The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is happy this election is over as it brings you this last blog post roundup before Election Day.

Off the Kuff offers a modicum of sympathy to Republican women for the plague of Sid Miller.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos shares her personal observations and polling data from a class she is taking to that shows Hillary Clinton carrying Houston and Harris County.

Switching gears away from politics, Socratic Gadfly offers up his 2016-17 NBA preview.  (Sorry, Mavs fans.)

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants everyone to know just how much Texas Republicans have abused workers, worker rights and their safety.

Neil at All People Have Value reminded folks that nasty Sid Miller was a big part of the forced sonogram law in Texas that is state-mandated rape. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

Control of the US Senate in 2017 looks to be a tighter race than the one for the White House, says PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

A Lewisville Texan-Journal reporter was arrested in North Dakota while covering the #NoDAPL protests, making the issue hit close to home.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston says you should wait until some election contests are decided -- win for your your side or no -- before you start drinking heavily on Tuesday night.

And Texas Vox points out that Thursday, November 10 -- not Election Day -- is decision day for the Texas Railroad Commission.

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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

FPH introduces us to Kelcy Warren, the man behind the DAPL and his role in this week's Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission hearing.

CultureMap Houston was at the Texas Book Festival in Austin weekend before last.

Amy McCarthy recaps the highlights of Anthony Bourdain's visit to Houston.

Kyrie O'Connor reminds us that "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" is at heart a feminist anthem.

Eva Ruth Moravec took the eight-hour DPS course on verbal de-escalation.

Susan Nold asserts that voting is not "rigged", it's power.

Jacquielynn Floyd calls Sid Miller's latest tweet abomination a "breaking point".

The Texas Election Law Blog gives credit where it is due on tamping down fear about "election rigging".

Somervell County Salon asks if you believe in open government.

Ashton Woods at Strength in Numbers explains intersectionality and the problematic 'white gaze' as it relates to black feminism.

The Rag Blog marked the night of the dead and the day of the living.

DBC Green Blog reminded Democrats and Republicans that voting a straight ticket is still stupid and lazy.

And Pages of Victory explained (via Viggo Mortensen) why he voted for Jill Stein, and also why he voted for Kim Ogg for Harris County District Attorney.

Sunday Funnies

Tear gas, rubber bullets, sound cannon, and Tasers fired from a drone 

used on Standing Rock water protectors

The Men Feminists Left Behind

Control of US Senate a tighter race than for White House

And the outcome means all the difference for the next two years.  The expert consensus four days from Election Day is a dead solid tie.

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

-- First of all, I don't think Wisconsin's Russ Feingold is in as much trouble as all those screaming subject line fundraising emails we're getting would have us believe.

-- Evan Bayh, the Democrat who held a lead most of the year for the open seat in the Hoosier State, has coughed it up.  Reports like this aren't going to help him.  There are still a lot of undecideds as reflected in the polls, and perhaps the Libertarian, the only other candidate in the race there, can influence the result to some degree.

-- Roy Blount, the Republican incumbent in the Show Me State, will probably hang on.  He has to overcome whatever percentages the Libertarian and Constitution Party nominees may take away from him, the only question mark I see.  That makes MO and IN holds for the GOP, and that gets the Elephants to 50.  Nate Silver has them both turning pink just yesterday.

-- New Hampshire's presidential polling volatility, coupled with incumbent R Kelly Ayotte clinging to a small lead probably means the Granite State isn't so much of a tossup.  That's 51 for the Reds.

-- That leaves Nevada, and I'll predict that the Silver State elects Catherine Cortez Masto, riding on the coattails of Hillary Clinton.  See Robby Mook's confidence about NV in the most recent post.

This is the last of these I'll do unless news breaks something of value, so put me down for a Republican Senate by just one seat.  That pits me against Silver and the NYT's Upshot, who are both predicting a 55% chance of it turning blue as of this morning.  Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball has the whip count at 48-47 Dems, with five tossups.

Update: Via Down with Tyranny, Rep. Alan Grayson (whom I wish was the Democratic nominee for the US Senate for Florida, and not Patrick Murphy)  has more detail, but sees it exactly the same way as I do.  Great minds and all that.

Here's a question I can't find the answer to: if somebody on the right side were to change parties, resign, or pass away in the next year or two, and a Democratic governor made an appointment to fill the vacancy that puts the upper chamber into a tie, does control of the Senate change mid-term or must it wait for the next election, special or regularly-scheduled in 2018?

