GOP getting really scared of losing their stronghold states..... They targeted Harris County specifically......
The narrative for like 15 years has been that Texas is slowly but surely turning blue and I just don't buy it. Texas Democrats don't even have a voice in this state anymore. And we're supposed to believe they are on the verge of flipping tons of seats blue? Whatever. Texas GOP is choking out the Dems because that's what sells now, not because this state is close to flipping.
Disagreed. Texas, Georgia, and Arizona are all heading more purple and this is being used to blunt that change. Texas is getting objectively bluer but 2020 was a step back as GOP won back many of the suburbs it had lost in 2018.
Definitely turning blue. You will see it in state wide elections first before the legislature because of all the gerrymandering that has happened since Richards. Even traditionally conservative Tarrant County went Trump by less than 2000 votes during the last election.
I hope so. The cities that make all of the money in this state are blue and the normal people living in them have no voice. Still not buying it though.
There was too steep a price paid for the right to vote to allow these retro-racists to turn back the clock. This is not ancient history; it took place in my lifetime. The children of these criminal cops are likely still living...
We might need to see demonstrations like this before the neo-Confederates i.e the GOP and their buds going up to the S.Ct relent and allow themselves to be gradually outvoted in our democracy.
The trick is keeping the existing coalitions together. Dems did make leaps and bounds of progress in voter turnout and the demographics favor them... and 2018 was a huge year for Dems in Texas. But in 2020, Latino voters went much more GOP. The demographic trends only work if the voters keep voting the way they were voting. Instead, over the last 4 years, Dems took control of suburbia but now lost their grip on the border. It's hard in a state where people lean conservative to build together a sustainable coalition of Democrats. The real question will be when Trump is not on the ballot - does the Latino vote switch back Dem or not, and does suburbia go back to the GOP? GOP has lots of questions in how to redistrict too, because it's unclear whether either of the trends (suburbs, Latino voters) is temporary or sustainable, and that affects how to best gerrymander districts.
5 of the Dems that fled have Covid now - I think most are vaccinated so they are not seriously ill. But probably wasn't a great idea to fly on a jet without masks.
The vaccines have about a 90% effectiveness so out of a group of 535 members like Congress if all were vaccinated you would still expect about 53 to get infected.
Doesn't that seem inevitable though at this point? I've assumed that my kids, who are too young to be vaccinated, will inevitably get Covid. The R value of the Delta variant leads me to think folks are either going to get it or vaccinated within the next 12 months....
Only 10% of our population has gotten it so far. Hypothetically, if we had 100% vaccination right now, that would mean our cases would double in the next 12 months. I am not saying it couldn't happen but the the numbers would have to tick up. The 90% effectiveness cant assume everyone will be exposed to it.
The converse isn’t necessarily true as you have to consider many factors. Even so with any group of hundreds all getting vaccinated there still is the possibility of some getting infected. It shouldn’t be surprising that a group like Congress that travels a lot and has a lot of exposure a few would still get infected now especially when mask and other rules have been relaxed in Congress and at their home districts.
