everybody's focusing on, you know, this Paxton, Cornyn, whatever, Trump thing. Yeah. The question is, can Talarico win? Yes. I think he absolutely can. And I frame it to people this way. It's like, and I worked on federal works race in 2018. I was at the beginning of it in the primary. But Ken Paxton underperformed Governor Abbott by 10% in an environment that was much better for the Republicans than this one.

So the economy and consumer sentiment is way worse.

Donald Trump's approval rating is way worse than it was in 2018.

Tala Rico is a good candidate, and I always frame it to people this way.

Texas is an R plus five state on the Cook PVI.

It's a Trump plus 14 state compared to 2024.

So let's assume we've got to move 14 points to win this race.

Tala Rico being a good candidate that can go to places that other Democrats can't go is worth

a couple of points.

Paxton being an absolutely damaged, corrupt, miserable human being who's been impeached by

his own political party, has been caught protecting child sex abusers just like Donald Trump. I think that shaves a couple of points off the Republicans. So now maybe it's an R plus 10 race. And so now the question is, is the environment enough, have independent voters turned enough against Donald Trump on the economy to flip it? I think the answer to that is yes. We have multiple A plus rated pollsters that have Democrats with a double

digit lead in the generic ballot, Atlas Intel, New York Times, Sienna. So there's been a lot of

good polling for the Democrats in the last couple weeks. If the economy gets better, I don't know.

Okay, look, I'm usually glass half full. I'm an optimist. However, when you're seeing,

you know, this guy who is so flawed, who's so corrupt, win by, what is it, 25 points, he won.

Yeah.

You know, and it's Texas.

And everything that you describe about Paxton can be said about Donald Trump pretty much.

Even 34 criminal counts liable in the civil court for

sexual assaulting woman. He's president. Yeah. So Donald Trump and Ken Paxton are not the same

candidate. That's how I would put it. I don't know if you watch Paxton's speech last night where he

called James Tala Rico, Talafriko, and what do you say? He was a vegan and he's a threat to our life. That guy has no juice. He has no charisma. Like he's very boring. Meanwhile, Tala Riko has a lot of charisma and is a different type of Democrats. So again, I'm sort of like you. I'm probably, I want to be pessimistic about this. Like I want to tell people that we can't win Texas. but I do think everything that needed to happen to put Talariko in a position to do this has largely happened. So he may fall short, but I think this is going to be a really close race. And to me, every dollar they spend in Texas right now defending this seed for Paxton is a dollar that's not going to Alaska to attack Mary Potola, is a dollar not attacking Sherry Brown in Ohio.

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