What are voters to make of the bizarre two-week disappearance of Far-Left Texas Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico? Talarico’s explanation that he was suffering from “the flu,” delivered with all the sincerity of a miscreant student trying to explain his absence to the principal, doesn’t hold water for even the most fair-minded outside observers.
Talarico first said he went to urgent care in Dallas. Now he says he saw his primary care physician in Austin. Did he have a flu shot, take Tamiflu to get himself back in the saddle as soon as possible, thank his doctors for the great treatment, cite the efficacy of his abuela’s chicken soup? Nope. He can’t keep his story straight—and he looks extremely nervous.
As Laura Ingraham observed, he didn't do one Zoom, one video, or one phone call, and even Joe Biden at least campaigned from the basement.
Of course, one could accept that Talarico was indeed suffering a bad case of the “man flu,” but that would require one to overlook his Beta Boy physique and demeanor and accept that he is in fact a man, albeit what my 1970s college friends and I would have termed a “major wuss.”
Absent the proverbial doctor’s note to the principal, the Talarico campaign’s lame attempt to move on has left Texas voters to sift through a blizzard of other more credible explanations and weird conspiracy theories to get to the truth about his absence at that crucial point in the Texas campaign calendar.
Caroline Wren on Bannon’s War Room broke down the timeline of Talarico’s disappearance this way:
Talarico is straight-up missing one month before the election. He was last seen in Texas on September 26th at a football game. He had a fundraiser in NYC on September 29th, and then, on September 30th, he gave an interview that was supposed to be in person. He said he had the flu and spent the night at a Dallas medical clinic. But that doesn’t make sense, because he was spotted at a fundraiser in NYC the night before.
From our perspective, a plausible explanation, although it seems to many like a conspiracy theory, is that Talarico suffered a mental health crisis of some sort.
Internet sleuths have allegedly turned up evidence that James Talarico’s break from the campaign trail was indeed due to a mental health crisis and he flew to a private facility in Ohio for treatment.
However, that doesn’t seem to wash for a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which are laws governing patient privacy.
New Jersey Republican Congressman Tom Keane was missing from the House of Representatives for several months, ultimately garnering heated calls from Democrats for “proof of life.” Upon his return Rep. Keane readily stated he suffered from major depression and needed the time off for treatment. Telling the truth goes a long way.
There would have been no harm to Talarico’s campaign in claiming exhaustion and dropping a few Zoom calls or videos while taking a break at home to recover, without fueling the conspiracy theorists with the lame cover story of having the flu after going dark for two weeks.
Combat fatigue is a real thing. After serving in over 300 campaigns, we will readily stipulate that a high-profile campaign, such as this Texas Senate race, is extremely stressful. Long hours, the mental and physical demands of being “on” all the time, preparing and delivering speeches, etc. take their toll. But lying about it casts James Talarico in a very negative light and tells us, and voters in Texas, that the candidate and his campaign can’t be trusted to tell the truth about even the simplest things.
