“Battleground Texas”
I have long been a skeptic about the prospects for revitalization of the state Democratic party, but recent developments call for re-evaluation. For one thing, the new finance chair of the Democratic National Committee is Henry Munoz III, of San Antonio. Some of his fundraising is likely to benefit the state party as well. For another, Politico is reporting that national Democratic groups have launched an initiative called “Battleground Texas” designed to re-invigorate the hapless state party.
From POLITICO:
National Democrats are taking steps to create a large-scale independent group aimed at turning traditionally conservative Texas into a prime electoral battleground, crafting a new initiative to identify and mobilize progressive voters in the rapidly-changing state, strategists familiar with the plans told POLITICO.
The organization, dubbed “Battleground Texas,” plans to engage the state’s rapidly growing Latino population, as well as African-American voters and other Democratic-leaning constituencies that have been underrepresented at the ballot box in recent cycles. Two sources said the contemplated budget would run into the tens of millions of dollars over several years – a project Democrats hope has enough heft to help turn what has long been an electoral pipe dream into reality.
“Tens of millions of dollars”? Well, I’ll believe it when I see it. That is serious money–enough to attract consultants, campaign operatives, and other talented folks who know the business of politics. Munoz’s presence should assure that the Castros and other Democratic candidates will be well funded when the time comes for them to run for high office.
I would offer the Democrats one piece of advice: the wisdom of Karl Rove. When the Republicans were trying to turn Texas red in the eighties, and they lost races here and there, Rove would say, “It’s not an event, it’s a process.” What today’s Democrats have that Republicans didn’t have in the eighties and nineties is the advantage of demographics. The stakes are high, because if “Battleground Texas” is successful, and Democrats can contest Texas, the Republican party could lose its biggest block of electoral votes.
Anonymous says:
The Democrats’ best advantage would be state Republicans who refused to either accept or adjust to the state’s changing demographics.
The Democrats’ biggest handicap would be the way other Democrats are running other big states in the country — it’s hard to say “I want Texas’ economy and government to be more like California, New York or Illinois” with a straight face as of January 2013 because all three of those states are at or nearing train wreck status (though to be fair, California and New York pols’ steadfast opposition to oil and gas fracking in their states has really been a boom to Texas’ economy. Thanks, suckers).
The Democrats can advance in Texas if the Republican majority ticks off the Latino vote enough they turn out in droves 6-10 years from now to vote against them — which certain parts of the GOP are perfectly capable of doing. But the Democrats really can’t do it on a positive message on overall economic issues, based on how Democrats are running other high-population/high-budget states right now.
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Beerman Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 12:31 pm
Agree!
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Blue Dogs Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 11:19 am
TX Dems will NOT win statewide offices until either 2018 or 2022 at least.
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Pat Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 2:09 pm
Eh, I’d put the odds at 5-1 against. Word on the street is that there are around 850K Democratic-lean non-registrants concentrated in the cities and the Valley. Even if Battleground meets that goal, they’d still need (i) a Tea Party-induced dud of a Republican candidate, (ii) a decent Democratic candidate capable of flipping 200K Republican votes, *and* (iii) the best Democratic GOTV in a midterm since 1990. Not impossible, just highly unlikely.
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Yellow Page Lawyer says:
Haven’t you heard? George P. Bush has sailed in from Florida to save the day. I guess that ends the Democrat comeback (not).
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Coolbaugh says:
Isn’t this exactly what the Texas Democratic Trust — which had millions of dollars, by the way — was supposed to do? The party is further behind now than when the Trust was launched.
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WUSRPH says:
Like Paul I will believe it when I see it…but some of us can remember when John Tower was considered a fluke….liberals “went fishing”, etc. It took a long time, but people like Norman Newton and company started the process back then that now has GOPers in every statewide office. It is feasible, but is the will (and the money) really there?
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Anonymous says:
Memo to the Ds.
(1) I’m a technical man, not a political man, so I’m not going to tell you how to block walk Bexar County. But the next time you nominate someone with the talents and the experience and the outlook of Ron Kirk, could you consider spending the money to have him talk to every Lions Club and Rotary Club in Midland, Lubbock, and Abilene? You need to get your votes in the cities but unless you also minimize your losses in places like those towns and the exurbs and seriously contest the suburbs, how can you win?
(2) This is Texas, a fairly well run low taxes low services state. That’s been going on since the state was run by Democrats. Ask yourself if you can change that. (I don’t think you can. There are things we like about that.) Ask yourself if you can point out Democrats played a role in bringing that about and how they did that. (Except for the resolutely low information voter, I think you can.). Ask yourself if, as Texas gets bigger and needs to meet challenges in water and education and transportation, you can work on specific, careful, creative ways to meet those challenges without making it sound like you want to generally turn Texas into a high taxes high services state?
