The inevitable has happened. Enough of the Democrats in the Texas Legislature have finally given up on their lame stunt and returned to the state, allowing legislative business to go forward.
On the bright side, they accomplished absolutely nothing aside from delaying a voting reform bill for six weeks.
The Texas House of Representatives returned to business on Thursday, and now Texas’s voting bill will almost certainly pass. Democrats threw their tantrum over the bill, fled the state to Washington, D.C., spread COVID-19 around, didn’t convince West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, or anyone else for that matter, to change federal law, and have now finally admitted defeat and returned from their vacation. It’s an impressive collection of failures.
The bill was never as sinister as Democrats suggested. It would end drive-thru voting and 24-hour early voting, both of which were put in place only to deal with voting during the coronavirus pandemic. It also mandates that counties offer a minimum of nine hours a day to vote during the early voting period and requires counties with more than 30,000 people to increase that to 12 hours during the final week of the period.
Whether Texas Democrats actually believe that this is “voter suppression” or not is irrelevant. The primary motivator for their doomed stunt was to try and boost their turnout. Fresh off their failure in the 2020 election, the Texas Democratic Party has no direction and no plan. Even simply trying to boost turnout is a poor plan: Texas saw its highest turnout in 28 years during the 2020 election, only for Texas voters to decide that they were just fine with the status quo.
Despite all prognostications, demographics have not turned Texas into a purple state. And the 2022 midterm elections keep looking better and better for the GOP, as President Joe Biden’s approval is falling. To top it all off, there is this headline from Texas Monthly: “Texas Democrats Are Relying On Politicians Who Lost in 2020 to Carry Them in 2022.”
So, in the end, Texas Democrats accomplished nothing. Their meek retreat back to their jobs is masked only by Biden’s failure in Afghanistan dominating the news cycle. But, in Texas, they will have to face voters again next year. And all signs point to yet another failure.
