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Tuesday, March 19, 2019

The Weekly Wrangle


Winding up SXSW in Austin and RodeoHouston on Saint Patrick's Day was a little too much for this Texas Progressive Alliance blogger.  Your round-up of the best of the left of the Lone Star State is, accordingly, a day late (but never a worthy blog post short).


The biggest Texas news of the week was Beto O'Rourke ending the suspense and entering the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.  The morning after his Annie Leibowitz/Vogue cover, he made his formal announcement and traveled to Iowa, where he stood on a diner counter and gesticulated enthusiastically, inviting the playful snark of of CNN's Jeannie Moos.  His first-day fundraising numbers were purposely delayed for 24 hours, then announced as just barely exceeding those of Bernie Sanders (but without disclosure of Beto's per-donor average.  We should know whether O'Rourke's claims about being grassroots- and small donor-driven are accurate by early April, as federal campaign financial reports are due at the end of March).

Here's a handful of reactions to the Texan's kickoff.

Ring of Fire: Beto'Rourke raised a ton of money but won't tell us where it came from

 Daily Dot: Beto likes to stand on counters -- and there are memes to prove it

Texas Tribune:

-- Beto O’Rourke acknowledges involvement with hacking group as a teen, expresses regret for writings

-- In Iowa, Beto O'Rourke works to find his footing on health care

-- Beto O'Rourke gets crash course in presidential scrutiny over two days in Iowa

CNN:

-- Beto's excellent adventure drips with white male privilege

-- Beto O'Rourke apologizes for jokes about wife, says he has benefited from 'white privilege'

Politico: ‘Not one woman got that kind of coverage’: Beto backlash begins

Op-Ed News (Bill McKibben): How to tell if Beto O'Rourke is for real: A Green New Deal and natural gas

Last October, in the heart of Texas hydrocarbon country and in the final weeks of his Senate contest with Ted Cruz, O'Rourke told the Midland Reporter-Telegram that "the natural gas that we use as a cleaner energy source here in this country could be something that replaces coal-fired plants in China, in India -- two of the largest economies on the planet that are burning coal and contributing to climate change. I'd much rather they burn natural gas from Texas that's connected to jobs here."

On Thursday in Keokuk, Iowa, during his first campaign appearance as a presidential candidate, O'Rourke praised the Green New Deal, particularly its call to "get to net-zero emissions." He said, "We have no more than 12 years to take incredibly bold action on this."

The Atlantic: O’Rourke mostly gets a pass for his lack of specifics

Reuters: Beto O’Rourke’s secret membership in America’s oldest hacking group (The Cult of the Dead Cow)

FiveThirtyEight: Is Beto O’Rourke learning how to troll the media?

The Week: Beto O'Rourke is hit with a 'devastating' new 2020 attack ad. Well, sort of.

Texas Observer (Justin Miller): Why is Beto Running for President, Exactly?

SocraticGadfly also took note of O'Rourke entering the presidential scrum, in particular that he still is not unequivocally for single-payer, and wonders when Sema Hernandez will apologize for endorsing him last fall and claiming he did support it.

(This might not be exactly what Gadfly is 'wondering' about ... but he's quite obviously asking for an apology from the wrong person anyway.)

(Click, scroll, and read all the Tweets, please.)

Stace at Dos Centavos wonders if people may be "Beto'ed out".  And Miles Coleman at Decision Desk HQ looks at his 2018 Senate race to see what it may mean for Beto's WH bid.

With much of the state's attention focused on the presidential race, Texas Standard sees an interesting challenge to John Cornyn in 2020 shaping up.  PDiddie at Brains and Eggs blogged about that as well, pointing out that the LBJ law would permit both Beto and Julián Castro to run for both president and Senate next year (if they so chose).

The Democrat defeated the Republican in the HD-125 special election for a seat in the Texas House.

Former San Antonio council member Ray Lopez defeated San Antonio construction businessman Fred Rangel, 58%-42%, to win the unexpired term of former Rep. Justin Rodriguez (D-San Antonio), who resigned in January to accept an appointment to the Bexar Co. Commissioners Court. A little more than 9K votes were cast, an increase of around 3K over the February 12 special election. Turnout for the runoff was 9% of registered voters.

Lopez jumped out to a 57%-43% lead in early voting, and he carried Election Day, 61%-39%. Lopez received more than four and a half times as many votes as in the special election, when he squeaked past Coda Rayo-Garza into the second runoff spot by 28 votes. Lopez received 19% of the vote, just over half the vote received by Rangel (38%). The Republican increased his vote total by nearly 1.5K votes, but it was not enough to overcome Lopez’s surge.

From the Texas Legislature, Progrexas watched as the Texas House Public Education committee passed a comprehensive $9 billion school finance and property tax reform bill ... but only after removing a merit pay provision that had angered teachers' unions.  Better Texas Blog already has their hot take on it posted.

Vicky Camarillo at the Texas Observer reported on the bills designed to break the cycle of 'debtor's prison'.  Grits for Breakfast has more on that topic.

As activists rallied at the Capitol yesterday, Texas Freedom Network updates on the legislative threats to LGBTQ equality and fairness.


Off the Kuff looked at the anti-sick leave bill that may serve as a stealth "bathroom bill".  Sanford Nowlin at the San Antonio Current is also on the sick leave/bathroom bill beat.

VICE has a story about the underground marijuana doctors here.

