https://www.texastribune.org/2026/11/04/texas-democrats-blue-wave-no-spaces-short/
Gov. Greg Abbott, the most powerful and well-resourced governor in modern Texas history, was unseated by Gina Hinojosa.
Attorney General Ken Paxton, who in past elections cast off impeachment, indictment and infidelities, fell to James Talarico in his bid for the U.S. Senate.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the iron-fisted ruler of the Texas Senate, went down to a little known state representative.
Republicans lost the attorney general’s office, one of the most influential conservative legal positions in the country. The new congressional map Republicans drew yielded them no gains — in fact, they lost one seat overall.
…nothing could have prepared either side for what happened Tuesday night — a full flip of statewide political control on a scale unseen in this state since Reconstruction
I’m going to remind everyone and you should also remind your friends that we had that “Blue Wave” in 2018 too, elected Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama, everyone and their mother was “Generational change!”, “The South is going Blue”, etc.
One election cycle later, we have Tommy “Name three branches of government” Tuberville elected right back in and remains there to this day.
You aren’t going to keep these seats if you don’t actually try to keep your promises to the electorate and conflate this win as a endorsement of Democrats and Progressives instead of a repudiation of Republican policies and actions.
To be fair, that was a special election in 2017. Not part of the blue wave in 2018. It was the only race on the ballot there. And Doug Jones only barely won because the GOP put up a literal pedophile who had been removed from office multiple times to run against him, and that guy got virtually no party support until a week before the election when Trump endorsed him.
And I remember back then almost everyone saying that it would only be temporary and he’d likely lose the seat the next election as long as they ran someone halfway decent against him. Which is what happened. They ran the former head coach of Auburn lol.
That’s a little different than pretty much the entirety of Texas government swinging blue. Governor, Lt governor, Senator, they picked up seats in the House that were gerrymandered to give to republicans, the Texas state House… that’s a much bigger and fundamental shift than a single off year race against one of the worst GOP candidates in history.
Sure, I can agree there about the special election and not officially being part of the whole 2018 blue wave thing. I also remember saying it wouldn’t last because I already had my doubts because come on, it was Roy Moore. Still I do remember the media and tons of people inside and outside of social media saying all these things I stated above.
As for this is different, man I really don’t have outlook given how fickle we’ve seen the American electorate is. Sorry but I really see this nation as a nation of idiots, reactionary, and made up of adults that always took the marshmallow as a kid. I mean we are a nation that has a that on average reads at or below a sixth grade reading level, we’ve shown that we’re just as susceptible, worse even, to populist bullshit propaganda when we elected Trump and Republicans in non-consecutive terms.
But hey, I’m still hopeful that this will be a permanent change, I’d like to believe, but just color me skeptical.
One election cycle later, we have Tommy “Name three branches of government” Tuberville elected right back in and remains there to this day.
There’s a real fundamental difference between the fluke election of 2018, where Republicans nominated an actual out-and-proud pedophile for Senate and he underperformed every other candidate on the ticket.
Democrats in Texas won across the board. Every statewide office flipped. Dems took the Texas House for the first time in decades. All Four state SC judges flipped. Dems hit a high water mark of 5.4M votes - more than in the Presidential election of 2024. Dems were winning in Bastrop. In Jefferson. All over the valley.
This wasn’t a bunch of moderate Republicans skipping on field on a ticket. This was a sea change built on the back of successively better Dem turnout going all the way back to the disaster of 2014 (1.4M Dem votes) to now.
More Democrats voted in Texas than in California (5.1M) this year.
First thing Gina should do is end the declared state of emergency that Abbott still had in effect at the border. You know the border he bragged about “fixing” so often? So why the state of emergency you ask? Oh because with that in effect it allowed him and his allies to hand out no bid contracts.
Yeah we didn’t talk about thst enough.
End it and have Abbott investigated
Did they seize power, or were people finally angry enough that the gerrymandering stopped working?
The gerrymandering is still there. The blue wave was big enough to overcome it, but unless the maps are redrawn it’s still providing an advantage in the future.
