Don’t believe Democrats. James Talarico isn’t a moderate. | Opinion

While James Talarico has a better chance than most to win the U.S. Senate race, I still don’t think he is the chosen one for Democrats dreaming of a blue Texas.

Texas Rep. James Talarico is the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate. While we will wait a couple of months to see who his Republican opponent will be, Democratic leaders have already started strategizing. 

Talarico’s brand is that he is a White religious man. The emphasis on religion is central to his campaign, in which the state lawmaker uses it to justify all sorts of radical policy positions. 

Democrats are making the same mistakes they have made for years in Texas. While Talarico has a better chance than most to win the U.S. Senate race, I still don’t think he is the chosen one for Democrats dreaming of a blue Texas. 

Talarico is a radical whom Democrats expect to launder as a moderate. Texas voters will see through such efforts. 

Democrats think being a White guy makes you moderate

We saw this approach when Vice President Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her 2024 presidential running mate. In the case of Walz, the impression party leaders wanted to give off was that of a typical Midwest suburban dad.

In the case of Talarico, it’s a young Texan Christian man.

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This also isn’t the first time Democrats have tried this in Texas. The last time they seriously deluded themselves into thinking they could win statewide in Texas, they ran former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who, at the time, was crowned the savior of Texas Democrats for very similar superficial reasons, despite being rather uninspiring politically.

He came close to defeating Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018. O’Rourke was more forthcoming about his radical nature, particularly on guns.

Talarico is not O’Rourke. He has used religion to justify his pro-abortion positions.

Referring to racism, Talarico has proclaimed on social media, “White skin gives me and every white American immunity from the virus. But we spread it wherever we go ‒ through our words, our actions, and our systems. We don’t have to be showing symptoms ‒ like a white hood or a Confederate flag ‒ to be contagious.”

He supports Medicare for all and eliminating the filibuster. He has said that there are six biological sexes. None of this is moderate.

Democrats let race and gender influence their strategy poorly

Talarico may be closer to moderates within the Democratic Party, but none of them have the appeal needed to win statewide in a place like Texas or many other Republican-leaning states, for that matter. Democrats think that traits that they have superficially associated with being right wing, such as being White, a male, being religious, or a nuclear family structure, are enough to appeal to moderate voters. 

Democrats’ view of race, gender and other superficial characteristics has led to seriously flawed decision-making. We saw this with the narrative around Harris, the first African American and South Asian American woman to become vice president. Democrats thought for some reason that in order for her to appeal to voters, they needed to “balance” the presidential ticket by adding a White man. 

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That assumption is rooted in an incorrect thinking that Harris’ unpopularity was because Americans were somehow biased against her because she is a Black woman ‒ rather than that her record was horrible, that she wasn’t an interesting candidate, and that she was the incumbent from a deeply unpopular Biden administration. 

Democrats did a similar thing in explaining away former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. There has been all sorts of punditry about how America just wasn’t ready for a woman president. However, anyone seriously analyzing that loss can see that Clinton’s defects as a candidate go far deeper than something as superficial as gender. 

Democrats are making the same mistakes they have made for years by viewing race and gender as key components of a candidate. The reality is that voters aren’t going to vote against their policy interests just because someone shares their skin color or chromosomes. Such losses are easily avoided, but it requires Democrats to stop viewing these traits as important and start pursuing the candidates with the most merit. 

Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.