Showing posts sorted by date for query voting machines. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query voting machines. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Friday, March 06, 2020

Race for the White House Update

Name change as referenced previously; post appearing later than usual because everybody's now dropped out that is going to (this week).  Which is to mean: Tulsi.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is still running for president, despite low national polling numbers and winning only two pledged delegates in the nominating contests so far.

The Hawaii Democrat's two delegates came from American Samoa, a US territory that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg won on Super Tuesday. (Bloomberg has since dropped out of the race.)

These delegates qualified her for the next debate, March 15 in Phoenix AZ, but the DNC apparently will revise the rules to exclude her.


Gabbard is a gadfly, as we are all aware, and her consequence has been that she's no more feeling the democracy from the Democratic Party than Bernie.

Waiting to post gave me the luxury of not having to reset the entire play-by-play from Sunday, when Barack Obama staged a neoliberal intervention on behalf of Sundownin' Joe.


The "Vote Blue No Matter Who Except for You-Know-Who" crew, particularly in Texas, made their complaints loud and clear.  And their Saviour answered their prayers.

The masses yearning to vote shitlib then obediently turned out, in such numbers that they broke all the voting machines in minority precincts.  There's a joke about sheep and souls and polls that I wanted to make here but thought the better of, so perhaps if your Google is as snarky as mine you can find it.  If not, just infer what you wish.

Bloomer wilted as the seasons turned to spring, his millions buying him a win in the afore-mentioned American Samoa primary, a handful of delegates, and little else.  After first declaring he would stay in, he joined Pete and Amy and fell in line.  And after trying to negotiate something with both Bernie and Biden, Warren did the same yesterday.  Not the endorsement part.


So it's just Sanders and Biden, as we -- or at least I -- have long thought it would be, with Gabbard doing whatever she will do (today she's traveling to Las Vegas to speak at a NORML convention.  That's not meant to be a pun, though you're welcome to take it as such).

The new ads between the two left standing have started rolling, and Biden is calling Bernie a socialist, accusing him of calling black voters the establishment, and a few other smears.

Bernie has tacked to the right as well.

On Tuesday, he began running a campaign ad consisting entirely of Barack Obama speaking in glowing terms of the senator who (infrequently) calls himself a “democratic socialist.”

“Feel the Bern!” the ex-president exclaims in the ad.


The ad is not only a bid for black votes, it is also a signal to the Democratic Party, including the African American party establishment, that they have nothing to fear from his “political revolution.”

This, along with Bernie's insistence that he will do whatever he can to support the Democratic nominee, and his defense of Elizabeth Warren in spite of her craven manipulation of his goodwill throughout the primary, has led me to the conclusion that I needed to prepare my Plan B options.

Which are not the same as Bernie's.


I watched the Free and Equal debates from Wednesday, and found Howie, and Mark Charles, and Gloria la Riva all vote-worthy.  They are in various states of qualifying for the Texas ballot.

I will not be ridin' with Biden.  I'm impervious to the guilt of Jackasses trying to shame me into voting for him, and I can't be shepherded onto a Biden bandwagon by any of Bernie's support network.  Bernie needs to win on the first ballot or the DNC superdelegates will surely steal it from him and give it to Old Joe, or some other candidate they prefer who will be just as centrist-shitty.

I have no faith in Democratic Party unity pledges.  I'm making plans to attend the convention in Milwaukee, if not as a delegate or a media representative then as a yellow vest in the street.
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Monday, February 24, 2020

The Weekly Wrangle (and the pens are full)


So much going on across our Great State this week: the conclusion of early primary voting, Fat Tuesday (and then Ash Wednesday for Catholics), and the Houston Rodeo kicking off Thursday with its World Championship Bar-B-Que Contest.  The Texas Progressive Alliance encourages you to get out and do some of everything -- but especially vote -- this week.


To begin, TXElects.

Early voting for the March 3 primary election continues through February 28.

Turnout continues to be brisk for a primary election but dwarfed by a general election. Through Saturday, Republican turnout in the 15 counties with the most registered voters remains at a record pace, running 6% ahead of the 2016 pace. It will likely fall behind the record pace for the first week because last Monday was a holiday, meaning the first week of early voting had just six days.

Democratic turnout in those counties is lagging farther behind the record pace set in 2008, but it remains the second-highest volume in the Top 15 counties for a Democratic primary. It is, however, 55% ahead of the 2016 pace.

The number of Democratic early voters in those counties leads the number of Republicans, 254K to 215K.

Update (Tuesday, 2/25): TXElects also has some analysis of polling results released by UH's Hobby School on Monday.

Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are tied as the top two choices of “likely Democratic primary voters”, according to a new University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs survey (PDF). Biden (22.5%) and Sanders (22.1%) are followed by Elizabeth Warren (18%), Michael Bloomberg (13%), Pete Buttigieg (12%) and Amy Klobuchar (7%).

