As Celebrities Support Talarico, McConaughey Takes a Strange Direction

This election season, many Texas celebrities have urged their fellow Texans to get out and vote. Most of those you’ve heard of have supported James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate. But here’s Matthew McConaughey, perhaps the most Texan of all famous people, with something a little different to say.

On Sunday, McConaughey released a six-minute video on X called “Independent Counts.” In a full-frontal video that looks like he’s being held hostage in a sauna, McConaughey urges Americans to vote not for party, but for ideas.

“They’ve been telling us for years that an independent vote is a useless vote,” McConaughey said. “Well, a big question for our times is: How did that unwasted vote work out for you?”

It’s unclear exactly what McConaughey counts as an “independent” vote. Is he talking about the common refrain that voting for a third party is “wasting” a vote? Independence in the sense of ticket splitting, where you vote for candidates from multiple parties on the same ballot? But before we get into his spiel, Mr. Alright Alright Alright needs to let us know that this video is not about him.

“This is the next election, and I’m not here today to support any candidate or party,” McConaughey said. “I’m here for two things: fairness and reality.”

He says the current two-party system isn’t fair because fairness “isn’t just about two fighters throwing the same punches at each other for 50 years.” Then, he finally defines what he means by “independent”.

“Independent doesn’t mean you’re halfway there. Independent is the original path. Before there was a Republican or a Democrat, there was an American,” McConaughey says.

For McConaughey, a “true independent” is not a “fence guard” but someone who takes the best ideas from Republicans and Democrats. What ideas or policies? Oh, you know, those.

McConaughey says he has to talk about it in a six-minute video because “the system has never been more out of balance.” This is true enough; McConaughey points out that most U.S. parliamentary elections are non-competitive by design and that most elections are actually decided in primaries. About 3% of primary voters decide Texas elections. But there is no solution in the wisdom of McConaughey’s sub-fortune cookies. Consider this real word salad quote:

“Think of (Independents) as a tollbooth between an idea and a law,” McConaughey intones. “Any bill coming from the left or the right must stop at this stand and answer one question: ‘Does this make sense for the community?’ Extreme things can’t, can’t, pay the price, and pretty soon both parties learned to write laws for where most of us actually live. »

How would this work in practice? McConaughey never explains, except to plug former Sen. Joe Manchin’s new “Independent Leadership Council,” a group supposed to recruit “a handful” of independent candidates to run for Congress. McConaughey promises this isn’t an endorsement of Manchin’s new gig, but how could it not be? It’s the only proper noun in this video!

“I’m not supporting an organization. I’m putting all of us back into the original organization,” McConaughey said.

McConaughey concludes by urging Texans to vote not for candidates from any particular party, but for those who they believe truly represent them. That’s a lot of words to basically say “do your research and vote accordingly.”

Compare this approach to that of McConaughey’s peers in the celebrity realm. Willie Nelson, The Chicks, Kacey Musgraves and most of the cast Friday night lights, along with a slew of other celebrities, rallied for Talarico and other Texas Democrats. They offered wholehearted endorsements rooted in their Texanness, the idea being “If you love me, you’ll know I have the best interests of Texas at heart.” What McConaughey offers is a call for himself and him alone.

It’s high time for McConaughey to retire this cowboy philosopher schtick. It was funny when he did those Lincoln commercials over a decade ago. But this “I am enlightened and above everything” thing is tiring. McConaughey wants to get involved in politics and talk about running for governor and spending time in the state legislature without ever saying what he stands for. He wants to be everything to everyone, and instead he ends up being nothing. For a guy who likes to tout his independence and free-thinking, he couldn’t even come up with a single statement about the hilarious and unpopular Big Bend border wall.

What was the point of releasing this video the day before early voting began in Texas? McConaughey offers little concrete advice. He has almost 3 million followers on X and hasn’t bothered to tell them how to find their polling location. It was ultimately an exercise in putting his face forward and making people wonder what his play was. I’ll tell you what the play is: getting everyone listening and talking about Matthew McConaughey for a little while longer.