Extrapolating from here, these folks calculate that Cortez Masto would end up ahead by 780 votes. But that doesn’t account for uncured ballots and provisionals, I believe. It’s also slightly conservative since it assumes the remaining mail votes break at the county overall rates. https://t.co/EbsVFuuY1V

— Blake Hounshell (@NYTBlake) November 12, 2022

Texas Democrats admit to faltering on messaging and voter turnout, contributing to resounding midterm losses

The odds were more stacked than usual against Texas Democrats this election cycle, with an unpopular president from their party going against them. Yet there was still hope and cautious optimism within the party that if anyone could pull off the upset, it would be Beto O’Rourke.

At a minimum, he could give a repeat performance of his 2018 matchup against U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, where he came close enough to defeating the Republican — less than 3 percentage points — that Democrats could convincingly make the case that Texas is a battleground state worthy of national attention and investment.

Instead, O’Rourke, the most promising Texas Democrat in recent history, got walloped by Gov. Greg Abbott by 11 percentage points, and every other statewide candidate lost by double digits.

The drubbing has left Democrats in a familiar position: wounded after a disappointing election night while contemplating their strategy and their future.

“It’s been one [election] after another where we ramp everybody up and set up these expectations that we’re going to finish in first — and then we finish in second,” said Joel Montfort, a Democratic consultant in North Texas. “I don’t see any indication that we can win at statewide levels or won’t continue to bleed house seats to the other party.”

In an internal party memo obtained Thursday by The Texas Tribune, Democratic Party executive director Jamarr Brown blamed historic midterm trends, voting restrictions enacted in last year’s priority Republican legislation, redistricting that benefited the GOP, “mind-blowing” amounts of funding for Republicans, and a lack of national investment for Texas Democrats.

But perhaps the most damning mistakes Democrats identified in interviews and the memo was their inability to get voters to show up at the polls coupled with their candidates’ weak response to the GOP’s united messaging around immigration and the economy.

“We as Texas Democrats can no longer be seen as sticking our heads in the sand on issues that poll after poll tell us Texans care deeply about,” Brown said in the memo, singling out border security at length. “This election has made clearer the immense challenges we face over the next two years to continue making Texas into a state where all working families can thrive.”

O’Rourke’s campaign leaders are set to offer their own takeaways in a call with reporters on Monday.

It was not all bad for Texas Democrats. They retained two out of three South Texas battleground congressional seats in a region the GOP had aggressively targeted. They also won a hotly contested state House seat in the Dallas suburbs. And rising-star Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo eked out a reelection win, despite being massively outspent by the Republican challenger. But in a sign of the treacherous environment, both those narrow wins came in territories that President Joe Biden carried by double digits just two years ago.

Democrats have little time to sift through their losses before the next election cycle kicks off. The marquee race in 2024 in Texas will be for the U.S. Senate seat that Cruz currently holds, and Republicans are vowing to keep contesting South Texas

But the Democrats face two immediate problems looking ahead to that race. First, Tuesday’s double-digit losses will make it harder for statewide candidates to raise money necessary to run a competitive race. O’Rourke’s current 11-point deficit to Abbott, is only slightly better than Lupe Valdez’s 13-point deficit, but her campaign, which was widely seen as underwhelming, raised less than $2 million compared to the $77 million raised by O’Rourke.

And secondly, the Democratic bench for statewide office is concerningly thin. Beyond O’Rourke, the names mentioned for future statewide runs include Hidalgo, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas and the San Antonio Democratic brothers Joaquin Castro and Julián Castro, who have been touted as rising stars for over a decade now but have repeatedly passed on statewide campaigns.

But it is unclear how much financial backing any of those potential candidates could garner from donors underwhelmed by the Democrats’ latest statewide results. This year’s gubernatorial race cost north of $140 million. And the party has for years shown an inability to groom candidates for higher office or convince potentially viable candidates to make a run.

“It boggles the mind that a state this big that has a large Democratic party and lots of Democrats in the big cities in the state, that they can’t find somebody and build up a series of people over time to strengthen their hand,” said Jon Taylor, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “They literally seem to be the people who can’t shoot straight.”

Turnout
Turnout was at the top of the list for things that went wrong for Democrats. About 8.1 million voters cast ballots — 2 million short of what both sides had projected. It amounted to a 46% turnout rate, higher than usual for a midterm election in Texas but short of the 53% turnout rate in 2018 when Democrats had their best cycle in recent history.

Gilberto Hinojosa, chair of the Texas Democratic Party, acknowledged in an interview that Democrats struggled to turn out both the party’s most engaged voters, as well as low-propensity voters, who need the most nudging by campaigns to go to the ballot box.

