About 40 days to go for the midterms and Texas Governor is using immigration as a wedge issue.
Meanwhile, few months ago, the wind appeared to be at O’Rourke’s back, as he fought to make that happen, to become the first Democratic governor of the state since Ann Richards over a quarter century ago.
He was gaining ground on Abbott, following the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the constitutional right to an abortion.
But A new Spectrum News/Siena Poll shows Abbott widening his lead over O’Rourke. According to the poll, that lead now stands at 7 percentage points, a little more than 40 days until Election Day.
Abbott reversed his fortunes by leaning into demonization and cruelty: He focused on immigration by busing immigrants to faraway sanctuary cities run by Democrats, part of a larger program he called Operation Lone Star.
The first immigrants were bused to Chicago in August, with Abbott saying at the time: “To continue providing much-needed relief to our small, overrun border towns, Chicago will join fellow sanctuary cities Washington, D.C., and New York City as an additional drop-off location.”
This is a callous and politically calculated stunt. But it is apparently paying off.
O’Rourke was asked how he views the state of the race, his own challenges, Abbott’s cynicism and the voters of Texas.
This is important to gain insight about how Democrats run against a politician, his or her policies and the Republican Party as a whole, while Republicans create enemies of classes of people: women, racial and ethnic minorities, L.G.B.T.Q. people, immigrants. This time it’s immigrants and immigration, a charged issue in Texas.
O’Rourke said that Abbott’s plan to bus immigrants to liberal cities was obviously an attempt to distract from his failure to shore up the state’s fragile electrical grids, prevent school violence and reduce inflation.
In addition, he also framed it as “an effort to incite fear and hatred and connect with people at a very base, emotional level,” an “effort to dehumanize people,” and that is precisely what it is.
Abbott is not only trying to dehumanize immigrants, but to strip them of their individuality and create an ominous class.
In that way, immigrants can be converted from throngs of individuals with individual lives, stories and feelings into an amorphous wave, overwhelming and unrelenting, crashing into the country.
Abbott is using these human beings as a weapon and a tool for the shallow purpose of retaining power.
For O’Rourke said: “There is no way that he would ever resort to that kind of fear mongering and demagogy, and vilifying, demonizing people, because he saw exactly what that results were.
O’Rourke is referring to the mass shooting last year in which a white racist, targeting Hispanics, killed 23 people in an El Paso Walmart. He left a 2,300-word manifesto reeking of white replacement anxiety, one that spoke of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and detailed a plan to separate America into territories by race.
Abbott’s stunt is dangerous and it earned him a lot of free media attention, which gets people talking.
Media coverage — what is called “earned media” — even negative and mocking coverage, is sometimes more powerful than paid ads. Look no further than Donald Trump’s victory in 2016.
O’Rourke is running a different race. He understands the potency of the immigration issue in his state.
He thinks what you may see reflected in that poll is the deep frustration that all of us feel about the fact that the last time we had any real major progress on immigration, Ronald Reagan was the president.
I believe something that hasn’t showed up properly in the polls is a shadow army of angry voters animated by the overturning of Roe.
The Dobbs decision is galvanizing for turnout everywhere and many of the people who are energized to vote will be turning out not just because of abortion, but also because of lack of movement on gun control, especially in red states.
A survey showed that many thousands of voters had registered in the state since the Dobbs ruling.
They were younger and more Democratic than before the June ruling and I believe these voters are going to help make the difference and produce an upset.
O’Rourke is counting on them. He is counting on the people of Texas. As he put it: “In Greg Abbott’s Texas, it’s ‘you or me,’ right. And in our Texas, it’s ‘you and me.’ Which of those visions is going to win out?
The above is just one more reason for the Urgency of Now!
Please vote in the November elections to preserve our freedoms and values.
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