Jim Jeffords' party switch in 2001 -- from Republican to independent caucusing with the Democrats -- flipped control, but the Senate was 50-50 at the time and Jeffords gave the Dems a pure 51-49 majority.  So by my understanding, pushing the body into 50-50 would only give a Vice President Tim Kaine the ability to break tie votes, and not change which party controls the flow of legislation, appointment of committee chairs, and the like.  Am I right or not?

Hillary builds a wall, too

With early votes in battleground states.

The word of the day is "firewall."[...]

Jon Ralston, the savviest political analyst in Nevada, used the term "firewall" to describe the early vote margin Democrats seem to be running up in that state. As of Friday morning, he figured Democrats had banked a 37,000-vote margin. "So he can win Nevada," Ralston wrote Friday morning. "But Trump would need base numbers and indie numbers that seem unlikely right now." Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, told reporters on a conference call that the campaign figures Trump would have to win Nevada by 10 percentage points on Election Day to overcome her advantage there.

I don't consider Ralston all that savvy after this episode from two years ago, but hard data is one of those things that is difficult for almost anybody to screw up.  And that's really why Clintonoids should breathe easier: there are over 30 million votes already in the can, and we don't have to rely on an admittedly shaky Nate Silver to tell us what to think any longer.

In Florida early voting, Democratic strategist Steve Schale sees further positive signs for Clinton, specifically a marked uptick in Latino voting. "The two places with the highest Puerto Rican populations, Orange and Osceola counties both out-performed their projected share of the statewide vote," he wrote Friday morning. Florida Hispanics are typically thought of as being Cuban, but Puerto Ricans have been migrating to the state in great numbers in recent years. More broadly, Schale wrote, Hispanic voting patterns so far are the "definition of a surge." It should be obvious, but is worth noting anyway: Hispanics aren't turning out in greater numbers to vote for Donald Trump. Schale goes on to add: "Right now, Democrats hold a 117K vote advantage among all low propensity voters, in large part due to this Hispanic surge. 32% of Democratic voters so far are low propensity voters, compared to 26% of the GOP voters. But among [no party affiliation voters or NPAs], the number rises to 48%. That's right, 48% of NPAs who have voted so far are low propensity – and 25% of those are Hispanic. In fact, of the NPA low propensity voters, a full 42% of them are non-white. That right there is the Clinton turnout machine edge." Reminder: Turnout is important, even if Donald Trump doesn't seem to think it is. Mook told reporters that the campaign believes it's leading in Florida by around 170,000 votes overall and said that at this time four years ago, the Obama campaign figured that it was behind by 15,000 votes. (Obama won the state, narrowly.) Schale sums up: "All of this has me leaning a bit that the state is shaping up nicely for HRC, but while I think that, in no way is it in the bag, or close to it."

The Hispanic surge isn't confined to Florida. Per Talking Points Memo's Lauren Fox, the polling firm Latino Decisions reported early Hispanic voting "is up 100 percent in Florida, 60 percent in North Carolina and up 25 percent in Colorado and Nevada." See my previous comment about Hispanics and Donald Trump. Fox adds: "Latino Decisions is estimating – using their own turnout predictor – that Clinton is on track to capture 79 percent of the Latino vote. Trump, on the other hand, is expected to garner only 18 percent (almost 10 points down from Romney's 27 percent performance.)" Remember that Trump's theory of winning through running up the white vote doesn't only motivate white voters. The backlash could well end up benefiting Clinton in a big way.

North Carolina is IMHO the true decider for both president and Senate in 2016.  Black turnout was reported soft in North Carolina (and Florida and Ohio as well) earlier this week, and there have been serious efforts by the Republicans in charge to stifle the vote there.  So I see the Tar Heelers being decided very late on Election Night.

Across the country, Mook told reporters Friday, early voting is breaking records. And for whatever it's worth, the Clinton campaign sees itself as having "leverage[d] this early voting period to build a firewall in states with early voting to turn out our supporters early and build up a lead that Donald Trump is incapable of overcoming."

Bloomberg's Mark Niquette and John McCormick took a broader look at early voting. "Donald Trump is showing strength in Iowa and Ohio pre-Election Day voting, while Hillary Clinton's advantage in early balloting looks stronger in North Carolina and Nevada, a Bloomberg Politics analysis shows," they wrote. Hold on there, Robert, my target audience responds, this post is supposed to soothe my nerves but you just quoted someone saying Trump looks strong in Ohio. The key point as we hurtle toward Nov. 8 is that given the state of the electoral map, Trump needs to look strong in all the contested states. If early voting carries Clinton to victory in Nevada (see Ralston above) and North Carolina (which my colleagues Dave Catanese and Seth Cline described on Friday as her ultimate firewall) the game is over.

