Texas Runoff Results Suggests Problems for Republicans in November; Burnham Claps Back at Blair in Battle for Control of the UK Labour Party
May 27, 2026
Another Republican Senator Falls to Trump’s Fragile Ego and Childish Revenge Fantasies
It is kind of hard to understand just how Sen John Cornyn (R-TX) offended Trump to the point that, despite intense lobbying from Republican Senators, he made a last minute endorsement of Cornyn’s opponent in yesterday’s runoff election. State attorney general Ken Paxton, one of the most vile and unethical politicians in the country (and he has a lot of competition), beat Cornyn in a landslide with about 63% of the vote. Pundits are crowing about how this shows yet again the control Trump has over the Republican electorate. But is this really a victory? Cornyn will now join other targets of the Trump revenge tour – Sen Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Sen Thom Tillis (R-NC) – as lame ducks with nothing to lose for the next seven months. They remain voting members of a Senate in which their party has 53 seats. On any given vote these three can bring that down to 50, and with Sen Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Sen Susan Collins (R-ME) occasionally voting against Trump, they can make things tricky for the president and the Senate leadership for the rest of the year.
While Tillis bucked Trump from time to time and Cassidy voted to convict him for trying to overthrow the Republic in the 2021 impeachment trial – which should have been the easiest vote any Senator every took, but still too many Republicans chickened out. One of those chickens was Cornyn who, like the coward he has always been, voted to acquit Trump. I can’t remember anything particularly important that Cornyn opposed Trump on. So what gives?
The best explanation I have heard for Trump endorsing Paxton over Cornyn is that it was his way to punish Senate leadership because they would not support him on a few issues, particularly on getting rid of the filibuster so he could pass whatever legislation he wanted. Cornyn was never Senate Leader – McConnell’s successor is Sen John Thune (R-SD) – but he was the closest to Thune who he could go after in this election cycle. The endorsement, in this explanation, is a shot over the bow of Senate leadership. Considering how angry Republican Senators were – and how thwy made sure the public knew they were – it’s not clear that this is going to work the way Trump thought it would. But knowing Trump as we do, some dope might have just whispered in his ear and encouraged him to endorse Paxton on a whim. There is a good reason why no one else governs through social media posts.
Source: New York Times
Is this good news or bad news for Republicans?
In any case, the deed is done. Cornyn is out and Paxton is the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas. The conventional wisdom seems to be that Paxton is the better candidate for Democratic nominee James Talarico to face than Cornyn would have been. Maybe, but I am skeptical. Cornyn is not popular in Texas and neither is Paxton. A recent poll shows that there is not much difference between their approval and even where Talarico does better against Paxton, it seems to usually be within the margin of error of how well he does against Cornyn. Paxton may be able to turn out Trump voters who would otherwise stayed at home if Cornyn were the nominee. Again: maybe.
Here is the problem facing Texas Republicans: Talarico won as many votes in the Democratic primary as Cornyn and Paxton received together yesterday. More than a million more voters participated in the Democratic primary than voted yesterday. One might think that this is par for the course in a run-off, and it is true that there is usually some drop in turnout in run-offs. But this one had as high visibility as any run-off anywhere has ever had, with the possible exception of the Georgia Senate run-offs in January 2021. Not only did a million fewer voters participate in the run-off than voted in the Democratic primary (2.3 million votes), but a million fewer voters participated in it than voted in the Republican primary (2.2 million votes).
Another interesting bit of data from yesterday is that Paxton got almost exactly as many votes as he did in the primary. Cornyn got 400,000 fewer votes. This suggests that the only voters enthusiastic about this race on the Republican side are Paxton supporters. If Cornyn supporters largely sit this race out in November, Paxton will be beaten easily. That probably will not happen, but his campaign should be very concerned about how many Republicans refuse to support Paxton. It seems like a lot right now.
In 2018, Democrats had a six-point advantage in the generic ballot and a good candidate in Beto O’Rourke against Republican Sen Ted Cruz. That generic ballot advantage foreshadowed a big Democratic victory in November, but O’Rourke came up short, losing by 2.8 points. Right now, the average generic ballot is about six or seven points, but recently there have been several polls showing a double-digit advantage for Democrats. Talarico has one important advantage right now that O’Rourke never had: he has lead in some polls. It was always close in 2018, but the Democrat never had the lead.
