if you know how to get those people to think about something else, they will pay you.

Cuz it’s not easy. Yeah. And so I think that’s kind of what’s reinforcing this sort of feeling of. Of sort of, you know, a certain steadiness or, or settledness in this race in some ways. But I will say this, a lot of money to spend, I mean, you brought it up at the beginning, there’s still a lot of money to spend both on advertisements, on mobilization, and of course, you know, we wouldn’t be a podcast if we didn’t mention, you know, exogenous shocks.

Something could happen between now and election day. But I mean, the current trajectory seems pretty well set right now. Yeah. And I, and you know, the. The factors that we’ve talked about all along. You know, it’s funny in, in thinking about this for one of the talks I was giving this week, You know, it’s interesting to look at, you know, we’ve talked a bit, you know, about issue ownership in the last few months.

As you know, the, the clearly different emphasis of the two campaigns has emerged and, and persistent as we made the point today. The way that, that, that issue ownership is now. Manifesting in a very partisan environment is very interesting along the lines you’re talking about. Mm-hmm. and that really issue ownership is becoming not just about the classic notion of trying to, you know, get people to think about something else in order to maybe move their boats or affect their voting behavior, but now there’s a real, you know, what we’re seeing is it’s, it’s folded into mobilization strategy in a very polarized environment.

Mm-hmm. . And it, and it kind of changes the way I think that, that we’ve thought about that in the past. Any other final thoughts on this, Josh? On the debate, the issued environment? All of it. Yeah. Um, you know, we haven’t, we haven’t talked on the, on the podcast in a couple weeks. Like, I mean, other than, you know, where we are.

I mean, I think, you know, we. We took a week off for the podcast one cause I used the, uh, last week’s podcast with the reporters that I, I did the trip best panel for and Right. Thanks to them again. Cause I, I thought it was a really, I had a really great time at the panel. You know, it’s amazing to me, uh, how set the dynamic is right now, seemingly, you know, pending the things you’ve said.

The, you know, as we say, a, a, a big, a big shift. And if there’s a shift out there on the dynamic right now, I think it’s. If there’s anything that seems to be looming right now, I may well be gas, gas prices creeping back up again. Well, right, and that’s, and that’s gonna reinforce, if not exacerbate, you know, I think some of these patterns that we’re talking about.

Yeah. Certainly gonna reinforce Republican advantage in, in Texas that is, you know, gas prices going up is something that, um, I think. Uh, uh, the AB campaign will be more than happy to talk about. Not that they’re happy for people’s misery, but in, in strict political terms, it’s a pretty good break for them.

As long as that misery is plausibly somebody else’s fault, it’s fine. Yeah. And, and right now we know who is gonna get the blame for that. And, and look there, you know, there’s a lot of policy discussion going on today and then, we’ll, we will end on this since we takes us in with the realm about you, how the Biden administration has.

Handled, uh, relationship, the relationship with the Saudis. And, um, you know, I would point people back maybe, uh, several months ago I did a, we did a podcast with Bob Vitalis, who knows as much about the US Saudi relationship as an East Scholar, and I would point y’all back to that if you wanna look at that again, and his book Co Craft.

So with that, thanks to Josh, thanks to our audio team for managing my on location under Swift. Quarterly supplied on my part, dialing in for the podcast today. You can find all the cut, all the data course that we’ve referenced today, much, much more at the Texas Politics Project website. Uh, thanks again Josh.

Thanks to you for listening, and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcasts.

The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.