In Marble Falls, Texas, a town of 7,000 about an hour west of Austin, a drug deal of sorts is going down. Underneath cover of a gray, foggy day, local buyers -- average age: 80-plus -- prepare their home for the meeting. Laid out on dining table for guests is coffee, tea, and Girl Scout Cookies while FOX News blares in the background. Republican regalia, like a 2016 Trump-Pence sticker on the laundry door and a picture of one resident’s father arm-in-arm with President Dwight Eisenhower, adorn the walls. Show horses ninny in the fields outside.

[Names have been changed.]

With his partner and wife Vicki, Chad supplies medical marijuana to about 200 patients around Austin through their homemade tinctures, edibles, bath salts, and more. “We’re no medical experts,” Vicki and Chad admit, they just happen to have more information about cannabis than most anyone else their patients meet. Medical marijuana patients themselves, they’ve also assumed roles as political advocates, petitioning state legislators to expand Texas’s severely restrictive cannabis regime.

The Texas Tribune's Alex Samuels writes that while medical cannabis expansion has strong support in the Lege, it will likely be blocked by Dan Patrick.

San Antonians with Type 2 diabetes will be among the first to test a breakthrough oral insulin capsule, according to Roseanne Garza at the Rivard Report.

Michael Li previews the return of racial gerrymandering before the SCOTUS.

Ty Clevenger at Lawflog has filed a defamation suit accusing CNN, the New York Times, and Vox of smearing Texas financial advisor Ed Butowsky with false claims about his role investigating the murder of DNC employee Seth Rich.

San Antonio's first draft for a climate action plan is encouraging but needs more, says Texas Vox.

The Bondad Blog proposes using a FICA-styled tax in order to transition to Medicare for All.

Harris ranks 53rd among Texas counties for health (Deer Park refinery fire notwithstanding) in a report linked at Houston Public Media.  The high cost of housing means many residents have to make a trade-off between paying the rent or the mortgage and visiting the doctor.

Kroger's first self-driving, grocery-delivering autos hit the streets in Houston this week, in four southwest-area zip codes to begin, says CultureMap.

And David Collins reviews "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness", Arundhati Roy's second novel.
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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@ turnout.  Several 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.
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Friday, February 15, 2019

The Weekly Twenty Twenty Update

It's quite thin, as nobody jumped in or dropped out and those who were in -- or not in yet -- had little but stumbles and speculation for the media, corporate and social, to report and feud over.

-- Let's note that with a very large field of candidates, the DNC is already laying down debate rules well in advance of the first scheduled tilt, in June.

“As many as 20 Democratic presidential candidates will be invited to the party’s first sanctioned debates this summer if they can meet new polling or grass-roots fundraising thresholds to qualify,” the Washington Post reports.

“Candidates can qualify either by attracting campaign donations from at least 65,000 people, including at least 200 people from at least 20 states, or by registering at least 1 percent in three state or national polls from a list of surveys approved by the party.”


-- After launching her campaign during a blizzard, Amy Klobuchar had to speak to allegations about bullying her Senate staff.

“Yes, I can be tough, and yes I can push people. I have high expectations for myself, I have high expectations for the people that work for me, but I have high expectations for this country.”

The matter seems quelled, but look for questions about it during the next CNN townhall on Monday.

-- Speaking of Howard Schultz, his was a complete faceplant.  But guess what?  In our glorious democracy oligarchy/idiocracy, it doesn't matter.

On Tuesday night, CNN hosted a live town hall with former Starbucks CEO and potential presidential candidate Howard Schultz. It didn’t go particularly well. Schultz’s answers were largely vague, with occasional lapses into absurdity (“I didn’t see color as a young boy and I honestly don’t see color now,” Schultz said when asked about race).

But more interesting than the town hall’s content was its existence. Lots of people with no base of political support would like to run for president, but they can’t, because the media wouldn’t take their candidacies seriously. So why is Schultz, a political newcomer who “had the worst numbers of any potential candidate tested” in CNN’s own poll, getting such red-carpet treatment?

The answer, of course, is money. Schultz is a billionaire, and in American politics, money is a shortcut to legitimacy.

“Schultz doesn’t have to do the hard work of building a mass movement or representing a genuine constituency to get attention in our politics, because the media uses ability to spend money as a proxy for seriousness of campaign,” says Lee Drutman, a political scientist at New America. “And when the media bestows seriousness on a candidate, the public follows along.”

This, as everyone with a functioning brain understands, is exactly how Donald Trump came to be the 45th POTUS.  What's unfortunate is that many of those who voted for him -- unlike those in the executive offices of our corporate media, which just needs to cash the checks -- do not have functioning brains.  Zombies vote, y'all, and they vote a straight GOP ticket.

-- Turns out Kamala Harris is a Rap Genius.



Yeah, my favorite rap song from Fresh Prince was Purple Rain.

Quickly recovering, Senator Copmala announced the endorsement of progressive lioness Barbara Lee, which instantly became a bone of contention for the Berners.

-- Beto O'Rourke trumped Trump's rally in El Paso and then fueled speculation about a potential US Senate race by meeting with Chuck Schumer this week.  Politico also quoted someone anonymously saying that US Rep. Joaquin Castro would run against John Cornyn if Beto decided not to.

"Joaquin believes Beto could beat John in 2020, and if Beto decides to see this thing through and do that, then Joaquin will give him his full support, just like he did against Ted Cruz,” a source close to Castro told POLITICO. “Otherwise, Joaquin will absolutely consider jumping in and finishing the job."

This smells like twin peaks of Castro bullshit to me.  Here's a few reasons why.

