One wonders why Democrats, across the nation, are seemingly determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

One wonders, additionally, why their counterparts in Texas are somehow even more fatalistic than that.

Let's consider the political landscape, nearly a year after the 2016 elections raised some questions about the radical, world-altering experiment in which all Americans live.

Republicans, having endorsed Donald Trump's bid for the presidency, remain mostly committed to what was once an alluringly non-falsifiable premise, that the man is capable of being a good president. And, in fairness, perhaps he is. At least half a dozen Texans, judging from my inbox, are convinced of that. Many others are satisfied that Trump is, at least, not Hillary Clinton. But at the beginning of the month just 38 percent of Americans, according to Gallup's tracking poll, approve of his presidency on that basis.

The rest of us, or as some would put it, the majority of us, have perhaps noticed a number of incipient issues with Trump's administration, or underlying pathologies of the party that put him in power, or both. Republicans, certainly, seem to have cottoned on to the dysfunction. This week came the news that two of the most powerful Republicans in Texas's congressional delegation - Jeb Hensarling of Dallas and Lamar Smith of an interestingly squiggly district that spans parts of San Antonio, Austin, and the Hill Country - will join Joe Straus, the speaker of the Texas House, in early and unforced retirement.

Yet Democrats are strangely reluctant to capitalize on the opportunities now obviously at hand. Some are doubling down on the idea that Republican voters, as opposed to some of the leaders who represent them, are "deplorables."

Others are warring amongst themselves, re-litigating not just the results of their 2016 presidential primary but the methods by which Clinton won it. On Thursday, CNN's Jake Tapper asked Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, if she agreed with the notion that it had been "rigged."

"Yes," replied Warren, who is considered a contender for the Democratic nomination in 2020.

A few notables

Most puzzling of all, though, is how little the Democratic Party is doing in Texas. Individual candidates, to be sure, are storming the ramparts; the most notable is Beto O'Rourke, the U.S. representative from El Paso, who is challenging Ted Cruz for a seat in the Senate. And some of the congressional primaries are, frankly, oversubscribed.

But from an institutional point of view, there's one race that matters far more than any of the others, and the party's attitude toward it can best be described as desultory.

Jeffrey Payne, a Dallas-based businessman, plans to challenge Greg Abbott's bid for re-election as governor. Houston's Andrew White, son of the late former Gov. Mark White, announced last week that he might do the same. I mean no disrespect to either of them when I say that neither of them has ever been elected to anything, nor does either have any particular name identification statewide. That being the case, Democrats should be nervous. They still have time to recruit a top-tier candidate for the race that is effectively, though not technically, the top of the ticket. Not much time, though; Dec. 11 is the filing deadline.

The reasons for that, in this case, are obvious enough that anyone who follows Texas politics should be able to recite them. In 2014, Abbott defeated the Democratic candidate, Wendy Davis, in a 20-point landslide. This year's legislative session - and the special session that followed - took a toll on his reputation among capitol observers, but his approval rating remains comparatively high. According to the most recent polling from the University of Texas/Texas Tribune, 48 percent of Texans approve of Abbott's job performance; just 36 percent said the same for the lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick.

Don't assume defeat

More generally, it is widely assumed that in 2018, Republicans will once again carry Texas's statewide elections, and probably without really having to try.

Still, at the risk of being pedantic, the latter assumption is reflective of the assumption from which it is derived. Granted, if Republicans are going to win the elections, there is no clear reason for Democrats to try. To assume that defeat is inevitable, however, is often to guarantee that it will be. This is a lesson that Texas Democrats have stubbornly refused to learn, despite testing the proposition at hand for most of my adult lifetime.

Their collective torpor is striking, though, under the circumstances. Texas is one of the few states where Democrats made real inroads in 2016, and they are positioned to do so again this time. Trump carried the state by nine points, barely half of Mitt Romney's margin in 2012. Texas Republicans would like to dismiss those results as a fluke, and perhaps they were. But Trump's election was preceded by a slew of similarly pyrrhic wins at the state level; his supporters in Texas include Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and Attorney General Ken Paxton. It was followed by the 85th Legislature, which was special enough in its own right; the actual special session that Abbott called, in its aftermath, was the civic equivalent of a black eye.

No internal divide

Texas Democrats, meanwhile, have largely avoided the discord that is plaguing the national party. Not having bothered to compete over the past 20 years, they can't exactly double down on the messages known to have backfired. And the state party isn't wracked by a serious internal divide; Clinton, who won the Texas primary in 2008, did so by 30 points this time.

And what Texas Democrats are failing to realize, perhaps, is that even if Republicans are predestined to win again, they can't afford to give up on the gubernatorial race. The state's governing party isn't governing as well as it might be lately; that's in part because you have a certain set of electoral incentives if you win the general by 20 points, and it's not the same set you have if you win it by five. The Democratic downballot is languishing, without a clear standard-bearer in the state's marquee race.

And Republicans aren't actually predestined to win anything, even in Texas. It might seem that way, after 20 years of one-party rule. But the past few years have been more eventful than most. So the only people who would cite that as an excuse, if the Texas GOP emerges from the midterms unscathed, are the people who will need one - and Texas Democrats will, if they don't even try.