^
That is correct. I'm working on an elections recap and I'll post it here when I finish.
Waiting with interest. One of the questions i would like to get an answer for - why most of highly heralded campaigns of well-known (an, ostensibly, fitting the districts, being an "old school local good boys" with "normal" campaign platform (mixture of some economic populism with social conservatism)) Democratic local officials went so badly? Some even failed to get 40%, and the best result i can remember was 46% in HD-90. Even Childers got only 42%. The one (and only) exception in HD-12 only proves that...
If a place is trending away from a certain party for a long time. Not even candidates closer to the new "political center of that state" can win.
Some people think they lost because "they were too rightwing". I think even though they lost, they probably lost much less than had they ran a CA style campaign with full on Green platform, economic leftism and ultra social liberalism. Lots of bitter progressives play too much into that meme and Wendy Davis being crushed is an example of that hypothesis not working. There is no secret progressive voterbase that will prop up and bring them to victory if only they were more leftwing.
I don't think Democrats should run bitter progressive campaigns in states that aren't bitterly progressive. But it seems like a lot of these Democrats run in these states AGAINST the Republican narrative instead of FOR their own narrative. Beyond maybe Joe Manchin, and even he does this, I get the sense that economic populism still vibes with this region.