1.  Beto hasn't even decided whether to jump in the presidential scrum, yet he's polling considerably stronger than Julián, and will move into the top five front-runners when he announces.

O'Rourke's e-mail network of small donors, at 743,000, is only one-third that of Bernie Sanders' -- whose 2.1 million base is larger than all other Democrats in the hunt -- but is still double that of his closest rivals (Warren, Gillibrand, Harris).  Castro has fewer than 900.

2.  It's Julián who is more likely to drop out and run against Cornyn, because he's not currently employed in government like Joaquin, his campaign is unlikely to gain traction among so many other cautious centrists, and he doesn't want to be anybody's running mate this time around.  He said so just last week (scroll to the end).

3.  Joaquin not only has some tenure in the D caucus -- he's already been a deputy whip and a chair of the Hispanic Caucus -- he sits on the House Intelligence Committee, which is a plum job for anybody with a base of representation that includes so many service members and veterans, like San Antonio's 20th District.  (Candidly, he or his brother could have defeated both Beto and Ted Cruz in 2018 if they hadn't been too fucking scared of losing.  Their reticence let Beto zoom right past them.  Don't take my word for it; read the third graf at Joaquin's Wiki.)

There's no good reason for Joaquin to give up all he's earned in a Dem majority in the House to shoot for a seat in the minority in the Senate.  Julián, on the other hand, has nothing left to wait around for if -- when -- his 2020 bid peters out.  Governor in 2022?  Not a chance if he's at 1% or less in the presidential polls in December.

And by the way: either Castro scares Wendy Davis and MJ Hegar right out of the Senate race, because even white centrist Democratic women can't compete with a Latinx of the same ideological stripe.  If neither Castro runs and one of Hegar or Davis does, look for Sema Hernandez to win the primary on the strength of the Latinx effect in statewide Donkey primaries.  She got 24% of the vote against Beto in 2018 spending just $5K, and similar to Maria Luisa Alvarado in 2006 and Linda Chavez-Thompson in 2010 -- who mashed their Caucasian establishment counterparts -- Hernandez can win the Senate primary with some reasonable fundraising even as the corporate media pretends she doesn't exist.

Beto's running for the White House in 2020, and when he comes up short will gladly be somebody's running mate.  Julián Castro could -- perhaps even should, but may still be too afraid to -- run against Cornyn in 2020.  Joaquin Castro needs to stay in Congress.

That's my reading of the cabrito entrails this week.
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Friday, March 15, 2019

Beto and Castro can run for both president and Senate *Update

It's the good old LBJ law.  *See news about Joaquin's imminent announcement and a Senate poll at the end of this post.


In his daily posts about something related to Beto, or the Senate race against Crony-n, "Shelley" Kuffner is yet to show any indication he gets this.

He has managed to conspicuously ignore the woman who's been in the 2020 Senate race for months, who got 24% against Bobo last year in the primary, and he's still pissing in one hand wishing for MJ Hegar/Wendy Davis/some other POS retread establishment conservaDem.  The more wars for oil, the better for his retirement plan.  Everybody votes their self-interest, after all.

It's still odd that his pining for Beto and/or Julián overlooks the historical and legal quirk that Lloyd Bentsen last took advantage of in 1988.  Ross Ramsey cleared this up weeks ago.

The law that allows Texans to run for two national offices at the same time is known as the LBJ law because it was passed to allow Johnson to run for both the vice presidency and for re-election in 1960. In his case, and later in Bentsen’s, it meant an incumbent didn’t have to risk the seat he already had for a higher one he wanted. Johnson, as it turned out, didn’t need the protection; Bentsen did. 

I've been saying for weeks that I did not think RFO'R would take on Corndog, and I still don't.  He's a top five presidential challenger upon entry yesterday, with plenty of media calf cramping, and he has 8 months to decide whether to file for another run at the upper chamber of Congress.  Castro is a different story; he's getting no traction, even after gouging Bernie Sanders on reparations at SXSW this past week.  Julián's White House bid is on life support and brother Joaquin would be an idiot to give up his seat in the House.

[B]oth O’Rourke and Castro would be eligible to be on the Texas ticket for Senate and for president or vice president, if they so desired. Texas law prevents candidates from filing for more than one office, except for that LBJ exemption. And the exemption in the Texas Election Code is broader than history might indicate: “This section does not apply to candidacy for the office of president or vice-president of the United States and another office.”

Yes, either dude is more likely, IMHO at this very early stage, to wind up as someone's #2 than the presidential nominee.  They would balance a ticket nicely with Kamala Harris, or Liz Warren, or Amy Klobuchar.  Maybe even Cory Booker.  And fantasize about the possibilities, Donkeys, with both Beto and Castro -- or vice versa, pun intended -- at the top of the '20 Lone Star ballot.  Even George Will knows that the GOP is roadkill if Texas turns blue.

So while my vote still goes to Bernie Sanders and Sema Hernandez as Democratic federal standard-bearers, I get that there are some jackasses that wouldn't be happy with those choices.  Maybe too many.  We'll see how things go in about a year.

But this is a spitballing post, and you decide what sticks or doesn't.  I think the most interesting question could be: what if Beto and Julián both run for president and Senate?  Who might you vote for in that case?  (I'd still be voting for Bernie and Sema.)  And what if there was a Senate runoff between O'Rourke and Castro next April, after the March 3rd, 2020, "Super Duper Tuesday" presidential primary results were known?

How about that!

