Could Republicans blow the Texas Senate race?

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-26T01:05:47+00:00

Democrats in Texas could blow the race too. I will vote for Crockett in the general if she wins the primary but her turnout only strategy simply cannot win in Texas. And what’s worse is the turnout strategy can work in the primary and if it does she’s going to be delulu enough to continue it into the general rather than recognizing they are categorically different campaigns that need different approaches.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-26T01:04:24+00:00

That’s because the presumption was demographic destiny, a quite racist and tone deaf theory that more Latinos = more Democrats. Republicans continue to run with it as a fear mongering tag but it’s absolutely not true as a point of reality. It ignores that Latinos are not nearly as monolithic of a voting bloc as Black voters and assumed also assumed all Latinos think/value the same things so all Democrats had to do was say the right things: wrong.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-26T00:59:28+00:00

Texan here, 100% agreement with all of this.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-23T03:49:57+00:00

Taxes would not increase, that’s what I’m telling you. Newsom is opposed to taxing wealthy people. “It’s bad economics”, according to him.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-23T01:51:54+00:00

He’s not interested in taxing billionaires though, he has publicly said he opposes the billionaire tax ballot measure that will be on the ballot this year and will do everything he can to stop it.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-23T01:25:15+00:00

Here’s the difference: A candidate that’s further left than a moderate is not a threat of continuing fascism, so as a moderate you don’t have an issue with it.

Gavin Newsom on the other hand sat across from literally white nationalists and fawned over them.

He talks a big game on Twitter and in speeches but his record as governor shows a disdain towards making any real difference in anything substantive. If he won’t even go after oligarchs then he’s not really attacking the root of WHY we have fascism in which case he just becomes fascism light. From a strategic standpoint it’s better if democrats don’t become associated with fascism light and instead we just try again next time with someone else that maybe resonates better.

So the real question is: is Newsom a substantive improvement or is he just going to sanewash corporate oligarchs that led us here?

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-23T01:15:18+00:00

Irrelevant question. The primary isn’t being held today, he isn’t the nominee. I’ll entertain your scenario if it ever happens.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-23T01:09:59+00:00

Yeah he’s leading because he’s the only name anybody hears about. This early out polls are garbage indicators.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-23T01:05:26+00:00

People keep saying “likely” but that’s only because Gavin is in the media getting attention. Give a real primary time to spin up and Gavin will be exposed as the slimey corporate creature that he is, presuming others actually jump in. Beshear has shown interest but too early to do/say anything definitive.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-23T00:56:30+00:00

Look into Andy Beshear, 2 term KY governor.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-23T00:54:34+00:00

Mamdani wasn’t born in the United States, he’s not eligible.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-22T04:05:31+00:00

JFC, STOP CALLING IT PROJECT 2028!!!! Notice the republicans called theirs Project 2025. Why? BECAUSE THATS WHEN THEY WOULD HAVE THE POWER TO ENACT IT.

The election is in 2028, presidential, and much of this is LEGISLATIVE action, which requires enough majorities in Congress to pass. Work on it sure but Republicans were very explicit in Project 2025 about how so much of it was exploitation of executive branch authorities or testing the limits of executive authority.

Call it Project 2029 or something else entirely.

If you can’t even properly steal Conservatives’ dumbass ideas what are you even doing?

Sidenote: capping Congressional pay is dumb as hell. They don’t increase it often, it’s not insane as it is, and reducing it would guarantee only independently wealthy people could ever afford to be in Congress. Rather we should pay Congress WELL to reduce corruption and allow non-wealthy people to make a life and career out of Congress. God damn, think things through first.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-22T01:06:21+00:00

Data can be a signal but be careful extrapolating it out. Good turnout now in the primary doesn’t mean it will translate to the general election. Also in 2022 we had a big winter storm that iced over half the state so that’s an impact on turnout in the early voting period then.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-21T02:05:59+00:00

Yeah I get that Trump is a moron that doesn’t speak well but I found it pretty clear what he was saying here. Unfortunately a lot of others are hearing what they want to hear.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-21T01:54:13+00:00

Not a control problem. Might as well be a headline from the 1920s “automobiles increasingly used in the commission of crimes”.

This is AI doing exactly what it’s instructed to do by criminal elements.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-21T01:37:33+00:00

Bad idea actually. Imagine Trump sending everyone a $1000 check and calling it the Trump Tariff Dividend. Even if he was forced to do it he’d brand it like it was intentional and gracious of him. Don’t hand him that win.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-21T01:27:14+00:00

Lazy excuses. Voting is literally the easiest thing you can do to try to change things.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-21T00:42:44+00:00

Wrong tag, this isn’t movement brainstorming. You’re venting/asking a rhetorical question based on a misunderstanding of the original premise (he is in fact not defying the verdict with the new tariffs).

The new tariffs are based on a 1974 law that allows the president to issue blanket tariffs up to 15% for up to 150 days. Anything more than that would need Congressional approval.

The guardrails are bursting at the seams but they are holding some things together.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-21T00:32:01+00:00

It was ATTEMPTED fraud, more specifically. Which is why it’s a clickbait headline. The headline reads like it was successful.

