Jasmine Crockett is a sideshow. Until she isn’t.

I’m sad to say I don’t share Jeff’s confidence that Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett is so limited in her professional political prospects.

“Publicity — and its hopefully attendant financial rewards — is the best she can hope for,” Jeff writes, after she appeared to workshop some edgy material about Texas Governor Abbott’s crushed vertebrae (she now claims the sobriquet “Governor Hot Wheels” was a reference to his migrant-bussing and not to his wheelchair).

Publicity, unfortunately, rewards in a variety of ways.

Remember that CNN poll earlier this month that was devastating for Democrats, showing the party more unpopular than ever? Deep within that survey was an open-ended question on “which one person best reflects the core values of the Democratic Party.” Jasmine Crockett tied for fifth with Barack Obama.

This was just 4 percent of responses, but in an open-ended question, it is startling that even that many people would choose Jasmine Crockett, a name they’re surely familiar with because of what Jeff accurately describes as her “publicity stunt style of politics.” To put her poll standing in context, the representative ranked higher than Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, Elissa Slotkin (remember her?), Chuck Schumer, Tim Walz, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, and many others. AOC was at the top.

As a Democrat in Texas, Jasmine Crockett would struggle in any statewide race, if she were to confine herself to her state. Whatever her future plans, this passage from a New York Times profile last year gives a good idea of her drive and her knack for viral politics; it starts with her election to the Texas House in 2020:

According to The Texas Tribune, she filed 75 bills on her own during that legislative session and wrote another 110 with her colleagues. Only three became law, but few rookie state lawmakers are so persistent.

Her ascent picked up speed during the summer of 2021, when she joined about 50 Democrats who fled Texas for Washington, D.C., in an attempt to block Republicans from passing new voting restrictions. The measure passed, but her video dispatches from the nation’s Capitol went viral online, which irked some in state leadership — and fueled her run for Congress in 2022. . . . She has since become one of her party’s most effective communicators — known for her wordplay and alliteration — alongside other left-wing Democrats like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

Jasmine Crockett is a sideshow. Until she isn’t.