James Talarico And The Real Problem With "The Groups"
They AND their critics are fighting the last war.
Now that he’s a Democratic Senate nominee, James Talarico has a big challenge on his hands: He’s got to win statewide in Texas, where Democrats haven’t won in decades.
Republicans may lend a hand, depending on whom they ultimately nominate for Senate. But there’s simply no way for a Democrat to win statewide in Texas with a divided coalition, and without crossover appeal.
So it’s no surprise, and really no sin, that Talarico is attempting, unreservedly, to distinguish himself from the Democratic Party, its toxic brand, its unpopular leadership, its symbiotic advocacy organizations, and the unpopular Biden administration. All of it.
The way Talarico went about this most recently, in an interview with The Bulwark last week, thrilled the party’s centrists, who are mired in a blood feud with what they call “The Groups.” That’s the catch-all term moderate factionalists reserve specifically for progressive advocacy groups; it does not apply to the mirror-image centrist groups whose objectives they typically support.
“In recent years there’ve been a series of advocacy groups that claim to represent the interests of different communities like here in Texas, but actually have no real connection to the actual people on the ground. And those groups convinced the [Biden] administration that it was racist to support border security.”
To my mind there are three distinct issues to assess here:
Talarico’s decision to treat “The Groups” as a foil.
His specific claim about these groups: that they manipulated President Biden and his advisers into implementing a bad, politically detrimental policy at the southern border.
His assessment of groups, as a whole.
Let’s take these one by one in depth. The tl;dr is that Talarico’s bent was politically justifiable, a bit tendentious in execution, and a harbinger of a real problem looming in the near distance.
‘RICO SUAVE
Centrists loved this riff from Talarico, because he adopted their critique word for word, down to the contemptuous and overgeneralized term “groups.”
And since they’re engaged in a factional fight, their joy translates into annoyance on the other side of the firing line.
That’s what makes it a slightly strange choice.