Is Trump Turning Texas Purple?

 by Ray Keating

The Keating Files – October 12, 2020

 

Is Donald Trump managing to turn Texas from a solid Red State (i.e., Republican) to a Purple State (a toss-up state)? If so, that would have earth-shaking consequences for American presidential politics.

Consider that the last time Texas favored a Democrat over the Republican candidate in a presidential contest was 44 years ago in 1976. Texas has gone Republican in every race since.

 

And the margins of victory generally have been pretty comfortable. The exceptions were in two losing efforts by Republicans, with Texan Ross Perot factoring into the equation. George H.W. Bush earned only 40.6 percent of the Texas vote in 1992, with Bill Clinton getting 37.1 percent and Ross Perot 22 percent. In the next election (1996), Bob Dole received 48.8 percent to Clinton’s 43.8 percent and Perot at 6.8 percent.

 

Republicans re-established solid wins in the next four elections. In 2000, George W. Bush took 59.3 percent in his home state versus Al Gore’s 38 percent, and in 2004, it was Bush 61.1 percent to John Kerry’s 38.2 percent. And then even in losing national efforts, Republicans did well in Texas in 2008 and 2012, with John McCain beating Barack Obama 55.5 percent to 43.7 percent, and Mitt Romney defeating Obama 57.2 percent to 41.4 percent. 

 

And then we come to 2016. Donald Trump won Texas, but only with 52.1 percent of the vote. So, Trump topped the percentages earned by Bush 41 and Dole in losing efforts in 1992 and 1996, respectively. But Trump managed the lowest tally in Texas for a Republican presidential winner since Herbert Hoover in 1928.

 

However, Trump’s 2016 Texas win was still quite comfortable given that Hillary Clinton only earned 43.1 percent of the state vote.

 

And now we’re only three weeks away from Election Day 2020, and President Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, are in a dead heat in Texas, according to the polls.

 

Of the Texas October polls, one has Trump up by 7 percentage points and another up by 5 points. That’s what one would expect for a Republican in Texas. However, another poll has Biden up by 2 percentage points, and another has the Democrat up by one point. And two other polls put the two candidates even.

 

Win or lose, Biden seems on track, at least at this point in time, to earn the largest percentage vote in Texas for any Democrat since Jimmy Carter won the state in 1976.

 

Suddenly, Texas is competitive. That’s deeply troubling news for Republicans. After all, of the four most populous states, two are solid Blue (Democrat), i.e., California and New York, and one, Florida, has gone from leaning Republican to being a Purple State.

 

We’ll have a somewhat clearer picture of what’s happening in Texas after this year’s election. But even then, there will be the question as to whether a poor showing, perhaps even a loss, by Trump in Texas might be a short-term Trump effect or something more lasting for the GOP. And if Texas does in fact go Purple, that would mean that there would be no reliable Red States among at least the top dozen populous states. For Republicans, that would be a big “Yikes!”

 

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Recent and Related Columns by Ray Keating…

 

“A Flood of Bad Economics on Tech and Immigration”

 

“Polls Before the Dreaded Presidential Debates”

 

“Voting Your Conscience Isn’t Wasting Your Vote”

 

“Character-Rich Sci-Fi: Take the Netflix Journey with ‘Away’”

 

“Applaud, Don’t Attack, Robinhood”

 

“Sports Are Back But Americans Aren’t Happy”

 

“Should We Take Our Ball and Go Home When Pro Athletes Disagree with Us?”

 

“‘Greyhound’ Ranks as Strong Storytelling – Even on a Smaller Screen”

 

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Ray Keating is a columnist, novelist, economist, podcaster and entrepreneur.  You can order his new book Behind Enemy Lines: Conservative Communiques from Left-Wing New York  from Amazon or signed books  at RayKeatingOnline.com. His other recent nonfiction book is Free Trade Rocks! 10 Points on International Trade Everyone Should Know. The views expressed here are his own – after all, no one else should be held responsible for this stuff, right?

