Henceforth, you may call me Prophet.
You don’t have to. However, of my wife I will insist.
Election Night proved me prophetic on two claims few would have deemed credible. Whacked-out, maybe.
The first prediction that became reality: the spectacular collapse of the Republican Party coast to coast.
Not just a blue wave, a continental shelving. The red undertow became the blue overtow.
My second prediction (hold onto your hat): the blue-turn of Texas.
Yes, I foresaw both things. The thing my wife will point out, though, is that neither happened on my timeline.
Of that national turn: My betrothed is a lot more pessimistic than I. So she was in 2016 when the Orange Kool-Aid Man burst into Americans’ lives, started defacing the Oval Office and ketchup-staining the Constitution.
“This won’t last,” I said upon his elevation. “He’s a clown. Voters will wise up. He’ll destroy the party. He’ll be gone. Republicans will pay, top to bottom.”
My wife tends to take a dim view of general human perceptivity. Sir Kool-Aid’s ascendance showed, to her, the evident dominance of dimwits and the attached hopelessness.
I chose hopefulness. I was philosophical. Reason would win.
And it did this Nov. 3, top to bottom, the repudiation of all repudiations.
What’s obvious is how long she appeared to be right across the years – 10 teeth-grinding years. A decade. We don’t have many of those.
Ten autumns. Ten springs. Ten World Series. Ten Oscar ceremonies. Ten New Year’s ball drops. Ten – egad – birthdays.
And now: the implosion. Shrapnel and charred red caps. Cinder blocks and downed data centers in concussion’s wake.
Let’s just say that after this rout, over the next two years the Republican Party must adjust its power calculations to dominating Wyoming.
Which leads me to Texas.
I lived and commented there for many years. I watched it go from solid Democrat to solid Republican. All along, I was philosophical, analytical.
I made the play for reason. I said one-party rule would not last in Texas. I said it in the ‘90s. Said it in the Oughts. In the Tens. Into the Twenties. Years into a new century, I made the guarantee to all who would hear – even as some started to lose their hearing.
Analytical. That was me. Sanguine. Look it up. (Has an “e” in it. Nobody knows that.)
I said Texas’ demographics – surging Hispanics; blacks gaining political strength — would pay off for a party of diversity and punish a white person’s party. Said it decade after decade.
I never lost certitude (amid the notion that a blue-ing of Texas might come long after my last Oscars.)
And then, Election Night 2026. Texas went to the Ds.
When it did, it was like the Balcones Fault did the hat dance.
A Latina governor. (Has an “a” on the end, MAGA.) A love-preaching seminarian as Texas’ next junior U.S. senator. Neither result was close.
Watching this on TV — mouth agape, eyes a-dew — from another time zone to which we had fled years ago, I had no idea what else happened in Texas that night.
Democrats took over the state House. They took over the Texas Board of Education, heretofore a klatch of thought monitors sharing abhorrence of public schools.
The meanest public servant in Texas, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, went down. Democrats were elected Texas’ next attorney general, comptroller, land commissioner, agriculture commissioner.
A wipe-out for Rs statewide. This was Battle of San Jacinto stuff.
Bo French, whose rattlesnake racism caused stunningly few in the Texas GOP to blink in nominating him for railroad commission, lost to a mild-mannered Jew named Joe (Rosenthal).
Four Republicans on the supremely staid, extremely Republican Texas Supreme Court (I know — in most states courts are deemed nonpartisan) went down to Dems. The new chief justice, Maggie Ellis, not only is D but the first statewide officeholder openly LGBTQ.
Absolutely unbelievable. Reason won in Texas, just as I predicted — back in another century.
Well, it doesn’t take a prophet to know what happened. Powerbrokers who tended religiously to the impulses of a lie-a-minute charlatan and a bunch of billionaire lever-pullers forgot to serve the people who granted them power. Power off.
So, see, dear? I was right on both counts.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
