Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 12:07 pm
Texas, especially during the 8 year run of George W. Bush, has been a ruby red Republican stronghold. There have been cracks over the last 10 years with Democrats winning house seats and Beto O’Rourke coming within 3 points of defeating Ted Cruz.
There have been a number of recent polls that show Joe Biden coming close or even leading Donald Trump. When recently asked about the state and those polls numbers, O’Rourke predicted that the former Vice President would win the state.
The former Texas Congressman made the comments during an appearance on MSNBC. He told host Kaisie Hunt, “Texas is not a red state, nor is it a blue state. It is a non-voting state. It had ranked, until 2018, 50th in voter turnout. Not because we love democracy less. But it is the result of decades of voter suppression, focused on black voters and brown voters in this state.”
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O’Rourke continued, “What’s changed since 2018 is that this is a Presidential cycle which favors Democratic voter turnout. Two, you have the absolute train wreck if the Trump presidency which has killed 162,000 of our fellow Americans.”
The former Preisdential candidate closed, “When you match that with a Democratic nominee like Joe Biden who is focused on bringing this deeply divided country together again. He will become the first Democratic nominee since 1976 to collect the 38 electoral votes in this state.”
Watch a clip of the segment below, courtesy of MSNBC:
Todd Neikirk is a New Jersey based politics and technology writer. His work has been featured in psfk.com, foxsports.com and hillreporter.com. He enjoys sports, politics, comic books and spending time at the shore with his family.