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Jed Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 2:01 pm
the people who are supposedly going to “turn texas blue” are going to need texas to become a high tax, high service state.
if the demographics are all-important (as your talking points master suggests), then texas’s history is all but irrelevant.
on the other hand, as long as all those people can’t or don’t vote, the demographics may not matter so much after all.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 2:35 pm
Who is my talking points master?
Good luck turning Texas blue by having the new demographic vote us into becoming a high taxes high services state. Good luck keeping Austin reliably blue with that approach.
Particularly at the federal level, the Republicans have done a lot of bad stuff since 1992. But they’ve long been able to count on the fact that their opposition has been the Democrats.
I sometimes wonder if the Rs weren’t able to plant some sleeper agents and agent provacateurs into the ranks of D activists and consultants. Even if that’s a fanciful notion, the result would seem to be the same.
Tom below painted a successful D message more succinctly than did I.
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db Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 11:19 am
Ron Kirk had to run alongside the worst possible Democratic gubernatorial candidate of all time. Thank God John Sharp is running A&M now and not the Texas Democratic Party.
Texas will turn blue when liberals stop being racist and let black and brown people run the party their way.
The last Texas Democratic Governor was Ann Richards and she did nothing but build more prisons to put black people in. It is time for Democratic Party money to get behind the rising leadership such as the Castro twins. Don’t recruit them to DC we need optimistic youthful leadership in Texas. Ted Cruz is a product of the Texas Tea Party, which is a direct descendent of the White Citizens Parties of the 1930s. The gerrymandering following the 2010 Census was a game changer that was taught to the Tea Party by Yellow Dog Democrats. The national Democratic Party is just now catching on that they lost at least a decade if not a century in the 2010 elections. All those young white liberals who put Obama in office went home and stayed there until 2012. Where you be in 2014?
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Anonymous Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 12:07 pm
Db, I might have said it differently but I pretty much agree with everything you say.
There are a large number of enormously talented and sensible black and Hispanic members of the Texas Legislature. A few of those members were Craddick Ds who were given more of an opportunity to use their talents when the House turned R than when it was still D. I’m happy to contemplate a world in which they lead or play a real and substantial role in leading Texas; I’ll be happy to follow.
It’s a big mistake to presume that Rs and center to center right Texas suburbanites are generally racist. It boggled my mind then and now that Ron Kirk was not given the funds and advice that would allow him to take his campaign to the mid-size cities and the suburbs.
BTW, I’m not a young liberal but an Eisenhower Republican in late middle age. I still split my ticket on state and local races but at the federal level I think the Rs have been out of bounds since 1992.
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Blue Dogs Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 2:33 pm
Anon, Kirk ran for the UNITED STATES SENATE in 2002, Sanchez was running for the Governor’s Mansion.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 2:47 pm
Right.
And candidates for THE UNITED STATES SENATE, like candidates for governor, run statewide races.
So what’s your point?
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Anonymous says:
Coolbaugh is right. Its not the money, its who is deciding how its spent. A bad GM with a fistful o dollars will still end up with a bad team, just a better paid bad team. The GMs have to be replaced before any money will be more than just good money after bad.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 1:01 pm
Are you talking about Jerry Jones and the Cowboys? Bad GM; lots of money; still losers.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 3:02 pm
Someone with a much worse record than Jerry. Makes Jerry look like a marvel of flexibility.
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Blue Dogs Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 2:34 pm
Jerry Jones has 3 Super Bowl titles with Jimmy Johnson (1992, 1993) and Barry Switzer (1995).
The ONLY reason San Francisco won the SB in 1994 was because of what fallout over Jones and Johnson and the 49ers got lucky that year because of Johnson’s mysterious exit.
Had Jimmy Johnson not been fired, Dallas likely would have won 4 in a row including the one in 1995.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 3:39 pm
And thats the point. What worked 18 freakin years ago may not work anymore. But the Jerry Joneses of the political world stay in charge, no matter how often they now lose, and how long ago they had success. Obamaclaus could ride to Texas on his sleigh, raining money all over the place, and it will all be wasted if it isn’t kept out of the hands of the tired old GMs.
Tom says:
The Republican message is offensive to women and minorities. Fix that and you have a chance, but if you do fix that you risk alienating your base.
A Democratic message based on fixing roads and schools and eliminating crony capitalism would be a good start.
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Palmer Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 1:59 pm
A strong defense, lower taxes, less government, no deficit spending and the right to capitalize on individual potential is offensive?
The GOP needs to say “good-bye” to some of it right side wingnuts, religious zealots, homophobes and xenophobic bigots.
The Liberal’s left side wing nuts, “hard” secularists, in your face LGBT’ers and true racists will then look like the crazies they really are.
The future is clear — if the right’s crazies don’t let up a bit, we can count on more Democrat “magic” will take over Texas and the Republic.
