Dem
47
GOP
53
No, we don't mean Halloween. In many states, primary elections are right around the corner. That means that if a candidate has some dirt to deploy, now is the time for it. There were a couple of big stories on this front in the last day or so, both out of Texas, which just so happens to have its primaries scheduled for one month from yesterday.
The first story involves the U.S. Senate race that, of course, many Democrats are watching with keen interest. We wrote about the Emerson poll that suggested that state Rep. James Talarico (D), who is white, had caught up with and overtaken Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D), who is Black. That one had it Talarico 47%, Crockett 38%. Since then, there have been two more polls, both from Democratic firms. The first of those, from HIT Strategies, had Crockett up by 13, 46% to 33%. The second, from Slingshot Strategies, had it an effective dead heat, with Crockett at 38%, Talarico at 37%. Given the yo-yo nature of these results, and the fact that each of these three polls had 15%+ undecided, it looks like it could be anyone's game.
The new development is that a TikTok user named with the handle morga_tt, who is also Black, posted a video in which she says she had a conversation with Talarico, and that the candidate said he made the decision to run when he thought he was going to face "a mediocre Black man" (Colin Allred) and "not a formidable, intelligent Black woman" (Crockett). Readers can watch the video at the link; morga_tt says that she does not like having to share this information, and that she had been planning to vote for Talarico, but she felt she had a duty to pass the information along.
Since the video is of someone recounting a conversation, as opposed to the conversation itself, Talarico might plausibly have denied the whole thing. Instead, his defense was that his words were taken out of context, and that he was referring to Allred's campaign style, not to anything else. The would-be senator said:
I would never attack him on the basis of race. As a Black man in America, Congressman Allred has had to work twice as hard to get where he is. I understand how my critique of the Congressman's campaign could be interpreted given this country's painful legacy of racism, and I care deeply about the impact my words have on others. Despite our disagreements, I deeply respect Congressman Allred. We're all on the same team.
Several of Talarico's colleagues, some of whom are Black, also spoke out in his defense. Maybe this will smooth things over. Maybe not. The only thing that is certain is that Democratic Party leadership is pulling its hair out that the race is going negative. It's Texas, and winning is a long enough shot as it is. If the nominee enters the general election race already badly wounded, winning might be impossible.
The other development comes in the race to represent TX-15, an R+7 district that runs from the Mexican border all the way up to Austin (about 300 miles) and is almost 82% Latino. The incumbent is Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R). So, like the U.S. Senate race, it's a tall order. However, it's also flippable, if the stars align right. And for the race, the Democrats managed to get an actual star, in musician Bobby Pulido. He's a very popular Tejano singer, to the point that he's been described as a teen idol. He's charismatic, and Latino, and in a blue wave, well...
Yesterday, there was much reporting about Pulido's social media history, which has an awful lot of locker-room humor (in Spanish). This posting is pretty representative:
That is obviously Hillary Clinton, and next to her is actress Chloë Grace Moretz. Translated into English, the comment says: "Girl, this is what happens to you after a natural childbirth..." The headline of the item linked above describes that as "misogynistic," which is open to debate, we'd say. It's certainly vulgar, but does it really convey hatred or hostility? Certainly there are plenty of female comics—Sarah Silverman, Margaret Cho, Awkwafina, Christina P., Wanda Sykes, etc.—who might plausibly make that same joke. Heck, Christina P. basically got famous for a routine called "Nobody wants mom ti**," which is dangerously close to actually being the same joke.
What will the impact on the race in TX-15 be? We do not feel especially well qualified to judge that, since we are not locals, and since we are not entirely sure how such things would play out in Latino culture. Given the substantial undercurrents of macho, that kind of humor might actually end up being a plus, sort of the way that "grab 'em by the pu**y" ended up endearing Donald Trump to MAGA. Pulido does not have serious competition for the Democratic nomination, and figures to triumph even with these new revelations. So, if this does hurt him, it would have to linger in memory for many months.
We pass this along, in part, because it involves some elections that Democrats would really, really, really like to win. But we also pass it along because we are clearly entering into what might be called the Social Media 2.0 age of politics. Social Media and politics first intersected something like 15 years ago, with Barack Obama generally considered the first social media president. But now we are getting office-seekers who have spent much of their lives in the social media age, and who may have a significant e-paper trail as to who they were, and what they said, when they were young and immature. And then add on top of that the fact that anyone who has dirt to share, or alleged dirt to share, has a platform for sharing it, unfiltered.
We are not here to defend or to lambaste Talarico and/or Pulido. The voters in Texas will get to decide what to do with these new revelations. However, it is going to be very interesting to see what happens, as these kinds of social media-driven scandals happen more and more often. We are absolutely certain that there are politicians of very high stature from the last 20-40 years who said many things in their youth that they would not like to be made public today. But these folks were lucky enough to live in a time when their ill-considered comments disappeared into the ether, as opposed to being memorialized for all time thanks to a server and a hard drive somewhere.
What we're really wondering is if there will be a time when most/all social media "dirt" will be dismissed as youthful indiscretions and/or not a reflection of who the candidates really are, and won't be taken all that seriously. Graham Platner, the fellow running for the U.S. Senate in Maine, seems to have weathered his own social media scandal a couple of months ago. Maybe the two men above will do the same. Certainly, if voters demand the things they've always demanded of politicians—charismatic, smart, educated, etc.—and they ALSO demand a squeaky-clean social media history, there are going to be far fewer viable candidates for office going forward. (Z)