Sanders was the top choice for 30% of Hispanic/Latino respondents, his best showing among any ethnic group. Biden was the top choice of 46% of African Americans, more than triple the support of any other candidate. Anglo voters were closely divided among Warren (21%), Sanders (21%), Buttigieg (16%), Biden (15%), Bloomberg (13%) and Klobuchar (11%).

Unsurprisingly, Sanders fared best among voters born after 1996 with 44%, more than double Buttigieg’s 21%. Biden (31%) and Bloomberg (26%) fared the best among voters born before 1946.
Sanders fared best in the border region with 29% but trailed Biden (33%) there. That Sanders is under 30% in the border region is probably good news for U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo), who is facing a Sanders-endorsed progressive primary challenger. Sanders received 25% of the vote head-to-head against Hillary Clinton in CD28 in the 2016 primary.

Our beloved Texas felt the Bern all weekend.   From El Paso to San Antonio to Houston to Austin, large crowds gathered and cheered the Democratic front-runner as he proclaimed victory in the Nevada caucuses, predicted a win here, and declared that his progressive populist movement was going all the way to the White House in November.


“This state, maybe more than any other state, has the possibility of transforming this country,” said Sanders, speaking Sunday to more than 6,600 rally-goers in the Fertitta Center (on the campus of the University of Houston).

More Bern in the Weekly 2020 Update, in time for tomorrow night's South Carolina debate.  PDiddie at Brains and Eggs had a pair of pre- and post-Las Vegas debate posts.  Juanita Jean at the Beauty Shop seemed happy about the debate.  And with Yang dropping out and Tulsi taking up the Basic Income drumbeat, SocraticGadfly again looked at libertarian vs non-libertarian versions of BI, and then dove into discussions just how we should define the "gig economy" and at whom different versions of BI might be targeting.

Unfortunately some of our Texas Congresscritters -- mostly those of the Blue-Dog-in-a-swing-district variety -- aren't getting onboard the Bern Train yet.


In response to Bernie's and AOC's bill to ban fracking:


Fletch just lost my vote again.

“Our candidates are going to spend their entire time distancing themselves from the nominee” if it’s Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, said Colin Strother, a Texas-based Democratic strategist, who sees fracking as one of several issues where progressive and moderate Democrats are divided.

Strother is advising Henry Cuellar, who got fluffed by Nancy Pelosi this past weekend.


Cisneros has been endorsed by Sanders and Warren and Julian Castro and three members of The Squad and the Texas AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME, CWA, AFT, the Texas Organizing Project, Working Families Party, and dozens of others.  TX-28 is far and away the most captivating primary race in the whole state.  Strother lives and dies by polling so don't expect him to mention this one.  The generational (and ideological) divide in the electorate, mentioned there, is showing up in the candidates running for office.  Reform Austin has that story.

There was a debate among the Democrats running for US Senate at the University of North Texas over the weekend ...


... but unlike the debate broadcast by KVUE and other TEGNA stations across the state last Thursday night, several of those on your ballot failed to show up.


Meanwhile the race took a turn for the vicious.


And the idiotic.


This on the heels of Bell bragging about being "certified progressive" (sic) by Progress Texas, a topic previously mauled to death on this site.

In last week's Wrangle, this blogger ranted about misuse of the word 'progressive'.  This week, both Gadfly and Jaime Abeytia picked up on that with rants of their own.   

To be clear: Bell thinks you're so stupid you'll keep falling for this ongoing shtick of his.

This blogger will deliver a promised state-of-the-race post on the D primary scrum to face Cornyn, complete with the latest developments (as soon as the latest developments chill for an instant).

State Sen. Kirk Watson abruptly resigned his seat in the upper chamber of the Texas Legislature in order to become dean of the University of Houston's Hobby School of Public Affairs.  His unexpected departure set Pink Dome tongues wagging about who might jump into a special election to replace him, and so far the biggest news is those who have declined to do so.

Kuff made some predictions about the primaries (that is, if you define "it's really hard to say", "Again, who knows?", and "I'm totally guessing" as predictions).  Paige Weaver at the Dallas Observer questions whether Dallas County is ready for Election Day, with its new voting machines to be implemented.  And Raise Your Hand Texas released its first poll about public education.

D Magazine asked both Governor Abbott and Mayor Johnson to stop sharing that Dallas Morning News wrong-headed editorial about bail reform.

Bail reform is not about freeing violent criminals. No one is saying that. But the Dallas Morning News’ editorial board can’t help but conflate the two. The editorial that ran last week has been shared by our governor and our mayor. And it’s wrong. It puts the rash of violence at the feet of District Attorney John Creuzot, who has advocated for bail reform and pushed for policies that rethink how we try individuals accused of minor crimes.

