James Talarico’s Win Shows the Promise of a Class Message
James Talarico prevailed in yesterday’s Democratic Senate primary in Texas with an economic populist message tailored to working-class voters. His campaign points toward the kind of politics that stand a chance of beating MAGA, even in Trump country.
James Talarico won the Texas Senate primary by infusing his Christianity with an economic populist message. (Jordan Vonderhaar / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
James Talarico won Texas’s Democratic Party Senate primary last night by running a race focused on Texans, not on defending the Democratic Party or its leaders. Whether it will be enough to win the general election is another question. But the primary has suggested answers to some critical questions about what direction the Texas Democratic Party can take now and in the years to come.
The Texas Senate race has been fiery and divisive. You could be forgiven for imagining there is a massive difference in platforms between Talarico and his opponent, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. In fact, rather than the policy battles that dominated the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, this race has been a lot more about style over substance. But in this case, the style matters.
Talarico infused his Christianity with an economic populist message. “We already have class warfare in this country. It’s the billionaires waging war against the rest of us,” Talarico told a voter at a town hall. His ability to tap into this populist anger, no doubt, explains one key aspect of his victory; Talarico racked up huge margins in counties that Bernie Sanders won in the 2020 Texas primary. The fact that Talarico was able to do so, while not supporting Sanders’s signature Medicare for All proposal, raises some critical questions for the progressive movement in Texas and nationwide.
But it also speaks to his viability. Reaching voters, particularly Hispanic voters in South Texas, who have been breaking from the Democratic Party in recent years, will be a cornerstone of any Texas miracle. And a Democrat winning statewide in Texas would indeed feel like a miracle. To do that, you need a messenger focused on uniting people with a message that unites working people against the billionaire class. And at least in the Democratic primary, Talarico has shown he can do that.
For her part, Crockett made her case as a fighter against Donald Trump and MAGA. The feasibility of that approach was doubtful in a state with plenty of Trump voters. Her election strategy didn’t inspire confidence. As reported by the Houston Chronicle, her strategy was to rely on “celebrity surrogates and turnout operations.” This is a carbon copy of Kamala Harris’s historically bad presidential run. But in a primary of mostly loyal Democratic voters, her reputation as a firebrand could make her viable. Her famous confrontation with Marjorie Taylor Greene, and even her penchant for calling right-wing Texas governor Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, “Governor Hot Wheels,” surely made her some fans.
Yet Crockett’s tendency to insult people wasn’t limited to politicians. In an interview with Vanity Fair after Harris’s loss, Crockett claimed that Hispanic voters in Texas who voted for Trump had a “slave mentality.” It revealed an attitude of contempt for voters held by Crockett and many other members of the party, just one rarely voiced aloud. And when faced with criticism over her support for Israel, Crockett regularly attacked her critics, accusing them of engaging in a “coordinated attack.”
On Israel, neither candidate called the genocide in Palestine a “genocide.” Crockett recently voted to support another $3.3 billion in military assistance to Israel. And while she does not take money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the results of this vote were celebrated by the organization. Talarico, on the other hand, has refused to take money from AIPAC, and when asked to speak on the issue, speaks morally: “I think God is screaming at us in Gaza right now.” He supports a ban on “offensive weapons” to Israel but continues to back the Iron Dome.
Can We Criticize Our Leaders?
“Joe Biden failed us,” Talarico told an undecided voter in a Jubilee spot seen by over a million viewers. When Crockett was asked in Texas Monthly whether she regretted ranking Biden among the “greatest presidents” and saying Kamala was a “perfect candidate,” she said, “Nope. I think right now people are appreciating what it is that Joe Biden did.” Harris made a late endorsement of Crockett, releasing a robocall urging voters, “It’s time to turn Texas blue.”
For too long, Democrats in Texas and throughout the country have refused to look honestly at their failures and criticize their party leadership. Talarico’s willingness to acknowledge these shortcomings, merged with his populist rhetorical appeals, played a large role in his success in former Bernie strongholds.
His campaign tailored its message to working-class Texans, with observations like, “The biggest divide in our country is not left versus right — it’s top versus bottom.” This populist rhetoric is mighty effective, reaching back to Texas’s deep roots as one of the birthplaces of populism. The question now is whether Talarico will be able to successfully harness this tradition in the general.
