周四，詹姆斯·塔拉里科在得克萨斯州参议员竞选中大获全胜后发表了首次演讲。他在丹佛举行的民主党会议上发言，表达了与唐纳德·特朗普合作的真诚渴望。他援引林登·贝恩斯·约翰逊的话说：“如果特朗普总统想要像林登·约翰逊那样拥有匾额、肖像和半身像，我们可以帮助实现这一愿望。我们应该让他总统任期的最后两年成为美国历史上任何总统任期中最富有成效的两年，因为这一时刻远比红队或蓝队重要得多，也大得多。” 我发现这番言论略显刺耳。
On Thursday, James Talarico gave his first speech since his commanding victory in Texas’ Senate race. Speaking at a Democratic conference in Denver, he expressed his sincere eagerness to work with Donald Trump. Invoking Lyndon Baines Johnson, he said: “If President Trump wants the same plaques and portraits and busts as L.B.J., we can help make that a reality. We should make the final two years of his presidency the most productive of any presidency in American history, because this moment is so much bigger and so much more important than the red team or the blue team.”I found this comment slightly jarring.
塔拉里科并非首位向特朗普示好的民主党人：纽约市长佐赫兰·马姆达尼利用特朗普对他的奇特喜爱为城市谋利，密歇根州当选参议员阿卜杜勒·赛义德主动提出将全民医保称为“特朗普医保”。但马姆达尼和赛义德称呼总统时都带有一丝讽刺意味，清楚表明他们知道自己是在迎合他的虚荣心。相比之下，塔拉里科听起来仿佛真心认为特朗普可能愿意帮助民主党造福国家。事后我问他：凭什么能相信这一点？
Talarico isn’t the first Democrat to make overtures to Trump: New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has leveraged Trump’s strange affection for him to help the city, and Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan has offered to call universal health care “Trumpcare.”But both Mamdani and El-Sayed address the president with a touch of irony, making clear they know they’re playing to his vanity. Talarico, by contrast, sounded as though he really thought Trump might be willing to help Democrats help the country. How, I asked him afterward, could he believe that?
“我们有一位声称关心劳动人民的总统，”塔拉里科说。“我们现在有大多数参议员和众议员都是以关注劳动人民需求的口号当选的。所以在我看来，这是为我所在州以及全国的劳动人民办成许多实事的秘诀。当然，这未必奏效。有很多理由让人愤世嫉俗，但在这场得克萨斯州的竞选中，也有很多理由让人愤世嫉俗。我们从一开始就说，一点点希望是件危险的事，所以我们要在这一点点希望上加倍押注。”
“We have a president who says he cares about working people,” Talarico said. “We now have a large majority of senators and House members who got elected talking about the needs of working people. So to me, that’s a recipe to get a lot done for the working people in my state and across this country. Of course, it may not work. There’s plenty of reasons to be cynical, but there were a lot of reasons to be cynical about this race in Texas. We said from the very beginning that a little bit of hope is a dangerous thing, and so we’re doubling down on that little bit of hope.”
这个回答道出了塔拉里科竞选活动的核心张力。他既以斗士又以团结者的姿态参选，赢得了既投过特朗普票的人、也想要免受特朗普伤害的人的支持。他有时会对团队说：“你不能在他们的游戏规则下击败他们。你必须改变游戏规则。”他的意思是，他要试着超越现代政治的恶毒与琐碎。“我们需要采纳一种新的政治意识，那真正关乎团结、疗愈与爱，”他告诉我。但在特朗普的华盛顿，能有多少团结、疗愈与爱，还是个未知数。
It was an answer that spoke to a central tension in Talarico’s campaign. He ran as both a fighter and a unifier, winning support from people who’d voted for Trump and from people who wanted protection from him. He’d sometimes tell his team, “You can’t beat them at their game. You have to change the game.”By this, he meant that he’d try to transcend the meanness and pettiness of modern politics. “We needed to adopt a new political consciousness, and that was really around unity, healing and love,” he told me. But it’s an open question how much unity, healing and love is possible in Trump’s Washington.
从一开始，塔拉里科就想改变文化，而不只是政策。他竞选的种子种在2025年春天，当时他处于低谷。作为州众议员，他曾与得克萨斯州众议院同事吉娜·伊诺霍萨一起，领导反对州长格雷格·阿博特利用学券将公共资金转向私立学校的计划。在上一届会期，一群共和党人——许多来自公立学校是社区生活中心的农村地区——曾联合民主党人挫败了该措施。但阿博特支持初选竞选、击败了其中一些共和党坚持者后，学券法案成了法律。
From the beginning, Talarico wanted to change culture as well as policy. The seeds of his campaign were planted in the spring of 2025, when he was in a dark place. As a state representative, he had, along with his Texas House colleague Gina Hinojosa, led the opposition to Gov. Greg Abbott’s plan to use vouchers to divert public money to private schools. In the previous session, a group of Republicans, many from rural areas where public schools are at the center of community life, had joined Democrats to thwart the measure. But after Abbott backed successful primary campaigns against some of the Republican holdouts, school vouchers became law.
“我们输了之后，她经历了一场巨大的心理危机，”塔拉里科在立法机构的幕僚长、同样令人困惑地也叫吉娜·伊诺霍萨说。“就像，这怎么可能发生？这对得州选民不利，明摆着的事。”
“When we lost, he was kind of going through a big psychological crisis,” said Talarico’s chief of staff in the legislature, also, confusingly, named Gina Hinojosa. “Like, how could this possibly happen? It was so obvious that this was bad for Texas voters.”