To the News’ opinion writers, it’s Creuzot’s fault that violent criminals are being given a low bond and released. In reality, Creuzot doesn’t set bond. Magistrates and judges do, and when they let a violent criminal off with a low bond -- which we heard about last week -- that’s their decision, and it has absolutely nothing to do with bail reform. Creuzot even wants a prosecutor present during arraignments to help bring context to inform the judge’s decision about bail. That doesn’t get mentioned in the News’ editorial.

Houston attorney and political gadfly Eric Dick and two others are being threatened with legal action by Spring Branch residents for soliciting lawsuits from victims of the Watson Grinding explosion in their neighborhood last month.

“Tex Christopher, Billy Bray (an insurance agent), and Eric Dick are hosting a series of informational town hall meetings for residents who suffered from the Watson explosion,” the post states. “The previous town hall meetings have been well attended and received.”

In an effort to encourage attendance, Christopher, who doesn’t live in the community, purportedly sent out thousands of unsolicited text messages.

The actions of Christopher, Bray and Dick have sparked a movement of sorts, as a website (protectspringbranch.com) has been launched asking locals to join a lawsuit against the three individuals.

“In order to stop what is a clear abuse of our community, we are preparing to file a class-action lawsuit against Christopher, Dick, and Bray, in order to hold them accountable for their dubious actions and protect vulnerable disaster victims from being potentially taken advantage of by predators,” the site reads.

With a side-eye look at the Right, Sean O'Neal at Texas Monthly sees Ted Cruz's pro-choice side, and the Texas Signal finds the latest contender for Worst (Would-be) Congressman.

Here's a few environmental news developments:

-- The Permian Basin is producing more natural gas and condensate than it is oil and profits for oil companies, writes Justin Mikulka at DeSmogBlog.

As oil prices plummet, oil bankruptcies mount, and investors shun the shale industry, America’s top oil field -- the Permian shale that straddles Texas and New Mexico -- faces many new challenges that make profits appear more elusive than ever for the financially failing shale oil industry.

Many of those problems can be traced to two issues for the Permian Basin: The quality of its oil and the sheer volume of natural gas coming from its oil wells.

The latter issue comes as natural gas fetches record low prices in both U.S. and global markets. Prices for natural gas in Texas are often negative -- meaning oil producers have to pay someone to take their natural gas, or, without any infrastructure to capture and process it, they burn (flare) or vent (directly release) the gas.

As DeSmog has detailed, much of the best oil-producing shale in the Permian already has been drilled and fracked over the past decade. And so operators have moved on to drill in less productive areas, one of which is the Delaware sub-basin of the Permian ... As a Bloomberg Wire story reported in December, “in recent years investments have shifted to the Delaware, where output is much gassier than in the historic Midland portion of the Permian.”

-- Tankers by road and rail from North Carolina are bringing a potentially cancer-causing chemical  named GenX to Deer Park each month.

In picturesque North Carolina, along the seemingly pristine Cape Fear River, a chemical company called Chemours was caught discharging an industrial byproduct called GenX and it showed up in the drinking water. Now, that chemical is being brought to Texas ... GenX is the trade name of perfluoro-2-propoxypropanoic acid, which is used to make Teflon, fast food wrappers and other products. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, animal studies have shown health effects in the kidney, blood, immune system, developing fetuses and especially in the liver following oral exposure. The data are suggestive of cancer.

Since June 2017 Chemours began capturing the wastewater that included the GenX. Then, starting the week of Nov. 13, 2017, the company began arranging to have the wastewater transported by tanker truck and rail for disposal in Deer Park, Texas. Specifically, it’s being sent to Texas Molecular for deep-well injection. Texas Molecular is a Class1 Deep Well. Since 2017, the company has commissioned an average of 10 tanker trucks a day to haul away the wastewater for offsite disposal, according to the Chemours plant manager.

Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has spoken numerous times about the dangers of GenX. In August 2017, she appeared at a town hall meeting in North Carolina.

Recently, Brockovich was in Houston for a town hall meeting to discuss a different matter. KPRC 2 asked Brockovich about Chemours’ plan to dispose of the GenX through deep well injection.

“Well that could be a problem... tanks deteriorate, bottoms rust, they break open. We don’t know it and we wind up with another massive groundwater contamination,” Brockovich said.

[...]

“Texas Molecular is not required to have a specific approval or public hearing for deep well disposal of GenX waste, because this waste stream is covered under the listing of industrial wastes authorized to be injected in its three UIC Class I permits,” according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).


And with some lighter news items, we'll wrap up this week.



Here's ten places in Houston to celebrate Mardi Gras tomorrow, and here's where you can eat fish on Fridays for Lent.  If bluebonnets are more your thing than mudbugs or tilapia, then everything's coming up roses (so to speak).


And the TPA wishes Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast a fast and full recovery.