Whoa theyah, podnah; it ain't over 'til it's over.

It's called being ahead, which Clinton still is. It may be a narrow lead, but it's a lead nevertheless, and with the days dwindling it's better to be front-running than trying to play catch-up.

The Comey Effect may have run its course, and any further late-breaking developments such as this are too late to move the needle.  But if the Senate does not flip, that will be added to the foundation for impeachment proceedings in 2017.

A fresh Senate forecast is coming shortly.

Why is Clinton losing to Trump? Vol. II

(Volume I was posted on September 16.  That was ten days before the first debate and about seven weeks following her triumphant coronation at the Philly convention in late July.  You should go read it for context in light of her slump here at the finish.  Especially if you are still of the mind that a straight Democratic ticket is a good idea.)

Is it the fault of Vladimir Putin and his Russian hackers, who broke into and stole the DNC's e-mail, and then gave the files to Julian Assange, who has leaked them out daily over the past month, revealing Hillary and her subordinates to be ... exactly who we thought she was, and they were?  Except even more craven and stupid than we could have imagined?

Is it those wretched Green Party/Jill Stein voters, those damned dirty hippies, all full of their white privilege as they stand poised to repeat the 2000 "history" (sic) of sending a shitty Republican to the White House because they refuse to vote for a shitty Democrat?

(Without question, the most stubborn urban legend ever.  I had to correct a few more former Facebook friends again just last night.  I'm pretty certain they still don't get it.)

Nope.  None of the above.  It's all Her.  And her supporters, who have driven some Sanders supporters to vote for Trump out of spite for the Hillbots' bad behavior.

(Not me.  Though I fought -- and fought hard, for a decade -- to push the Texas Democratic Party to the left, this was the year they yanked the torch and pitchfork out of my hands and ran me off for good.  I still didn't vote for any Republicans, however, though there were many fewer Democrats who earned my vote in 2016.  That's a pattern I see increasing in the future.)

Here, let's allow Cesar Vargas to explain.

It took me a long time to write this. I had to dig deep into my being to come up with these words. I’m recanting my endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the presidency.

I’m aware of how vindictive Clintonians can be. I’m not speaking about the Clintons themselves, but of those surrounding them. Perhaps the saying is true: dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres.

Your staff, your donors, your surrogates, and those you surround yourself with are a reflection of who you truly are, no? If not, why not curb any unacceptable behavior? Silence, indifference, or inaction is as incriminatory -- at least to me.

There has been no repudiation, let alone denunciation, of what was said in those emails-just denial, finger pointing, and doublespeak. To appoint the very same folks who carried out many malicious behaviors to tip the scales for Hillary is just as unpardonable. Why reward unethical behavior? It’s mind-boggling.

I rebuke with my heart, mind, and soul all the twisted narratives of sexism, misogyny, racism, and classism lay at our feet. Though some of them are legitimate, most were used to derail derail valid grievances from our communities and completely erase us. Our voices were drowned out by empty accusations, by a nefarious usage of identity politics recommended by one of our own, no less. That is a bamboozling of POC and unsuspecting allies. This is why Hillary Clinton doesn’t deserve our vote, among many other reasons.

If Hillary Clinton fumbles this sure thing, it's on Her.  And all of those with Her.

Bernie Sanders was treated horribly by the DNC, the Clinton crew, and the Obama administration, and by proxy, many of us were also stung. Without any apologies. In fact, we received nothing but contempt from the Clinton campaign and her surrogates. Then they expected us to fall in formation. Many of us did. I said I would endorse Hillary if she won the primary fair and square. And I did, but that was before I got a hold of all the highly unethical things that happened to get her to win.

I’m not telling you not to vote for her. I’m aware of what is at stake. The Supreme Court and a petulant man-child that might quicken the apocalypse, I know. I’m telling you that I’m no longer endorsing her. Vote with your conscience. Vote strategically. Or don’t. It’s your prerogative.

If she loses, it's all Her fault and the fault of those who attacked everything they saw in opposition, like a pack of rabid dogs.  In other words, they acted just like Republicans.  They acted worse than Republicans on far too many occasions, but that might only be because I have long given them the benefit of the doubt as being smarter, using critical thinking skills, etc.  They stopped doing that, and consequently lost me -- and what appears to be some significant quantity of other Democrats and Democratic voters -- this year.

And I doubt whether they can earn it back.

Harris County still looking blue, Texas not so much

Once again, Tom Gederberg via SD17 Democrats on Facebook.

