The Paxton/Talarico race has already gotten nasty, with Paxton and the rest of the MAGA crew, including Trump, calling Talarico gay, trans, vegan, “low-T”, etc. (Details here.) I have a few observations on this tactic, which has been and will be effective until Democrats get a handle on how to punch back on it.
First, let’s start with the guy making these remarks, a doughy, middle-aged, unattractive, adulterous, dishonest freak named Ken Paxton.
Just saying - he’s not exactly the number one specimen of manly manhood himself. That’s why his masculinity needs to be performative. And, frankly, it’s hard to punch back at Paxton without insulting the doughy, middle-aged, unattractive men who might just vote for Talarico, but it has to be done. The worst thing that Democrats can do when they “go low” is “go high” by ignoring them.
That said, Talarico has good political instincts. He’s already talking about manliness on the stump, telling a story about his dad, who would mow their lawn without being asked and then mow the elderly neighbor ladies’ lawn, without making a fuss about it.
Moving on from the “low-T” manly man stuff to the gay stuff, Talarico has a girlfriend. For a brief moment, MAGA was all excited because they thought she wasn’t real. Well, she is, her name is Brianna Menard, and she’s a vegan. And let’s face it, vegans can be annoying, but a tiny bit of self-deprecation about it goes a long way. (“James is not and never has been a vegan, much to his girlfriend’s chagrin […] As the saying goes, true love conquers all.” ) Talarico was accused of being a vegan, too, even though his famous taco order was eggs and potatoes, and vegans don’t eat eggs. Here’s his response: “I’m an eighth-generation Texan […] I’ve been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment.”
Both of those responses are pretty genuine, though obviously workshopped, almost as if the campaign was ready for them. It shows a campaign that understands their opponent and also understands that hiding from the attacks just doesn’t work.
By the way, that link and the facts about Menard are from an AOL news reprint of a NY Post article. It’s basically a celebrity profile piece with lots of pictures of his attractive, age-appropriate, accomplished girlfriend. So, another job well done by whomever in the Talarico orbit coordinated that. It could have been Menard herself, since she’s his former chief of staff and currently a lobbyist for the Texas Medical Association. Again, it almost seems like the plan was to bait MAGA with slightly-vague girlfriend talk and then trot out the woman he’s been dating for four years.
Moving on to the trans stuff, which is really ugly, Amanda Marcotte has a good point about it:
That whole thread is worth a read.
I think the Harris campaign failing to confront the “Trump is for us, Kamala is for they/them” charges head-on, and the rush by chickenshit Democrats to throw trans people under the bus in the wake of Trump’s victory, were major mistakes. Lack of resistance to MAGA empowers them to go one step further — now everyone who isn’t the kind of “man” that Ken Paxton and Donald Trump are is “trans”.
This is how you do it:
The brave person in that video is AB Hernandez. Tom Steyer is a middle-aged white billionaire who will be just fine no matter what. That said, Steyer shows some great political instincts by simply acting like an average, middle-aged human being responding to the inhumanity of the bullying of a vulnerable teenager with what I’d characterize as “normal protective dad energy.” (I have no opinions on the California governor’s race, btw, just thought Steyer did a good job in this instance.)
If Democrats are seen to be weak, and polling shows that we are, the way to look less weak is to — and I’m patenting this original insight — be less weak. Stand up for what you believe in loud and proud. Yep, we protect trans kids from bullies. When our neighbors were attacked by MAGA ICE thugs, we did everything in our power to protect them. “We protect the vulnerable, always” is a brand that people can respect. “We make mouth noises about protecting the vulnerable, hide when we’re attacked for doing so, and throw them under the bus at the first opportunity” gets respect from nobody.
The MAGA strategy is to put out these attacks and just let them fester in the media. They know that the media loves this shit (former podcast guest Mark Jacob has a great comment on that), and they expect Democrats to run away or to offer weak, equivocal resistance. Talarico seems to understand that the media’s obsession with this nonsense is in some ways an opportunity: he’s prepared for the attacks, and he pushes back quickly and unequivocally. He’s also not humorless. For example, since Paxton called him “Talafreako”, his campaign is selling “I’m a Talafreako” t-shirts.
The whole point of the exercise is to respond quickly and then get back to the topic at hand, which is that Paxton is corrupt and would be a terrible Senator. I don’t know what’s coming next from the Paxton campaign, but it really is a mark of desperation that they went all-in on the manliness stuff on the first day of the real campaign. Usually, Republicans do that in the last couple of weeks, hoping to catch Democrats flat-footed. This will be an interesting race to watch for tactics on how to use MAGA’s obsession with performative masculinity against it.