Norma Zenteno was one of this blogger's heroes, performing many times for her brother and sister-in-law's canine rescue operation, Barrio Dogs.  Our precious little Holly was saved by them.
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Monday, July 22, 2019

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance joined 82-year-old Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) ...


... in requesting membership in The Squad.


This is your expanded edition of the once-a-week roundup of the best of the left of, and about, our beloved Great State.  To the above, Bonddad gives a history lesson on how The Squad's members -- that's all of us, but especially the brave women pictured -- are direct ideological descendants of 1850s-era Congressional Republicans (if you saw the 2012 film Lincoln, which starred Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, then you have some additional insight here).


Texas Southern University will host the third Democratic presidential candidates debate, scheduled for September 12 and 13, and broadcast by ABC News and Univision.

The two-part debate will be held at TSU’s Health & Physical Education arena, which has 7,200 seats ... The candidates and debate moderators have yet to be announced. To qualify, candidates must amass 130,000 unique donors and receive at least 2 percent support in four qualifying polls.

Houston City Council Member Amanda Edwards joined the US Senate Democratic primary, just ahead of state Senator Royce West's announcement on Monday.  The field includes former Cong. Chris Bell, Air Force veteran MJ Hegar, and activist Sema Hernandez, among others.

And former state senator and gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis declared her challenge to Republican Chip Roy for the right to represent the 21st Congressional District.


Dos Centavos scoffs at the weak Republican response to Trump's latest racist diatribe.

Better Texas Blog urges a vote against HJR38, the anti-income tax constitutional amendment.

The biggest prize in next year's elections will go to the political party that controls the state's House of Representatives, writes Ross Ramsey at the TexTrib.


The idea animating many political candidates, consultants and donors in Texas in 2020 is one that’s way down the list of concerns for many Texas voters: redistricting.

The 150-member Texas House has 83 Republicans and 67 Democrats, creating a GOP majority that could flip to Democrats if the minority party could wrest away nine spots.

[...]

The legislators elected in 2020 will draw the next set of political maps for the state’s congressional and legislative seats. Right now, Republicans hold the governor’s office and majorities in both the state House and Senate -- a trifecta that virtually ensures the resulting maps will favor their party.

Winning a Democratic majority in the Texas House would give Democrats some leverage over at least some of the maps the state will use for the next decade of elections. Specifically, it could break the GOP’s control over the congressional maps that will be drawn after the 2020 census. At the very least, it would allow the Democrats to prevent Republicans from drawing those maps -- and to throw the political cartography to federal judges instead of Texas politicians.

More from Michael Li of the Brennan Center:

“There are 17 seats that Republicans won in 2018 by 10 points or less,” said Michael Li, senior redistricting counsel at New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice. “And that seems to be a lot of opportunity for Democrats, because the investment that would be needed to flip those seats is relatively small compared to the prize of being able to have a role in help drawing 39 congressional districts.”

Kuff reads the Chronicle's article on the millenials running for Houston city council, then pulls out a spreadsheet that reveals the Bayou City municipal electorate "tends to be pretty old" in order to justify the premise that these aren't the candidates the voters are looking for.  (Or something.  Frankly it all smacks of ageism.)  For more enlightened reading, see David Collins, who has some very good questions for council candidates.

The state's largest county will have new voting machines, very likely with a paper trail ... but not until the May 2021 primary elections, according to HPM.

Harris County is set to replace its antiquated voting machines, which are based on 20-year-old technology. But the work won’t be done in time for the 2020 presidential election.

A prospective voter tries out an Election Systems & Software voting machine at the
International Association of Government Officials Conference Trade Show.
Photo by Andrew Schneider/Houston Public Media

The new voting infrastructure will cost $74 million, with the funding coming out of the 2020 budget. Speaking at a trade show on Tuesday, County Clerk Diane Trautman said it will take until March just to narrow down the selection of voting machines to the top two vendors. She expects to pick the supplier by July of next year.

“Actually just to make 5,000 machines will take months,” Trautman said. “So to get them back, put them in the field, teach the election workers and the voters how to use them ... our estimate is the May 2021 election before they can be used.”

(Recent reports indicate that machines like the one pictured above are still not safe from hackers, and the company that manufactures them has a record of questionable business practices.  Brad Friedman, one of the nation's leading voices for paper ballots, would concur that the only safe ballot is one marked by hand and not by machine.  Clerk Trautman needs to be encouraged to carefully consider her purchase decision in this regard.)

And there remains some confusion about whether the state's hemp legalization law accidentally decriminalized marijuana.  Some county DAs are ending prosecution of petty weed crimes while others are not, and our tuff-on-crime governor weighs in on the question.

The University of Texas-El Paso followed the University of Texas-Austin in reducing the costs of tuition to zero for families of a certain income level.  This is probably a direct consequence of the debate among Democratic presidential candidates on this topic.

With the 50th anniversary celebration of the Apollo 11 moon mission this past week, Texas Standard speaks to a historian about LBJ's role in the effort.

