FORT WORTH, Texas -- It took Donald Trump to get Democrats elected in Texas.

Not since the 1980s have Democrats won elections like Tuesday night, maybe not since 1964.

The last time Texas elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate and the Governor’s Mansion, the year was 1990 and James Talarico was age 1.

But the Austin Democrat kept his focus in the face of $100 million-plus in smear ads. He and Austin Democrat Gina Hinojosa led a slew of Democrats suddenly elected Tuesday by voters who mobbed the polls like one of those movie scenes where the townspeople drive Godzilla back into the sea.

Talarico and Hinojosa outlasted Republican Ken Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott, not only because the Trump White House made a bad Republican year worse, but also because the B-teamers who have hijacked the Texas Republican Party insisted on driving it off a cliff.

Ken Paxton and Bo French would be terrible candidates in a good Republican year. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick led the party toward the cliff, not away from it. The Tarrant County Republican Party is run as private property of a few rich out-of-town donors and picked some candidates you wouldn’t invite into your living room.

Meanwhile, Texas Democrats and the Tarrant County Democratic Party finally drew a full list of candidates who deserved party volunteers’ incredibly hard work.

Paxton proved once again that only candidates from the George H.W. Bush-Karl Rove family tree can win at the top of the ticket in Texas. Then, Abbott proved how even that warranty doesn’t hold up under a President Trump.

At the start of the year, experts said there was only one way a babyface like Talarico could beat a rock-solid Senate leader like U.S. Sen John Cornyn.

The campaign was a joke. Talarico had no hope, they said. That is, unless America was still at war and gas was $4 a gallon.

And of course, Trump would never allow that.

Nobody knew the bad news would only get worse.

Cornyn was caught off-balance by a vindictive Paxton. Somehow, he found himself on the short end of a runoff because Republican voters demanded someone who would completely bow to Trump.

Then the White House instead tried to justify the price of gas. Trump, the ultimate actor, couldn’t even pretend he had ended the war until after the election.

And Texas Republicans ran into their own problems.

Mainly, they never found a message besides “We have more money!” and “No Trans In Texas!”

And they never found a way to explain why Texas has more data centers than Paxton had girlfriends.

In the end, it all came crashing down under the weight of too many bad actors and too many mistakes, starting with the White House and reaching all the way to Southlake and the Tarrant County Courthouse.

Alisa Simmons of Arlington was just out of college and starting a career as a Fort Worth gospel radio station’s spokeswoman the last time Tarrant County had a Democratic county judge.

She served the last four years on Commissioners Court taking constant abuse from Republican Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare of Southlake. Now, she not only has the gavel but Democrats have a governing majority that commissioners’ redistricting couldn’t change.

The last time Democrats ruled this many offices in Texas, half the voters in the state had not been born yet.

Only Donald Trump could take us back to the ‘80s.

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