It’s been on my brain so I’m gonna write a bit about why lots of people who aren’t one percenters in Texas are not actually crazy for voting for republicans, with some implications for why Hispanic voters do.

I’ll start by recalling a conservation with a family member. He’s a mechanic in the military, owns a relatively modest home in an unincorporated area, and some land in which he raises one or two cows at any given time.

We’ve talked politics a bit. He’s a Republican, but his relationship with the party and even with the military is much more transactional more than ideological. Like a lot of union members’ relationships with their unions are

Main things he likes in Texas are that there is no income tax and that he can basically avoid property tax by running a small business raising cattle that loses a small amount of money every year. He likes his military job because it pays well and he didn’t have to go to college

The GOP is the custodian of this basic arrangement where he can live a life that he’s ok with. And that is held up in his case by stable employment and ease of registering and operating a business. He is a beneficiary of a big government program.

Now let’s think about what other jobs you can do that pay well in Texas that you don’t have to go to college or move to a big city for: you can work in oil or you can be a cop or some sort.

For about two decades now we’ve been increasing CBP funding, which goes to border cities in Texas. To people who aren’t politically engaged this means stable government employment, a good retirement package, and not having to relocate. It’s not a bad deal

And what, really, can democrats say that they have given, or will give anyone? From a lot of peoples’ perspectives, the GOP is defending a pretty basic arrangement of guaranteed employment in exchange for keeping them in power. It’s just a basic political machine

Democrats, for various reasons, just don’t do these kinds of things anymore. The employment conditions guaranteed by the GOP to uneducated people in rural areas are odious, but they are all that’s on offer from politicians until Democrats come up with something else.

This “something else” needs to be a bigger part of Green New Deal rhetoric. Democrat-favored federal agencies tend to be bureaucracies, which mean that as patronage systems they primarily benefit the college-educated. That needs to change

But left policy makers should be imagining a big federal agency that advances left-wing priorities that can provide stable employment for people anywhere in the country, regardless of education status. Failing that, current trends will continue.

And things like defunding or abolishing CBP without a replacement of funding for jobs in those communities will in effect be austerity, and it will be understandable when people reject it without existing jobs in place.