Texas EV scattershots

-- This poll has Congressman WhataBeto trailing Senator Serpent Covered in Vaseline by four percentage points, 50-46, with the MoE at 4.  No crosstabs at the link.  The Lib, Neal Dikeman, polled 2% and 2% are undecided.

At first glance this would look like good news, but note that GSA Strategies is affiliated with Citizens United, and both are, shall we say, "progressive" outfits.  So there's a leetle bias.

Except for this one, there's been no fresh polling for nearly two weeks.  Update: As this was posted, the TexTrib via Progrexas has Reuters/Ipsos/UVA's latest, showing Cruz by 5, which is an increase of three points over their survey a month ago.  

Real Clear Politics (without the influence of either of the above yet) has the rolling 30-day average at Cruz +7.  Texas Politics Project (Blank and Henson at UT, also for the TexTrib) has history back to April, but the song remains the same.

#TrumpRally and #EarlyVoteTexas should be influencing actual vote counts now, but we can keep divining tea leaves and interpreting cabrito entrails until Election Day.  Just keep in mind that the polls could be as wrong as they were in 2016.

-- O'Rourke gets an assist from the Librul Media in the form of a town hall with Tweety.

MSNBC host Chris Matthews is coming to the University of Houston next week to interview U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke for his “Hardball College Tour” special.

Matthews announced during his Tuesday night broadcast that he plans to record an hour-long interview with Sen. Ted Cruz's Democratic opponent a week before the November election on Oct. 30 at Cullen Performance Hall.

After Matthews' on-air announcement, tickets were made available through the school’s website. Doors open at 4:30 p.m. while the taping begins at 6 p.m., the site reads. Attendees are prohibited from bringing “promotional or political affiliation displays.”

And another pop culture merger for the Democrat.

Artist Chris Rogers has been at work on the mural for weeks, according to progress documented on his Instagram, but he put the finishing touches on it just as early voting began in the state.

The mural, located in East Austin, features O’Rourke, a rising Democratic star, standing in front of a Texas flag with his shirt unbuttoned to reveal a “B” emblem, reminiscent of Superman’s “S.”

“Out of the darkness comes the light,” Rogers wrote of the mural, which is entitled “Beto For Texas.”

Rogers said that the mural took 40 hours to paint, according to Austin Monthly.

I thought Election 2018 was going to be all about Texas Latin@s and Lupe Valdez, but I'm going to be wrong about that, of course.  As Beto goes, so go Texas Democrats, as we all know now.

-- You should check this fellow's Twitter bio and then read the numbers here.

Here is a snapshot of who voted early in the biggest Texas counties based on previous election history. #txlege #txsen pic.twitter.com/Z3jeLoAwcP

— Derek Ryan (@longhornderek) October 24, 2018

Ryan's Tweet here indicates that a lot of people who don't usually vote in midterms are voting -- almost 30% of those who have already cast an early ballot.  After just two days.  The TexTrib has raw numbers for Harris and Dallas Counties.

1/ 689,613 Texans have already voted in the 30 counties where most registered voters in the state live.

That turnout equals 34.3 percent of the total votes cast in those counties during the entire two-week early voting period in 2014.https://t.co/mneKCMK3NV#tx2018 #txsen pic.twitter.com/3mTWOtlqdT

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) October 24, 2018

I don't underscore Harris just because I live and vote here or because it's the largest county in Texas, blahblah.  It represents about a fifth of all the Democratic votes cast in the state.  And you may have read that new voter registrations here shattered records.  So the reports this week of hour-long waits at EV locations in Harris County -- and for that matter, across Texas -- could be something the polls are missing.  But this NBC account says "hold on there, blue wave" (emphasis mine):

Republican-affiliated voters have outpaced Democratic-affiliated voters in early voting in seven closely watched states, according to data provided by TargetSmart and independently analyzed by the NBC News Data Analytics Lab.

GOP-affiliated voters have surpassed Democratic-affiliated ones in early voting in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Montana, Tennessee and Texas, the data showed.

[...]

In Texas, 53 percent of early voters had a Republican affiliation, compared with 43 percent who had a Democratic affiliation and 4 percent who were not affiliated with either party.

[...]

Women voters have outpaced men voters so far in ... Texas (59 percent to 41 percent), (and) urban voters have outpaced rural and suburban voters in Arizona and Texas.

Here is the important qualifier to this data.

As of Oct. 22, over 5 million votes have been cast early or absentee in the 2018 midterm elections nationwide.

This piece, dated Monday 10/22 and helpfully time-stamped at 2:49 p.m. (probably EST) does not include any in-person votes for Texas.  That is to say: these are all mail (aka 'absentee') ballots, and party affiliation is reflected (at least in Harris) by efforts of those at the county party level who push to identify and augment those numbers during the voter registration period.  You may recall that Harris County Republicans used to have a big advantage in this regard, but Harris Democrats have considerably whittled that down.

