Seeing R.E.D.D.

Harris County's Early Voting Ballot Board reconvenes this morning  to verify signatures on overseas and provisional ballots, so as I complete my service there, I'll just pass this one item along for your consumption.

It took a field trip to a trendy New York hotel nearly a year ago — and then a lot of follow- up — to get Republicans up to speed and on the same page about using technology in their Senate campaigns.

Last January, several dozen Republicans gathered in New York City at the Standard High Line hotel in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District at the invitation of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

The group included general consultants for most of the competitive Senate campaigns, mail vendors, pollsters, TV buyers, principals at the top Republican digital and data firms, and NRSC leadership and staff.

“We encouraged people to be very blunt with each other, and they were, in a very good way,” Lira said. “I compare it to the family having the argument they’ve been dancing around for years. … They entered the conference with a lot of historic baggage over, 'You’re taking my budget,’ or ‘You’re trying to steal my thing,’ and they left it with a greater sense of how they could work together.”

“It wasn’t a panacea,” Lira added, sensitive to oversimplification. “But I think it was a pivotal event.”

The High Line summit was a table setter, a beginning. It did two things: it cleared away obstacles to greater cooperation among the GOP’s paid consultant class and between them and the NRSC, and it delivered a clear message to them that the NRSC was expecting the consultants to execute digital-savvy campaigns. But Lira, with the backing of NRSC executive director Rob Collins and political director Ward Baker, was going to do more than just ask. He was determined to hold the campaigns accountable.

So Lira assembled a team to do just that. In March, he hired Mindy Finn, a well-respected digital strategist who had worked on multiple presidential campaigns and also as an executive at Twitter’s D.C. offices. Finn’s sole responsibility was to create what she named the R.E.D.D. program, short for Republicans Excelling at Digital and Data.

Somebody forward this to Jeremy Bird, please.

Update: As a matter of record-keeping here, the TexTrib also had a detailed report on Greg Abbott's extensive -- and, I'm sure, expensive -- voter turnout model.

Feeling vindicated

What I've been saying -- and doing -- for a couple of years now seems to be what others are also now saying and doing.  The idea of an independent progressive movement seems to have found purchase.

This piece at Down With Tyranny! -- which has the details of the New York governor's race -- links to this piece at Jacobin and this piece at The Guardian.  Two excerpts from those follow.

-- "Building outside the Democratic Party":

Everything about this election points to widespread dissatisfaction with a rightward-moving Democratic Party. Democratic voters stayed home. The turnout was a record low in New York State, with Cuomo receiving nearly a million fewer votes than he did in 2010. The Working Families Party (WFP) deployed all their resources to maintain their ballot line, but their campaign literature didn’t mention their candidate for governor: Cuomo. Only the Green Party significantly increased their vote.

Our gubernatorial candidate, Howie Hawkins, got 5 percent and 175,000 votes — nearly triple the number that voted for him in 2010 and quadruple the percentage. Instead of just voting against the Republicans or for a lesser evil, countless people expressed glee at the prospect of voting for someone running on a progressive platform.

Could only happen in in New York, you say?  Happened in California also, where 23 Greens won election across that big blue state, bringing their numbers to 64.

Could only happen in New York and California, you say?  A Texas Green candidate earned 10% in a statewide race for the first time in as long as anyone can remember.  A Texas Green in a contested statewide race with a strong Democratic candidate got 2% of the vote, at least twice as much as the historical average.

-- "America just took a wrong turn. It's time to take a hard left":

(T)here were real victories this week for progressive alternatives on clean energy, economic security and social justice. The extremist blood bath may have painted the country more red, but there were more than a few important – and extremely promising – tea leaves of green. It was even enough to suggest a new, independent, hard-left turn in American politics is still very much possible.

Fracking bans just passed in cities from California to Ohio and even in Denton, Texas – the town at the heart of America’s oil-and-gas boom. In Richmond, California, progressives beat back a multi-million dollar campaign funded by Chevron to defeat Green and allied candidates. Voters in Alaska, Oregon and Washington DC joined Washington State and Colorado in legalizing marijuana, adding to the growing momentum to call off the failed “war on drugs” that has given the US the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Still not buying it?  Would you open your mind a little about it if you read it in the Waco Tribune?

