The Democrats are going to mess with Texas in 2020. So says Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who predicts that a massive Democrat turnout in the coming November 3 contest will threaten President Trump’s re-election chances. He also states, however, that the impeachment effort has helped Trump, transforming his second-term prospects from “a coin flip” proposition into something greater.
Texas has for a while now been a prime Democrat electoral target because, as I wrote in 2012, flipping the state left would make it impossible for a conservative Republican to become president. The 2018 election was a portent of things to come, too, says Cruz, as the Democrats more than doubled their Lone Star State turnout that year. This helps explain the senator’s narrow, 2.6 percent 2018 re-election victory over left-wing challenger Irish Bob (“Beto”) O’Rourke, the closest Senate race in Texas since 1978.
The Democrats “took it from 1.8 million all the way up to 4 million. That is a massive increase in turnout,” Cruz explained to the Washington Examiner.
“‘I think that 2018 race is foreshadowing for 2020,” he continued, relates the Examiner. “‘I think you’re going to see a massive Democratic turnout in 2020. That everyone on the far left that hates Trump, they’re going to show up.’”
The Examiner points out that while Trump leads all the major Democrat candidates in Texas, his polling advantage over ex-vice president Joe Biden is only half a point.
Explaining how impeachment should help the president, Cruz pointed out that Bill Clinton’s fortunes improved after he was impeached for lying under oath and obstructing justice. In fact, Clinton’s “approval rating peaked at 73% in late 1998 as House Republicans moved to impeach him,” the Examiner informs.
Cruz stated that the Democrats were committing “the exact same” error today with their impeachment witch hunt targeting Trump.
The senator also “said that, in order to keep the White House and the Senate controlled by Republicans, the party has to have high turnout among ‘commonsense conservatives,’” the Examiner also tells us.
“If such voters ‘stay home,’ he said, ‘that’s how you end up with a disastrous election.’”
As for Texas, it’s significant because it’s the only high-electoral-vote state that has remained solidly in the GOP column in recent decades. California with its 55, New York with its 29, and Illinois with its 20 have long been reliably Democrat; and Pennsylvania (20) and Ohio (18) lean notably Democrat while Florida (29) is a toss-up.
Considering all the states, Democrats can generally now count on approximately 240 sure electoral votes every presidential contest. With 270 necessary for victory, this means they need only 30 from the true swing states to win. In contrast, the Republicans basically have to pull an inside straight draw, so to speak, to prevail.
President Trump trumped this, winning Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, which in recent decades had gone Democrat and which accounted for his victory margin. Note, however, that Trump is not a typical Republican, conservative or otherwise. He campaigned as a populist/nationalist and — with his status as a non-politician and colorful celebrity — was able to attract new voters, had great crossover appeal, and was a breath of fresh air in this anti-establishment time.
Yet note also that even Trump would have lost had he failed to capture Texas and its electoral 38 votes. Hillary Clinton would have had exactly 270 and he 268.
So why is Texas moving closer to the tipping point that has already seen California, Virginia (notoriously), New Jersey, and Illinois turn Democrat? A major factor is demographics. Consider:
• California has long been hemorrhaging residents, with many relocating to Texas, which has long been gaining residents. Yet most of the liberal ex-Golden Staters bring their voting habits with them and become Texas Democrats.
• Eighty-five to 90 percent of our post-1967 immigrants have come from the Third World, and 70 to 90 percent vote Democrat upon naturalization. So consider: We absorb approximately 1.3 million legal immigrants annually. If one million ultimately remain and are naturalized and 50 percent vote, and 80 percent of that group breaks Democrat, it means a net plus for Democrats of 300,000 voters every year and three million every decade. The latter was Hillary Clinton’s purported 2016 popular-vote advantage.
• Then there’s the circle of life (and, in this case, Republican death). Between Trump’s 2016 victory and Election Day 2020, approximately 11 million Americans will have died; mostly older, they’re a relatively conservative voting demographic. They will more or less be replaced, however, by approximately 16 million young people who’ll turn 18 during those years. Unlike their elders, though, they’ll disproportionately cast ballots for hardcore statists.
• These factors may be especially significant in Texas. As the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) reported last year, “Texas has the fastest-growing population in the U.S., with nine Hispanics relocating to the state for every white person.” Hispanics are one of the groups that generally break Democrat by approximately a 70 percent margin.
• The PRRI also tells us that the “number of religiously ‘unaffiliated’ residents in Texas is increasing, up to 22% in 2018 from 18% in 2014.” This matters because the religious are more likely to vote Republican than are the unaffiliated.
There are other factors as well. There’s the left-wing indoctrination effected by the schools, media, and entertainment. There’s vote fraud. This has already occurred in Texas, though remedial measures the state is taking — including a new voter-ID law — hopefully will render it inconsequential. Vote harvesting is also illegal in the state.
There is a new threat on the block, however: Big Tech manipulation. Consider that Dr. Robert Epstein, a liberal psychologist who researches Big Tech, testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last year that “‘upwards of 15 million votes’ [nationally] were in jeopardy in the 2020 election,” reported NewsBusters. Note that 15 million votes purposely shifted one way or the other are more than enough to change an election’s outcome.
Epstein also stated that Google alone shifted between 2.6 million and 10.4 million votes toward Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to NewsBusters.
In other words, a lot of powerful forces out there are messing with not just Texas, but our whole civilization.
Graphic: fatido/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