 

Keating’s latest novel is  The Traitor: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel, which is the 12thbook in the series. The best way to fully enjoy Ray Keating’s Pastor Stephen Grant thrillers and mysteries is to join the Pastor Stephen Grant Fellowship! For the BEST VALUE, consider the Book of the Month Club.  Check it all out at https://www.patreon.com/pastorstephengrantfellowship

 

Also, tune in to Ray Keating’s podcasts – the PRESS CLUB C Podcast  and the Free Enterprise in Three Minutes Podcast  

 

Check out Ray Keating’s Disney news and entertainment site at www.DisneyBizJournal.com.

Is Senator McSally Poised to Make History, Again? If So, Not in a Good Way

by Ray Keating

The Keating Files – June 27, 2020

U.S. Senator Martha McSally, Republican from Arizona, has a knack for making history. However, the history she might make this November is not the kind that she would appreciate.

Without a doubt, McSally is a fighter. She became the first female fighter pilot in history to fly in combat, as well as the first to command an Air Force fighter squadron in combat. She served in the Air Force for 26 years, and retired a full colonel in 2010.

McSally subsequently dove into a political career. She first lost a Republican primary in Arizona to fill the rest of the term for Democrat Rep. Gabby Giffords’ House of Representatives seat after Giffords was badly wounded in a 2011 shooting in Tucson. Ron Barber, a former Giffords’ aide who also was injured in the shooting, eventually won the seat. As the GOP candidate, McSally then narrowly lost to Barber in 2012.

McSally came back to win the seat in a tight, brutal race in 2014, and then was re-elected handily in 2016.

After Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican critical of President Donald Trump, announced in 2017 that he was retiring, McSally entered the race. She largely was seen as the traditional Republican conservative candidate in the primary versus more fringy candidates, namely, Kelli Ward and Joe Arpaio. McSally won the primary, had a tough time then uniting the GOP vote, and failed to handle the death of U.S. Senator John McCain very well, which happened just before the GOP primary. 

McSally wound up losing the November election by an extremely tight margin to Kyrsten Sinema. So, McSally lost the Senate seat that had been in Republican hands since 1995.

Meanwhile, former Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican, came out of retirement to be appointed by Republican Governor Doug Ducey as a kind of placeholder for the McCain seat. Kyl then retired, again, in December, and Ducey appointed McSally to the seat – just 55 days after she lost to Sinema. According to a Smart Politics analysis, that was the quickest turnaround from losing a Senate seat to being appointed to a Senate seat.

McSally is now in a race to finish out McCain’s term, and her Democratic opponent is Mark Kelly, who is Giffords’ husband and a former astronaut.

The latest polls show Kelly holding a strong lead over McSally. For example, in the two polls on the race released in June (so far), McSally has failed to top 38 percent, and trailed in one poll by nine points and in the other by 13 points. Of course, the four-plus months remaining until the election can be an eternity in politics. But it’s clear that McSally is in deep trouble. 

Part of the problem might be that Trump is not faring well in the state, either, and McSally clearly has moved closer to the Trump camp. The most recent polls show Trump either in a dead heat or slightly behind his opponent, Democrat Joe Biden, in Arizona. Since Harry Truman won Arizona in 1948, the state has only gone for a Democrat once in a presidential race – by a tiny margin for President Bill Clinton in 1996.

If McSally goes down to defeat, it would not only mean losing a seat held by Republicans since 1969 – by Barry Goldwater and then John McCain – but it would mean that McSally would make history, once again. She will have lost both Republican Senate seats in Arizona to the Democrats within a mere two years. Yep, that would rank as making history. Of course, though, it’s not the kind of history any politician wants to make.

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See recent...

“I’ve Been Granted 7 Pop Culture Wishes”

“The Ills of Labor Unions, Part II: Public Schools and Policing”

“The Ills of Labor Unions, Part I: Baseball”

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Ray Keating is a columnist, economist, podcaster and entrepreneur.  You can order his new book Behind Enemy Lines: Conservative Communiques from Left-Wing New York from Amazon or signed books at RayKeatingOnline.com. His other recent nonfiction book is Free Trade Rocks! 10 Points on International Trade Everyone Should Know. Keating also is a novelist. His latest novels are  The Traitor: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel, which is the 12^th book in the series, and the second edition of Root of All Evil? A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel with a new Author Introduction. The views expressed here are his own – after all, no one else should be held responsible for this stuff, right?