Updated Harris County Early Voting and Mail Ballot Results for November 1

So far 626,627 people early voted and 86,456 people have turned in a mail ballot! Today's turnout was 72,580.

There is a lag in getting the data loaded into VAN. VAN currently has data on 576,983 early voters and on 80,820 mail voters. Assuming that people who have a 2016 DNC Dem Party Support v2 score of over 50% is a likely Democrat and those with a score below 50% is a likely Republican, here is how the voting looks in Harris County so far:

VAN Early Total: 576,983
Likely Democrat: 318,855 (55.26%)
Likely Republican: 258,128 (44.74%)

VAN Mail Total: 80,829
Likely Democrat: 44,635 (55.23%)
Likely Republican: 36,185 (44.77%)

EVIP this week in Harris County (early voting in person, more formally called EVPA, or Early Voting by Personal Appearance) is lagging last week's eye-popping numbers, but is still surging past 2012 and 2008.  In local media reax, Groogan at Fox swallows Mark Jones' spin and pimps for Team Red, while the Chron's article underscoring stronger Democratic turnout reveals that the EV numbers seem to show more of a partisan groundswell than they do new voters.

By both comparison and contrast, the state's fifteen largest counties show gains, but the red counties look to be voting a little heavier.  The most recent Texas poll reveals Trump ahead by 12, and above the 50% mark for the first time (click for a clearer pic, or go to the link).

So while the Donks still have bright prospects for downballot races locally, I would have to say to Democrats dreaming of turning Texas blue -- and especially to some of those laughably bad statewide judicials: wake up and smell the coffee.

Madam President + GOP Senate = impeachment

The real Comey Effect is not going to influence Hillary Clinton's coronation.  It's going to trim her coattails in the Congress, and that spells more DC dysfunction for 2017 and beyond.  Heather Digby Parton sets it up with the death of Antonin Scalia, the continued stalling of Merrick Garland, and, well ... take it from there.

...(I)f the GOP fails to win the White House and  maintains their Senate majority, there’s a good possibility that the Republicans won’t confirm any new justices appointed by Hillary Clinton, ever. Indeed, if other justices retire or die, one can imagine the court dwindling down in number for years. Keeping the Democrats from nominating Supreme Court justices is now a GOP litmus test.

And let’s face it, this is a foreshadowing of something even more disruptive and dangerous. Ever since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have increasingly seen Democratic presidents as illegitimate. They said Bill Clinton wasn’t “their president” because he won with a plurality, rather than a majority. (Which may well happen this year as well.) The GOP-led Congress spent years trying to drive him from office on trumped up charges. Many in the Republican rank and file believed that Barack Obama was ineligible for the White House because he was a secret Muslim who had lied about being born in America.  Their decades long “voter fraud” myth has created an underlying sense among their voters that our election systems are always tilted against them by Democrats trying to steal elections.

But this election has taken it to an entirely different level. We’ve never seen a presidential candidate state in advance that he believes the vote is rigged and declare he will only accept he outcome if he wins. Even if he ends up conceding in some technical sense, his voters will never truly accept his loss and Trump will be a martyr to their cause. In that sense, Donald Trump has already won regardless of the actual vote count.

(Let's pause for a lengthy sidebar and reassure nervous Donkeys that despite Nate Silver's fairly ominous header, Clinton is still very likely to sail into the White House with 300+ Electoral College votes.  You like your data deeper?  Scroll down to 'reversion to the mean'.  This is the most conservative map I can come up with at the moment:

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

Kindly note that I have awarded Ohio to Trump.  Even if he were to prevail in the gray "tossup" states I've indicated above, he comes up short.  He would still need all three plus, for example, New Hampshire and Nevada in order to win.)  Update: Lagging African American turnout in FL, NC, and OH was factored into the above.  Update II: Oh my, look what Walt Hickey at FiveThirtyEight.com just posted:

Trump does not have as many avenues to victory as Clinton, but a few states are slightly better than average for him.

North Carolina is an interesting one. When North Carolina tips the race to Trump, he has usually carried Ohio, Florida and Nevada, plus New Hampshire, with the Midwest potentially up for grabs.

Back to Digby.  And as with climate change, Obama's birth certificate, and voter "fraud", conservatives don't make rational decisions based on factual evidence.

We’ve also never had a presidential candidate delegitimized before the election even occurs. Trump routinely claims that Hillary Clinton should “not have been allowed” to run because  she is “guilty as hell” of unnamed crimes and has promised to imprison her if he wins the office. His followers are convinced this is true and chant “Lock her up!” and “Hang the bitch!” at his rallies. (The outrageous actions of the FBI director last Friday have only made such people more certain in that belief.)

