How did we get here? The reasons are varied. The national Democratic Party’s decades-long shift to the left contributed to the end of 100 years of Democratic dominance. (Even Mr. Perry was a Democrat, because, back in the day, nobody in Texas was a Republican.)

The energy boom of the late ’70s and early ’80s brought an influx of the disaffected from the Rust Belt, boosting the angry, turn-back-the-clock conservatism already here. Then, in the ’90s, Karl Rove and Mr. DeLay’s grand plan to create a perpetual Republican majority in Texas also tilted control of Republican primaries toward ever more right-wing activists.

Meanwhile, Texas Democrats’ case of learned helplessness became chronic. They hardly bother to run for dogcatcher. Wendy Davis’s ignominious defeat in her 2014 run for governor proved it was time to start over, but strategic efforts have not taken off.

“They spend a lot of time updating voter files, but nobody knows how to use those things,” one longtime Democrat told me. The difference between pragmatism and self-pity has become hard to discern. That was never the norm.

Then the cuckoos took over. It’s astounding that a state so modern in many ways has moved so far backward when it comes to taking care of its own people — for example, curtailing poor women’s access to birth control while refusing to take a cent in Medicaid expansion. Is it cynicism or plain old ignorance that makes our legislators appear oblivious to the damage that cuts to public education and health care will do to our future work force?

Few in Texas see a quick way to restore the state to national relevance, if not respectability. That might be a comfort to the Texas haters outside our borders, but it’s not so heartening for the people who live here. Maybe the long-predicted Latino surge at the polls will save us (thanks to Donald Build-a-Wall Trump). Or maybe, as the aged white voters of the religious right pass to their rewards, they will be replaced by more open-minded millennials.

“Our best hope is to become a swing state like Florida,” Ms. Rogers proposed.

It’s a humbling thought for a Texan, but we have to start somewhere.