Update: Within just a few hours of this post, the Texas Tribune reported that Joaquin is all but in against Cornyn.  He gives up important committee chairs and seniority to do, which I deem to be stupid, but it is accurate that some other San Antonio Democrat will announce for his House seat the instant he officially declares for the Senate.  Castro is pegged as the frontrunner for the nomination in a PPP poll just released.

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Thursday, January 10, 2019

Back to the future: 2020's latest news


It's been over six months since Blue Dog Ted turned down easy money in my proposed wager between his lap dog, Joe Biden, and my man Bernie Sanders.  The national conversation is still mostly centered around those two old white guys, although our Texas boy Beto moved in and up in the polling, and Liz Warren is occupying portside Democrats' attention with her first-out-of-the-gate exploratory announcement.  We should have Julian Castro to kick around by Saturday.  There's also Kamala Harris waiting in the wings; this account says she'll kick off on MLK Day, January 21.  She'll benefit greatly from a California primary that comes very early on the calendar.

Quietly organizing under the radar are Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand.  A mash of stale reruns like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton are trying to draw attention to themselves, and there are a few very long shots in early: WA Gov. Jay Inslee, (signature issue: climate change); Andrew Wang (the UBI candidate), and Maryland Congressman John Delaney, the extremely wealthy centrist.  He's been running since last July; has staffed up for -- and scheduled meet-and-greets next week in -- New Hampshire, and is capable of pouring millions of his own dollars into his bid.

Here's a few headlines, Tweets, and assorted other thought-provokers I've collected over the past several days, along with some of my usual salty opinions.

Warren's been most talked-about, so she gets to lead off.

-- Start with the TexTrib's profile from 2016, about how her decade teaching at UT Law influenced her (if you haven't read it already).  I found it seminal.  It suggests to me that she will have some network of support in Keep-It-Weird that competes with the Berners.

Warren is the progressive Democrat that establishment Democrats prefer over Sanders, who is still being smeared by orthodox Donkeys because he gets elected as an independent.  This is its own purity test, as thinking people clearly get.  Those who squeal "Vote Blue No Matter Who" will have to put up or shut up in 2020 if Bernie wins the nom.  History reminds us that the PUMAs failed in 2008 where the Sandernistas did not in 2016.

Daily Kos kicked off their every-two-weeks straw poll and the inaugural gave Liz a big win.


Let's note a few things for the record: Kos has been a vituperative gasbag against Sanders for a long time now.  The author of this Tweet is also the co-author of this piece.  And the DK straw poll is an Internet poll, which didn't stop Nate Silver from performing an act of seppuku.

So much credibility lost in such a short period of time.

A lot of people think Warren and Sanders are competing for the same voters, but that's lazy and uncareful.  She ain't him in her own words.  This Tweet thread was instructive as an academic exercise if you're into that.


More on those differences from Jacobin.

As for my M4A litmus test ... well, Warren is a capitalist, a believer in markets, like she said above.  She also said in autumn 2017 that she supported Sanders' Medicare for All bill, "but until we get there"... six months later (as in last March) introduced her own bill strengthening the ACA instead.  That was of course prior to the recent decision by a federal judge here in Texas that struck down Obamacare.  Her position ten months ago -- there is no clarity on her presidential website -- is best explained by Daniel Callahan at STAT.

(Warren) has proposed an alternative plan. She judges that a single-payer plan would be difficult to get through Congress and concedes that private insurance will have to continue. But that insurance would “have to be at least as good and priced as reasonably as the coverage provided by our public health care programs.” The obvious advantage of her plan is that it aims to build upon and improve the embattled Affordable Care Act, likely making it easier to get through Congress than a single-payer plan. Warren’s plan would benefit from the strong gain in public support for the ACA over the past couple of years despite assaults on it by President Trump and other Republicans.

Too mealy-mouthed for me.  She's gonna hafta take a mulligan.

-- Lots has already been posted about the "war" on Beto by the "Berniebros", its own double smear.  I summarized it in the Xmas Eve Wrangle.

In the span of seven days, Beto O'Rourke went from expanding his statewide cult of personality from sea to shining sea to exploding on the 2020 launching pad, writes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs, in a post originally motivated by two hilarious takes about Bernie Sanders from Bay Area Blue Dog John Coby.  But it was a takedown by David Sirota at Capital and Main of Beto's voting record that did the most damage to the erstwhile Congressman's reputation as a "progressive", and that in turn spawned an article about a "war" on O'Rourke being waged by "Berniebros".  The geek fighting didn't just carry on all weekend on Twitter, it again ruptured the 2016 fault lines between the center of the Democratic Party and the left. 

Give the shitlibs credit for rapidly counter-attacking, especially when you consider that examining the Congressman's voting record does not constitute a "war" by any stretch of the definition of the word.  As was said repeatedly in 2015 and '16 regarding Hillary Clinton's long public service history, facts are not attacks.  For fuck's sake, vacation in Yemen soon, you fucking neoliberal fuckwads.

Undeterred, Tina Nguyen at Vanity Fair throws more gas on that fire.  She opens with the premise that the GOP will use the data that Sirota, et. al. have published about Beto for themselves, as advanced by The Hill.  Somehow I find it difficult to believe that Trump, or any of his potential primary challengers, could make a credible case for criticizing O'Rourke for taking money from oil & gas industry executives.  Just ridiculous.