.@SenRickScott on Fox calls 2022 “a complete disappointment.”

“What didn’t happen? I think we didn’t have enough of a positive message. We said everything about how bad the Biden agenda was — it’s bad, the Democrats are radical. But we have to have a plan of what we stand for.” pic.twitter.com/r1clJXaOtJ

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 12, 2022

They never have an economic plan. Tax cuts is the only thing they know; well, and also starve agencies.

@orlbucfan

I am getting (deservingly) roasted for this pre-election prediction.

So, I must ask: Who got it right with their prediction❓

Link them in the replies – I try not to live in an echo chamber. https://t.co/7HG6ApngFd

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) November 12, 2022

Please chip in so we can win this! https://t.co/iejyQc1c0x

— Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@MaxwellFrostFL) November 13, 2022

New House math:

Dem called/likely (213), incl. #AKAL, #CA09, #CA21, #CA47, #CA49, #CO08, #ME02, #OR06
GOP called/likely (217): incl. #CA03, #CA27, #CA45, #CO03, #NY22, #OR05
Toss Ups (5): #AZ01, #AZ06, #CA13, #CA22, #CA41

Dems need to run the table on the last five for 218.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 13, 2022

I’m not confident we’ll get those five, but it’s interesting to hear about the possibilities.

Keith Levene, founding member of the Clash, dies at 65

Keith Levene, the innovative guitarist who was a founder member of both the Clash and Public Image Ltd, has died at the age of 65.

Levene, who had liver cancer, died at his home in Norfolk , leaving a lasting legacy of influence on British rock music.

His influence on the post-punk music scene was hailed by musicians as news of his death broke. Among his fans is Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante, who once described his style as “spectacular”, saying “he explored the possibilities of what you can do with the guitar”.

Forming the Clash with guitarist Mick Jones and bassist Paul Simonon when he was only 18, it was Levene, alongside the band’s manager, Bernard Rhodes, who asked Joe Strummer, frontman with the 101ers at the time, to join them. Luckily for the Clash, Strummer had just seen the Sex Pistols play at the Nashville Rooms in London and had become convinced that punk was the way forward.

Levene, who was born Julian Levene in Muswell Hill, north London, remained in the Clash long enough to appear in early gigs and to contribute to songs, including What’s My Name on their 1977 debut album. But he grew apart from the Clash’s increasingly political direction and went on to greater success with PiL.

When the Sex Pistols disbanded in January 1978, singer John Lydon (previously known as Johnny Rotten) and Levene formed the new band with bass player John Wardle (known as Jah Wobble). “John made a wise choice getting Keith,” Wobble said in 2012.

Their first album, Public Image: First Issue, reached No 22 in 1978 and was preceded by the classic single Public Image, which reached the Top 10. Their second album, 1979’s Metal Box, is regarded as a post-punk classic. With various drummers, the lineup took inventive new forms of post-punk, dub, freeform jazz and classical music into the Top 20.

Levene said in 2012: “People thought I was classically trained, which was bollocks. I knew the E chord, and ventured into E minor. We laid the music out on a plate for Lydon. He was very hip at the time and did really good work.” He played synthesiser on 1981’s The Flowers Of Romance, which was his last released work with PiL, but he played with Wobble again in subsequent years.

In 2021, the website the Quietus described him as “one of the architects of the post-punk sound, his guitar style occupying a space between angular abrasion and pop opulence”.

Levene enjoyed building guitars and had been working on a book about PiL with writer Adam Hammond. His partner, Kate Ransford, who, with his sister, Jill Bennett, and her husband were with him in his final hours, said he had died “peacefully, settled, cosy and loved”. The family have asked for privacy.

The death is the second high profile loss to rock music to have been announced in 24 hours. A spokesperson revealed on Friday that Nik Turner, the co-founder of the British space-rock band Hawkwind, had died at 82.

Announcing the death of the Oxford-born multi-instrumentalist, a statement released on social media said that “the Mighty Thunder Rider” had “passed away peacefully at home,” adding: “He has moved onto the next phase of his cosmic journey, guided by the love of his family, friends, and fans.”

When Turner was 13, his family moved to Margate, Kent, the town where he was first exposed to rock music. After a period in the merchant navy, he travelled and worked around Europe, studying the saxophone in his early 20s.

In Berlin, he was introduced to free jazz and, became convinced that self-expression in music was more important than technique. “I decided that what I wanted to do was play free jazz in a rock band. What I was trying to do in Hawkwind, basically,” he told Mojo magazine in 1999.