Update: Local political consultant Mustafa Tameez expanded on the problems with the TargetSmart data in his Tweet linked here.

So while there may be considerations for other states in the article to be concerned about w/r/t to "Blue Wave", Lone Star worries are overblown, to this reporter's POV.  At this time.

-- Perhaps you noticed that Michael Avenatti quietly canceled his Texas anti-Trump counter-rally.  (Avenatti's Tweet about doing so, and at least two mentions by TexTrib reporters that I bookmarked, have also disappeared.)  Perhaps you noticed that he's been keeping a (somewhat) lower profile for the past week or so, since his client lost her defamation lawsuit against Trump.

Back here I speculated (doubtfully; scroll to the end) about whether local deep-pocketed Democrats attending his Harris County Dem money bag drag would mention his responsibility -- ascribed accurately or falsely -- for the Kavanaugh bump Republicans seem to be enjoying.  That fundraiser, on 10/16, happened the day after DNC chair Tom Perez was also in town helping the HCDP with some cheerleading, a geographically proximal coincidence that largely escaped public notice.

I should have put two and two together.  Two being Harris County judicial kingmakers Gerry Birnberg and Dave Matthiesen, who together with Perez -- and let's say, for purposes of rounding, at least one other Houston legal eagle who wrote a $2500 check for VIP entry -- very likely cornered Avenatti and asked him to please freeze it.  For the sake of the downballot, you know.

Check Avenatti's Tweet feed above, scroll back in time to about the 16th and then forward, see if you think he heard a message somebody sent him.

I would pay to see that fight

Greg Abbott v. Vlad Putin, in a leg-wrestling contest as part of a decathlon of 'World's Most Powerful Dictator' events.  On pay-per-view.  What should the Vegas line should be?

At a rally on Monday night, the governor of Texas declared himself 'more powerful' than Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Greg Abbott was warming up the crowd for President Donald Trump at the Toyota Center in Houston when he bragged that his state's economy is the tenth-biggest economy on the planet.

"By comparison, the Texas economy is larger than Canada -- it's larger than Australia. And get this, the Texas economy is even larger than the economy of Russia," the Republican governor told the crowd.

"That makes me more powerful than Putin!" he boasted to applause.

You might be forgiven if you thought this was going to be a rally for 'Beautiful Ted' Cruz.

Now perhaps General Abbott and his Army were simply volunteering for service in the War on Russian voter electoral fraud.  In Trump's one-hour and eighteen-minute address to the faithful last evening -- Senator White Castle only spoke for thirteen minutes; your clearest tell he was an afterthought -- Our Greatest President Ever did not mention scrapping the intermediate nuclear missile treaty that is provoking tension with his Kremlin BFF (or so both Fox and  Democrats keep telling us.  He did repeat some fake news about a middle class tax cut before Election Day.)

But I don't want to digress from our Dear Paraplegic Leader's boast.

Let's give the Guv some credit for maintaining an ideal body weight and trim figure after all these years off his feet.  Isn't it remarkable how many calories a man can burn being a total sociopath?  He might not have been nimble enough to avoid being struck by a falling tree when he was young, but in the decades since, he's carefully watched his diet and has no discernible middle-age paunch.  I would hazard a guess that's without being able to do any sit-ups.  I'll also bet that he can take a body blow from the Russian Bear if they decide to spar a few rounds.

Who do you think wins in a 90-second lightning round fundraising competition?  We can ask Charles Kuffner to be the judge of the campaign finance reports.

Probably no distance running, but a 50-yard dash/roll could be interesting.  Gymnastics, like those Olympic rings or parallel bars, or better yet, monkey bars.  A hand over hand climb gives Abbott too much of an edge, I suspect.

A pandering-to-your-millionaires faceoff would be close.  Call it Plutocratic Pugilistics.  Separate from the Money Chase above, this contest would be determined by how much you could promise to do in exchange for a government position ("Tap That Crony") or a relaxation of regulations, rather than a monetary donation.  The minimum acceptable standard would have to be Trump's own recent world record; his awarding of the South African ambassadorship to Mar-a-Lago member and handbag designer Lana Marks sets a pretty high bar for Abbott and Putin to clear.

I can't handicap this match.  Who gets home field advantage?  Is it a best of five, or seven?

This could be the almost-ultimate Battle of the Ages.  Armageddon, Jr.  World War 2.5, televised on Fox, emceed by President Reality TV, for all the Nationalist marbles.  Sponsored by the NRA (they have large and equal bets on both sides), the Southern Baptist Convention, and Super Poli-Grip.

These people will buy and swallow anything.