The Revenge of NAFTA, Big Biz, & the Consultant Class

How we lost Texas and what to do about it

Well, that was a shitshow. Having been raised on a ranch, I know what bull smells like — and I’m telling y’all, there’s some major bull in the Democratic Party & how campaigns are run.

But first, a quick bit of clarity: There are many great people in the Texas Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee, and within the political organizing world. Some of the hardest-working people I know are there, and we need them. While most are hard workers with bull on the outside of their boots, there are some where the bull is in the inside.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into why we lost Texas by margins, which would surprise even the more pessimistic among us.

The Revenge of NAFTA

The North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and all the other free trade agreements are a corporate trojan horse for the working class, and working folks know it. We have sold out millions of working-class folks by shipping their jobs overseas.

It’s worse than it sounds. Work is a part of our American identity, for better or worse. It’s very American to ask someone, “What do you do?” for work, which is uncommon in many other countries. So when we shipped jobs overseas, not only did millions lose their livelihoods, they lost a core of their identities.

Unfortunately for us, the Far Right + Evangelicals were there to give them a new identity. They’ve been tending rightward ever since.

Think of East Texas. East Texas was steel country. Those steel mills supported thousands of local businesses, including restaurants, mechanics, mines, and shopping.

Once thought mills were sent overseas (by Reagan), those communities crashed.

While it was the GOP that drafted most of our “FrEe TrAdE” policies, it was Clinton — a Democrat — who signed it and took ownership of it.

The working class has never forgiven the Democrats for this. Even when we campaigned on hope and change, we turned around to support the status quo and to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trade was one of the early issues Trump campaigned on in 2016.

While Biden has been good on trade, sadly they failed to promote that fact well enough.

But it gets worse! NAFTA also lead to our runaway ***inflation***.

Shipping our industries abroad guaranteed eventual supply chain disruptions once something big — like a global pandemic — happened. Our economy runs on a “just in time” method. In other words, it’s all about efficiency to the detriment of resiliency. When you only care about “efficiency,” you become a glass cannon.

Once Covid hit and our supply chains were disrupted, since we didn’t produce anything in the USA, OF COURSE, we would get hit by massive inflation.

NAFTA set us up for failure on multiple fronts. Full stop.

P.S. If you want to learn more about how bad trade deals affect you and your community & help fight future bad trade deals, check out the Trade Justice Education Fund.

Big Biz Cannabilizing Communities

The Democratic Party under FDR was the Party of monopoly busting. We busted big oil, big ag, big telecom, big whatever.

Then the Corpocrats took over and we let monopolies cannibalize our communities. The Walmarts, Amazons, Tyons, and other monopolizers killed competition. They drove out small businesses, ruined jobs, paid people little to nothing, and they raised prices for us all.

Take food prices. When Democrats busted monopolies, farmers made 40-50 cents per food dollar spent in the store. Nowadays, farmers make 7-14 cents per food dollar. But is food cheaper? No! Not in the slightest. But Big Ag’s corporate profits are breaking records right now. It’s a great time to be a monopoly, and under the new President-elect it’s about to get even better.

Again, the Biden Admin is *starting* to take these monopolies to court. Why do you think so many economic royalists (i.e. billionaire tech bros & others who see themselves as American royalty) went from “Trump is a danger” in 2021 to kissing his ass? Because Trump never tried to bust them up, but Biden started to flirt with the idea.

But for whatever asinine reason, Democrats don’t advertise this fact. I only know it because I had some meetings in DC. Maybe they don’t talk about it because the Corpocrats stop them, maybe they’re scaredicrats, maybe the monopoly-controlled media stopped them. Who knows.

The Consultant Class

I’m going to get some major shit for this one, but it needs to be said. As someone who’s been a candidate, a county chair, a member of the State Democratic Exe Committee, a political organizer, and a founder of the Texas Progressive Caucus — I can say that too many political consultants are snakes.

Political consultants, at least the snakiest of them, make their money via mailers, commercials, and such — which is why they love them so much. They don’t make much money from door-knocking or any traditional methods that allow people to have actual conversations.

I have never been convinced of anything by a commercial or mailer, political or otherwise. Conversations have convinced me of things.

Too many political consultants charge too much, and they focus on what makes them the most money. Again, NOT ALL consultants are this way. Most of them are great. Some of them are worth their weight in gold, while some I would rather smell the fine aroma of goat shit than hire them.

When I ran for the State Senate in 2020, I asked a TX State Rep what their best advice was. Their answer was to avoid consultants. For my 2020 campaign, we didn’t use consultants except for highly specific tasks; everything else was in-house, which is why we boosted turnout significantly in a number of our rural counties. That way we could run a big, bold campaign without being told what to do.

Even before that, when I became a starting campaign manager for Chris Perri for Congress in 2018, I read a book about campaigns. It said there’s very little scientific research on which campaign methods are truly effective. What “studies” exist are funded by those who use them — which is like Big Pharma being 100% trusted to conduct its own studies without any oversight or accountability.

There’s also too much focus on letting polls tell candidates can or can’t say. What they fail to understand is that polls change. Opinions change. What the GOP seems to understand but Democrats, lead by bad consultants, fail to understand is that repeating makes you [sound] right. The more you repeat an idea — any idea — the more people will accept it. To hell with what polls or focus groups say. If you repeat your convictions enough in simple enough language, people will change. It’s basic human nature.

The point is our political campaign system itself has some major corruption issues. A “Fair Pay for Campaign Consulting” document would note a fair price for basic campaign work (we still want our friends in the consultant world to be paid well, they serve an important role, we just need to stop the ones who get away with highway robbery). I’m not the only person in the TX Dem Party who thinks this.

We also need some truly independent scientific studies on which outreach methods are most effective. I would bet most forms of our campaign outreach are just campaigns pissing in the wind, with consultants making bank.

Conclusion

We need to return the Party back to its progressive populist roots. Trump has proven populism is all the rage right now, though he’s a false idol.

Texans have always appreciated boldness. Texans ain’t known for their timidity, and it’s time the Texas Democrats fully take progressive populist boldness by the horns. We need to call for breaking up Big Ag, Big Tech, and the rest of the monopolies. We need to champion bold policies, not weak teas.

As we do that, Trump will be filling the government with billionaire tech bros, and Abbott will likely be defunding our public schools to allow the West Texas billionaires, Tim Dunn and the Wilks brothers, to set up their network of private schools. They will fail. Their policies have always failed. And when they do, we progressives must be ready to take charge with the boldness that comes from us having the courage of our convictions.

If you are in Texas and you agree, join the Texas Progressive Caucus, a group I founded to return progressive populist boldness to the Party. Leave me a comment below if you have any questions.