Maybe I need to turn off my hypocrisy sensor.  Is it a common practice at this point in the presidential election cycle for Republican political consultants to share mud with their Democratic professional advisor "friends", where that might benefit the Dem's clients and help the GOP overall (by, say, hurting Beto with the Sanders/Inslee/anyDemocratwhosupportsclimateaction caucus)?

Or do they sell it to them?  Capitalism, you know.  And how does the invisible hand of the free market set a price for that commodity?  Berning questions.


-- Bern Notice: six of these are in the Houston area, two in DFW and San Antone, five in Austin, and one each in Abilene, Waco, Bastrop, Luling, and Temple.  I'm attending the one at Axelrad.  Sema Hernandez, challenging John Cornyn in 2020, is the organizer.  For people who would rather work on revolution than mere resistance, this is the place for you.  As I see it, that's the role of the Democratic Socialists as well (but YMMV and I could just be wrong since I don't attend the local chapter's meetings due to my various handicaps.)  With the implosion of the Texas Green Party, I remain a Bernie or Buster.  He's got his faults; he's a rural state gun supporter and also a Defense Department grifter for Vermont, but he's better on BDS than anybody else, especially Warren.  They both have a bit of a complicated relationship with the Pentagon, but they're both also saying and doing things that are breaking new ground in Democratic foreign policy.

Brian Hanley has listed 20 reasons why Bernie is the only one who can beat Trump in 2020.  I agree.  If the Democrats nominate anybody else, Trump will be re-elected and everybody can blame us all over again.  I just don't GAF any more.

-- Read everything in this hot 2020 take but especially the excerpt below.  It's certainly true that there are far too many trolls online -- no matter your social medium of choice -- who will make the next almost-two years somewhat intolerable for all of us.  Clean up your own feeds and timelines; use 'mute', 'ignore', 'block', and 'report' to your advantage.

Will there be assholes online getting in circular arguments and making inappropriate personal attacks on the integrity and intelligence of anyone who supports the wrong candidate(s)? Of course! There always will be assholes. Always, always, always. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that there are always going to be some big assholes in the mix. But we don’t have to let online wankers define the discourse around what is shaping up as the most ideologically significant Democratic primary in at least a generation. All we need to do is pay attention to what the candidates themselves are talking about and remember that social media apps come with a mute button. 

-- And let's not let the vile corporate media and their 'he said, she said', 'soandso' slams 'what'shisface' on Rachel/Hannity, "Entertainment Tonight"/"A Current Affair"/TMZ panel of political experts masquerading as news reporting BS fuck this up again, either.  When they show Trump saying 'Pocahontas', you turn them off.  When they show a video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing, don't you click on it.  If Beto's head appears Photoshopped onto the nude body of a male stripper ... well, try not to click on that, okay?

Matt Taibbi, from his book Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus.

“Elections are about a lot of things, but at the highest level, they’re about money,” Taibbi writes. “The people who sponsor election campaigns, who pay hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the candidates’ charter jets and TV ads and 25-piece marching banks, those people have concrete needs. They want tax breaks, federal contracts, regulatory relief, cheap financing, free security for shipping lanes, anti-trust waivers and dozens of other things.”

And Chris Hedges, in this Truthdig piece entitled "The Election Circus Begins".

“The corporate media ignores issues and policies, since there is little genuine disagreement among the candidates, and presents the race as a beauty contest. The fundamental question the press asks is not what do the candidates stand for but whom do the voters like.”

The only way we'll avoid Idiocracy again is if we don't pay for idiocy.  Don't give them the clicks, ratings, subscriptions, or eyeballs.  Set your adblocker to 'vaporize'.  Block the social media trackers (the latest version of Firefox is doing this now).  And for the love of Dishrag, get off Facebook and use DuckDuckGo and not Google.

-- Debates begin in June, with six this year and six next.  We'll have a clearer picture about who's in, out, up, down, sideways, and every other direction between now and then.  I'm still of the opinion that Beto and Castro are in it not to win it but to be picked veep, and before Christmas comes around again one of those is better-than-even-odds to drop out and file to run against John Cornyn.
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Thursday, February 27, 2020

The state of the #TXSen Democratic Primary

It's a crine-ass shame that our corporate media not only picks their favorite candidates, to the exclusion (read: blackout) of all others, but then refuses to perform the due diligence to learn, and disclose, that one of their favorites is laden with heavy, reeking baggage.

I'll get to that in just a moment.  Let me open with the premise (you're welcome to disagree) that Bernie Sanders is going to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.  There is, unsurprisingly, major fuckery afoot to stop that from happening.  Again, whether efforts to subvert democracy by the Democratic Party establishment succeed or fail is -- or for now, will be -- a conversation for another day.

Today we'll start with the postulate above.  And if you buy that, then ...


Despite my longtime denigration of polls and polling, I tend to place more faith in the pseudo-science as Election Day draws closer ... despite the outcome of the presidential election in 2016 defying even the prognostications of the once-mighty Nate Silver.  (Hey, I believed him and them too.)

So Bernie's on a roll; he'll emerge next Wednesday morning with a bushel full of delegates; his various challengers are in assorted stages of disarray, and only some treachery is going to stop his nomination.  And with those circumstances, and with the Senate in desperate need of flipping blue so as to enact his sweeping reforms ... why is a Libertarian who voted in the GOP primary in 2016 and a self-confessed gun nut -- she stands for everything Beto O'Rourke fought against ...


... leading a dozen candidates by a mile in the race to replace John Cornyn?  The strength of her campaign seems to be, as it was in 2018 when she ran for Congress against John Carter, based on her military service.  Oh, and she also rides a motorcycle.

