MS NOW’s John Heilemann Admits James Talarico Is ‘Pretty Far to the Left’

MS NOW’s John Heilemann admitted that James Talarico, the newly-minted Democratic nominee in Texas’s 2026 Senate race, is “pretty far to the left” but nevertheless insisted he could prevail in November’s general election on Thursday’s edition of Morning Joe.

“The key thing here is that James Talarico was cast and increasingly still is cast, I would say increasingly, but still is cast as a moderate. There is nothing-, he’s not a moderate, he’s a-, he and Jasmine Crockett had basically the same positions on almost every issue. He’s a populist, he’s progressive, he’s pretty far to the left on a lot of issues, but mostly he’s an outsider. And you could see that in the results yesterday where-, or on Tuesday, where he basically carried all of the counties that Bernie Sanders carried in the 2020 primary against Joe Biden,” observed Heilemann. “His coalition is the coalition of upscale professionals, young voters, hardcore progressives, and, as you pointed out, Hispanics. That’s where the Barack Obama thing comes into play, because if you think about Barack Obama in 2008 in the primary, his coalition was exactly the same, except swapping in African-Americans for Hispanics, who Hillary Clinton dominated with. He then later went on to capture a lot of Hispanic vote, and Talarico’s job now to go and appeal to a lot of those Black voters who preferred Jasmine Crockett.”

“But that’s not just the making of a coalition that can win in Texas, that’s the making of a coalition that can win pretty much anywhere in the Democratic Party. And I will say that part of the key thing is, he codes as moderate to a lot of people because of his religiosity, because he is a former seminarian, a practicing church pastor, and that is a thing that people take, they walk away from that thinking, ‘well, he’s not a partisan progressive despite his position on issues.’ That gets him in the door with a lot of voters, including a lot Hispanic voters who are pretty populist and progressive on economic issues, but pretty culturally conservative.”

Watch above via MS NOW.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!