Christopher Hooks
By Christopher Hooks:
A Modest Proposal: Replace the Iowa Caucuses
Dear Beto and Julián, Please Don’t Run for President
Most failed presidential campaigns are high-risk bids for personal glory and a waste of time and money.
Are you planning to run for president on the Democratic ticket in 2020? If not, why not? Everyone else is. Seventeen Republicans ran in 2016, and the nominating process winnowed them down to the least qualified and most deranged. Now, … Read More
Texas is a Purple State Now. The Proof is in Last Night’s Results.
Tuesday’s midterm was the best election result for Texas Democrats since at least 1994, and gives a lot of reasons to think that something has meaningfully changed in this state.
Photos/Brad Tollefson, Justin Miller, Illustration/Sunny Sone When Ted Cruz slipped ahead of Beto O’Rourke in the count last night, there was a wave of anguish and recrimination from Democrats on social media — some from Texas, many not. That’s understandable. The … Read More
The Disconnect Between Ted Cruz’s Victory Speech and What Actually Happened in Texas
When Cruz declared victory, the crowd in Houston chanted “build the wall,” and speakers on stage greatly overstated the Republican hold on Texas.
The currency of the realm for Texas Democrats is small, symbolic victories, and the currency of the realm for Texas Republicans is the overwhelming, crushing humiliation of one’s enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations … Read More
The #FireStanStanart Campaign Finally Wins, Knocking Off the Much-Maligned GOP Harris County Clerk
Democrat Diane Trautman is now is in charge of administering the voting rolls for 4.7 million Texans.
The theme of the night for Texas Democrats, if there is one, might be frustration at the top of the ballot while making great strides at the bottom. It should be noted that Texans have seen the end of one … Read More
Ted Cruz’s Do-Nothing Record
Cruz can’t help build the future because he’s focused solely on his present.
There’s one element of the Senate race in Texas that has gotten surprisingly little attention: Ted Cruz’s astonishingly thin legislative record. As his first term comes to a close, he might as well have not been in Congress at all. … Read More
Has Pete Sessions Marinated in D.C. Too Long for Texas Voters?
In the 2008 presidential election, John McCain won Texas’ Congressional District 32 by 11 percentage points, and in 2012, Mitt Romney won it by 15. It was not, in other words, a district that anybody at the DNC hoped to … Read More
Why Don Huffines’ Destiny May Depend on Other Districts (and ‘Dragon Ball Z’)
Don Huffines won state Senate District 16 from incumbent John Carona in a bitterly contested Republican primary in 2014, when no Democrat ran, so this will be Huffines’ first general election. His district covers much of suburban North Dallas. If … Read More
Will Sarah Davis’ Odd-Duck District Keep the Legislature’s Most Moderate Republican?
The Republican Party of Texas was born in places like House District 134, which covers Houston’s Bellaire and West University Place — educated, wealthy, professional. This is part of the district that George H.W. Bush was elected to represent in Congress … Read More
The Soul-Crushing Emptiness of the Texas Governor’s Race
Greg Abbott was frustratingly vague and dodgy in the one and only gubernatorial debate, delivering the tacit message that he has little to do with the governance of the state.
The race for Texas governor this year is a deadening absurdity between two low-energy politicians with spotty records. An empty suit with a gargantuan checking account versus an empty campaign run by a candidate who is filling the slot for … Read More