If you believe what the so-called smart people in Texas politics say, MJ Hegar will be followed into the runoff by a man or a person of color, and that sounds a lot like Royce West, the Dallas state senator with a long service history, many endorsements from his peers in the Lege, and a proud record of Democratic conservatism that Texas Donks are renowned for.  (Once upon a time, before they were called Blue Dogs, they were Boll Weevils, Reagan Democrats, Goldwater Democrats, Shivercrats, and other less-flattering monikers, but back then they were also all Kluckers.  Far be it from me to suggest that an African American conservaDem be classified with white racists.)

Hegar and West don't support Medicare for All, don't support the Green New Deal, but do support a host of middling half-measures and corporate centrist views that have been demonstrable failures in the Senate by Democrats of their stripe for many, many years.  A new generation of Texans needs new blood and fresh thinking.  These two ain't it.

Chris Bell, as I have blogged and Tweeted a thousand times, is a horse's ass of a different color.  He boasts of being progressive, but endorsed Bill King over Sylvester Turner in the 2015 mayor's race in which he failed to make the runoff.  That's not progressive (though to be fair, he might have told the truth if he'd simply amended his declaration of being "the most progressive in the race" to "the most progressive between King and Turner", although that's not much better).

And we know that Bell couldn't beat Rick Perry in 2006 in a four-person race for governor, losing votes to Kinky Friedman (not progressive) and Carole "Grandma" Keeton Rylander Strayhorn (also not progressive).  This is supposed to tell us, inexorably, that progressives can't win in Texas.  So sayeth the paid political class, pundits, and what have you.  We also know ad nauseum that Lone Star Dems have run nearly no one but conservaDems -- there have been a couple of exceptions -- and lost every statewide race since the mid-90's.

And then along came Beto O'Rourke in 2018.  Without digressing too much, Beto's shooting star has turned into a small meteor falling in the barren West Texas desert.  His close loss to Ted Cruz 1.5 years ago, his flameout in the White House sweepstakes last November, and his heavy bet on a longshot bid to flip a statehouse seat in Fort Bend County last month give him the look of a flash in the pan, in fact.  He's avoided making an endorsement here, though one candidate has staffed her campaign full of Beto alumni.

Amanda Edwards, the former at-large Houston city council member who is the fourth "favorite" in the race, has the solid pedigree and the consultant-speak down pat.  She's gotten some late media assistance, probably too late, but maybe the Black woman vote is undersampled in the polls and she sneaks into the runoff.  Does "Moderate Millennial" bang anybody's shutters?

That brings us to Cubic Zirconia "More Mexican/Good Stock", aka Christine Costello, aka Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez.  As the nickname I've given her implies, she has considerably less worth than what you might see at first glance.  Not for lack of promotion by the Texas Tribune and their CEO and co-founder Evan A. Smith, that's for sure.

So in the absence of any good journalism, you should read all the way through John's thread.


It's ten Tweets, with a few links and some video and audio.   CTzR has not responded, as best as I can determine, to any of the allegations above.  She and Hegar have recently squabbled over a few things, so it's not like Ms. Tzintzún Ramirez plays the "lalala I can't hear you" game.

John G and me are biased, of course.  He works on Sema Hernandez's campaign and I've been a supporter, financial and social media and otherwise, since her run against Beto in 2018, where she got a fourth of the primary vote, winning several counties.


Despite that, she was dismissed by Smith at the TexTrib (according to Hernandez.  Smith has not responded to the allegation below).


The voters in the Texas Democratic primary are currently in the process of rendering a verdict on the viability of Hernandez's candidacy, but I do not think the seriousness of it has ever been -- or should have been -- in question.  And in any case, Evan Smith would not be the judge of who is or isn't a serious candidate, no matter how deep our democracy has sunk into oligarchy.

So if any of this is something you'd like to have a say in, at the ballot box, between now and next Tuesday evening, please go to it.  As a reminder:


See you at the polling place.
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Saturday, January 13, 2018

Sema versus Beto

(Part two of The Revolution as opposed to The Resistance.  Part one is here.)

Once more we find a corporate media blackout on the most progressive candidate in a statewide contest.  To paraphrase Sarah Silverman: frankly, it's ridiculous.

Sema Hernandez is told she is the first Texas Latina ever to qualify for the ballot for US Senate.  She has an enthusiastic Twitter following that was instrumental in raising the funding necessary to get her on the ticket.  Her story is powerful.  And yet ... if all you did was watch teevee or read the newspapers, you might believe that there was just one person standing up to challenge Lyin' Ted Cruz in November.  (There are three, but the third one is a ghost.  Only this site has the slightest bio of him, an 'ex-pressroom manager'.)

Exhuming the lede: the more I have researched Bob O'Rourke, the less likely I am to be voting for him.  Today I'm including the general election in that assessment.  There's much time and many opportunities for improvement on his part should he emerge as the nominee, and lots of unexpected things can happen.  But if November 6, 2018, was tomorrow, and the options were Cruz, O'Rourke, and a bunch of nobodies on the extreme right ... I would undervote the US Senate race here in our beloved Texas, and here is why.

-- There is no Green candidate running, or attempting to qualify to run, by all indications.

-- The gaggle of Libertarians dueling for that party's nomination are, to be kind, completely insufficient candidates, and the independents declared with even so much as the slightest profile -- Dale Bible of the Constitution Party, Bob McNeil of the American Citizens Party --  are far to the right of the GOP and the Libs.  This research was comedic relief: finding Texans who think Cruz is too liberal helped clear my lungs of a small bucket of phlegm, screaming and coughing in laughter.

