Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow broke down why former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, is in headed to Texas as her race is starting to heat up.
Maddow, however, said the trip wasn’t out of a hope to win Texas in next year’s presidential election, but instead a trip to raise money for her campaign.
Partial transcript as follows:
There to rain on his parade in Texas during his announcements will be Hillary Rodham Clinton — former first lady, former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton has conveniently scheduled her own Texas campaign stop to directly coincide with Rick Perry`s announcement tomorrow.
Now, Texas, of course, is a vey, very red state. No Democrat has won statewide elected office in more than 20 years. The last time was 1994.
There had been this brief glimmer of Democratic expectations when Rick Perry decided to leave the governorship and not run for re-election. Texas Democrats and Democrats around the country briefly thought that the very charismatic, very compelling Texas Democratic senator, Wendy Davis, might have a shot at the governorship. She might have a shot at succeeding Rick Perry and becoming the new Democratic governor of Texas. Wendy Davis in 2014 not only got beat, she got beat by 20 points in the 2014 elections.
Texas — whatever Texas is going to be some day, Texas right now is just really, Really, really red. President Obama lost in Texas to Mitt Romney by 16 points in the last presidential election there.
So, Hillary Clinton is in Texas today. She`s going to be in Texas tomorrow as well. She`s not there for the purposes of the Electoral College. She`s not going there because I think anybody has expectations the Democrats are going to win Texas in the presidential election in 2016 unless it`s a huge blowout.
Rather, the reason Hillary Clinton is in Texas today and tomorrow is ka-ching.
Texas is a big state, has a big population, even though the state as a whole votes for Republican candidates basically in lockstep, that doesn`t mean there aren`t a lot of rich donor class Democrats in Texas who are happy to make their money count in national Democratic campaigns even if their vote at home in Texas really doesn`t count, at least not yet.
The chair of the Democratic Party today tells “The Guardian” newspaper, quote, “Texas is an ATM machine for Democrats all over the country.”
So, mostly, Hillary Clinton will be going to Texas to insert her proverbial ATM card into the Texas Democratic donor class and withdraw campaign donations. I think that`s mostly why she is there, and nobody would say otherwise.
(h/t RNC Research)
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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