President Johnson (r.) with NASA head James Webb in 1967.

In 1957, a Soviet satellite wasn’t a cosmic curiosity; it was a real threat -- a nuclear threat. The public imagination was gripped by the idea that the Russians could bomb the United States from space. A few days after Sputnik launched, Johnson got a memo from an aide named George Reedy, urging the Senate majority leader to push for more aggressive space exploration. He saw an opportunity for good public policy -- and good politics. John Logsdon is professor emeritus at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

“That was Reedy’s message, that this was something that’s a good thing to do. Plus, it will be attractive to the public and position you, as Reedy said, and make you president,” Logsdon says.

Johnson ran with Reedy’s idea. He came to believe that control of space meant control of the world. For the next decade, Johnson worked to make sure that Americans were those controllers.

“Would we be on the moon without Lyndon Johnson? I think the answer is no,” Logsdon says.

SocraticGadfly shows and describes why Texas arts aficionados who have any chance to see the late-life Monet exhibit at the Kimball need to go.

The Lunch Tray wants a real federal response to lunch shaming.

Elise Hu provides your Trader Joe's shopping list.  (I don't even know any rich people who shop at Trader Joe's.  Do you?)

And Pages of Victory uses Tom Englehardt's voice as a stand-in for himself.
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Friday, June 14, 2019

The Weekly Twenty Twenty Update

The twenty who are debating in two weeks.



Update: And here are the lineups. Warren is the only front-runner going on the first night, Wednesday, June 26th.


Her expectations might be higher than usual considering her competition.  She'll certainly be subjected to a few extra potshots from the trailers.  But I'll be more focused on Thursday evening's cage match.


There's been a shuffle in my front-runners this week: Biden is still slumping but remains the leader, barely holding on atop the heap. Warren has effectively pulled in to a second-place tie with Bernie. Mayor Pete holds down fourth, and Kamala, Beto, and Cory Booker round out the top seven.

1. Joe Biden  momentum: slipping


Another lousy week for Gramps.  But some pundits are beginning to muse that his gaffes are just part of his charm, and that they may even be his Teflon shield.

Joe Biden, the Democratic front-runner, has had a peculiar couple of weeks: The points on which he’s been historically weak—women’s rights, mass incarceration, and plagiarism—have surfaced again, as weak points are bound to do, but if his responses on all three fronts have muddied his record, they haven’t done much damage to his vaunted “electability.” He’s reiterated his support (before retracting it) of the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal funds like Medicaid from paying for abortions. He’s defended his 1994 crime bill, which contributed (many believe) to America’s mass incarceration problem. Asked at a recent event whether he’d “commit to reducing the prison population by half,” Biden claimed that the woman asking -- whom he addressed as “kiddo” -- had been “conditioned” to say it was a bad bill. But “we should not be putting people in prison for drug offenses,” he added, omitting that he was one of the architects of the war on drugs and had specifically criticized then-President Bush’s plan because it didn’t “hold every drug user accountable.” Finally, his campaign was found to have plagiarized some policy language. 

Go read the whole thing, please.

Any politician with a record as long as Biden’s has to tell this “evolution” story convincingly and well. Biden’s success on this score is spotty. His appeal despite that makes it interesting. In a weird way, his frankness about his self-contradictions --“I make no apologies for my last position. I make no apologies for what I’m about to say,” he said Thursday as he reversed himself on the Hyde Amendment -- bestows upon him a kind of flexibility that allows him to claim (for example) that he won’t accept donations from corporate lobbyists, and then kick off his campaign with a fundraiser held at the home of the head of lobbying for Comcast. 

At some point you'd like to think that Democrats are smarter than Republicans; that they will wise up to this hypocrisy and abandon the flip-flopper for someone who tells the truth, at least more often than not.  Jemelle Hill isn't convinced; she sees African American voters doing the same thing that far too much of the rest of the Donkey base is doing.

When it comes to looking ahead to the 2020 presidential election, many black voters aren’t focused on race, gender or who can out-progessive who. They’re focused on ousting Donald Trump from the White House.

That’s according to the Los Angeles Times, which notes that while the more progressive nature and strong black base of the Democratic Party could have one thinking the next Democratic nominee will be a person of color or a woman, many black voters are setting aside thoughts of racial or gender pride to focus on who can best beat Trump at the polls.

“They are so sick and tired of being sick and tired of Trump, there’s this almost unconscious feeling they’re going to go with the candidate that is more likely to beat him,” Ron Lester, a Washington pollster who studies the attitudes of black voters, told the Times.

For many, Lester added, “that is probably a white male,” the Times reports, “given their deep-seated belief ‘that America is still a very racist place and a very misogynistic place and that a candidate who doesn’t get any white votes is probably going to lose.’”