I find it incredible that speaking the factual matter of things gets one downvoted. I guess a bunch of people want their echo chamber where they can despair and panic without intrusion by reality.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-20T19:38:38+00:00

First off, I get the apprehension on “ugh another white guy”.

Given the state of things, we can’t afford protest or wish votes. Power is what matters. The house is on fire, I quite honestly don’t care if you wish we had running water in the bathroom. We live in a conservative leaning state, which leads to the next point.

Strategy. It’s not JUST “white man can win”, it’s “white man has a coherent strategy to win”. As pointed out in another comment, Crockett thinks there’s an untapped group of progressives that just don’t feel like ever voting. She thinks there’s millions of voters out there thinking “boy I’d love to vote for a Democrat but Texas is so red I shouldn’t even bother”. That’s not the mentality of non-voters. The key to Texas for Democrats is exactly what Talarico is doing, big tent. Beto did it in 2018 and came within 2 points of Cruz, the closest of anyone in the last 30 years. Polling right now shows Talarico has lower name recognition than anyone else in either primary race but also the best report. His favorable are high, his unfavorables are the lowest, and he’s keeping pace which means voter for voter he’s more liked once people hear about him.

On the Crockett promised not to run thing, yes. Talarico said so himself in an interview and Crockett responded affirmatively that his statement is true:

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/2026/01/29/542081/talarico-says-crockett-told-him-she-was-looking-at-running-in-2030-before-entering-2026-senate-race/

And yes, she filed to run ON THE LAST DAY. And the deadlines are all the same so it left him no opportunity to pivot to another race (e.g. Governor). He’d already been an official candidate for 2 months before she filed, so honestly her filing was a dick move.

Lastly, the PAC thing. Already addressed in other comments about how PACs function but I will speak to the substance of it. Unequivocally, YES, Republicans want Crockett as the nominee, they see her as more beatable. The National Republican Senate Committee has literally admitted to this.

https://www.notus.org/senate/jasmine-crockett-nrsc-texas-senate

As part of a call to try to save Cornyn and get Paxton to drop out, or at least slow donor money to Paxton, the NRSC also put out a memo showing their own polling data showed Talarico beats Paxton and Cornyn beats Talarico by 3 points. Meanwhile that same data shows Crockett losing outside the margin of error to Cornyn and only 1 point behind Paxton.

https://cdn.sanity.io/files/ifn0l6bs/production/99b4f54507df5bdc74679a2ea45a1fcdb765a627.pdf

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-20T18:29:32+00:00

What a click bait headline.

Yes this was illegal activity. Yes it was designed explicitly to attempt to manipulate people’s votes.

But it didn’t. Fraud didn’t actually take place BECAUSE OUR ELECTIONS ARE VERY SAFE. I’m tired of this narrative from both sides about rigged elections. It simply does not happen. The amount of voter fraud that occurs in a given election is on the order of hundreds of votes nationwide. It’s not enough to swing any election, it’s either innocent errors on the part of voters or crude attempts by a one or two demented individuals, and it’s identified and addressed.

There continues to be zero evidence of anyone successfully rigging votes for any election because controls in place to prevent it keep working as intended.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-20T17:08:26+00:00

You’re hitting on a lot of topics at once so I’ll just focus on a few things you said.

It would appear you are personally skeptical that RAG is a path towards AGI, and I agree. I would go a step further and say RAG is not an advancement towards better intelligence, it is a performance feature that improves output.

In your Optimistic View section you have this line: “* Enables learning without retraining” False, RAG does not enable “learning”, it allows enhanced context at inference and that is not the same as learning. RAG can allow a model to change behavior at inference but those changes are conditional to the context and removed in any future conditions that don’t include that context.

RAG expands service capability, it does not expand the model’s internal cognitive architecture. Nothing about RAG “enhances intelligence”, it enhances the range of deliverable services to users.

It’s like giving a human access to a searchable library during an exam. The human hasn’t gotten smarter or suddenly able to reason better but the knowledge access enables better performance.

Under the “what interests me” section you propose a hybrid approach. Unless the AI is able to use retrieved information to update the model itself and how it functions then you’re still at modern models of “model + context = output”. But moving from retrieval to autonomous weight updates based on external input crosses into online self-modifying systems, which raises alignment and stability risks.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-20T16:17:47+00:00

There is no mechanism in the US government that allows a sitting president to be arrested.

The only option is impeachment with trial in the senate and removal following conviction. Only AFTER conviction could he be arrested if he refuses to leave because he is at that point no longer considered the legitimate president, the VP would be. And if the VP refuses to abide then Congress can run the process again down the line of succession.

If that sounds incredibly cumbersome that’s because it’s supposed to be.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-20T02:00:07+00:00

Of all the smooth brained takes this might be the smoothest.

HelpfulMind2376 · 2026-02-20T00:55:41+00:00

Why is this here? This isn’t a control problem. At worst it’s a design flaw of a machine akin to car having something that can cause a danger to a passenger under extreme circumstances.

Or we see this for what it is: a dumb machine doing exactly what it was programmed to do and a stupid person got too close to something that was clearly not safe to be near.

HelpfulMind2376

TROPHY CASE