-- It shouldn't have to be mentioned, but Cruz or any of the four Republicans who might upset him in their primary are non-starters.  I only wonder if disgraced prince of darkness Steve Bannon's support of Cruz helps or hurts the incumbent at some point.  Texans Republicans are both forgiving of all sins and massively hypocritical when they can manage to acknowledge them, so there's probably nothing for the lazy corporate media to find even if they looked.  If televangelist Bruce Jacobson is to gain any traction, he would be wise to go after Cruz's porn Tweets, the Bannon free pass, and anything else that can leverage Trump's MAGATs against the senator.  It's quite possible that Cruz has to go to a runoff, and that helps the Democrats.  So does so many freak right-wing others in the general.

So then ... can Sema run strong enough in south Texas, among other places, to push O'Rourke into a runoff?  If Edward Kimbrough, whatever and whoever he is, can collect some vote share above 1 or 2%, then the chances increase.  That's her best bet today.

So why can't you vote for "Beto" again, PD?

For starters, he comes from a excessively privileged background, and it's been my experience that people like him don't have a lot of genuine empathy for the less-than-fortunate.  His parents were well-off and well-connected; he attended an all-male boarding school, went to Columbia University (was on the rowing team), drifted somewhat aimlessly and in bohemian fashion for several years after graduation.  He would rather you think of him as the punk rocker who got busted twice in the '90's, once on a forcible entry charge at UT and also for DWI.  Both charges were dismissed -- lucky him -- but he apparently earns 'street cred' from the repeated mentions of his criminal record.

What he really doesn't want you to know is that he has a long reputation as a phony.  This excerpt from Texas Monthly has details about his El Paso real estate fronting for his father-in-law.

In 2006, (city councilman O'Rourke's group of politicos cynically named the Progressives) championed a public-private redevelopment that would welcome a sports arena, hotels, big-box retailers, and an arts walk to downtown and southside El Paso. O’Rourke saw the plan as a way to “bring life and energy and vitality” to an area of the city that had long been characterized by abandoned buildings and shuttered stores. But entrenched property owners believed the plans represented an existential threat to their businesses; Chicano activists saw an aggressive gentrification that would “de-Mexicanize” the historic Segundo Barrio neighborhood, some of which was slated to be razed and rebuilt; and soon both groups mounted an offensive against the council members, accusing them of doing the bidding of a cabal of billionaire developers. O’Rourke responded by attending forums hosted by the business owners and walking door-to-door in the Segundo Barrio neighborhood to hear residents’ concerns—he found that most of them supported some kind of redevelopment—but the battle lines had already been drawn, and his opponents saw his listening tour as a cynical act.

“He was the young Kennedy progressive going to slums, offering a better perspective,” David Romo, a historian and activist who fought against the plan, told me. “That was the narrative that he was very good at promoting, but it was all false, it was all a mask. He made himself the absolute good guy and everyone who was fighting against displacement was the bad guy.”

That May, another El Paso activist initiated a recall campaign against O’Rourke. When the recall fizzled, the downtown property owners filed two ethics complaints against him, citing conflicts of interest because his father-in-law, prominent real estate investor William Sanders, was one of the key businessmen behind the plan. After an independent ethics-review commission dismissed the charges against him, O’Rourke denounced what he saw as a coordinated campaign of “character assassination and political intimidation.”

To this day, the fight produces strong reactions. Romo refuses to call O’Rourke Beto, because he sees the name as an act of cultural appropriation by “someone who betrayed our trust.”

Watch this video of the Segundo Barrio residents and activists confronting O'Rourke about the project.  Read this extensively researched blog post from 2012 at Deep Inside El Paso regarding the pattern of displacement of minority communities for 'economic revitalization' demonstrated by real estate developer and O'Rourke's FIL, Sanders.  Note that as an El Paso city council member. O'Rourke recused himself from many votes on real estate projects in the city ... but not Segundo Barrio.  Even when former mayor John Cook suggested that he do so.

And if you like your snark wicked, read this send-up of 'Beto 4.0'.  Excerpt:

“This is pretty alarming,” says CNET analyst Amado D. Kompuradoras. “The Betobot has had a series of problems since its initial outing as Robert O'Rourke.1.0. At that time, that version was sufficiently Republican until you got the BetoBot released in Version 3.0, name change and all, now a Democrat.”

Learning all this gave me a greater understanding for the Congressman's duplicity -- there's no other word for it -- on single payer.  He declares that healthcare is a human right, but it's a right he expects everybody to have to pay for, and that hospitals have a right to profit off of.

O’Rourke supports universal coverage and sees a single-payer approach as the “only clear path” to get there. He’s not signed on to the House bill (HR 676, 'Medicare For All', the Conyers bill), even though he likes its goal, because he disagrees with the requirement that providers be public institutions or nonprofits. “If you like the way Medicare works today, I don’t know why you wouldn’t use the same model in what is being called a Medicare for All bill. Instead, Conyer’s bill changes that model fundamentally, takes a big chunk of potential providers out of the mix and starts out with some entrenched opposition,” O’Rourke told the Observer. “I think we can do better.”
 
O’Rourke likes what he’s read of Sanders’ bill, but disagrees with having no copays for anyone and no premiums for low-income families — he’d prefer everyone pay in to some extent.

That's the equivalent of favoring a poll tax for the right to vote.  Which is bullshit, Bob.