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Another Wilco Voter Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 2:59 pm
Palmer says, “The GOP needs to say “good-bye” to some of it right side wingnuts, religious zealots, homophobes and xenophobic bigots.”
That’s like telling Kermit the Frog to stop being green or expecting Rick Perry to suddenly get a clue about maple syrup.
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Blue Dogs Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 2:36 pm
The GOPers need 30-37 percent of Latinos and 12-17 percent of African Americans to keep winning statewide elections.
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sdguppy Reply:
January 26th, 2013 at 11:17 pm
Tom summed up my thoughts as I read these comments. My taxes are low but the roads stink, we are selling highways to international companies and our schools have a big bullseye on them. The other comment would be that, while we do have jobs, a lot of them are just crap, with people barely scraping by.
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ghostofann says:
I’m not holding my breath.
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JohnBernardBooks says:
If you believe all republican hate women, hispanics, are racist, and are dumb you are truly stupid.
Yes I’m aware the low information voter believes this because it’s what they’ve been told.
But the low information voter in Texas is in the minority.
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Anon Reply:
January 28th, 2013 at 12:56 pm
Republicans are scared of women (particularly Old Army aggies)are pretty much racist and are not really dumb (but thay are sheep. Republicans live for bumper sticker slogans and denigrating anyone they disagree with. Texas republicans are more joke worthy than most.
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Jed says:
if step one in the democratic plan to reclaim texas is to renounce the platform of the national party (e.g. announcing no intention to pursue gun control legislation in texas), then you can keep it.
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Peggy Venable's conscious says:
Too many voters on both sides of the aisle are straight ticket voters and are mere sheep. An informed electorate is a myth.
Poll anywhere in the state and ask voters to name their senator or state rep if you don’t believe it.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 2:33 pm
Exactly right. And Texans, their protestations of “rugged individualism” to the contrary, are the biggest sheep in the entire country. They go with whichever party is the “shepherd” and right now it’s the Republicans. That’s not going to change.
There’s no way to make Dems into the “cool party.” Republicans need to relax. Keep moving further right, troglodytes. The low-information sheep will have no choice but to follow you. It’s what sheep do.
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Tom says:
“If you believe all republican hate women, hispanics, are racist, and are dumb you are truly stupid.”
There is a reason a liberal black man with the middle name Hussein presiding over one of the highest unemployment rates in the history of this country, was easily able to defeat the Republican Party.
The GOP’s wounds were self-inflicted.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 3:01 pm
But do you really think at the state level, a message of “We really, really need to make Texas government act more like California” is going to play well with voters anytime in the near future? Or that political types who think “Gasland” is the Gospel truth are going to be able to convince South Texas Hispanics to give up their fracking-created jobs to Save the Planet?
Look at how Bob Bullock and John Sharp won re-election against the Republican tsunami in 1994. That may be 18 years ago, but that’s the strategy Democrats at the state level are going to have to return to if they want to return to power and keep it (which means what they say on the campaign trail is what they have to follow through on once in Austin — none of this “Golly, now that I’m in office, I think we need to pass a state income tax,” shenanigans the Richards Administration pulled in 1991, which is the main reason the Democrats are in the hole they’re in today).
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Vernon Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 4:58 pm
Well, first of all no one would ever use that message.
And secondly, it’s not only a choice between running Texas the way Texas is run now and running Texas like California.
There is middle ground that would still allow Texas to thrive.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 8:06 pm
…which is how the Democrats ran things in Texas up until 1991. The gobsmackingly asinine push to pass a state income tax poisoned the well for Democrats with a large swatch of voters for a generation, because it told them “We want to run Texas like New York. We want to run Texas like California.”
Twenty-plus years down the line, you now have a whole generation of voters who don’t remember the early 90s, so the Democrats have a lot better chance of wooing those voters. But those same voters can look at the economic conditions of other big states led by Democrats right now and be wary of what might happen here.
That’s why, come the day that the party does win back some sort of control in the state, if the top elected officials campaign and win saying one thing and then govern another way, in order to set themselves up for possible higher elected office with the more liberal national voters, the same thing that happened in 1994 will happen again (which BTW, is why after campaigning one way in 1992 and governing another way in 93-94, Bill Clinton went triangulating back to the middle prior to ’96 — like Bob Bullock after the state elections in ’92, he could see the handwriting on the wall and acted before he lost the support of the swing voters).
johnBurnedallhisBooks Reply:
January 26th, 2013 at 10:41 am
Well of course you know it, if anyone dares disagree with you they’re just wrong, but when they disagree with me they are super low information double wrong and since I know you disagree with me that makes you super low information double wrong, though you used to be a pedant when that was my temporarily favorite insult but that was then and this is now so now you are just super low information double wrong, ipso fatso because you disagree with me with is twice as bad as me disagreeing with you.
