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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   20303 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026

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The most parsimonious explanation for Talarico to me seems similar to Biden's campaigns (before it all blew up): you're a Democratic campaign manager, and your candidate turns out to be kind of bad at campaigning. You know the media will essentially do your campaigning for you, and this guy is hurting your internals compared to Generic Democrat every time the public sees his face. So what do you do? Shove the guy in a basement, use the time to coach him like mad, and try to get to Election Day with voters thinking about negatives on Republicans rather than about your guy in particular. Which makes sense given how Talarico was selected ("fuck, we can't run Crockett, what white guys do we have left?"), but I suppose we'll see over the next couple weeks whether the campaign keeps him on ice or tries to get him back out there.

I don't know if Talarico is that bad at campaigning. Mostly I think his problem is (apart from the religion angle which we don't need to go into here) that he (like Harris) opened his big yap and spouted forth all the progressive talking points, back in the day before "Oh Woke 1 was so crazy, wasn't it, ha ha!" was the new paradigm.

So now he's having to backpedal like a trick unicylist in the circus and it's not going too well*. Maybe sticking him in a basement for two weeks and coaching the heck out of him is the answer, but frankly Paxton is so awful that all Talarico reasonably should need to do is show up on the campaign trail, wave and smile, and beat the guy. If he needs more coaching than that, then the problem is bad.

*Then on trans girls/women in sports: "there are things more important than fairness in sports" Now: "fairness in sports requires me to say biological males should not be on female teams". Then on gender/sex: "there are six sexes not two" Now: "I admit there are only two sexes".

That makes sense.

But it feels like the Democrats missed an opportunity here.

I mean there are TONS of libtarded white guys would who love to be a Senator for Texas. We're talking boy band levels of female adulation here. How come they found this weird heretical, vegetarian, self-loathing, possibly gay guy?

Can't they just find a normal white dude who doesn't post shit about white people being a virus? It's not that hard.

Kinda of like how the Republicans are running Michelle Tafoya in Minnesota or Susan Collins in Maine. You find the best candidate you can for the race you have. There are lots of normal guys who would beat Paxton and would tow the party line once they are in office.

Talarico isn't being the Talafreako allegations. Only way he wins is a big blue wave.

Both parties keep doing this. Running bizarre looney candidates in critical races. There's hundreds of millions of Americans and these are the ones all political focus is put on for key elections?

So both parties have been facing an uprising by voters who distrust the establishment candidates.

A blue dog Democrat running in the senate primary would have been painted as racist for not stepping aside for Jasmine Crockett.

Talarico got the nomination because he's clearly progressive enough for the DSA to expect him to be loyal. Someone more centrist would not have. They wouldn't have been able to get the establishment support or the progressive vote.

Similarly Ken Paxton got the nomination because he's won statewide office before and establishment Rs absolutely hate him. His voters trust him not to prop up the power of the R senate leadership clique.

How come they found this weird heretical, vegetarian, self-loathing, possibly gay guy?

"Damn it, there are still holdouts among the voters who are Bible-bashing redneck churchgoers. How do we peel them away from the Republicans? We need a Christian of our own. Where the heck do we get one?" Enter Talarico. "Wow, he's a Presbyterian seminarian! That's, like, double or even triple Christian! Woo-hoo, we're saved! (though of course not in any sectarian denominational religious sense, that would involve the concept of sin and the only sins are racism, sexism, transphobia and climate denialism, all of which we are free from)".

I don't think he's gay, by comparison he makes Pete Buttigieg look like a Folsom Street float participant in that area. I think he's just plastic. And of course they needed someone who would be soundly on board with all the liberal agenda so they couldn't get a genuinely theologically conservative/orthodox Christian guy who might, you know, say that sin was real or even worse stuff. So Talarico it was, who was white cis het male enough to be acceptable, but not offensively so.

I don't think he's gay

Girllllllll...

Friend, brother, colleague, he's a Democratic party politician, he is legally required to have a favourite local and a favourite national drag queen. How else will he sing along with Blue's Clues?

He allegedly has a girlfriend, though if we want to put on the tinfoil hats, it could be an arranged relationship for PR purposes but I don't think that's likely, more likely is a minor scandaletto about "were they dating while he was in office and she was lobbying him?" which may be why we don't see much of her:

As of May 2026, Talarico has been in a four‑year relationship with Brianna Menard, who previously served as his chief of staff in his Texas House office; she left the position after they developed feelings for each other.

It could well be she who steered him towards vegetarianism and drag queens:

She has also publicly described herself as a vegan and has referenced spending time at Austin’s Cheer Up Charlies, an Austin venue known for hosting drag performances and catering to the city’s progressive activist scene.

A Talarico campaign spokesman told the NY Post that Talarico was not vegan, “much to his girlfriend’s chagrin.”

The problem is finding one of those people who a. wants to be a Democrat and b. can slide through the treacherous reefs of Identity Politics Primary Season.

Yeah, I’d expect especially the latter is a rough point. There’s a million Blue Dog Democrats in Texas, usually the reverse of the Thrown In the Pit on the right on something moderate-left on abortion or trans stuff… but there’s no way they’d make it through a primary without getting quisenarted.

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