The prevaricating doesn't end there; PolitiFact caught him in a half-truth regarding his piousness about "not taking PAC money".  It's long, and complicated by the usual hurdles in tracing political contributions, so here's the nut graf.

O’Rourke said: "I’m one of two members of Congress out of 535 that takes no corporate cash, no political action committee money."

Unsaid: no candidate can take corporate cash; that’s illegal. Otherwise, we found, O’Rourke was one of at least five (not two) House incumbents to keep no PAC contributions in the run-up to the 2016 elections. He also hasn’t accepted PAC aid into 2017 though he drew on about $297,000 in PAC donations in his House bids of 2012 and 2014 -- actions not recapped in his Dallas call for contributions.

I think "half-true" was generous.

In the past week, one thing O'Rourke did that he had to quickly backtrack on was his call for a mandatory national service program for millennials.  Because, as blogged above, he did so much in his own youth to serve his country.

Stace and Wayne were both quick to make excuses for him.

All this is forcing me to take a hard pass on Bob.  By sharp contrast, Sema is from the Democratic Socialist wing of the Democratic Party, she's for Medicare for All without conditions, also tuition-free college, the good kind of comprehensive immigration reform (she's the daughter of immigrants), a $15 minimum wage transitioning to a universal basic income, and a whole lot more that I find genuine and direct, not to mention meeting the definition of 'real progressive'.

Please don't give me any crap about pragmatism over purity.  I am so worn out by logic represented by "if everybody who voted for Jill Stein would have voted for Hillary Clinton, Hillary would have won" that my stock response turns that inside out: if everybody who voted for Hillary would have voted for Jill Stein instead, Trump wouldn't be president.  And we'd all be even better off than that.

So you vote your principles in the primary and I'll vote mine.  Don't expect me to vote for your neoliberal shitholes in November if you wouldn't vote for a Democratic Socialist now, or then.  There's gonna be a Revolution inside the Democratic Party sooner than later; I'm voting for now.

If you're in the Houston area, you can meet Sema next Friday.  The following day is the 2018 Women's March in Houston (last year more than 20,000 participated) and Sema will host a meet-and greet prior to it.  She'll also have a community town hall at U of H on February 7.  If you're elsewhere in Texas, she's raising funds for a state tour right now.

She is as solid as a progressive populist can be.
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Thursday, August 15, 2019

How many Democrats are running against Cornyn?

Is it five?  Is it "at least seven"?  Is it eight, as the Tweeter below has repeatedly pointed out?


Or is it nine?  That's also how many Ballotpedia has.

... former Congressman Chris Bell, Pastor Michael Cooper, Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards, failed judicial candidate Jack Daniel Foster, Jr., failed congressional candidate MJ Hegar, Berniecrat Sema Hernandez, failed gubernatorial candidate Adrian Ocegueda, civil right activist Christina Ramierez (sic) and state Senator Royce West ...

I believe the point would be that none of them -- however many you choose to believe exist -- are named Beto O'Rourke.  Nor will be, if you simply take his word for it.


A few more corrections:

Howie Klein (he's the blogger known as DWT) might have pointed out that Bell is also a failed gubernatorial, Congressional, state senatorial, and mayoral candidate who endorsed the Republican, Bill King, over Sylvester Turner in the 2015 runoff.  I should know.

Klein does have a lot of issues with spelling, grammar, logic, and knowledge of the situation here, as Gadfly has already pointed out in the comments there, though someone he references as Nancy -- presumably not Pelosi -- being the "worst brain-lacker" could have been more coherent, particularly for someone whose job title includes the word 'editor'.  But Howie can at least count higher than five, and he does not have a degree in mathematics, which means he doesn't have a blind spot the size of his ass or the color of what comes out of it.  (Klein may or may not have an issue with parentheses.)

Seriously.  You think it might be racial?  Or is it just about the money?

Cooper also fell short in his bid for D lite governor two years ago.  And Hernandez, with less than $5,000 raised, earned nearly 25% in the last US Senate primary against ... you know who.

A few more disclosures:

Hegar, the early money leader, was exposed as a GOP voter in the 2016 primary and a supporter of Libertarian causes and their presidential candidate that year, Gary Johnson.  As best as I can tell, this escaped notice during her near-miss for Congress in 2018.  Hegar is by far the most conservative candidate in the race: no on M4A, no on GND, come and try to take my guns, etc.  I truly hope we have seen the last of these DINOsaurs in the Texas Democratic primary after 2020.

Edwards is flush with consultant-speak, particularly on healthcare.  She and West both advocate for expanding the ACA, not Medicare for All.  If I were moderating a debate with either of them standing before me, my question would be: "What are your plans for healthcare if the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare next summer?"

Tzintzún Ramirez has become the most intriguing candidate to state media of late, as she has hired several of the folks that worked on O'Rourke's landmark run against Ted Cruz.  This would be everybody's final clue that it's Democratic presidential nomination-or-bust for Beto.  More importantly, Tzintzún Ramirez appears to be coat-tailing Democratic progressive Elizabeth Warren, a candidate whom establishment Donkeys and teevee talking heads love much more than the real deal, as has also become obvious this week.  More about this point of contention in tomorrow's 2020 Update.

I think everybody knows where I stand in this race.


If you're going to be in or around the Metroplex before Labor Day weekend, you can catch five of the candidates at this forum.  (I'd be willing to bet there will be more than five in attendance by then.)


Does anyone have questions?
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