Also, tune in to Ray Keating’s podcasts – the PRESS CLUB C Podcast and the Free Enterprise in Three Minutes Podcast 

Voting Your Conscience Isn’t Wasting Your Vote

by Ray Keating

The Keating Files – April 27, 2020

We live in a strange political time, to say the least. And one of the oddest phenomena I’ve witnessed is pushback against the idea of voting according to one’s conscience. Um, really?

In fact, if you mention during a discussion that you plan to vote for a third-party candidate or write in someone during a presidential election, the response, more often than not, is the following: Why would you waste your vote? That reaction raises interesting questions about what a “wasted vote” looks like.

First, it must be noted, as public choice economists remind us, that since your single vote will not decide an election (the chances are infinitesimal), it’s perfectly rational to not vote. Indeed, we are free to vote or not to vote in this country. 

Acknowledging the reality of one’s vote not deciding an election, then why do I vote? Well, I recognize that my fellow citizens – my neighbors – and I do come together to decide who our governmental representatives will be, and that matters very much in terms of a host of policies and issues affecting each of our lives. And I understand that this right to vote is exceptional in the history of the world, and that many of my fellow Americans have risked everything to protect this freedom to vote. Indeed, voting in a free and fair election is special, and reaches beyond the pure economic or statistical argument about one vote not deciding the outcome of an election.

Given how precious this right to vote is, then how can anyone do any less than vote according to conscience? 

Of course, a vote according to conscience can take various forms. The most obvious, and easiest, is to simply cast your vote for one of the two major party candidates – Republican or Democrat – who creates no significant issues or questions for one’s conscience. That’s been the case for me, fortunately, during five of the nine presidential elections in which I’ve voted.

Then there’s the case when voting against one of the major party candidates seems to be the primary impetus in the voting booth. 

For example, during the 2016 presidential campaign, which did not have an incumbent running, voting against a candidate ran much stronger than in the previous non-incumbent election. In the September before the 2016 presidential election, Pew Research found that among those supporting the Republican, 53 percent were voting against Democrat Hillary Clinton and 44 percent for Republican Donald Trump. That compared to 35 percent voting against Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 59 percent for Republican John McCain. Meanwhile, as for those supporting the Democrat, 46 percent were voting against Trump and 53 percent for Clinton in 2016, versus 25 percent against McCain and 68 percent for Obama in 2008.

Understanding that politicians are, well, politicians, I get the idea of voting against someone. But by doing so, if you pull the lever for the opposing major-party candidate, for example, then you’re effectively voting for that candidate. And if your conscience turns out, even after much wrestling, to be okay with who you’re pulling the lever for, so be it. That was the case for me in two presidential elections.

But what about the case where voting for either candidate would go against conscience? That was the situation confronting me in two presidential elections. There was no candidate on the ballot to vote for – either explicitly for or de facto for by voting against the other candidate – who didn’t trouble my conscience. So, in each case, I followed my conscience, and wrote in my choice.

Those write-in votes, contrary to widespread opinion, were in no way wasted votes. How could any vote be wasted when voting according to your conscience? Indeed, I’m completely baffled by such accusations.

While he spoke on theological matters, I think of the Christian reformer Martin Luther on this topic, with his famous quote: “I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.”

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Ray Keating is a columnist, economist, podcaster and entrepreneur.  You can order his new book Behind Enemy Lines: Conservative Communiques from Left-Wing New York  from Amazon or signed books at RayKeatingOnline.com. His other recent nonfiction book is Free Trade Rocks! 10 Points on International Trade Everyone Should Know. Keating also is a novelist. His latest novels are  The Traitor: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel, which is the 12^th book in the series, and the second edition of Root of All Evil? A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel with a new Author Introduction. The views expressed here are his own – after all, no one else should be held responsible for this stuff, right?

Also, tune in to Ray Keating’s podcasts – the PRESS CLUB C Podcast and the Free Enterprise in Three Minutes Podcast