In his victory speech on November 3, after winning a U.S. Senate seat in the previously Republican-dominated state of Texas, Senator-elect James Talarico redefined the modern United States by recalling an older time when Americans worked together to defend their country against those who wanted to take all of its wealth and power for themselves.
His remarks were particularly impactful in Texas, where billionaire Elon Musk spent at least $225 million during the midterm elections to keep the state government in Republican hands. And yet voters elected a Democratic governor, a Democratic lieutenant governor, a Democratic attorney general and a Democratic state House.
“We just took back Texas,” Talarico told the cheering crowd. “We just proved that all the money in the world is no match for the people of Texas. We just showed that a politics of division is no match for a politics of love. And we just sent a message to every billionaire megadonor, every billionaire megadonor, every corrupt defender of this broken political system in this state, in this country. The power belongs to the people.”
Drawing on his religious faith and his own history as a middle school teacher of underprivileged students and as the son of a single mother, he told the crowd: “Scripture has taught me, my own life has taught me, to always bet on the underdog. »
“We were the underdogs in this race,” he said. “We have faced nearly 40 years of doubt and disillusionment. We have faced more than $300 million, more than any Senate campaign in American history. We have faced all the negative ads, smear campaigns, foreign bots and AI knockoffs that money can buy. These attacks were the last screams of a dying establishment, the death rattle of a status quo that knows its days are over. counted.
“They played dirty because they were desperate. But we never lost hope. We never lost faith. And against big money and long odds, we took back our power. Always, always bet on the underdog.
“We have built an unprecedented movement in this state. We have brought together Texans from all backgrounds and beliefs as one team to take on this broken and corrupt political system: early voters, three-time Trump voters, working people from every corner of this state who have had enough and are ready for change. This victory is for every oppressed person who has been excluded and left behind. This victory is for every teacher and every nurse, for every farmer and every rancher. For every young person trying to buy a Home For all parents trying to put food on the table.
“This victory is for every Texan who has ever wondered if anyone was listening. I heard you. We heard you, and tonight the world hears you.”
Talarico identified the moment the nation finds itself in as monumental. “This victory is neither about the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party,” he said. “It’s much bigger than that. There is something broken in America. Our economic system is broken. Our political system is broken. Even our relationships with each other seem broken. It’s because the most powerful people in the world want it that way.”
Talarico anchored his political convictions in his belief in the commandments to “love God and love your neighbor” and noted that “despite our differences, we all want the same things: a safe neighborhood, a good job, a high-quality, well-funded public school, and the ability to see a doctor when we need it.”
“But the billionaires who own the social media algorithms, who own the cable news networks, who own the politicians who fight on our screens, they want us to fight each other. They want us to focus on our differences rather than our sameness. They want us to look at each other left and right instead of at them. The real fight in this country is not left versus right. It’s up and down.”
“The people at the top work so hard to maintain our anger and division because our unity is a threat to their wealth and power,” he said. “We’ve seen it in this race. We’ve seen it in every billionaire-funded attack ad. The people at the top are dividing us by party, by race, by gender, by religion, by culture, so we don’t notice that they’re emptying our pockets, that they’re cutting funding for our schools, that they’re destroying our health care, that they’re raising taxes on all of us while they cut taxes for themselves. It’s the oldest strategy in the world. world, divide and conquer. But tonight we sent a very clear message to the people of Parliament.
“(We) are tired of being pitted against each other,” Talarico continued. “We’re tired of being told to hate each other. This kind of politics has been going on for 10 years. Politics is a blood sport. Politics is trolling and possessing. Politics is professional wrestling. It tears families apart. It ends friendships. And we all still feel terrible. People across the political spectrum are hungry for a different kind of politics. Not a politics of hate, not a politics of fear, not a politics of division, but a politics of love.”
He explained how Democrats won Texas: “We mobilized our 60,000 volunteers from across the state and together we delivered bottled water to Sand Branch, a community south of Dallas without running water. We donated school supplies to an elementary school in El Cenizo, a small border town. We collected more than 20,000 pounds of groceries for Fort Worth families struggling with the cost of living high. Before the world changes like you see on television or in what you read about in the newspapers, the world changes from one person to another, from one neighbor to another.
“(We) know how to make it happen,” he said. “We must take big money out of our politics so that no billionaire or trillionaire can buy our elections. We must destroy this economic system that only benefits the top 1%. We must pass universal health care so that no one goes bankrupt just because they get sick. We must invest in our teachers and students so that every oppressed person has a fighting chance. We must end these eternal corrupt wars that drive up prices and kill our brave men and women in uniform.
“And,” he continued, “we must heal the deep spiritual corruption at the root of all these crises. We must heal the divides between us and mend the ties that bind us. We have forged a new kind of politics here in the Lone Star State. A response to this decade of division. We have shown that when working people come together across all dividing lines, we can do extraordinary things. We won this race because the people who desperately need change now are going to get change.
“This old politics is dying,” he told the crowd, “and a new politics is being born through each of us. »
Talarico, who won his race by an astonishing 12 points, accurately identified the extraordinary importance of grassroots and relational organizing in creating communities that would elect Democratic candidates in 2026.
He also accurately identified the threat this type of politics poses to establishment politics, particularly MAGA. President Trump today reinforced his need for division and hatred by offering the position of White House press secretary to Dana White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, whom he described as a “violent fighter and warrior.” Trump encouraged White to take the job and bring a number of his UFC fighters.
“We need these people to defend us against the lunatic left,” Trump posted.
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Remarks :
https://fortune.com/2026/11/05/elon-musk-texas-democrats-hinojosa-terafab/
https://apnews.com/article/texas-senate-talarico-paxton-midterm-election-66df71a7c2bfa962cffd4134ef1a0364
https://www.cnn.com/2026/11/07/politics/dana-white-trump-press-secretary
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