I love you low information voters you’ve been told all your life how smart you are, it must be a shock to find out how little you do know, in fact you are so low information that you don’t even know when i have been smart enough to shock you in to knowing the nothing that you know.
moronz
Americanus Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 1:05 am
@Anonymous 3:01 p.m. & 8:06 p.m.
. . . Umm, actually Bob Bullock was the one that proposed the state income tax in 1991, only to backtrack less than two years later and push through the constitutional amendment that was approved requiring the voters to approve the imposition of an income tax. I worked in the Legislature at the time and it was huge news when Bullock came out in favor of an income tax, particularly since he had been Comptroller.
So, it is patently unfair to blame that income tax proposal on Ann Richards and attribute her as saying “Golly, now that I’m in office, I think we need to pass a state income tax”
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Anonymous Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 8:43 am
…hence my point about ’92 and the elections that year, which went great for the Democrats on the national level, but not-so-hot in Texas. Bullock saw he had screwed up big-time, in terms of the feelings of state voters on the income tax, and pulled one of the most amazing pirouettes in Texas legislative history, positioning himself as the champion against the very bill he had backed two years earlier. It was something he could do, because in ’93 there were no Republicans in statewide office with the stature to grab the anti-income tax banner and drub the lite gov over the head with it (certainly not the freshman ag commissioner of the time).
Bullock and John Sharp, with his very high-profile statements about cutting waste and responsible government spending, recognized the mood of Texas voters in 1993-94 and as a result, were still in office in 1995. The other Democrats in statewide posts, including the governor and the people around her, seemed to enamored with the idea of being loved by other Dems and media outlets outside Texas has being at the forefront of leading the Lone Star State in a new, more enlightened direction, and ended up bearing the brunt of the voters’ wrath in November ’94.
Blue Dogs Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 2:37 pm
Richards was stupid in proposing the state income tax during her tenure in office.
Mauro and Morales were also re-elected in 1994 that year alongside Bullock and Sharp while the GOP won the Governor’s Mansion.
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Americanus Reply:
January 26th, 2013 at 2:34 am
Anonymous, ’94 was a nationalized election. I think you’re overthinking things a bit.
W rode his Daddy’s Rolodex into office, or at least used it along with the money from those that had big checkbooks to put someone in the Governor’s mansion that would work to gut corporate accountability, through “tort reform” and other anti-accountability dodges.
I have it on good authority from someone that was very involved with the Bush family that W was emotionally motivated by Richards having insulted his dad at the ’88 DNC.
JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 8:51 pm
Yes when Mitt Romney let Candy Crowley lie about Benghazi he lost the American voter, purely self inflicted. All he had to do was call her and Obama out for their lies, and he wins in a landslide.
Republicans better learn the “middle road” that Ike spoke of is being torn apart but the lying left.
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BCinBCS Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 1:14 am
JBB, I have never met anyone in my long life that has as many excuses and bad predictions as you. Doesn’t it embarrass you to constantly be wrong? Do you realize how stupid your posts make you appear? You honestly think that Candy Crowley is the reason that Romney lost the presidential election? How can anyone be so ill informed and narrow minded?
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Jerry Only Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 1:31 am
mitt romney is the reason mitt romney lost. and jbb was predicting a landslide and backing him all the way down the drain.
JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 6:43 am
BC with all due respect if my posts go over your head ask someone smarter to explain them to you.
Jerry same message as before stop being a stupid.
ANONYMOUS Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 10:40 am
JBB, we all know that you are the definition of stupid. WE ALL KNOW IT.
JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 2:23 pm
Well of course you know it, if anyone dares disagree with you they’re just wrong.
I love you low information voters you’ve been told all your life how smart you are, it must be a shock to find out how little you do know.
Another Wilco Voter Reply:
January 28th, 2013 at 11:13 am
Please, please, please, don’t feed the troll!
Dan C says:
I moved to Dallas County in the mid 1980′s when the R’s were taking over. It was solidly red for 20 years. Now it is SOLIDLY blue. I would never have imagined D’s in control in 1990. Demographics are a key reason, but not the only reason. Educated, young, urban voters are turned off by today’s GOP.
Rural East and West Texas will be red for the foreseeable future. For Battleground Texas to have any chance they have to do two things. First, move out from the big blue cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and [almost] Houston)to their suburbs and vie for the educated moderates who are turned off by the wingnuts and extremists who control today’s GOP. Two, get the Latino voters to show up on election day.
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johnBurnedallhisBooks Reply:
January 26th, 2013 at 10:44 am
Well of course you know it, if anyone dares disagree with you they’re just wrong, but when they disagree with me they are super low information double wrong and since I know you disagree with me that makes you super low information double wrong, though you used to be a pedant when that was my temporarily favorite insult but that was then and this is now so now you are just super low information double wrong, ipso fatso because you disagree with me with is twice as bad as me disagreeing with you.