Tuesday night in Wisconsin, Trump declared that if Clinton wins the election “it would create an unprecedented crisis and the work of government would grind to an unbelievably inglorious halt.” In fact, he and the Republicans are now making that an explicit promise. Some, like Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson (who faces likely defeat in his re-election battle), are actually running on that agenda. He told a local newspaper this week that he believed Clinton will be impeached should she win the office.

I would say yes, high crime or misdemeanor, I believe she is in violation of both laws [related to gathering, transmission or destruction of defense information or official government record]. She purposefully circumvented it. This was willful concealment and destruction.

Unfortunately, Johnson is not the only one already talking about impeachment:

America was a p. fun idea for awhile pic.twitter.com/0V3lyUjKQC

— Adam Weinstein (@AdamWeinstein) November 2, 2016

To hold on to their congressional majorities, Republicans should promise voters they'll impeach Hillary by 2018.

— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) October 18, 2016

It’s always possible that this is an election season bluff designed to make some people vote for Trump out of fear that the Republicans will completely shut down the government if Clinton is president. It’s the kind of thuggish hostage-taking gambit in which they’ve come to specialize. (“Nice little country you have here. Be a shame if anything happened to it …”) But it’s also possible they will follow through on these threats simply because it’s all they have. As Brian Beutler wrote in the New Republic:

 [W]hat they’re seeking is to hold together their broken party for long enough to make another run at complete control of government in 2020. Republicans are no longer seeking any substantive ends in the interim — just the power to obstruct and the power to manufacture scandal.

The crippling of the Supreme Court is just a first step. If they fail to win the White House, the destruction of Hillary Clinton will be their common purpose, the only goal that can bring them all back together.

And there you have it, folks.  More of the past eight years for the next four years.  Obama's third term, indeed.

The Comey Effect (and toons)

Is the Big Nothing actually Something?

While FBI Director James Comey's email bombshell may not dent Hillary Clinton's White House chances, Democrats fear it might shorten her coattails and threaten their prospects of retaking the Senate.

Comey's decision to publicly announce a new front in the Clinton private email server investigation so close to the election has come under fire from Democrats and even some Republicans.

Its impact on the presidential race may be marginal, since Clinton has built up a comfortable cushion of electoral votes and Donald Trump pools poorly with some key demographic groups.

But small disruptions in tight down-ballot races could have a big impact and the Democrats' aggressive response to Comey belies their concern that his move could cost them at the polls.

"It's certainly not helpful," said Missouri Democratic Party Chairman Roy Temple. "It kind of pollutes the Democratic brand in a way that's unnecessary, simply because it doesn't actually involve any new information, which is why the frustration at Comey is so high right now."

... (S)ome say that they think the FBI news has foreclosed the possibility of the kind of election triumph that seemed within reach just a few weeks ago.

"It moves us closer to the middle of the bell curve in terms of possible outcomes," said one Democrat working on Senate races, granted anonymity to speak candidly, and who noted that polls had been tightening anyway before the news.

Patrick Murray, the director of the independent Monmouth poll, agreed. "While the email news does not play a decisive role in the presidential contest, a couple of points on the margins could be having a critical impact on tight down-ballot races," he said.

Could this be a reason that turnout in Harris County slumped on Saturday and Monday?  Or was that just the Halloween/Dia de Los Muertes phenomenon?  Has the supply of early voters been exhausted?  As usual, we'll just have to wait and see.  But Comeygate almost eclipsed Brazilegate.

CNN says it is "completely uncomfortable" with hacked emails showing that former contributor and interim Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile shared questions with the Clinton campaign before a debate and a town hall during the Democratic primary, and has accepted her resignation.

Hacked emails posted by WikiLeaks show Brazile, whose CNN contract was suspended when she became interim DNC chair over the summer, sharing with the Clinton campaign a question that would be posed to Hillary Clinton before the March CNN Democratic debate in Flint, as well as a possible question prior to a CNN town hall, also in March. 

In a statement, CNN spokeswoman Lauren Pratapas said that on Oct. 14, the network accepted Brazile’s resignation. 

Democrats are quick to remind us that nothing was rigged.  (As I wrote last week about my personal early voting ordeal, it's been rigged for decades, centuries even.)

But if it makes you feel better, you should just go on thinking that someone is telling you a story about Democrats and Republicans being all the same.  If you're scared of pretty much everything that's happening right now, just repeat your calming zen-like affirmation that Democrats and Republicans are not the same (despite the recent accumulating mass of evidence that they are).

Meanwhile, everybody has a last-minute GOTV strategy.

