Wednesday, September 12, 2018

#VoteBlueNoMatterWho? #NoCanDo

#AnyBlueJustWon'tDo for me.


As DWT posted a few weeks ago, it's almost nostril-pinching time for some.

Beto, as many of you know, is on Colbert tonight.  Panties and money will be thrown.  Update: Keep your clicker close, because Ted Cruz has bought ad time during the show.  What a likeable guy.

As I mentioned last week, he will have enough caysh to win.  Lack of name recognition should be no excuse for his losing, either.  That leaves only one thing: Latin@ turnoutSeveral media outlets have already mentioned it as key to Bob's victory, so I'll just point you to Stace, who -- as referenced in Monday's Wrangle -- seems to be using the recent NALEO poll for excusing low turnout well in advance of the election.  Let's hope I'm just misunderstanding him, but ...

... frankly, if Trump and ICE and separating children from their parents and holding kids in cages, and policies like this, and Democrats like Lupe Valdez and Sylvia Garcia and Veronica Escobar and Lina Hidalgo and Adrian Garcia and a shit-ton of others on the ballot aren't enough to motivate turnout, then maybe turnout is impervious to motivation.  Exactly how much fucking worse must it get for La Raza in this country before they do something about it?

If I remember history rightly, black people have been tortured, murdered, lynched, dragged, burned, and hanged just for trying to vote.  And then they were poll-taxed.  And they're still pretty well kept from voting by any means Republicans deem necessary to this day.  Maybe I have a blind spot, but I just don't recall Latinxs having to put up with as much bullshit through the years as that.

If Latin@s (and maybe this should be read as 'Mexicans') are waiting for their engraved invitation to a banquet where all of their wishes, hopes, and dreams will be granted ahead of their citizen participation in selecting our leaders ... then somebody needs to take them aside and explain that politics doesn't work that way.

Power concedes nothing without a demand, said Frederick Douglass.  And the way that looks, hermanos y hermanas, is: first you show up, then you demand.  Your demand correspondingly includes withholding your future support if your prior demands are not met.  Maybe try something different besides doing nothing this year, see what happens.

On the bright side for Beto, my shero Sema is on board.


She's made a pragmatic political calculation here, to Gadfly's irritation.  She plans on challenging Cornyn in 2020, and there's simply no way that her harsh criticisms of the Democratic Party establishment -- published as an op-ed in the Chronic in late July-- would be forgiven if she did what I'm doing and went "bah-fungoo" at O'Rourke.

I'm gonna cut her some slack.  Part of this is inherently being DSA; if you're running on their ballot line, you're inside their party.  You are expected to fall in line in November.  She may have simply given in to Beto's most obvious charm: his empathy.  He listens well.

Let's also be clear that Poop Cruz, whoever it is Tweeting for him, his comms team generally, and the Texas GOP at large are the gifts that keep on giving to O'Rourke.  They are doing everything they possibly can to lose this race for the Zodiac Killer.  Beto has also been blessed with the most favorable media coverage ever.  For the life of me I cannot understand how he dances through these continuously blooming meadows of lilies, gilded and not.


There's no reason he should get special recognition for this.  He's already sworn off corporate money and PAC money (allegedly), right?  I find plaudits from McKibben here the equivalent of whooping for a 7-year old who successfully completes his first unattended poop, or a 14-year old who has managed to tie both his shoelaces.  It's very typical of the Congressman's national media coverage.  Read all of this, with the excerpt being the last sentence.

If O’Rourke really does have a chance to win this November, then he’s going to have to prove to be the political rock star all those profiles keep making him out to be. 

No Beto for me, but Mrs. Diddie will give him a vote.  Same for Elizabeth Fletcher (why does a corporate attorney go by such a childish, childhood name?), whom I find charisma-impaired on top of her more recent Labor Day hypocrisy.


Wasn't exactly her firm's position in 2016.  (Your vehement protests against personal characterization as a janitors' union buster have been duly noted, Lizzie.)

Her vanquished primary opponent, Laura Moser, has been graceful and hard-working in support of Ds of all stripes since March.  Both Sema and Laura are just better Democrats than me. 

