Something Beto said that I want to highlight because I'm worried it will get missed: in Texas, Democrats HAVE to close the gap in Republican areas if they want to win statewide races. (1/n)

Most of the other components people get: the five largest counties have to vote blue, Democratic strongholds need to run up the turnout. In many states that's enough. It's not in my home state. (2/n)

As @TheUrbanAce has noted, Texas has 254 counties. The vast majority are small and rural. The Republican Party has invested a lot, over years, in knowing who to reach there when they need a boost. (3/n)

This was the biggest lesson from 2018. Anyone who understands the state thought we'd win the Senate races after seeing the early vote. We knew turnout was high in urban areas. The five biggest counties and many suburbs went blue. (4/n)

As a side note: when I saw that Biden only got 58% of the early vote in Harris County in the first ten minutes of returns, I knew he lost the state. But it wasn't so long ago that Harris County frequently voted for Republicans! (5/n)

Anyway. What happened in 2018 is that Team Cruz saw that they were on track to lose, and they asked Greg Abbott for help getting Republicans out. Cruz' campaign didn't even have a GOTV operation! That's how lazy some Texas Republicans have gotten. (6/n)

Of course, Abbott has an amazing canvassing operation that has invested millions in, year over year. Anyway, long story short, Cruz got a late boost from 1 million voters across counties that most Texans even don't recognize the name of, and won by less than 2%. (7/n)

Less than 3% - typo. The best candidates in the world won't win Texas if significant resources aren't made in the state, not just right before an election. (8/n)

Cruz was a shit candidate. Cornyn is an even worst candidate! He's dumber than Cruz, has never had to win a competitive election, and has no base (Cruz has evangelicals). Lots of Texans don't even know who he is. But bad candidates can be carried by great resources, too. (9/n)