My unpublished thoughts on James Talarico from 2025
Maybe they're relevant now, as he continues to frame progressive arguments with a strict father appeal.
It may be hard to believe, but there are words I’ve written that I haven’t immediately published. But not many.
Last year, I wrote a short-lived series at FrameLab on Democrats’ messaging in unique and powerful ways. My Talarico take from before the Senate campaign even officially began never got published.
Not until now. The streets weren’t ready. Now they are. Clearly.
Won’t he make our Lone Star State blue?
The expectations of Democratic politicians are so fixed and often low that when they do anything to break them, the press may go wild.
Take James Talarico, the 36-year-old state rep from Texas, whose single appearance on the Joe Rogan Podcast earlier this summer prompted Politico to exclaim, “Joe Rogan’s Latest Guest Might Turn Texas Blue.”
The story noted:
The 36-year-old Talarico is not your average Democratic politician; he’s an aspiring preacher who studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and has gained nearly 1 million followers on TikTok by publishing videos that frequently center on the intersection of his Christian faith and politics.
Here’s an example of how his “amiable preacher giving a rip-roaring Sunday School lesson” persona translates so well to the social media era:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
One of his most effective attempts to subvert the right’s effective scapegoating of immigrants and DEI policies was with his viral applause line, “The only minority destroying America is the billionaires.”
The former middle school teacher became one of the most convincing spokespeople for Texas Democrats as they raised the alarm about Trump’s attempt to rig the 2026 elections with a corrupt mid-decade redistricting.
On Fox News, he reframed the issue in terms that could appeal to the strict-father view of Fox watchers by calling it “cheating” and applying the notion of “fairness” in sportsmanship to the attempt to rewrite the rules in the middle of “the game.”
What’s Next
Talrico has entered a competitive US Senate primary where he may face two next-generation candidates who have lost races to Ted Cruz. Yet both Beto O’Rourke and Colin Allred kept their margin of defeat to single digits, unlike many Democrats who run statewide in Texas.
All three need to make the case that they’re the one to turn the state blue when it matters most.
Talrico has a unique skill for packing progressive ideas in terms that can activate empathy even in more hierarchical/conservative thinkers. But his strategy of literally hijacking right-wing media like Joe Rogan and Fox to spread a message is open to debate.
Media Matters—the organization that has spent the longest time fighting the right-wing press, and now faces extinction at the hands of Elon Musk—argues that any successful appearance will be drowned out by the other 23 hours that day of the channel bashing you. In exchange, you’ve legitimized a right-wing hate machine as a news source.
The same is true for Rogan, Roid Limbaugh, who may exhibit two to three moments a quarter of clear-headed, more progressive thinking, yet spends nearly all of his life and energy, and shows, unapologetically, bashing the left to his millions and millions of listeners.
Yet in this fraught moment, where the future of democracy will be decided in the immediate future, the most successful communicators both have to recognize the Democrats’ platform problem and figure out how to exploit the attention that Donald Trump and the right-wing media command.
This pulpit-ready populist progressive offers a model for how Democrats can reach Americans who are not already following them.
******
Thoughts on the Talarico messaging now, versus Paxton? Well, I’m glad I asked.
Paxton and Miller and Fox are going to brand him as gay. That’s it. They think that’s enough in Texas. I’m dubious. Maybe they know Texas better than me. To me, this is the year where 7? out of 10 Americans would pick queer over a corrupt billionaire slickspittle.
I think the risks for Talarico are that the food fight becomes just about Paxton v. him. That could focus too much on Paxton as a powerful dude who gets away with crime like Trump and many dudes want to. Instead, I’d focus on the fool as a repulsively corrupt wart, the symptom of a sick system siphoning from our schools, hospitals, and souls.
That said, whoever is framing for Talarico is doing so on the highest possible level. When a candidate is this consistently good at messaging, you expect that s/he’d have written a book. If Talarico has, I can’t find it. But seems all very homegrown, given that his campaign manager is a longtime adviser. I’d be annoyed if I were giving Lis Smith all these compliments.