This High-Profile Race Shows Exactly What Has Changed In The Democratic Party

WASHINGTON — There’s plenty of reason to be skeptical of Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s chances in Texas’ U.S. Senate race. While Crockett’s television hits and podcast interviews delight liberals, she’s only ever won in safely Democratic seats. Her preferred strategy of focusing on increasing base voter turnout has little track record of success. Republicans are openly ecstatic about her decision.

But if Democratic elected officials share this skepticism, they’re unwilling to say it out loud. They’re also not willing to fully back her campaign or endorse her over her primary opponent, state Rep. James Talarico.

“It’s entirely possible that she can put together a good campaign,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.).

“She’s an outstanding person and an important voice in her state,” added Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.).

“I’m obviously focused on the House, not the Senate,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), declining to speak on the ambitions of one of the most high-profile members of his caucus.

Uncertainty about the utility of Crockett’s bid extended even to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), one of the members of the so-called “Fight Club” group of progressive senators pushing for a more aggressive approach to combating Donald Trump.

“There are some places where the primaries are good, and there are places where they can be a pain in the ass,” Murphy told HuffPost. “A primary can, you know, ultimately cause a lot of new people to register and cause a lot of new people to get involved.”

The wishy-washiness greeting Crockett is reflective of the party’s uncertainty about how to navigate the anti-Trump, anti-establishment energy coursing through the party, which closely mirrors the GOP’s crack-up in the first half of the 2010s. Democrats are hoping to mirror the incredibly strong midterm election performances Republicans had in those years.

But they are hoping to avoid the downsides the GOP experienced in those years: Primary voters repeatedly picking weak candidates who handed winnable elections to the opposition. The consensus among party operatives is Crockett is the Democratic equivalent of Christine O’Donnell or Richard Mourdock, a candidate whose fighting spirit animates the party’s base but whose rhetoric — like Crockett saying conservatives are “inherently violent” or suggesting Latino Trump supporters have a “slave mentality” — repels swing voters.

“This feels like a Democratic tea party moment,” said Adam Carlson, founder of the Democratic polling firm Zenith Research. “Democratic primary voters are tired of having candidates dictated to them, and they’re saying, ‘Stop telling us who’s electable. We’re going to vote for who we like the best.’”

The party’s establishment has long succeeded at closely managing primaries. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), known as a ferocious recruiter, was also adept at subtly and not-so-subtly discouraging candidacies, helping the party avoid contentious primaries in Florida and Kansas in recent years.

And voters largely went along with party leaders’ wishes. In the first midterm under Trump, wins by insurgent progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) were the exception rather than the rule, with voters — especially in swing states and districts — backing moderate candidates seen as safe choices to win. That trend largely continued through the 2020, 2022 and 2024 elections.

Democrats in those elections often benefited from anti-Trump energy, and clear cases of the party picking the wrong nominee were few, far between and often limited to lower-stakes races for the U.S. House. But some party operatives fear they could be far more common this cycle.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) indirectly compared Crockett to Aftyn Behn, the Tennessee state legislator whose liberal stances and controversial social media posts some Democrats blamed for blowing the party’s shot at a deep-red House seat earlier this month.

“I do know that Texas is red, and then I do know that you have to bring some people over to the other side,” Fetterman told HuffPost. “And now, what happened in Tennessee? You know, we had that total train wreck on our side, and that could have been actually really, truly competitive if it was like a more reasonable kind of a candidate.”

Crockett’s entrance into the race seemingly forced former Rep. Colin Allred, potentially a much stronger candidate, to challenge Rep. Julie Johnson for a safe Democratic House seat instead. Allred ran 6 percentage points ahead of former Vice President Kamala Harris in the state when he challenged Sen. Ted Cruz last cycle.

Allred’s team portrayed his decision, which leaves Talarico as Crockett’s only competition in the primary, as a selfless one that would give the party’s nominee a 13-week head start in the general election by avoiding a runoff, which is a near certainty in the GOP primary between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt. (Texas requires runoffs in primaries if no candidate breaks 50% of the vote.)

But as the likelihood of Crockett running for Senate became clear in recent weeks, Democrats in the state couldn’t find anyone willing to discourage her. Senate Democrats do not yet view Texas, an ultra-expensive state that might only be competitive if Cornyn loses to the deeply conservative and ethically challenged Paxton, as an essential part of their pathway to the majority.

Even if they had, Crockett, to put it lightly, does not seem to be the type swayed by the pleas of party elders.

“It’s weird that people believe that I could win the races that I won and I’m just like out here willy-nilly,” she told CNN last week before officially announcing her decision. “But OK. I am very self-aware, right?”

With Allred out of the race, it is now a showdown between Crockett and Talarico, widely seen as another rising star in the party and someone who has amassed a $5 million war chest since entering the race this summer, according to the Federal Election Commission filings from October. (Crockett has roughly $4.6 million in her account.)

Crockett’s unelectability, in the eyes of most Democratic operatives, comes down to both her insistence on turning out Democratic base voters at the expense of persuasion and her tendency to actively insult Trump voters.

“There just aren’t enough Democrats to win using a base-heavy strategy in Texas,” Carlson said.

The other concern Democrats have about Crockett is, as one strategist put it, her “robust self-image.” Her campaign announcement did not include any mention of policies or voter concerns; it was a video of herself with audio of Trump insulting her. Early on in her kickoff speech, Crockett said she was running because “what we need is for me to have a bigger voice.”

Crockett’s campaign did not respond to an email requesting comment. During an appearance on CNN on Monday night, Crockett went further than previously in suggesting she would reach out to some Trump voters.

“We are going to be able to get people that potentially have voted for Trump even though I, obviously, am one of his loudest opponents because at the end of the day, they vote for who they believe is fighting for them,” she told host Laura Coates.

But she reiterated her top priority would be turning out otherwise apathetic voters, a strategy even many other progressives have backed away from. “Our goal is to make sure that we can engage people that historically have not been talked to because there are so many people that get ignored, specifically in the state of Texas,” she said. “Listen, the state of Texas is 61% people of color. We have a lot of good folk that we can talk to.”

One Democrat working for a House campaign in Texas’ heavily Latino Rio Grande Valley — an area that has swung sharply to Republicans over the past decade — noted Crockett’s announcement video included no mention of the high cost of living, a message the party has used to successfully win back Latino voters elsewhere in elections this year.

“It’s simply not the message these voters are looking for,” said the operative, who requested anonymity to speak frankly because his candidate is neutral in the Senate primary. “People here are worried about a downballot bloodbath.”

While Crockett has an advantage in name identification and starts out in the lead, Democrats watching the race say she also has uniquely high unfavorable ratings, even among members of her own party. Talarico allies hope a closer look at Crockett’s record — including her past support for Israel, her ties to the cryptocurrency industry and her acceptance of corporate political action committee money — rather than just her TV appearances, will convince the party’s voters Talarico gives them the best chance of winning statewide in Texas for the first time in 30 years.

“We’re building a movement in Texas — fueled by record-breaking grassroots fundraising and 10,000 volunteers who are putting in the work to defeat the billionaire mega-donors and puppet politicians who have taken over our state,” Talarico said in a statement after Crockett’s entrance into the race. “Our movement is rooted in unity over division — so we welcome Congresswoman Crockett into this race.”