And our media will go on focusing on the things that really matter.

The Weekly Wrangle

Have you voted yet?  In bringing you this week's round up of the best of the Lone Star left, the Texas Progressive Alliance wants to know.

Off the Kuff compares current and older poll results to evaluate the argument that Texas Democrats should not get too giddy.

Socratic Gadfly calls Mark Miller, the Libertarian candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission, a dangerous alternative, and calls out any and all state-level Democratic fixtures endorsing him instead of Green Martina Salinas over Grady Yarbrough.

As if to contradict Gadfly, Texas Leftist changed his endorsement from Green to Libertarian after receiving Mark Miller's candidate questionnaire.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos learned that elections are rigged in a certain way. The rigging is called voter suppression and gerrymandering: Where the Real Rigging Takes Place.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders why Texas Republicans hate women and children so much. Funerals for miscarriages? Giving tax cuts to corporations while stiffing health care for children?

Turnout in Harris County and across Texas and the country swelled as Americans chose to end the 2016 presidential election as early as humanly possible. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs wrote about his personal experience voting early at one of Houston's heaviest polling places.

Dos Centavos advanced the "Tacos and Votes" rally held this past Saturday to assist GOTLV efforts in Houston.

Egberto Willies trotted out the Daily Beast's tired "privilege" argument against Jill Stein, and both got "straight up butchered" for it by Caitlin Johnstone at the Inquisitr.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston thinks he sees Texas Republicans abandoning Trump.

Texas Vox reports that Public Citizen and three other groups are urging the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to halt their review of the license application for a high-level nuclear waste dump in Andrews County in West Texas.

Neil at All People Have Value said that if you see a gap, you should fill it in yourself. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

And Lewisville gets its first ramen restaurant, reports the Texan-Journal.

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

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Culturemap Houston helped reveal Anthony Bourdain's Houston myth-shattering in the most recent episode of Parts Unknown, and Eater Houston has the five best moments from the show.

The Rag Blog eulogized Tom Hayden, one of the nation's most influential liberal political activists, who passed away last week at the age of 76.

David Collins advanced Ajamu Baraka's visit to Houston over the weekend, where the Green Paarty's vice presidential candidate spoke at Texas Southern University and campaigned at the Palm Center early polling place.  (More photos here.)

Somervell County Salon asks if Texans believe in good government.

Lone Star Ma wants to know what your voting plan is.

Grits for Breakfast despairs over the degraded state of Texas high criminal court elections. (This is about the truly awful candidates for the Texas Supreme Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals, about which I have railed repeatedly.)

The TSTA Blog calls on Dan Patrick to put his money where his mouth is on special education.

Mimi Marziani argues that Texas still has a long way to go to get it right on voter registration.

Paradise in Hell wonders how many more Republican judges will switch parties.

Zachery Taylor is convinced that Hillary Clinton is a greater threat to democracy than Trump.

Ashton Woods at Strength in Numbers has the third installment of his Chronicles of an Angry Black Queer: "The Big Ole Fag".

And Pages of Victory gets to vote in person, instead of by mail as in years past.

Sunday 'Back from the Dead' Funnies

More early voting analysis

Whopper, supersized.

Harris County residents cast more ballots in the first four days of early voting than five states did in the entire 2012 presidential election.

Locally, the number of ballots cast over those days was 45 percent higher than the same period four years ago. Other parts of the state, which sported the nation's lowest turnout in 2014, have seen similar growth.

[...]

In the 15 most populous Texas counties, turnout in the first three days of early voting equaled one-third of total turnout in 2012, said Derek Ryan, an Austin-based Republican data consultant. In some less populous counties, he said, polling places have been "just completely swamped, they aren't used to seeing this many people show up to vote."

And it's not just Texas.

"We're seeing reports of record turnout for this point in time across the country," said Michael McDonald, director of the United States Elections Project. "You (Texas) are really off the scale compared to the other states."

I got the following off the (Democrats') Senate District 17 Facebook page, posted there by their chairman, Tom Gederberg.

Updated Harris County Early Voting and Mail Ballot Results for Friday

So far 374,679 people early voted in Harris County (and each days number was greater than the previous day: 67,471 on Monday, 73,542 on Tuesday, 76,098 on Wednesday, 76,329 on Thursday, and 81,239 on Friday) and 77,445 people have so far turned turned in a mail ballot!

