Nationally, Republicans are decreasingly strong where two generations ago they were especially robust — in suburbs. Texas ranks high among the states in terms of the percentage of the population that is suburban. And statewide, whites are a minority.

In 2008, with the Great Recession underway, John McCain carried Texas by 12 points. In 2012, Mitt Romney carried it by 16. In 2016, Trump (whom Hurd did not endorse) won by nine points. In Texas’s most important 2018 contest for a federal office, incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz won by just three. See a trend?

If the Democratic Party can collect Texas’s electoral votes — 38 today, perhaps 41 after the 2020 Census — as well as California’s 55, it will reap 35.5 percent of a winning 270 from just two states. Then the GOP will have almost no plausible path to 270, and Democrats who are currently hot to abolish the electoral college will suddenly say: Oh, never mind.