Every Democrat, aside from the DSA folks in Deep Blue districts, ran on one word: affordability.
Sure, there were nods to other issues when they talked to their base, but nobody in a swing district went out and said their #1 priority was reimplementing DEI or ensuring that middle-school girls got their first introduction to the female penis in a locker room. It wasn't a winning message.
Lowering prices was the promise.
OK. Fine. It's politics, and politicians are actually supposed to respond to the will of the voters, or at least nod vigorously when they speak.
But there's rhetoric, and then there is reality. When the rubber meets the road, what issues make the tires spin and burn, and what does the smoke actually smell like? Is it the smell of burning tires destroying high bills, or of anti-DEI laws burning under the tires?
I would ask you to take a wild guess, but it takes no guessing to know the answer.
During and after the campaign, the Democrats declared that the "Culture wars are over." The Guardian even ran a post-election analysis arguing exactly that.
How angry parents helped flip Texas: choosing real education over culture wars https://t.co/cqLoAxrCzq
— The Grade (@thegrade_) November 12, 2026
It's a nice-sounding argument, although the reality is that the aggressors in the culture wars have always been the Democrats. For millennia, nobody questioned the basic biology of sex, and suddenly that all changed when Democrats declared a new "science" of gender. Republicans were just defending against the radical shift. Calling Republicans the aggressors is like blaming Poland for being invaded by Germany.
When Democrats say they want the culture war to be over, what they mean is that they want it to be won on their terms. And the long list of bills they put in on the first day they could were heavily focused on culture war issues, and only lightly, if at all, on the "affordability agenda."
What came first? Abortion, trans issues, and, of course, repealing school choice, which is a top priority for Democrats and the teachers' unions that put them in office. You have the standard Medicaid expansion for illegal aliens, stopping local law enforcement from aiding the federal government in enforcing laws, legalizing pot, gun control, and sending actual state checks to illegal aliens.
Yep. Nothing "culture war-ish" about any of those things. The state transing kids and forcing them into classes their parents object strenuously to will enrage nobody but the MAGAist of MAGAs. I'm almost certain that the Independent who reluctantly voted for the Democrat on the ballot was thinking his first priority was getting transgenders back into the locker rooms.
And, of course, Texans were HUNGERING for those 35 gun control bills dropped on Day One. I know it.
Rep. Christina Morales, who ran the Democrats' campaign arm that pushed the "affordability" agenda that won all those seats, named her top priorities after the election: expand Medicaid, repeal school vouchers, and repeal the immigration-enforcement laws. The first touches no middle-class Texans at all, except in adding to the tax burden; the second will increase costs for every parent who sends their kids to private schools or home schools; the third only increases "affordability" to any extent at all by ensuring that cheap illegal alien labor is more accessible.
Affordability. You keep using that word. I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Rep. Donna Howard chairs the Texas Women's Health Caucus. She filed HB 126, the omnibus repeal: all three abortion bans (2022 trigger law, 2021 heartbeat law, 1925 pre-Roe statute), parental consent, waiting periods, and repeal of SB 14 (2023), the ban on puberty blockers/hormones/surgery for minors, including its Medicaid exclusion.
Affordability. You keep using that word. I do not think that word means what you think it means. And that sure looks like pure culture war fodder to me.
Governor-elect Hinojosa is taking a stab at affordability in the only way that Democrats know how: declare "emergencies" and impose price controls, which is its own form of disaster about to happen. Her biggest actual "affordability" move is promising $1500 checks to every Texas household by draining the Rainy Day Fund, but buried in that promise is the apparent inclusion of illegal aliens — and the promise will not only spend every penny, but leave an actual deficit because there isn't enough money to do the job.
Of course, there IS a backstop: Republicans still control the Senate, and most of this agenda, aside from the Executive Orders, will be stopped before it becomes law, and those orders are on rather shaky legal ground. Chances are that the Democrat wish list will remain just that, not a new set of laws that Texans will have to pay for. (Except the checks, of course, since nobody wants to say they refused to write you a check, so SOMETHING will come of that.)
So, in a sense, all of this is theater, but in another, it is not: the Democrats are telling people who pay attention what they really care about, and it ain't what they ran on.
Unfortunately, voters never pay attention to what politicians do until it is too late. The rhetoric sticks; the reality does not.
So it goes. Every time.