Wendy and Royce made a splash, but winning is another matter

The week began with Wendy Davis and Royce West announcing their respective candidacies for the U.S. House and Senate on the same day. I suppose as a sign of Democratic electoral energy heading into 2020, the overlapping announcements exuded a buzzy, positive vibe, but it seemed pretty poor party planning.

After all, Davis, a former state senator from Fort Worth, and West, a veteran state senator from Dallas, had served side by side from neighboring districts in the 31-member Senate for six years and one might have thought that one or the other, out of deference or friendship, would have made a call to the other and said, "I see you're planning on making your big reveal on Monday, so I'll go Tuesday," or vice versa.

Davis herself had thought about running against U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, but passed, out of deference to U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, who seemed all but certain to make the race once Beto O'Rourke, the party's 2018 candidate for U.S. Senate, chose to run for president.

But, Castro, whose twin brother, Julián, is also running for president, and had seemed the next strongest candidate after O'Rourke to challenge Cornyn, decided to stay in the House.

MJ Hegar, who had lost a close contest against U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, last fall, jumped first into the Cornyn race, and seemed, briefly, like she might become the presumptive nominee.

But then Chris Bell, a former congressman from Houston who was the party's 2006 nominee for governor, entered the race, followed by Amanda Edwards, a Houston City Council member, followed by West.

The crowded field increases the likelihood that a potentially energizing primary campaign will lead to a debilitating runoff that will leave the party's nominee out of the time and money needed to effectively challenge Cornyn.

If so, retroactive blame will be heaped on O'Rourke for squandering the party's chance of taking out Cornyn.

This of course presumes that O'Rourke doesn't beat the odds and become the Democratic nominee for president or vice president in 2020, which seems a safe bet, though, with the distinct possibility that Joe Biden, 76, and Bernie Sanders, 77, may prove too gray, and Pete Buttigieg, at 37, may prove too green, it is possible that by early next year O'Rourke may be the last white man standing.

O'Rourke remains an exceptional political talent who snapped Texas Democrats out of the deep funk they had been plunged into when Davis' initially promising candidacy for governor in 2014 imploded, generating more excitement on MSNBC than among Texas voters, and ending in a dismal 20.4-point-loss to Greg Abbott.

But Davis' choice of a congressional race was a good one. She will bring name recognition, star status and fundraising prowess that would be hard for any other Democratic candidate to match, and she and freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, who lives just outside Austin in Hays County, are equal and opposite ideologues. They were made for each other and for a contest that will quickly grab the national spotlight.

Even so, Roy has the built-in advantage of incumbency in a district that was drawn to elect a Republican. The 124,000 votes cast last year in Travis and Hays counties in the 21st Congressional District, where Roy lost badly to Democrat Joseph Kopser, amounted to slightly more than one third of the votes cast in the district, which includes a wide swath of the conservative Hill Country.

On Monday, Davis was back on MSNBC for a seven-minute interview, but it was a cautionary appearance with a churlish host Joy Reid, who was vexed at the outset that Davis didn't highlight abortion rights -- the cause she will always be identified with for her 2013 filibuster of a Republican bill to tighten abortion restrictions -- and ended the interview by demanding to know if Davis were elected would she vote to impeach President Trump.

When Davis noted that there will be a presidential election between now and when she would take office, Reid said, "So that's a no."

"No," Davis said. "I'm not saying it's a no at all."

But perhaps for a Texas Democrat seeking to win a district Trump won by 10 points in 2016, just saying no to hypothetically impeaching a re-elected Trump ought to be OK.

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