In the Update posted two weeks ago, I led with this electability fallacy.  Markos Moulitsas blogged about it this week.

We are a polarized nation, and as such, the actual candidates themselves hardly matter anymore. We could nominate a mealworm, and it would get numbers similar to these, according to the latest general-election matchup poll by Quinnipiac University:

Biden 53, Trump 40

Sanders 51, Trump 42

Harris 49, Trump 41

Warren 49, Trump 42

Buttigieg 47, Trump 42

Booker 47, Trump 42

The key here isn’t the Democrats’ number (those are mostly driven by name recognition): it’s Trump’s. He’s maxed out at 42%. And with universal name recognition and a polarized electorate, how does he rise above that?

[...]

Bottom line? Support whoever you like, and not because you think someone will or won’t run better against Trump.

Now you're welcome to grumble that "itzerly" like Kuffner, or that polling can be akin to toilet paper, as I have repeatedly in the past.  But for the love of Dishrag, make a choice on the basis of something that appeals to you about a candidate or their policies and not a nebulous, poorly defined adverb.

Every single Democrat running for President in 2020 that is currently leading the field -- the top seven of 24 -- ought to easily beat Trump.  Except maybe for Joe Biden.  We'll see how he comports himself in these upcoming debates.

2. (tie) Elizabeth Warren  momentum: surging

(I was tempted to list Bernie here due to my bias, so I'm just trying to be fair.)

Warren showed up second in a handful of polls, national and state, released this week, for which she gets the credit as the candidate on the biggest roll.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has pulled ahead of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., thus far her chief rival for the mantle of progressive alternative in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, in a trio of recent polls.

The first result comes from a recent Economist/YouGov poll, which finds Warren ahead of Sanders by a margin of 16 percent to 12 percent nationwide. Thus far, Warren has been trailing Sanders in national polls as both candidates grapple for the same base of progressive voters. If this trend breaks, it will be a sign that Warren could be winning over that key demographic. Both candidates still continue to trail former Vice President Joe Biden.

A second poll — this one involving an early nominating state rather than the nation as a whole — also showed Warren pulling ahead of Sanders. In the Monmouth poll of Democrats likely to participate in the Nevada caucuses, which is scheduled to follow the Iowa causes and New Hampshire primary next year, Biden is leads with 36 percent, followed by Warren with 19 percent and Sanders with 13 percent.

And that was not the only good news for Warren. A new UC Berkeley-Los Angeles Times poll of California found Biden again ahead with 22 percent of likely Democratic primary voters, but he was closely followed by Warren with 18 percent and Sanders with 17 percent.

To be clear, these are not the first polls to show that Warren is steadily making gains over other Democratic candidates. Earlier this week, a survey for the Iowa caucus conducted by the Des Moines Register and CNN found that Warren had 15 percent support, behind Biden at 24 percent and Sanders at 16 percent and ahead of South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 14 percent. This was a major sign of progress for Warren, who during a survey by the same group in March was only at 9 percent in Iowa.

She won Kos' straw poll on Tuesday, first time Bernie's lost that in a long while.

Elizabeth Warren won the inaugural 2019 Daily Kos straw poll back in early January. Two weeks later, riding the high of her announcement speech, Kamala Harris won the poll. But once Bernie Sanders announced, it’s been all him, since way back in February. But this week, in convincing manner, Elizabeth Warren has retaken the top spot.

[...]

The straw poll and public polling are in agreement. There are five serious contenders in this race: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and Kamala Harris. All the other 19 declared candidates combined can only muster around 8% of the vote. ...

Warren is riding on a high after her viral moment from the MSNBC town hall, the one where she made mincemeat of Biden’s support for the Hyde Amendment. Her rallies are drawing thousands. Her “I’ve got a plan for that” catchphrase is landing. And yes, they may both be white women, but no one is comparing her to Hillary Clinton anymore.

In a comment yesterday on the site, community member Fatherflot wrote, “Fair or not, (Warren) needed to create a clear identity for herself that drew a sharp distinction with Hillary. Instead of the aloof insider-technocrat, she is promoting herself as a kind of ‘Mary Poppins’ figure -- the cheerful, exuberant, uber-competent woman who simply gets things done and makes everyone feel included and proud.”

I’ve got to say, 'Mary Poppins figure' is really landing with me. I think it nails her vibe, and why we’re seeing a surprising dearth of “Is she likable?” stories and memes about her.

The Daily Kos denizens don't see the differences between Liz and Bernie, and remain of the "he's not a Democrat" persuasion anyway.  This collides with the view of the Berners I hang out with, not to mention my own.  Anyway, the progressive wing -- comprised loosely of Sandernistas and Warrenites -- is most certainly ascendant right now.

2. (tie) Bernie Sanders  momentum: holding

The Week offered a theory about Bernie's speech defining democratic socialism.