Lt. Gov. Vikki Goodwin will oversee the Senate, a role Dan Patrick has wielded with an iron fist. But Republicans are expected to maintain a majority of that chamber, and already, there’s talk of finding ways to curb her authority on crucial roles like deciding what legislation to bring to the floor of the chamber.
Don’t try and govern or make things better for your constituents. Instead use parliamentary bullshit to ignore the voters and continue down the path that got you here today.
If you turn politics into a team sport its more important that your team wins then actually doing the job. Its repulsive.
A Democratic woman won in Texas yoohoooo I can’t believe so many good news this year!
- Orban out
- Vucic out
- Bolsonaro defeated again
Elections in the US aren’t about if people like one candidate over the other as much as they are about attendance. Dems outnumber republicans. But republicans show up, Dems don’t.
If the Dems turn out, republicans loose.
So the rule of GOP evil for years has been keep their misdeeds subtle and dismissible. Crank up the heat gradually. Then trump came along and blew that up since he’s about as subtle as a tornado in a trailer park.
Now everyone understands the GOP tactics, the Dems have enough power to fight back, and many of the red voters won’t fall for the same tricks anymore.
The GOP just died.
The GOP just died.
Woah, that same thing was said back in 2008 when dems won the senate, the house, and the white house. They clearly didn’t die, the evolved to become even worse.
The current iteration of the GOP did, at least. Trump is toxic politically, but they’ve all been riding his dick for 10 years now. They’ll have to figure out a new way forward.
The GOP just died.
Doubt.
They have a bad habit of coming back from the dead in an even more horrific version.
They have a serious lacking of candidates with any charisma left. They’re too ghoulishly out of touch.
Trump was their most charismatic candidate (lol), and when he’s gone they have a bunch of unlikable dweebs who don’t even know how to pretend to be relatable.
McConnell has an opinion on this he’s unable to express…for reasons.
The GOP just died.
The GOP isn’t any more dead today than it was in 2008 or 1992. No more than the Dems were dead after 1994 or 2016.
The GOP was dead when they stood behind Trump in his first impeachment. We just have to hope it completes dying before America does.
It will be interesting to see what they do between now and next year. Trump has his entire party looking for a redemption arc so the knives are out, nobody is doing him any favors now.
There is no final victory, just like there is no final defeat. We are fighting the same battles our parents fought and our children will struggle with the same. Just as it is important to learn from the past, we need to prepare the future as well.
Declaring victory is how we got Obama betraying the working class, which ultimately lead to Trump and the MAGA Republicans gaining power. We won the battle for the House and Senate, and now the battle will be between the Progressive and Centrist Democrats. If the Progressives are unsuccessful in making things better and holding MAGA accountable, the pendulum will once again swing back to fascism.
That’s why the #1 strategy of the GOP is voter supression. The easier voting becomes, the more they lose.
Say what you will but Texas turned blue because diesel was too expensive.
Exactly, and that’s the reason the entire country flipped. Not wars, not support for Israel, not abortion rights, nor even all those Nazis dragging brown people into busses without cause. It was because of the price of diesel and all the cost increases stemming from that.
Regime change in an oil rich oligarchy under the banner of liberal democracy?
I guess we’ll give it another shot.
This is the good news people could have consistently and all over, when enough people show up to vote for the platform that has most policies people want when polled. Don’t fall for propaganda against healthcare for example, or fall for the fear about minorities and vote against healthcare. Stop doing that every other time or ever ideally, and stay the course for long-term stability with proven policies people want.
Do it again in two years. Call your new representatives. Regularly. This is only the beginning. The work starts now.
Can’t I email them instead? Seems so much less of a hassle.
Calls get logged and delivered to reps daily. Emails dont get much weight because they can be spammed. It’s assumed a call is a real person.
Tell that to all the spam calls I receive
Do you have a paid staffer whos job is to log every call and what everyone said and then present it to you every day?
No, but what’s stopping a spam robocall from spamming the paid staffer in the same way as an email?
The only thing Republicans know how to do is blame trans people and immigrants. They never answer for their own failures. Their platform starts and ends at hate.
First order for Texas, fix the power grid before they freeze again this winter.
I’m still in shock. wtf i love Texas now. Thank you for getting rid of that fucking embittered little legless piece of shit
