Lillian Salerno

The first two states with 2018 primaries are Texas-- March 6-- and Illinois-- March 20. The thing is about the Texas primaries is that they're going to, in most cases, lead to primary runoffs on May 22.

TX-32 was carefully gerrymandered district in the northern Dallas metro to specifically exclude minority voters in order to keep crooked GOP hack Pete Sessions safe. Last year the district PVI was R+10. Despite the gerrymandering that removed minority heavy areas around Irving and Grand Prairie, the new PVI is R+5. McCain beat Obama 55-44% there and Romney did even better-- 57-42%. But TX-32 was not Trump country in 2016.

In 2014 Oklahoma reelected conservative Republican Mary Fallin over conservative Democrat Joe Dorman 460,298 (55.8%) to 338,239 (41%). Although there have been some shocking recent special election wins by Democrats in Oklahoma, the state Senate has 39 Republicans and just 8 Democrats and the state House has 73 Republicans and 28 Democrats. The Oklahoma congressional delegation consists of 5 Republican congressmen and 2 Republican senators...

This was originally written as part of today's first post, so if you haven't already done so, you might want to read that for context.Catherine Vaughan is the CEO of Flippable, a Democratic organization founded right after last year's election by a gaggle of Hillary Clinton staffers who want to flip red districts blue.

The Washington Post's Robert Costa and Philip Rucker reported that-- wait for it-- Republicans fear Democratic wins mean more losses to come. Who'd a thunk?

It may have been lost yesterday as a line in a long, long post on how crooked the political establishment is. At one point I listed the Hillary donors funding a crap candidate for Pete Sessions' seat in Dallas, Ed Meier.

Zero Humility by Nancy OhanianBefore Trumpanzee started demanding Ryan call his tax bill, "The Cut Cut Cut Act," Chuck Todd had reported that House Republicans were facing a major disadvantage with their tax plan, even before they delayed the rollout of their bill until today, namely that "their plan starts out underwater, according to

I wish Stephen Jaffe's insurgent campaign in San Francisco was catching on faster. For one thing, it might focus Pelosi on saving her own hide and leave her with less time and energy for interfering in so many primaries across the country. Pelosi isn't even especially ideological in her interference.

Over the last few decades, once populist Texas has turned into a very red state. But not hopelessly red. Last year , without even trying, Hillary made unexpected inroads in districts that were gerrymandered to prevent unexpected inroads. Trump won the state-- 4,685,047 (52.23%) to 3,877,868 (43.24%). Those 3.87 million Texans who voted for Hillary were more than her margin of victory in the national popular vote.

Over the years, Democrats let Texas slip away. When Democrats were firmly committed to representing the legitimate aspirations and interests of working families, Texas was part of their coalition.