McLennan Community College professor Ashley Cruseturner astutely observed in a recent Tribune-Herald article that one-party rule allows the party faithful to dictate outcomes: “You have this situation where 5 percent of Texas is picking a statewide candidate for the whole state. Whoever is the most motivated in the spring, who can get this tiny group moving, that’s a lot of power.”

It is a lot of power, and concentrated power is not a good thing in a democracy. The results are predictable; we all find it hard not to reward our friends if it is within our power to do so.

(Notice that the author didn't mention the Green Party there.)  What else is being said about this strange phenomenon of the Democratic Party being abandoned by those who voted and those who did not?

-- "Why the Democrats lost... if they really did":

American voters — the ones that bothered to turn out for the elections — made a few things pretty clear. They’re tired of the party infighting. They’re tired of Democrat and Republican extremes. They’re tired of being held hostage by politicians who aren’t actually representing their wants and needs. The odd combination of Democratic policies and Republican politicians that were approved in this last election shows that Americans aren’t defined by two parties and the ideals encompassed by those parties. They are not black or white, but shades of grey, and need to be represented as such. Was it the Democrats who lost? Or the American people speaking in the limited voice allowed them by a two party system? It seems as though the populace of the United States is tired of party rhetoric, and is seeking a middle ground. It may be that the time is ripe to introduce a third party, one that is interested in representing the people, not collecting political gains like so many trophies.

-- And here's your argument for working within the Democratic Party to affect progressive change, from Bonddad.  "The importance of state-level third parties":

As spelled out above, corporatists are thoroughly in charge of the democratic establishment, to the point, it is widely reported, that they would prefer GOP election wins over progressive democratic candidates. See, for example, here.

So, how to make corporatist democrats extinct?  By showing them that they can never win.  And how do you show them that they will never win?  By borrowing a page from the career of Joe Lieberman.

It isn't enough for progressives to primary corporatists. State level third parties, like New York's Green Party, give progressives the ability to stay in elections right through the general election, even if they lose a democratic primary to corporatists.

Yes, this strategy will mean some general election losses over a few cycles.  But when corporatist democrats learn that they cannot win, they will start to disappear.  Progressives will win either as Democrats, or under another party banner.

By the way, this happened before. One hundred years ago, there were active Populist and Progressive Parties in the states (remember Robert LaFollette?). Ultimately they became part of the winning New Deal coalition.

Progressives shouldn't abandon the Democratic Party.  But they should target the corporatists as mercilessly as Tea Party republicans targeted their less-extremist wing, and state level Third Parties are an indispensable part of that attack.

-- And there's still room in my brain for this, which disagrees that reforming the Democratic Party is the best way to go.

If progressives can learn one thing from the 2014 election cycle, it is that they no longer have a place in the Democratic Party.

With Republicans on the offensive, Democratic incumbents and hopefuls spent the entire election running away from anything perceived to be associated with President Obama. In effect, this created numerous Democratic campaigns that ran to the right of a president that was already on a long-standing drift to the right of his own. This is in contrast to the normal state of affairs, which is where Democrats campaign on ideas that appeal to the progressive base and then do not deliver when elected.

This set of events left progressives and even many liberals without the party that they would normally identify with and vote for. The result was a sweeping defeat for Democrats in the congressional and gubernatorial elections, losing their Senate majority in the process.

Warning: a full reading of these links will be extraordinarily provocative for those on the left still trying to make some sense of last week's wipeout.  (Was it just a week ago that some Democrats were feeling hopeful about the end of the day's results?  I confess I had given up some time before early voting concluded; just didn't want to be Debbie Downer to my hard-working friends and neighbors.)

It's definitely going to challenge your thinking about the kind of Democrat you should support in 2016, in 2018, etc.

