Say, do you remember Wendy Davis… the Texas state senator who performed a filibuster while wearing pink sneakers, immediately becoming a Democrat national icon? Well if you do you’re apparently in the minority. After that jackrabbit quick start on a run for governor in the Lone Star state, recent reports indicate that her campaign has somewhat fizzled.

One year after bursting onto the national scene with a marathon filibuster against abortion restrictions, Wendy Davis, the Texas state senator and Democratic nominee for governor, has been doing everything she can to mark the anniversary of that speech last June, even donning the same pink Mizuno sneakers.

The problem: A year after her filibuster pumped her up into the kind of galvanizing candidate Texas Democrats have not had for decades, she seems very much dragged down to earth, dwarfed by the perception that Democrats’ chances of ending the Republican domination of Texas remain slim. Recent polls have shown her trailing her Republican opponent — the state attorney general, Greg Abbott — by up to 12 percentage points…

“She’s not doing as well as people had hoped, expected or wanted,” said Bill Miller, an Austin lobbyist who works with both Democrats and Republicans and who is a friend of Ms. Davis’s. “I think there were unrealistic expectations…”

But Ms. Davis isn’t going to let such talk deter her. The polls are skewed!

Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis said Saturday it’s “absurd” to suggest it’s too late for her to overtake Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott in the race for governor

Davis, pausing to speak to reporters after a breakfast speech at the Texas Democratic Convention, said her campaign will have the resources to compete with Abbott.

Greg Abbott is sitting on more than $10M as of the last quarterly campaign finance reports, with the ability to tap into more staunch conservative donors over the summer if need be. We’ll have another week or two to wait before we can find out precisely what sort of “resources” Davis has built up. But this probably has less to do with Davis’ fundraising ability or appeal to the Democrats’ base than they would have you believe. I think a lot of the probably unrealistic assumptions underlying her campaign were based on the predictions that massive immigration was going to be turning Texas blue. That may still happen one of these days, but the numbers seem to indicate that it’s not going to be coming in time to vault Ms. Davis into the lead.

But she’ll always have the sneakers.