In a night full of incredible victories for Team Blue, none was more remarkable or significant than Texas state legislator James Talarico’s landslide win over Attorney General Ken Paxton for a U.S. Senate seat that Republicans had held since 1961. This was the most expensive non-presidential political contest in U.S. history, and the winner, himself an incredible fundraising machine, was outspent overall by about a two-to-one margin. That was in no small part because the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, spent an incredible $168 million in a rescue effort for Paxton that from a distance felt irresistible in its sheer demonic weight. Not just Musk but Republicans all over and far beyond Texas made saving this Senate seat job one. And because the scandal-plagued Paxton was so powerfully unlovable (even being mocked to his face by his friend Donald Trump for his slovenly appearance), that meant smearing the seminarian Talarico as a predatory menace to small children, a blasphemer and heretic, an unmanly vegan, and, of course, a “radical leftist.” Near the end of the campaign, Republicans even spread the rumor that the flu-ridden Talarico had actually been committed to a mental institution. No holds were barred.

The Democrat........

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