I love you low information voters you’ve been told all your life how smart you are, it must be a shock to find out how little you do know, in fact you are so low information that you don’t even know when i have been smart enough to shock you in to knowing the nothing that you know.
moronz
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Jed says:
yes, and my point is to do that last thing you have to offer them something other than a lecture on personal responsibility and the wonders of the free market.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 4:31 pm
Your other point is that that “something” needs to be having the new demographic turn Texas into a high taxes high services state. Saying that “you have to offer them something” sounds like you’re teeing things up for Rush and Hannity and JBB to knock the Democrats in Texas right back out of the ballpark.
Why not act in a way inconsistent with being an agent provacateur for the Rs? Why not talk about good roads and good schools and needed water projects and, maybe after waiting two years, improving the health and economy of Texas by signing up for the great deal the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act would be.
Championing the ACA (Obamacare) is going to be your leftward boundary in this state for quite some time.
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Jed Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 10:47 am
yeah, i figured that would be your reply. but listening to the right complain about how obama won by appealing to the self-interest of his voters is so far beyond hypocrisy that i just can’t be bothered to respond to it. could hannity make some noise about what i said? sure. could i have said it more carefully? perhaps. but the democrats don’t need (or want) hannity listeners in their coalition, anyway. recruiting boxes of rocks would be more constructive.
i will say this: i don’t think i did a good job of explaining my point. i am not championing the democratic plan to “take back texas.” i think the texas dems are laughably clueless.
here is my complaint: the democratic strategy for texas seems to hinge largely on wishful thinking about when the demographics in the state will turn over. but in the meantime, their actual platform seems to run away from the positions that would motivate this very demographic. what i meant was this: IF your long-term success hinges on getting out latino voters, then crafting a message to chase after white suburban types is 180 degrees in the wrong direction. moreover, you shouldn’t need both to get to 50%. so pick one.
personally, i’d like to see the texas democratic party offer an actual liberal alternative, rather than just trying to be the second-most conservative party in texas. after all, the liberal voters in texas may not be enough on their own to win elections, but just try winning as a democrat if you DON’T have them.
there. better?
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Anonymous Reply:
January 26th, 2013 at 3:25 pm
A little better.
I don’t know if you and other readers of the Burka Blog are still checking this post or have mostly moved on. But just in case let me go a little deeper and perhaps set our differences of opinion in sharper relief.
I think that you think a large majority of black and Hispanic voters are essentially liberal Democrats. (Let me know if I’m incorrectly describing your position.) I disagree. I think that those voters together with Asian-American voters have been voting for the Democrats in ever larger margins for a variety of reasons, but I think many of those voters both nationally but particularly in Texas are at heart old-fashioned liberal Republicans.
By being at heart liberal Republicans I suppose I mean something a little different than “socially liberal and fiscally conservative”, though perhaps that’s not all that far off the mark. But I mean a Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower kind of Republicanism suited for our post civil rights post New Deal post Great Society post industrial times.
Liberal Republicans may not so much exist as a self-identified group anymore but I think the sensibility remains. There are things, as President Obama says, that we accomplish best when we come together and act as a country through the government. But when we regulate we better keep a running tab that keeps track of the regulatory burden; and when we spend public money we better be lean and efficient and sustainable and keep track of the financial burden and revisit periodically whether this is something that’s best accomplished by spending public money. Sometimes the best answer is to come together and act as a state or as a country. Sometimes the best answer is to respond like a flinty old New England Republican and make do with what we’ve got.
If you’re right, you’re in for a long loud divisive war.
If I’m right, you can motivate urban voters and voters south of I-10 and at the same time make a pitch with the same message to voters in the smaller cities and the suburbs and to whatever remains of old-fashioned Texas populism out on the farms and ranches. The Republicans will quickly moderate their tone and outlook, though they won’t become just like the Democrats, and Texas will pretty quickly become a two party state. That’s probably good for Texas, I think, and I care more about Texas than I care about the Republicans or the Democrats.
Also, if I’m right, we can keep on being a generally low tax low services well run state with our hyper-federalized way of doing things and we can occasionally decide to act narrowly and specifically to add a public good here and there (like by addressing our huge medically uninsured population through the federal ACA, or letting metropolitan regions decide for themselves whether to raise the gas tax locally).
We can argue about this but I don’t see the point, because I’m guessing that looking to modern polling and modern statistical analysis as interpreted by elected officials who deal with their constituents on an ongoing basis is the best way to settle our difference of opinion.
