In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.
Texas Republican senatorial candidate Ken Paxton is a sleazy politician who abused his power for personal gain and only won the nomination because he promised to be President Donald Trump’s toady. He is far from the first or last of his kind, unfortunately.
Recommended Stories
Texas Democratic Party senatorial pick James Talarico, on the other hand, is almost certainly the first major candidate in American history to contend that God is “non-binary.” Talarico didn’t say that God transcends earthly classification or comprehension — he intentionally used the quack neologism to normalize the idea that a person can choose to align with neither “man” nor “woman.”
Color me skeptical that retrofitting Christianity to fit a radical secular notion of people who generally detest Christians will sit well with most conservative voters in Texas. Many Democrats speak about abortion as if it were a religious sacrament, but Talarico is probably the first to explicitly offer a theological case that abortion is a sacrament, noting that the Annunciation, Gabriel’s announcement of Jesus’s coming to Mary, proves that “creation has to be done with consent.”
None of that is normal. Perhaps Talarico has changed his outlook, but these statements, offered as an elected official, are all fair game. You can go full woke. You can win a Senate seat in Texas. You probably can’t do both. Nothing stopped Democrats from finding a more moderate or impressive candidate.
Because of Paxton, however, Democrats are again acting like they occupy the high moral ground of American politics. If 2026 has proven anything, it’s that there’s virtually nothing a left-wing candidate could say or do that would elicit condemnation from Democrats if doing so threatened their power.
Democrats, for example, demand credit for their opposition to Maureen Galindo, the Texas congressional candidate who proposed putting American “Zionists” (wink, wink) into concentration camps and castrating them, lost her Texas primary last week, winning 36% of the vote — not a bad showing for a politician championing mass imprisonment of her political enemies.
The question, though, is whether House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), or anyone at Pod Save America or the Bulwark had uttered a word in protest, had Galindo already won her primary before making those comments? All the evidence strongly suggests no.
And by evidence, I mean their explicit support for slightly less offensive cranks, extremists, bigots, and terrorism apologists such as new party power broker Hasan Piker or the socialist Hezbollah fan Abdul el Sayed in Michigan or the Hamas apologist Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, a guy who suggested the massacre of Jews at Bondi Beach was a “false flag” operation by “Zionists.”
Imagine telling someone 20 years ago that a leading congressional candidate in a New Jersey district situated right outside New York City had both volunteered for an al Qaeda front in Europe and spent years being friends with “The Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman, the longtime jihadi preacher who was sentenced for seditious conspiracy after planning a “day of terror” in 1995. Adam Hamawy defended Abdel-Rahman during his trial. And yet not a single notable Democrat has called him out on it.
Many of the same Democrats who expect Republicans to wring their hands over Paxton have offered full-throated endorsement of a man who knowingly got and kept a Totenkopf SS Nazi tattoo for 20 years.
It’s not just that Graham Platner’s mentally unstable ravings, including saying a Purple Heart recipient didn’t “deserve to live,” or that “all cops are bastards,” or that white rural Americans were “racist and stupid,” or that the Virgin Mary was a “skank” or defending child killers of Hamas or contending that sexual assault victims bring it on themselves. It’s that he still uses unhinged Marxist language right now.
Platner isn’t the first skeeze to run for major office, but he might be the most extreme. Only two elected Democrats, as far as I can tell, have spoken out about Platner’s soft spot for Nazis. One is Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who is under relentless attack from his own party for supporting Israel over Islamists, and Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA).
Now, if Platner’s opponent in Maine was a raging, corrupt ideologue, independents might be torn between two dangerous candidates. But the Republican in Maine is incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, perhaps the most milquetoast centrist member of the entire chamber.
Some Democrats rationalize their support for a self-described “communist” by noting that control of the Senate is far more important than worrying about the individual ravings of unhinged candidates. Though gutless establishment Democrats did virtually do nothing to counter extremists during the primaries, there’s a utilitarian logic to this thinking. But then you’re in no position to lecture Republicans about Paxton or anyone else, for that matter.
The 2026 elections will be held during the second term of an unpopular presidency, so there’s no telling how many Democrats will win. Or, perhaps, the new reality is that pro-Islamist Marxists are now an influential part of the contemporary Democratic Party. How popular such a party will be nationally moving forward is yet to be seen.
IN FOCUS — AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH AT 20: A HOAX IN HINDSIGHT
Whatever the case, as a “Make America Great Again” skeptic, I am constantly being assured that Democrats are the adults in the room. I’m supposed to believe that self-styled socialists are not only going to uphold norms, decency, and democratic institutions but also improve the economic conditions of Americans. That contention clashes with every shred of historical evidence we possess.
Democrats had a chance to be normal. They chose crazy.
