Of non-Texas Democrats in places like New York City and San Francisco, Wendy Davis is perhaps among the dozen or so most popular figures in political life today. Her fundraising from liberals in liberal bastions bears that out. Ronan Farrow and the rest of the MSNBC crowd love her.
In Texas, though, not so much.
The Texas Democrats' primary performance Tuesday was an unmitigated disaster, and the performance of Wendy Davis was particularly abysmal.
The Austin American-Statesman set up a few benchmarks the day before the primary:
"So is all the hoopla around Wendy Davis and Battleground Texas just so much hype, or are Democratic prospects truly better than four years ago?
"A first test will be whether the party primary draws more than the 680,000 voters who participated four years ago, and if Davis exceeds White’s 517,487 votes in a seven-person field. One would assume that a healthy number of new voters registered by Battleground Texas’ 5,700 volunteer deputy registrars would want to take advantage of their first opportunity to exercise their franchise."
At last count, with 8,742 of 8,745 (99.97%) reporting, Wendy Davis had just 432,025 votes, or 79.05% of the primary vote in a two-person race. All told, 546,480 Democrats voted in the 2014 primary.
Failure, in other words.
If you're someone who has given millions of dollars to this effort, you're fuming and/or depressed today. Send in the auditors. Send in the adults. Double down. Or retreat entirely.
Compare the Democrats' figures to the Republican nominee Greg Abbott's numbers. Abbott received 1,219,831 votes, or 91.50% in a four-way primary race. 1,333,010 Republicans voted in the 2014 primary. Those figures may change ever-so-slightly, as 8,825 of 8,829 (99.95%) of precincts are now reporting.
The abysmal, embarrassing primary performance by Wendy Davis was shared by her party at large, though, as Democrats advanced a Lyndon LaRouche acolyte, who is demanding the impeachment of Barack Obama, to a multi-month runoff for U.S. Senate. And Kinky Friedman is going to the Democrats' Agriculture Commissioner runoff.
There is no papering over just how bad Tuesday night was for Texas Democrats. Their "rockstar" nominee losing more than two dozen counties, mostly in heavily Hispanic areas, demonstrates just how misguided their "nominate a single issue candidate" plan was. Democrats failing to receive a single vote in nearly two dozen more demonstrates that their vaunted field and data work isn't yielding results in critical political regions of the state.
In short, there is a partisan enthusiasm gap in Texas, and Republicans are winning it. Democrats have years of soul searching and retooling to do before they'll even sniff winning their first statewide race since the early 90s. Anointing someone known almost exclusively for filibustering on behalf of elective late-term abortion post 5 months of pregnancy may have set the Democrats' plan back at least one full election cycle, if not more.
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