And that needs to happen.  Either the Democratic Party nationally -- and the Texas Democratic Party as well -- can get its shit together, or it's further on down the road to perdition.   I still like the idea of tempting them with my vote and support in exchange for nominating the right left kind of candidates.  But if they can't manage that then I can easily go Green.

Sure hope I see more discussions on this topic in the future.

Update: In case anybody might wonder, I wouldn't follow David Alameel to the nearest liquor store, much less any revolution he thinks he's going to lead.  You do have to like how he throws Gilberto Hinojosa, et. al. under the bus, though.  That signals some fun times ahead for the TDP.

The Chill Down Wrangle

Our red nation is going to turn a little blue this week, but only because of the Alaskan polar vortex (or whatever they're calling the first cold front of the season).  The Texas Progressive Alliance reminds you to find your gloves and scarves for later in the week as it brings you the best of what's left of Texas post-election.

As the Fifth Circuit gets set to hear arguments over Texas' ban on same sex marriage, Off the Kuff reminds us that public opinion is much more favorable towards same sex marriage in Texas now.

Libby Shaw, writing for Daily Kos and Texas Kaos, believes that although this election was lost almost before it began, capitulation is not an option: We Lost the Election but We Are Not Giving Up.

The first beatings in the Republican takeover in Harris County were administered at their election night watch party, as the media that dared to speak during a prayer experienced first-hand the love of Christ and his believers. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs wonders if assaulting a reporter on camera, physically or verbally, is really what Jesus would do.

Despite the ugly results from last Tuesday, CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme refuses to be discouraged. We learn from our mistakes. PS: The Valley went for Davis.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson reminds us that fewer than 30% of eligible voters turned out to vote in the 2014 mid-terms in Texas. Needless to say, 2014 turnout was horrible.

Texpatriate bemoans the fact that Texas will never turn blue.

Neil at All People Have Value has a news flash: if Democrats want to change their political fortunes, then their policies have to offer a ray of hope for the working class.

Texas Leftist noted that minimum wage initiatives elsewhere in the United States won approval. Might Texas be next?

Dos Centavos also points out that in Texas, Latinos just didn't vote.

In environmental developments, Bluedaze reports on the aftermath of the landslide win for the fracking ban in Denton, and Texas Vox wants to be sure everybody understands the difference between better air and still-bad air.

================

Other blog posts from around the state...

Lone Star Q observes that Westboro Baptist Church is wading into the HERO fight against the Houston pastors.

nonsequiteuse passes along a few suggestions on what might come next.

Socratic Gadfly thinks that the Democrats' Obama problem in 2014 was akin to their Clinton problem in 2000.

Hair Balls informs us that the Fifth Circuit wasn't always a judicial wingnut backwater.

John Wright updates us on Connie Wilson's efforts to get a drivers license that properly uses her wife's surname.

The Lunch Tray divines what the elections mean for school food.

Prairie Weather thinks we ought to just go ahead and let the GOP impeach Obama, since his economic numbers are so bad anyway.

And finally, Carol Morgan says that while the voters may have spoken, what they said makes no sense at all.

Sunday Funnies

Packets of catchup

More tea-leaf reading on the weekend ahead.

-- Caption, please:

Mine: "Do what now?"

-- More 'duh'.

White voters of all ages were less likely to back Democrats this year than in elections past, helping Republicans nationwide but most acutely in the South — and overpowering Democratic efforts to turn out their core supporters among blacks and Hispanics.

In a nation growing ever more diverse, political forecasters repeatedly warn Republicans they must improve their appeal among minorities in order to remain competitive in the long term.

But for the Democrats, dominating the vote among minorities isn't enough to win elections today — and it won't be in the future if the GOP is able to run up similar margins among whites, who still make up a majority of voters in every state.

"The rule of thumb was Democrats could win with 90 percent of the African-American vote and 40 percent of the white vote," said Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

"But now very few Democrats could think about getting 40 percent of the white vote. They're trying to get 30 percent. In the Deep South states, from South Carolina to Louisiana, it's very hard for the Democratic candidate to get 25 percent of the white vote."

-- Here is the best explainer for the current political climate in the USA.

In 2004, Republicans won big, and Democrats were left trying to figure out what went wrong.

