David Frum

And it's a state, of course, that depends heavily on export industries.

It's not just an extractive state.

It's a state that sells to the world.

Those are the kinds of places where Democrats tend to do well and better over time.

And yet it never seems to quite happen, not even in 2018, another midterm year when President Trump was very unpopular.

Can I hit a pause button there?

So the claim, Texas is not a red state, it's a non-voting state, is a favored talking point, especially of Texas progressives.

And it was the theory of the Jasmine Crockett campaign.

It's if only we could get more people out to vote and the voter suppression weren't so bad.

But isn't it true that every Texas political scientist who has studied this question said if Texans vote in higher numbers, they will actually be more red and less blue because the places where people are not voting are exactly the kind of disaffected, disaffiliated sectors of the population where President Trump does well.

And the high commitment voters are the people who actually are the heart and soul of today's Democratic Party.

I don't know.

Well, persuasion versus turnout was kind of the abstract issue in the primary.

Crockett saying, we don't need to persuade anybody.

We just need to turn out the voters who are not turning out.

Flying in the face of the political scientists who said, the people who don't turn out are more Trumpy, not less Trumpy.

And Tallarico saying, I think I can persuade some of the people who formerly voted for Trump.

And that was the question, persuasion versus turnout.

And those are both plausible points of view.

Why, given that there were two plausible theories of the election, why did the election turn so nasty?