Jed Reply:
January 26th, 2013 at 4:20 pm
yeah, we’re pretty far apart on this.
blacks are democrats, period. liberal and ocnservative has nothing to do with it. the polls tell the tale. but party ID does little good if you don’t vote.
but my point was really about motivating latino voters, who i would expect to the the OPPOSITE of rockefeller republicans. i’m not sure what would lead you to expect that, but think about it. compared to urban whites, hispanics are on average socially conservative (i.e. religious, opposed to things like abortion), but disproportionately disadvantaged. a family values message is what is needed here, but certainly not lean spending.
think about this: how much money will it take to bring the infrastructure and education in the valley up the standards of the rest of the state? you have to promise to do that if you’re going to get the attention of latinos in the numbers the democrats seem to think they’re going to get. and that would take MASSIVE increases in spending.
because those people currently live in a third world country (i.e. south texas) and lest you think i know not of what i speak, i teach the kids that come from that part of texas. i know they aren’t getting anything like a real education in their schools. not even close. and they know it. and telliong them that this is their own fault, or that they are going to fix it by pulling up their bootstraps, or that they just need to wait another century, ain’t going to fix the democrats OR texas.
JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 6:46 am
“yes, and my point is to do that last thing you have to offer them something other than a lecture on personal responsibility and the wonders of the free market.”
progessives know that won’t stand up to entitlements funded by the taxpayer.
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Jed Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 10:56 am
correct.
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John Johnson says:
How come we got a Cornyn and Cruz and Oklahoma got a Coburn? I want a Corburn. I’d trade the Okies Abbott, Perry, Dewhurst, and Combs for Coburn. Would keep Patterson cause he is the closet thing we have to a Coburn. No one else around on the R side who will speak freely and forthrightly about what ails us and the steps that need to be taken to initiate a cure. Tired of hearing how good we look, all the while knowing that we are really dying a slow death from the inside out.
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Jerry Only Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 5:30 pm
the idiots in oklahoma also got an inhofe.
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BCinBCS Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 1:17 am
Amen
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Alan Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 6:55 pm
I’ve always admired Tom Coburn. He’s one of the few examples of a far-right Republican who actually represents his state’s interests rather than being a mouthpiece for national groups like AFP and ALEC (Jim DeMint) or shamelessly self-promoting (Marco Rubio, Rand Paul).
Inhofe is a mean-spirited fundamentalist caricature. I recall him once bringing a poster-size family portrait onto the Senate floor and bragging about how no one in his extended family was gay or atheist or had ever been divorced. As if this were somehow relevant to him doing his job and not wasting everyone’s time.
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Blue Dogs Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 2:39 pm
Johnson, I would rather keep Abbott, Cruz, Cornyn, Perry and Co., here in Texas thank you very much.
Let Oklahoma die in their own crap.
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Patriotone says:
Texans have to understand that we are living on a meth high right now. We have lots of oil and new technology and as good as it is in parts of the state, it isn’t near as good as it could or should be. The oil will run out. The boom will bust. What will be left but bad roads and uneducated children. Texas is going to be a majority hispanic state, and soon. Fine, demography is destiny. There won’t be a problem unless we don’t educate these children. We should have at least 2 if not 3 more flagship universities and kids should get out of school without crippling debt. Texas roads should be the envy of the world. We will soon find water much more valuable than oil and we have to address this.This is going to take people with vision. A high bar in the land of the blind. Democrats take over when they convince Texans they have a vision to accomplish these things.
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vietvet3 Reply:
January 24th, 2013 at 6:56 pm
“People with vision, you say.”
“Yeah, a hell of a vision!”- paraphrasing Woodrow Call
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JohnBernardBooks says:
Dems haven’t won a statewide election in Texas in over 20 years, because the low information voters believe the drivel put out by the progressives.
Progressives won’t stop lying and the low information voter is too stupid to stop believing their crap.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 9:40 am
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=3Fn36l_z3WY&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D3Fn36l_z3WY
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Anonymous says:
Careful JBB. That makes no sense even by your lights. I hope that was just a cutting and pasting error on your part and not you coming unhinged at the thought that the Ds may make a play for Texas. If it’s the latter, take a deep breath and relax. Maybe adopt a mantra. I will be calm and rational when I attempt to affect public policy. I will be calm and rational when I attempt to affect public policy …
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 6:56 am
you keep drinking the kool aid, it won’t make you any smarter but it will make a ring around your silly grin.
Democrats are run by the progessives who tell the low information what to think and how to vote.
American’s aren’t buying the progressive agenda that should tell some of you something, but it doesn’t.
“Moving to California was once the dream for many Americans. Its population grew at almost triple the national average — until 1990. Then big government, in the form of endless regulation and taxes, killed much of the dream. In the last decade, 2 million people left California.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/23/shopping-around-for-better-life/#ixzz2IzXJPjgf
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Anonymous Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 9:37 am
Sigh. That’ll teach me to try and be nice. OK, then, back to the original idea on seeing your post 1/24 at 8:55 PM.