The Texas Dilemma
It’s a bit of a cliché to write about the decades the Texas Democratic Party has spent in the wilderness. The year 1994 was the last time a Democrat won statewide office, a fact cited in almost any talk about Texas politics. But the state’s politics has been stuck in amber; the Democrats keep finding new paths to irrelevancy. One of the most damaging has been an overreliance on a bedtime story that “demographics is destiny.”
“Demographics is destiny” was based on a type of race essentialism: the idea that once whites were no longer the majority voting group in Texas, Democrats would win because non-whites would automatically vote Democrat. But in Texas, even as whites ceased to be the largest population group, Democrats’ fate remained pitiful. And in 2024, this Democratic dream was not just dashed; it was made into a mockery by Trump. The billionaire demagogue saw his vote share rise with black voters and most decisively among Hispanic Texans. The once-solid blue wall of South Texas, creaking as it was, crumbled and went Trump Red.
The fundamental failure of Texas Democrats has been the belief that some combination of mobilization and favorable demographic shifts will deliver victory. It’s the kind of thinking that inspires passive campaigns and disastrous election results. The opposite of this approach is working-class politics, which is about convincing voters to see politics in a new light and to see themselves as members of a larger group of working people, bucking the culture war, and uniting around a simple message of economic populism.
In Texas, we have seen promising signs of a new working-class alternative to Trumpism emerging. On this score, Talarico would do well to take lessons from the victory of union leader Taylor Rehmet, who just flipped a +17 Trump district.
Looking Out and Looking Forward
Talarico’s victory is a triumph over a tired version of Democratic Party politics: identity-driven, loyal to leadership, too cozy with Israel, and hostile to criticism. In contrast, Talarico’s politics is outward-facing in its orientation, looking to win back working-class Republican voters who have left the party. This is often falsely read as being moderate or even conservative, but Talarico does not base his appeal to Republican voters by tacking right. Rather, he is using the language of “top vs. bottom” instead of “Left vs. Right.” On social issues, he is in line with progressives and is ridiculed by the Right for his interpretation of scripture. It’s an outward-looking approach to politics, not a conservative one.
A lot has been made about Talarico’s faith and whether it may help him appeal to Christian conservatives in the general. Supporters often cite this as a major advantage of Talarico’s. But those arguments miss an unfortunate reality of modern Christian conservativism. It is much less interested in being aligned with the Gospel than it is in punishing the enemies of the conservative movement. Talarico himself expressed doubts to the New Yorker, saying, “We think we can make real headway with Christians,” but when it comes to winning the evangelical vote, “He shrugged.” Still, contesting the dominance of the GOP among religious voters in Texas is a huge step for the Left.
Where does Talarico’s victory leave the Left? His victory is the best outcome when it comes to the choice between him and Crockett; it represents a bolder and more productive path for Democrats than would’ve been possible with Crockett as the nominee. It also makes for a stark contrast with Colin Allred’s disastrous 2024 Senate campaign.
On labor, Talarico supports the PRO Act and will be set to win the support of Texas unions, who are becoming a major force in Texas politics — a much-needed development. And a long election cycle of a major Texas politician decrying the billionaires is a positive for the state.
Talarico wouldn’t have won this seat without the inroads progressives have made in Texas, and Sanders’s success in the state in 2020 with voters who felt abandoned by the Democratic Party. This makes the fact that Talarico doesn’t support Medicare For All disappointing. It was also disheartening that this failure wasn’t made more of an issue by progressive voters in Texas.
To win Texas, we are going to need more than just rhetoric. We will need real leadership that connects the feeling of unfairness to the class war from above and directs people to take up that fight at the ballot box and at the workplace.
But for now, Talarico’s victory is another signal that a politics that is focused on the billionaire class, deploys populist rhetoric, and is genuinely interested in winning voters abandoned by the Democratic Party can prevail. To advance further will require us to keep building out the political alliance between organized labor and economic populist politics. It also means that we need to continue fighting for policies like Medicare for All and push those who use class-war rhetoric to support badly needed class-war policies.