Heilemann: Talarico Is ‘Pretty Far to the Left,’ But ‘He Codes as Moderate to a Lot of People Because of His Religiosity’

EXCERPT:

HEILEMANN: “A lot of people who didn't have really focused until last week and I think the Colbert thing and the way that Trump managed to martyr him and elevate him gave him a lot of attention. Another big surge of fundraising. And at just the moment when Texas voters were focused on the race, they saw this guy in Donald Trump's crosshairs in some way that helped his credibility. But look, I think, Joe, the key thing here is that James Talarico was cast and increasingly still is cast, I say increasingly, but still is cast as a moderate. There is nothing -- he's not a moderate. He's a -- he's a -- he and Jasmine Crockett had basically the same positions on almost every issue. He's a populist. He's a 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 on Tuesday, where he basically carried all of the counties that Bernie Sanders carried in the 2020 primary against Joe Biden. You cannot think that people that you associate with being a particular with being a moderate. He won in the rural areas, he won in the suburban areas and he won in the urban areas. His coalition is the coalition of upscale professionals, young voters, hardcore progressives, and as you point out, Hispanics. That is where the -- that's where the Barack Obama thing comes into play. Because 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 is to go and appeal to a lot of those black voters who who preferred Jasmine Crockett. But that's -- that's not just the making of a coalition that can win in Texas, that's a 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 -- his religiosity, because he is a former seminarian, a practicing church pastor.”