Another potential problem for Paxton this fall is that the Latino vote, which shifted right in 2024, has appeared to have snapped back, if not shifted even further left. There are quite a few indications that Talarico is in a stronger position to win this year than O’Rourke was in 2018. That is probably why Paxton is already airing ads attacking Talarico as some kind of MAGA fever dream caricature of the “woke radical Leftist.” The Democrat has raised $27 million in the first quarter of this year, way more than any Republican running in any other state has. With Republicans having already spent over $100 million in a failing effort to save Cornyn, they are now going to have redirect money from other states to Texas. Even if Paxton wins, the cost to Republicans has been and will be enormous in terms of dollars and it may even cost them other seats that could have used the resources and attention.
Meanwhile, in the UK…
Tony Blair, being the smug, self-righteous centrist he has always been, decided yesterday that he had lecture Labour on how the only reasonable politics for the UK is to tack right and protect capital at the expense of labor. He sounds like a British version of the Clintons, James Carville, and - yes - even the late Barney Frank. Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t some kind of generational mind virus that forces politicians from the 1990s to think that they are the only ones who understand politics and that their understanding of it is timeless and without context. It is getting so ridiculous to keep hearing political lectures from people who at this point haven’t faced voters in decades.
In any case, Mayor of Greater Manchester and potential future Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham was having nothing of it. Blair counsels Labour that they need to reject the Left and embrace the “radical centre” - a term only centrists could possibly understand; it’s like asking for a glass of dry water. In response, Burnham notes that Blair “never mentions inequality once,” and that is what is driving people’s anger.
“If you don’t get how that’s driving politics now, if you are not rooting your analysis in the fact that people are unable to live and that things that were taken for granted are no longer affordable, then you are not understanding what’s going on.”
Blair went on to complain about Burnham’s criticism that Britain has been “on the wrong path” for the past four decades - a timeframe that includes Blair’s ten-year stint as PM.
“The last 40 years has given us wide inequality - that’s what’s responsible for the abandonment of the centre. … People don’t think the centre has delivered for them in terms of their lives, therefore they’ve gone further to the extremes.”
Blair’s self-serving nonsense about the radical center and his nostalgia for a time when he could pretend that giving capitalists everything they wanted made life better for everyone echoes a lot of what we hear from the Democratic establishment these days - particularly those Democrats who cut their teeth during the Clinton years. It is so clear at this point that declaring Reagan and Thatcher were right and championing free trade (rather than a common market) and neoliberalism was not just destructive to working people, the poor, and their communities, it was a really short-sighted and self-destructive political path for supposed parties of the common person to embark on.
In the US, Democrats such as Sanders, AOC, and Mamdani are showing the party how to listen to people and provide the services they want and need. Few (but increasing numbers) over 50 seem to be listening, but those younger get it. Burnham is hoping to show Labour a similar path, or at least is talking that way. It’s time for the Blair and Clinton crowds to either admit they were wrong and start working to build a pro-worker progressive economy and future for both nations, or just get out of the way, stop trying to convince us (or is it themselves?) that they are the smartest people in every room they enter, and maybe just focus on spending time with their grandchildren.
Burnham is the Labour candidate in the June 19th by-election for Makerfield district in Parliament. He cannot challenge Starmer for PM unless he is a Member of Parliament. Starmer prevented Labour from offering Burnham as a candidate in the last Manchester area by-election, but this time the pressure was too strong for him to do that. Should Burnham win, there is a good chance - but not a certainty - that he will replace Starmer as PM in the next few months.
Should he lose, there is going to be a lot of hand-wringing by Labour officials. There are other good candidates for PM in the party, and the Makerfield seat is no slam-dunk for Labour (every ward there voted for Brexit in 2016). The idea that losing a mildly conservative seat that was recently won by Labour in their 2024 landslide election should bring existential crisis to the party is really only something that makes sense to people for whom chaos is good business. It would be unfortunate, but it would not be existential. It would not mean Burnham’s ideas are wrong for the national party anymore than him winning means the nation demands he be the next PM.