Then in 2006, Democrats won big, and they decided everything was fine. Republicans merely shrugged it off as the 6-year-itch that bedevils parties that hold the White House in a president's last midterm.

2006 was a wipeout for Texas Democrats, kos.  Let's forget it, he's rolling.

2008, Democrats won big again, and Republicans were left fumbling for excuses, but mainly decided it was Bush's fault and an artifact of Barack Obama's historic campaign.

In 2010, Republicans won big, so they were validated. All was fine! Democrats were left fumbling.

In 2012, Democrats won big, so they decided everything was fine. Demographics and data to the rescue! Republicans decided to rebrand, until they decided fuck that, no rebranding was needed.

And now in 2014, Republicans are validated again in the Democrats' own 6-year-itch election. Democrats are scrambling for answers.

And I'll tell you what the future looks like:

In 2016, Democrats will win big on the strength of presidential-year turnout. Republicans will realize they really have a shit time winning presidential elections, and maybe they should do something about that!

In 2018, Republicans will win on the strength of off-year Democratic base apathy, and they'll decide everything is okay after all. And it's going to be brutal, because those are the governorships we need for 2020 redistricting. Republicans will then lock up the House for another decade.

Then in 2020, Democrats will win on presidential year turnout, and  ... you get the point.

So in short, we have two separate Americas voting every two years. We have one that is more representative, that includes about 60 percent of voting age adults. Then we have one where we can barely get a third of voting age adults to turn out, and is much whiter and older than the country. And Democrats can win easily with the one, and Republicans can win easily with the other.

And that cycle won't be broken until 1) the Democrats figure out how to inspire their voters to the polls on off years, or 2) Republicans figure out how to appeal to the nation's changing electorate.

And given that each party is validated every two years after a blowout loss, the odds of either happening anytime soon? Bleak.

-- And the best thing about red waves is that we don't have to listen to any whining about voter "fraud" from the King Street Patriots and True the Vote.  We'll take our little blessings where we can find them.  I'm pretty certain that will only be a two-year reprieve.

Latinos aren't going to rescue Texas Democrats

Local attorney Mark Yzaguirre.

Various observers will address particular points and provide certain suggestions, but let me focus anyone reading this piece on one figure: 40 percent. That number is the percentage of the Latino vote in Texas that I previously suggested is necessary for the Republican Party to maintain a strong working majority of the general election vote in Texas.

So what percentage of the Latino vote did Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott get in his victory over the Democratic nominee, State Senator Wendy Davis? Forty-four percent, according to exit polling from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. If one breaks those numbers down by gender, 50 percent of Latino men and 39 percent of Latina women voted for Abbott. While African-American voters in Texas went 92 percent in favor of Davis, 73 percent of non-Latino white voters supported Abbott. Other exit polling largely matches the UT-Austin numbers. That combination of Anglo and Latino voters gave Abbott the landslide victory he achieved on Election Day. 

Well, he just put Marc Campos out of business.

The results of the 2014 elections vindicate that position. Democrats who think that the Latino vote is a lock for the Democratic Party need to be disabused of that false assumption immediately. The numbers cited above show that. Also, if one looks at county-by-county data, Greg Abbott was able to get strong pluralities in many of the generally pro-Democratic Latino counties of South Texas.

[...]

This election shows that the Republican Party in Texas is quite capable of making a play for a solid portion of the Texas Latino vote. If Democrats want to have any hope of changing the dynamics of statewide politics in Texas, they need to lose their illusions about a coming tide of Latino voters who will save them. They need to work to expand their lead among Latino voters and find a way to bring in a decent percentage of current non-Latino GOP voters into the fold. If they fail to do both, their wait for a demographic transformation will be a very long one that may never end.

Yeah, some good solid soul-searching is in order for Team Blue.  A little existential angst never killed anybody (who was able to pull themselves back from the edge, anyway).  That would be a good place, in fact, to start... once all the hand-wringing and crying and finger-pointing and backbiting work their way out of everybody's system.

Updates: More here.  And Stace with with more and better.