On Wednesday, Sanders gave a lengthy speech outlining what he means when he says he's a "democratic socialist." It was chock full of historical references and mentions of President Trump, but, as some Sanders supporters and Democratic strategists suggest, may have been more aimed at Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Sanders and Warren are often seen as progressive equivalents, except for when Warren declares herself a capitalist and Sanders sticks to socialism. Despite that ideological difference, Warren has seemingly been the only Democratic presidential candidate gaining steam over the past few weeks, and it has largely come at Sanders' expense. In fact, an Economist/YouGov poll released just an hour before Sanders' Wednesday speech showed Warren had 19 percent support in the 2020 race over Sanders' 15 percent. Sanders had been at a solid second place to former Vice President Joe Biden before that.

This the first major poll where Warren has managed to pass Sanders, and to Democratic strategist and former White House Communications Director Jen Psaki, it's just what Sanders was worried about. His Wednesday speech "is a pretty clear indication he is feeling the heat from Elizabeth Warren's recent momentum among progressive voters," Psaki told The New York Times, calling it Sanders' "attempt to reclaim the anti-capitalist mantle he ran on in 2016."

Even before Wednesday's poll debuted, it didn't seem Warren was too worried about whatever socialist rhetoric Sanders had cooked up. When The Atlantic asked her about Sanders' forthcoming speech the other day, she laughed. 

Vox thought it was about Trump.  I just thought it was about something that most people don't really understand, despite it being defined repeatedly over the course of the past year.


Republicans salivate, centrist Dems fret, but the truth is that the disinformation campaign, i.e. fear-mongering, Red-baiting, scape-goating etc. will happen no matter what.  Bernie is simply being honest and owning it.


4. Pete Buttigieg  momentum: gradually rising

Mayor Pete's constituency as reflected in most polls is right around ten percent.  He's raising money, staffing up in Iowa -- rising in the polling there -- and continuing to slowly grow his support.  I continue to hold that his appeal will be capped by a variety of factors and that the best he can expect is a Cabinet position, not even VP, but hey, I've been wrong before.  His debate performance alongside Biden, Sanders, and Harris will either significantly add to his momentum, or slow his roll.

5. Kamala Harris  momentum: holding

Like Buttigieg, there was no significant positive or negative development for her this past week, unless you count her slipping to fourth in recent polling of California.

The poll serves as a blunt warning for Harris, who is banking on a surge of home-state support after a strong showing during the back half of early voting -- in neighboring Nevada, and South Carolina, where African American voters form a decisive bloc. Organizationally, Harris is working to make up ground with Warren in Iowa, where the Massachusetts senator has built a formidable team. Harris is planning a hiring spree there that calls for bringing in 65 people.

In the California poll, Harris performed well across ethnic and demographic groups, and voters there consistently selected her as their second choice. But similar to her standing in the early states and nationally, she hasn’t caught fire with likely voters in the first few months of the race.

Harris just seems to be getting out-worked, or out-hustled, or outdone in some form or fashion every time I have taken a deep look lately.  Is it her emerging reality that she winds up as nothing better than someone's veep?  Her debate performance will either cement or break that impression.

6. (tie) Beto O'Rourke  momentum: holding

Beto became the first to slap Biden around.

“You cannot go back to the end of the Obama administration and think that that’s good enough,” the former Texas congressman said at the end of a lengthy interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “As much of a horror show as Trump has been -- his racism, the disaster of his foreign policy, his punishment of farmers and workers here in this country -- we had real problems before Donald Trump became president.”

Asked, “Is Joe Biden a return to the past?” O’Rourke answered bluntly, "He is. And that cannot be who we are going forward. We’ve got to be bigger, we’ve got to be bolder. We have to set a much higher mark and be relentless in pursuing that.”

That's rougher than I recall him ever being on Ted Cruz.

I'm ranking him tied for sixth not only for that, but for last week's Texas poll showing him second to Creepy Uncle Joe in the Lone Star delegate chase.  Despite the fact 60% of those surveyed in the same poll want him to drop out of the run for the White House and take on John Cornyn (something I still anticipate he will do).  If/when Biden deflates -- and should Beto not take everybody's advice and actually win our Super Tuesday primary next March -- he sits pretty for at least another month or so of presidential primaries and caucuses.

6. (tie) Cory Booker  momentum: slightly rising

Booker has twelve signatories on his reparations legislation, including several of his competitors for the Dem nom.

The bill, officially titled “HR 40 Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act (pdf),” would establish a commission to study the impact of slavery on African Americans and suggest proposals that would help repay descendants of slaves for the costs of centuries of racial discrimination.

The bill’s 12 co-sponsors are U.S. Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.). Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Christopher Coons (D-Del.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.).

Along with Warren, Booker was reviewed favorably at last weekend's Iowa cattle call, the Cedar Rapids Hall of Fame dinner.