There is a slight lag in getting the data loaded into VAN. So far, VAN has data on 276,292 early voters and on 63,293 mail voters. If you assume that people who have a 2016 DNC Dem Party Support v2 score of over 50% is a likely Democrat and those with a score under 50% is a likely Republican, here is how the voting looks in Harris County so far:

VAN Early Total: 276,292
Likely Democrat: 150,530 (54.48%)
Likely Republican: 125,762 (45.52%)
VAN Mail Total: 63,293
Likely Democrat: 35,063 (55.40%)
Likely Republican: 28,230 (44.60%)

One note of caution. Our percentages have gone down from yesterday. Yesterday, our early vote percentage was 56.47% and our mail vote percentage was 56.26%. Also, these percentages are only as good as the 2016 DNC Dem Party Support scores in VAN.

I am disinclined to believe that Friday's development w/r/t Hillary's latest email thing is going to influence a measurable amount of those who have not yet voted.  This is not the October Surprise some have been waiting for, and even if it were, I simply don't think it will sway many people.  The Democrats I know have demonstrated a remarkable ability to ignore, minimize, or give credence to her many scandals, flaws, foibles, and policies that are anathema to progress.  They have applied their own coat of Teflon to Madam President, and I do not expect their beliefs are going to change very much over the next ten days ... or even the next four years.

Back to the turnout: the EV numbers have indeed been increasing every day, and today's total will be the highest perhaps seen for the period.  With more data and more granular analysis, the easier it becomes to divine a wave election.

"The first four days looked pretty good for local Democrats," said (UH's Dr. Richard) Murray, who has studied Harris County voting patterns since 1966. "More female, more ethnic, less Caucasian."

The county's turnout so far has been 57 percent female, Murray said, compared with the typical 54 percent, which he called "probably something of a Trump effect."

Stephen Klineberg, founder of Rice University's Kinder Institute for Urban Research, said the county's Democratic shift was a long time coming.

He pointed to a 2016 study by the Institute, which showed Harris County had been evenly split between Democrats and Republicans since studies began in 1984.

In 2005, 35 percent of respondents identified as Democrat and 37 percent identified as Republican. In 2016, 52 percent identified as Democrat and 30 percent as Republican.

That change was mostly due to population growth and changing party affiliation among Latinos, who make up 51 percent of the population under 20 in Harris County, he said.

"Pundits have been predicting this for years," Klineberg said. "There are some indications that we are beginning to see signs of that inevitable transformation in this election year, earlier than most pundits expected."

Let's hope all these Democrats are NOT voting straight-tickets.  Too many lousy statewide judicials that don't deserve a single vote, after all.  More at the Chron's link, and more later as the numbers come in from over the weekend.

Election scattershooting

-- Harris County and Texas turnout continue to break records.  Marc Campos still doesn't know what's happening, so here's the breakdown for Harris County's five heaviest boxes, my guess as to how they lean, and from the SoS, Texas' fifteen-largest counties' turnout as of Wednesday.

1. Metropolitan Multi-Service Center (known colloquially as 'West Gray') with 12,802 (heavy D).
2. Juergen's Hall Community Center with 11,945 (heavy R).
3. Bear Creek Park Community Center with 11,625 (heavy R).
4. Champion Forest Baptist Church with 11,488 (heavy R).
5. Bayland Park Community Center (where I voted Monday) with 8,656. (more D than R).

Close behind are Jersey Village City Hall (R), Kingwood Library (heavy R), and Nottingham Park (heavy R), all with more than 8000 early votes cast as of last night.

Since we're just spitballing, I'd have to say that the Republicans in Harris County might not be in as much trouble as we've been portending.

Click on it for a clearer picture or go here. Note that Harris County's turnout is 50 percent larger than second-place Dallas County.  This is why the emphasis on the state's largest county is so great.  The metro counties -- Harris and Dallas, then Bexar and Travis -- are more blue than red, but third-largest Tarrant and the suburban DFW counties of Denton (6th) and Collin (7th) are crimson-colored.  The three counties that round out the top ten are blue: El Paso, Hidalgo, and Fort Bend (which is actually purple, but trending azure and there are high hopes for a flip).

-- Alas for excited Democrats, a glob of recent polling appears to show the the prize of Texas' 38 Electoral College votes just out of Clinton's reach.

-- Still think there's a big difference between Democrats and Republicans, especially in Texas?  You really need to revisit that thinking.

-- One of the more under-reported stories of late has been the polling deflation of the Libertarian ticket.  This week Johnson-Weld hit three percent; less than two months ago it was ten.  It appears that's one of the places Hillary Clinton has siphoned votes from as she has surged, and the message to millennials about moving over from Gold to Blue seems to be working.

Update: Johnson's more recent meltdowns, captured on camera by HBO and The Guardian, aren't going to help him.

