Ezra Klein

I once heard somebody around the Mamdani Cuomo campaign be like they both got the exact antagonist they wanted.

Yeah, that's a great point.

Right.

And it just turned out Mamdani was right about which antagonist he wanted and Cuomo wasn't.

In terms of that race and who's making the right tactical calls, we should just take a step back and say, you know, Texas is Texas for a reason.

And if you run a moderately competent campaign with a moderately competent candidate, you will win by five points.

Like as a Republican, as a Republican, it's just structurally there.

So you really got to screw things up, if not more than five points.

Yes.

I mean, 10, 10 to five.

Right.

You run a bad campaign.

It's five.

You run a miserable campaign like Ted Cruz did in 2018 in a really, really good year for Democrats.

You win by two.

What I would say is about Paxton.

is that he's kind of the worst of all worlds in this way, which is that Ken Paxton is someone with a lot of baggage.

He was impeached by a supermajority Republican state legislature for corruption.

He was indicted for securities crimes, although not convicted.

He was also not convicted on his impeachment.