While Moser would be more accurately called a Berniecrat and Sema DSA, I personally am more of a hybrid when you consider my affinity for the Greens, or any independent candidate running to the left of the Donks.  I like DSA and their inside strategy, but I'm also more than willing to part company when certain right-leaning Democrats -- Henry Cuellar, anyone?  Bueller?  -- fall too far outside tolerance limits, as they do for me with Beto and Lizzie.  YMMV, and this is not what the vast majority of Texas Democrats are accustomed to doing, as we all know.

I have a few more Dems I won't be voting for, and a list of those that I will, which may surprise some of you reading this far.  I'll try to get that posted before the weekend.

4 comments:

Gadfly said...

Two notes:

1. On Latin@ turnout, Texas Monthly covered that a while ago. Beto still doesn't want to play the old "retail politics" game in the Valley.

2. On Sema ... per David Bruce Collins (it's in my Twitter feed yesterday), Our Revolution Harris County chapter took a powder on endorsing Beto. That's all Sema has to do. She doesn't have to shout "undervote," she could have simply kept radio silence. And, she chose not to.

And, isn't it just possible that in 2020, at the same time the Hinojosa types pat her on the head for carrying water, that folks like Our Revolution Harris County ask her about this? Not just Green-leaners like you and me, but people within the Dem party, but, like her, at its more leftward side.

(If I have time, I'll see if/when other major Our Revolution chapters in the state do endorsements, and if they, like Houston's, take a powder on Beto.)

3. I will vote for our state senate candidate up here. Young, talked about lowering broadband Net costs for rural areas and other things that wingnut Bob Hall probably can't even think about thinking about. Besides Robert Francis, I'll likely undervote Lupe, on lack of competence more than any positions she holds. And, she can't even get a mention on social media these days.

PDiddie said...

1) Purposely left a more recent TM piece out of this post. Didn't think it was all that strong, had enough links as it was.

2) Sema has quite obviously softened for reasons of her own (and so far undisclosed). I believe I know her well enough to know she didn't sell out, so unless I learn otherwise, it's okay by me. I acknowledge it isn't by you. It didn't get me to vote for Beto. Maybe it will for some others, particularly in the RGV, where she ran strong in March.

3) Kendall Scudder. I'll be disclosing my votes and undervotes in my next post (you will agree with some of them and not with others). I'm not going to call them endorsements anymore, as even Mrs. Diddie would just rather vote a straight ticket than make the distinctions that you and I make. This is going to be a very pivotal kind of midterm for Texas Democrats than has been seen in recent years. I know saying "the most important election " blahblahblah is trite, but it certainly feels more than the usual true at this stage.

That makes her a better Democrat than, say, all these local centrist assholes who won't be voting for Franklin Bynum.

Unknown said...

First observation: Beto-Bob makes Prof. McKibben look really short.

If I read Our Revolution Harris County & Gulf Coast correctly, O'Rourke didn't get their endorsement because he didn't ask for it, or even send a surrogate to seek it. I notice that Our Revolution Texas has not updated its statewide Endorsements page since before the May 22 runoff.

I figured correctly that Sema's evolving willingness to promote O'Rourke was connected with her 2020 aspirations. She has announced that she filed with the FEC to run for Cornyn's seat. We can just hope that she keeps appealing to disaffected Democrats and prodding El Gigante Dormiente (i.e., stoking the LatinX vote) instead of trying to make nice with the establishment.

Gadfly said...

"Sellout" may be too strong a word. Not sure what is right. "Early-age careerist"? (Assuming that running again in 2020 is the key reason, which taking her at face value, it is.) More seriously, I guess it's confirmation that DSA Dems are ... Dems at bottom line.

I am noting in my piece for next week, which is still being revised, including with an update based on DBC's referenced piece, that I vote on foreign policy too. (As I think you do.) Single-payer is a key domestic issue, but ... what will Sema say about, oh, BDS?

You're right about important .... which IMO is part of ... not backsliding!

==

On the TM piece, I know Beto is going his own way. That said, how much of this is candidates' fault, and how much of it is border Hispanics' fault? Let's also not forget, as I have blogged before, that many younger Hispanics are evangelical Protestants, not Catholics, and trend more GOP than older ones.