Crockett: No plans to campaign for Talarico

Jasmine Crockett just told the quiet part out loud. She's not campaigning for James Talarico, the guy her own party nominated to run for Senate in Texas, and her reasoning is that Black voters aren't feeling him. That's not a policy critique. That's one of the more prominent Democrats in the state looking at her party's chosen candidate and shrugging.

This is what happens when a coalition gets held together with tape and vibes instead of anything real. Talarico won the nomination, presumably because Texas Democrats thought he was their best shot at finally making a Senate race competitive. Now a sitting congresswoman from his own party is publicly saying part of the base doesn't want him. If that's true, it's a real problem for Democrats in a state they've been trying to flip for a decade. If it's not true, or at least overstated, then Crockett is doing real damage to her own nominee for no obvious upside except making a point about who gets picked and by whom.

Either way, spare us the lectures about unity and showing up for democracy that get aimed at Republicans every time there's an intraparty scrap. Turns out Democrats have their own factional resentments, their own candidates nobody's excited about, and their own elected officials willing to say so on the record months before an election. That's not us being cynical. That's just reading the quote.