In this dark age of Trumpian rule, is there any glimmer of hope?

Yes – lo and behold: Texas!

I’ll bet you were not expecting that answer. Well, for sure, the Republican clique of arrogant billionaires and Christian supremacists who thought they owned Texas politics didn’t expect the comeuppance voters delivered to them in this month’s local elections.

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In city and school board contests across the state, Texans bluntly said to right-wing operatives and officials: We’re sick of you – your constant attempts to divide and dictate, ban and bully, privatize and profiteer at the expense of the common good.

For example, in the flashing-red suburbs of Fort Worth, where GOP front groups have spent millions in dark-money to take over school boards, Democratic challengers won 11 of 11 races! In Mansfield, the county’s third largest city, all five right-wing extremists running for mayor and school board lost. “Mansfield has gone to Hell,” screeched one of the Christian Nationalist activists!

No, it’s being yanked back to its senses, rejecting hyper-partisan nutballism and church dictatorship in favor of, you know, educating children!

Also, voters in Katy, Fort Bend, Plano, Richardson, and other big suburbs – long written off as solid red bastions – produced sweeping progressive victories.

This grassroots turnaround is no accident. It’s largely the product of a young generation of progressive activists revitalizing the tried-and-true practice of “little-d” democratic organizing – which means showing up in-person, day-in and day-out to connect with workaday people, focusing on their real problems.

This is Jim Hightower saying… Of course, this doesn’t mean Texas is suddenly blue – but it’s on the right path, and that offers hope in other red and purple areas. Remember: The first rule of politics is to show up.

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