-- The Justice Department is coming to monitor Houston polls for 'irregularities".

Six teams of Justice Department officials will be dispatched to observe Election Day voting at 75 polling locations in Harris County as part of an investigation into allegations that the county failed to provide reasonable access to mobility-impaired voters.

Harris County will field its own teams on Election Day as part of an arrangement approved Thursday by U.S. District Judge Alfred H. Bennett.

Bennett, however, told county officials that he found it "deeply disturbing" that Justice Department observers saw a visibly armed county investigator with a badge filming an elderly African-American woman with a walker entering a polling place this week for early voting.

"That's voter intimidation," the judge said, ordering the Harris County Attorney's Office to provide written notice explaining how it plans to avoid a repeat of the scenario.

-- Texas Leftist's endorsements were mostly Democrats, but he did work in a couple of Greens -- Martina Salinas (Texas Railroad Commission) and Joe McElligott (HD-127) -- and a couple of Republicans.  He apparently missed the memo on the shitty Dems running for the state Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals.  Socratic Gadfly knocked down the fervor for the Libertarian running for the Railroad Commission.

-- Wonder Woman flies her invisible plane to Houston to stump for Hillary today.

On Friday, October 28, Actress Lynda Carter, television’s original Wonder Woman, and Hillary for Texas will host a phone bank with supporters in Houston. Carter knows that Hillary Clinton will continue to lift up American children and families while fighting against Trump’s dangerous and divisive rhetoric. At the event, Carter will discuss how supporters can mobilize from now until Election Day to ensure that Hillary Clinton becomes the next President of the United States.

With more people voting in this election than any in history, Carter will urge Texans voters to take advantage of in-person early voting. Voters can check their registration status and learn more at iwillvote.com.

Media planning to cover the event are asked to RSVP to Miryam Lipper at mlipper@hillaryclinton.com.

Hillary for Texas - Phone Bank with Actress Lynda Carter

WHEN:  3:00 pm – Friday, October 28

WHERE: Headworks International, 11000 Brittmoore Park Dr Houston, Texas 77041

PUBLIC RSVP HERE

I'd absolutely be willing to get roped with the Lasso of Truth, but the words coming out of my mouth would still be "I have already voted for Jill Stein".

Ajamu Baraka at UTD on Friday, TSU on Saturday

Say this for the Greens: they clearly understand that because the Texas Democratic Party is so lame, the best opportunity for collecting the most votes is right here.

-- See Ajamu Baraka speak at the University of Texas-Dallas on Friday, October 28.  Details here.  Introduced by one of my very favorite Congressional candidates, Gary Stuard, running in the 32nd (incumbent Pete Sessions, no Democrat filed).

-- And on Saturday, October 29, at Texas Southern University.  Details here.

In his own words, speaking about the Green Party's Southern Strategy.

We have to recognize, as we struggle to dismantle this system, we also have to survive. We have to build dual power where we confront and utilize the state and local level to win real concessions for the people, while we also make sure that we have independent structures outside of the state and we’re building within these independent structures additional survival programs. So what we have for example is Cooperative Jackson in Jackson, Miss., that’s committed toward building real worker co-ops. Those kind of efforts we need to support, and if we had nominal state power, we have in our platform a program to provide real, direct federal support to worker cooperatives and businesses as part of a transitional program.

We also believe we’ve got to have federal intervention to address the astronomical rates of unemployment among people of color—both in the urban area but in the parts of the country that people seem to forget about, the rural areas. And the grinding unemployment and grinding poverty that we find. We have to force local and state governments to address this specific reality that face black youth and black working-class people in general. While we struggle, we have to build structures, and one of the structures there for the taking is, in fact, the Green Party structure.

What I’m engaged in right now is a Green Party Southern strategy where we suggest specifically to black folks in the South that you have an instrument that can be used if you want to challenge the power of the Democrats in the various states to mount a real opposition to the control of the Republicans. Even in those states where you have Republican political control, there’s still a lot of collaboration with the Democratic Party. People are comfortable playing that role and they’re not really providing a real challenge to these Republican governors. If you want to have real opposition, you have to have a structure in place to engage in real oppositional politics. The Green Party can be that force that provides an instrument of direct challenge and to also place pressure on those black Democrats that continue to sell out the interests of black communities by collaborating with white power in the South.

Does this sound like white privilege to you?  All your conceptions about what the Green Party is and stands for have been turned on their ear.  If you're still undecided on whom to vote for at the top of your ballot -- but especially if you're thinking about writing in Bernie Sanders (just ten states will count those, and none of them are Texas) -- take another look.