bobby pulido is probably more conservative on the issue than the republican he beat. he calls himself a "blue dog" and does not support libertarian border policies.
the new batch of openly right-wing democrats is also saying they won't support chuck schumer and are presumably looking for somebody more conservative. the house leader may also face a leadership vote, and it won't be a shift to the left.
in fact, the leftist rump in the house is likely to be completely pushed out of any delusion of power and bernie sanders is likely to end up as an opposition figure. they don't need to tolerate him any more.
the media narrative is not based in reality, but trump is an idiot, and he bases his self-worth on how he thinks people perceive him, so he's the first one to be manipulated by it. it is predictable that if trump moves to a more libertarian border policy that (1) his base will cave even further and (2) socialist-leaning working class democrats that oppose immigration in the region due to the fact that they work under the table, displace jobs and undercut wages by doing so but voted republican in recent cycles because they're also catholics (and won't vote for a woman as president, for example) are just going to bail that much harder. it's going to kill him from both sides.
the reality is that south texas is a working class region with a working class population that has far left, socialist views that are opposed to illegal immigration and has historically voted democrat and that those democrats have historically supported hardline immigration policies. it's not about total number of immigrants, or about what language they speak, or what god they pray to, it's about forcing the bosses to follow the labour code. it makes absolutely no sense to think they suddenly flipped to the democrats because they're all of a sudden in favour of open borders (which these specific democrats are definitely not).
conversely, there was clearly substantive opposition to ice policies in hard blue districts in minnesota that were going to vote 70% democrat anyways.
there is some possibility that trump may have suddenly realized he misunderstood opposition to immigration in texas and had an epiphany that he's not in solidarity with it but in solidarity with the bourgeois interests that benefit from bringing in illegal workers. i mean, that's clearly what is actually true. trump's public position on immigration has never made any sense. there are even rumours that he was a major employer of illegal immigrants, himself. trump clearly thought it was cultural, like you see in the liberal european secularist movements that want to block a return to religion in europe. that would be a minority view in texas, where the class divisions are broadly that the wealthier voters support illegal immigration because they benefit from it and the more working class voters don't because it increases the amount of competition they have for scarce resources in a very brutal market economy.
somebody like monica de la cruz actually represents the businesses in the region, not the workers. that's why she actually supports amnesty. and it's why she lost to a hardline democrat that doesn't.
so, did trump just pull his head out of his ass and realize he should be supporting his class interests if he wants to more seriously swing seats in the region, by holding the bourgeois vote in opposition to working class voters, which keep going back to the democrats? if so, it's too little too late, clearly.
and it doesn't change the facts or the data.
that's not what the election was about and not why democrats won seats in the region. the republican backlash, in turns of low voter turnout, has to do with the republicans under trump not being christian enough to justify continued support. republicans have been hypocrites for decades. reagan himself was a hypocrite. the reason it didn't come up in the data is that nobody asked and nobody asked because republican hypocrisy has never caved turnout before; christians have enthusiastically shown up and voted for the hypocrites in high percentages for decades. so why change now?
on some level, it's obviously finally too much.
but i'll direct you back to abortion.
it's not immigration. that makes no sense. at all.