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rw says:
If this state was as screwed up as some of the people on this blog indicate then we might new Democrat leadership. But Democrats can’t manage anything worth a damn – there are several blue states with Republican governors. How many red states with Democrat governors are there? People like Christie and Walker clean up messes that prior Democrat admins make.
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Anonymous Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 9:33 am
I would agree to the proposition that there are a lot of blue states where R governors get elected to clean up the mess made by Ds and that at the federal level we have to vote in Ds to clean up the messes made by Rs.
Which if you think about it is consistent with all those R governors in blue states and D U.S. Senators in red and reddish purple states.
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Blue Dogs Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 2:41 pm
Arkansas has a Democratic Governor in a Red State (Mike Beebe) in the post-Bill Clinton Era in the Natural State.
North Carolina had 3 consecutive Democratic governors for 20 straight years from 1992 until 2012 in a Red State.
West Virginia is a deep Red State with the Democrats controlling the governorship since 2000.
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Marie says:
Hmm…
As Texas turns blue, Austin will turn… yellow? (What’s the Libertarian color?)
I think Austin has to be different. It won’t stand for being like Dallas and Houston. It’s a “special” city. I’m already seeing more libertarian tints to neighborhoods in Austin these days.
Also call me skeptical, but it sounds like they plan on running pro-abortion, gun control, big government candidates. That will go over so well with the libertarian and independents.
Of course, they’ll market them as pro-education, pro-choice, gun safety fiscal liberals.
I’m sure Texas will get more liberal over time, but I think the New Republic had it right it won’t be until after 2020. Al the young people I meet are staunchly libertarian. They worship Ron Paul.
And since they represent a usual demographic for democrats that’s minus votes for the democrats. Unless the democrats want to run fiscal conservatives, they just won’t have appeal the after Obama era.
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Jed Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 10:51 am
the libertarian color is white.
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Blue Dogs Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 2:43 pm
Marie, Texas Democrats likely will NOT win statewide offices until at least either 2018 or even 2022 (unless Greg Abbott wins a 3rd term as governor, but he’s likely a two termer and extends the GOP’s dominance of the Governor’s Mansion to 28 years by then).
The TX Dems will not win back either chamber of the Legislature until 2030. Voter ID in the state will set the Dems back for awhile.
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paulburka Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 8:29 pm
Voter I.D. will be long forgotten by 2030. It will have a hard time getting past the D.C. circuit court that found intentional discrimination,
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 27th, 2013 at 7:36 am
Paul its already the law of the land, ask any lawyer.
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-04-28/politics/scotus.voter.id_1_voter-impersonation-voter-id-laws-voter-fraud?_s=PM:POLITICS
wayne thorburn says:
If anyone would bother to look at recent election results in Texas they might come up with the equally relevant question; when will the Democrats face up to their problem with Anglo voters? For the next 10-15 years, that is at least as relevant as asking the Republicans to deal with their low support among Hispanics. At least the GOP is trying to do something while Democrats fail to perceive that a problem exists. Remember: All Texas is not Austin!
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Blue Dogs says:
The Texas Democrats still have yet to address their lack of $$$$ in competiting for winning elections, statewide offices that is.
They tried this back in 2002 with Tony Sanchez which failed badly after wasting over $72 million of his own $$$ to unseat Perry, then fast forward 8 years later, and Bill White spent $25 million and the Democratic Governors Association thought about contesting the race when they thought polls showed a “close race”, but Perry won BIG by double digits.
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Jed says:
agreed that lack of support by the party is a big problem for dems in statewide offices.
BUT, your examples show that money is not the only problem. sanchez outspent perry in that race, didn’t he?
putting a hispanic name on the ticket (or in charge of the state party) and then trying to run right down the middle would appear to be a tested and failed strategy.
next!
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Blue Dogs Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 11:41 am
Sanchez couldn’t even give Texans a clear reason why they would vote for him instead of Perry.
His problem in 2002 was that Perry managed to tie him to Mexican drug cartels and the death of the ATF agent.
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Anonymous says:
Lack of money isn’t the only problem with texas dems but it sure is a lot of the problem. They are stuck in a chicken
And the egg problem. The money is here, but most won’t waste their
Money on
Local or statewide races because they are seen as unwinnable. So because of a
Lack of donations, local and statewides lose, thus self-fulfilling the donors prophesies of losing.
Outside money, not spent like sanche did on pointless mailers, but on pushing up dem
Likely voter numbers, is exactly what is
Needed for dems. As dems start to see the fruits of this by picking up marginal suburban house seats, and as a statewide like Wendy Davis breaks the 45% barrier, more local money will stay local, and one thing will lead to another. This fixes, to the margin necessary, the “anglo” problem. A
Big rise in minority participation, plus just stabilizing and pushing back the anglo numbers by just three points, equals a blue Texas by 2020. And maybe someone breaks through in 2018 statewide.
