{"id":378244,"date":"2018-09-23T04:15:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-23T03:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/is-the-lone-star-state-moving-left\/"},"modified":"2018-09-23T04:15:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-23T03:15:00","slug":"is-the-lone-star-state-moving-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/is-the-lone-star-state-moving-left\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the Lone Star State Moving Left?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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To the delight of millions of people in Texas and across the country, the odious Republican Sen. Ted Cruz <\/span>finds himself in in a close race<\/a> against his Democratic challenger, US Rep. Beto O\u2019Rourke.<\/p>\n

In Texas, where Republican zealots have dominated every statewide office for more than two decades, O\u2019Rourke\u2019s promotion of Medicare for All, endorsement of anti-racist protests among NFL athletes and <\/span>participation in marches on child detention centers<\/a> <\/span>are a welcome sign that Democratic politicians feel the need to address the grassroots social movements that have extended across the state.<\/p>\n

If Cruz is out of a job following November\u2019s midterm elections, socialists and progressives will have plenty to smile about.<\/p>\n

His defeat would serve a long-overdue humiliation in the southernmost bastion of US conservatism to a loud, bigoted clown who both constituents and non-constituents have come to know too well.<\/p>\n

It would also register the desire of millions in Texas for a progressive break with not only the past two years of Trumpist terror, but also decades of having a state government completely in bed with Gulf Coast capitalism.<\/p>\n

Liberal organizations have flocked to O\u2019Rourke\u2019s campaign, which has been amassing <\/span>donations that far surpass Cruz\u2019s fundraising<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But for all the enthusiasm that O\u2019Rourke has generated among progressives, there is less to his platform than meets the eye, and his campaign threatens to shift the attention and resources of activists away from the union drives and protest movements that are truly responsible for creating this opening.<\/p>\n

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O\u2019Rourke\u2019s surprising success to this point reflects two social changes underway in Texas.<\/p>\n

First, the state\u2019s working class is undergoing rapid transformation. From 2010 to 2016, Texas experienced the <\/span>largest population growth among all 50 states<\/a> for six straight years. An annual average of 140,000 people…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To the delight of millions of people in Texas and across the country, the odious Republican Sen. Ted Cruz finds himself in in a close race against his Democratic challenger, US Rep. Beto O\u2019Rourke. In Texas, where Republican zealots have dominated every statewide office for more than two decades, O\u2019Rourke\u2019s promotion of Medicare for All, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-378244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}