Six years ago, James Talarico, the Democrats’ latest great white hope in the perpetually recalcitrant state of Texas, wrote and published the following words:

White skin gives me and every white American immunity from the virus. But we spread it wherever we go—through our words, our actions, and our systems. We don’t have to be showing symptoms—like a white hood or a Confederate flag—to be contagious.

Since he won the primary on Tuesday, these words have been highlighted as prima facie evidence of Talarico’s unsuitability for public office. In response, his already insufferable fans have cried foul. In their view, homing in on old utterances such as these is uncharitable, unbecoming, and unjust, and it ought not to be done by anyone who considers himself to be a respectable chronicler of contemporary political affairs.

Those fans are wrong. Indeed, far from serving as a distraction, these words are pretty much all anyone needs to know about the man. In the coming election, they are relevant, indefensible, and disqualifying.

Why “disqualifying”? Because they are indicative, that’s why. Because they point to a considered, premeditated, fully conscious extremism that ought to be unacceptable in any American public figure. Only a handful of people in these United States would ever think a thing such as this — let alone say it aloud. The words in question were not rash, or hasty, or uttered under duress. They were volunteered. They represent a window into the soul. They ought to be fatal.

The two most popular rejoinders to this view are that they were issued “six years ago” and that they were offered up during a “crazy period.” But neither of these briefs do anything other than underscore the initial problem. Six years is not a long time. I am judged on my words from six years ago. So are you. So is everyone else. Why, pray, would we make an exception for a public official? Talarico is running for the U.S. Senate. As far as I can tell, nobody ever suggested that previous candidates for that body — Herschel Walker, say — ought to have been given a clean slate in that endeavor. So why Talarico? Because he’s a Democrat and the Democrats really, really want the seat? That dog won’t hunt. Six years ago, James Talarico was 30 years old. Had he won a Senate seat back then, he’d still be serving now.

As for the contention that 2020 was “a crazy period”? That is true, but it skips several important steps. Why was 2020 a “crazy period”? I’ll tell you: 2020 was a crazy period because a handful of crazy people made it so, to the horror of everyone else. That didn’t just happen, as might an earthquake or lightning. It was orchestrated. And, evidently, one of the people who was busy orchestrating it was James Talarico. The quotation at hand is from before George Floyd was killed — which, astonishingly enough, puts Talarico in the vanguard of the vanguard. “I got swept up in the mania” would, if true, also be a thoroughly damning thing for an aspiring member of America’s upper chamber to claim. But it is not true, is it? Talarico pushed that mania. He was one of its architects. He was a cheerleader on its behalf. While others were defending America’s creed and demanding upon equality, rather than grotesque race essentialism, and upon the Declaration, rather than the 1619 Project, he was insisting that white people are a virus. That must exclude him from consideration. A crucial test arose, and Talarico failed it spectacularly. There is no justifiable reason to put him in the Senate as a reward.

Which is to say that a sensible electorate would treat Talarico’s ability and willingness  to entertain such thoughts as equivalent to other, more obvious forms of lunacy. A man who enthusiastically contended that spiders were secretly running Walmart or that women were plotting the overthrow of California would be summarily dismissed as a plausible leader of men not simply because he held such views, but because he had demonstrated his capacity to hold such views. One has to be a very particular sort of creep to run around accusing all people with a particular skin color of ineluctably spreading diseases, and Talarico, by his own admission, fits the bill. By dint of his own words, James Talarico has shown Texas who he is. Texas ought to thank him for the heads up, take note of the invaluable information, and launch him squarely into the sun.