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Blue Dogs Reply:
January 25th, 2013 at 2:44 pm
Anon, speaking of Greg Abbott how many terms will he likely serve as governor ?
A. 2
B. 3
C. Until he dies.
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TexasGal says:
To all you naysayers: It is real. We are going door-to-door, ground game and air war. The money is already committed by some folks you’d be shocked to know have invested.
Y’all just sit back and prepare to get your butts kicked.
Go Blue!
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Anonymous Reply:
January 26th, 2013 at 3:42 pm
Yeah, but you Austin dems don’t like going door to door. Just sitting back in group meetings, sending out mailers and TV ads trying to educate the rest of us. Until you are all replaced by people who respect the common voter, instead of trying to educate them, you could spend a billion dollars and you won’t get anywhere.
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Jed Reply:
January 27th, 2013 at 9:13 pm
i hope you plan to do something besides mimic republicans once you’ve won all those races.
yellow dog, indeed.
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TexasGal says:
I am not an Austin Dem. I am not lazy and hate meetings.
I’d submit the problem with the “common voter” in Texas is that they are not all that common. Rare as snipe. We are going to make voting common, downright habitual.
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 27th, 2013 at 7:39 am
dems can’t win in Texas, they don’t have the “machine” dems have set up in the NE and West coast to buy votes.
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Jerry Only Reply:
January 27th, 2013 at 1:35 pm
you mean like the one the dems ran in texas for most of the 20th century?
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JohmBernardBooks Reply:
January 27th, 2013 at 5:54 pm
Exactly, party bosses like George Duvall and politicians like LBJ are the reason most Texans vote republican. Those operatives are long gone and dems need a fresh infusion of cash for vote buying. Pay to vote is still the dem choice for stealing elections in Chicago, Philly, Detroit etc.
JohnBernardBooks says:
Can the democrats turn Texas into another dem controlled state run “the Chicago Way?”
Illinois’ credit rating downgraded; state drops to worst in the nation
Read more: http://wgntv.com/2013/01/26/illinois-credit-rating-downgraded-state-drops-to-worst-in-the-nation/#ixzz2JBU83Ffk
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Blue Dogs Reply:
January 28th, 2013 at 11:17 am
Books, you can thank Blagojevich for causing Illinois to be run into the ground and Quinn ain’t doing any better of cleaning up the state’s economic mess either.
I’m hearing IL State AG Lisa Madigan (D) is planning on challenging Quinn in the 2014 Democratic primary for the Executive Mansion, and former US Commerce Secretary and WH Chief of Staff Bill Daley (D) might run for governor too.
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Indiana Pearl says:
JBB, three Repub govs. of IL from 1991-2003.
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 28th, 2013 at 3:16 pm
I know but look what’s happened since, all dem all the time and the state is the worse run state in the US.
Look what dems have done to Chicago, Philly, Cleveland, and Detriot and dems want to do that to Austin.
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Indiana Pearl says:
Just heard a talk by Lawrence Lessig about how money in politics is destroying America. That’s a problem that both parties are guilty of and I’d like it to change
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John Johnson says:
Mark this up, Peral, as one we agree on wholeheartedly. If it comes down to allowing the Big’s to suck another dollar out of our pockets or having commonbreds get a break, who are the bought and paid for pols going to side with?
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JohnBernardBooks Reply:
January 29th, 2013 at 1:42 pm
forcing workers to join unions and then give their dues to democrats have been a union/dem marriage for years.
10 of the top 15 political donors are unions.
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php
I could have gone down to the top 20 but why rub salt into the wound.
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Anonymous says:
The Dems need to do turnout and registration in the cities and south texas, and a persuasion campaign in the older surbubs and high growth areas that are middle class. They can’t pick one over the other. They need to do both and it will be expensive and the money has to be there for the long haul.
Face it the rural areas outside of counties that have a large minority population are lost for the next 10-20 years if not a generation. The yellow dog Dems who remember Sam Rayburn, LBJ, and the tory Democrats are dying off, being replaced by their republican sons and grandsons on the voter rolls. Bill Clinton won Fannin, Delta, Morris, Red River, and did well in Kaufman and Hunt. All of these counties are now ruby red in state and federal elections, going 65% or more for Romney.
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JohnBernardBooks says:
voter registration means didlysquat, dems win when they pay people to vote.
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Bigj says:
As an African American, I have to remind the progressives that we are socially conservative. If you continue to push such acts you will be alone.
Now for Democrats to win, they must stop, stop, stop stop being so standoffish. Go to the community and talk. Go campaign in South rural Texas, and lastly call out and bash radio talk show hosts like WOAI’s Joe Pags, Michael Berry, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity. Campaign near their radio stations if need be.
Williams 2014.
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