"To that Angle"

*Dateline Austin/Houston:

After two years as the voice of the Texas Democratic Party, spokeswoman Amber Moon is moving to Houston, where she will head up communications for the Democratic Party in Harris County — her hometown.

Replacement: Hector Nieto, Moon’s deputy.

“With so many competitive races on the ballot, it’s a particularly exciting time to return to Harris County, and I look forward to a repeat of last cycle’s Dallas County success in my own home town,” Moon said in an e-mail.

The Texas Democratic Trust has taken full credit for 2006 success in Dallas, obscuring the role of Royce WEST and the Dallas County Democratic Party itself.

To that ANGLE (pun intended) ...

Attorneys MATHIESSEN and BIRNBERG have added the approach of (a) quietly disparaging some of those elected in Dallas as “unqualified”, (b) staging and recruiting would-be or former GOP judges from big law firms, (c) protecting CRADDICK Democrats, (d) privileging judicial over executive candidates on the countywide ticket, and (e) projecting the “bipartisan diversity” government at City Hall out into the county.

The communication/campaign strategy will be to avoid controversy other than GOP scandals and to rely on racially segmented marketing to exploit demographic projections of likely-voter behavior to sweep Harris County offices up and down the ballot. This is new only in that the countywide slate is full and the campaign consultants may not disparage straight-ticket voting by Democrats, as they typically have done previously.

This could work -- if and only if (a) the Presidential and Senate races are actually inspiring, (b) the GOP continues to spiral into division and demoralization, and (c) scandal or conspicuous dysfunction in the “Democrat-controlled” City Hall does not allow the GOP to run effectively against “the government” they control but Democrats do not actually oppose and indeed are constantly apologizing for or collaborating with.

We could win only to find the GOP using problems with the security of GOP voting technology to get new elections ordered by the GOP-controlled courts.

In any case, the unilateral bi-partisanship -- item (c) above -- is the only thing the local Democratic Party might change now. But under Matt ANGLE’s influence, it will not.

*the musings of irregular contributor Open Source Dem.