In the early state where field organization has traditionally mattered the most, Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Elizabeth Warren have quietly and patiently concentrated their resources toward building grassroots machines designed to power them on caucus night.

It showed here on Sunday as 19 Democratic presidential candidates converged for the first time in one venue to make their five-minute pitch to the party faithful. The gathering, designed to honor Iowa Democrats in a Hall of Fame dinner, offered the first glimpse of a sprawling Democratic primary field — and the organizational strength and enthusiasm each campaign could muster.

Booker and Warren weren’t the only presidential hopefuls to stand out. The senator from next door in Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar, also put on a show of force both inside and outside the Cedar Rapids Doubletree Hilton Hotel, where the dinner took place.

Biden was not in the state.  Sanders marched outside with the McDonald's workers, who were on strike for a $15 minimum wage.  Eighth place in my rankings would probably go to Klobuchar.

And FWIW, the WaPo's Pundit Power Ranking has Liz in a tie with Joe for first, Bernie third, Buttigieg and Harris tied for fourth, Klobuchar in sixth, Booker in seventh, and Beto in eighth.

Gonna wrap this week with Howard Schultz and Howie Hawkins.

Starbucks billionaire Howard Schultz told campaign staff that he is making significant cuts to his team, as he suspends his political plans for the summer.

Schultz came into the office Wednesday for the first time in months and met with the staff, according to a person in the room. He announced that he was letting everyone go except those in senior leadership positions, adding he would not make a decision about running for president until after Labor Day.

Shortly thereafter, Schultz sent an email to supporters, saying that medical reasons had taken him out of commission for months, and he still needed time to recover.

“While I was in Arizona, I unfortunately experienced acute back pain that required me to cut my travels short,” he wrote. “Over the following two months, I underwent three separate back surgeries. Today, I am feeling much better, and my doctors foresee a full recovery so long as I rest and rehabilitate. I have decided to take the summer to do just that.”

Go play lots of dodgeball, Howard.

And finally:


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Tuesday, May 28, 2019

The Sine Die Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance waves adios to the Texas Legislature until January of 2021 (with any good luck).  Now our lawmakers watch, along with the rest of us, to see which of their hard-worked, hard-argued, hard-fought bills become law -- or not -- by the pen of Greg Abbott.


The Texas Tribune, always with the most comprehensive coverage, has a photo gallery and a list of winners and losers from the 86th session.  The Dallas News' Texas Tracker aggregated their Lege reporting (which subscribers can customize to their interests).

Here's just a sampling of the latest from yesterday and the holiday weekend from those two sources:

Gunsense  and gun-nonsense bills made it through at the deadline.  Criminal justice reform advocates ran into one final roadblock in the Texas Senate, as a watered-down amendment was stripped out at the last minute.

After the fate of (House Bill 2754) was decided, state Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, added a more limited version of the provision as an amendment to Senate Bill 815, which was a fairly uncontroversial bill relating to the preservation of criminal records. The House approved the bill, with Moody’s amendment about Class C misdemeanor arrests, in an 81 to 52 vote. But the Senate didn't approve the change, and Moody's amendment was taken out of the bill in a compromise report proposed by a group of lawmakers from both chambers.

Moody partly blamed the amendment's downfall on the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) -- one of the top police unions in the state -- who he said "stabbed me in the back and waged an outrageous campaign of outright lies and character assassination." He added that "pressure from the top down" in the Senate ultimately killed the bill.

Grits for Breakfast had the early analysis on this clusterf.

The most significant legislation of the session, the bill that reduces property taxes and adequately funds public schools, reached bipartisan consensus (and self-aggrandizement to the point of overkill).

Lawmakers also signed off on the state's two-year, $250-plus billion dollar budget.

The approved $250.7 billion, made up of state taxes and fees, local property tax dollars and federal funds, marks a 16% spending increase over the two-year budget approved by lawmakers in the tight-fisted 2017 legislative session. ... Facing a cautiously optimistic fiscal forecast, lawmakers expect to have an additional $10 billion or so to spend over the next two years, compared with the previous budget cycle. They agreed to allocate $6.5 billion in new state funding for schools and $5.1 billion to buy down Texans’ local property taxes, which state dollars supplement to pay for public education.

Pay raises for teachers -- not the $5000 across-the-board increase Dan Patrick had promised, though -- and a 13th pension check for retired teachers are included.

Texas Freedom Network made note of the fact that 2018's blue wave, and another one looming in 2020, made divisive legislation more difficult to pass.  Better Texas Blog enumerates five good bills that passed, five bad bills that failed, and five missed opportunities.  Environment Texas also scores the Lege's results as mixed.  Texas Vox blogged that lawmakers punted on taking any action with respect to the chemical fires Houston has recently suffered from.  And the Texas Observer's Candice Bernd wrote that despite efforts to soften the penalties for protesting against pipelines, the Lege passed the bill designating them as felony offenses.  (IANAL, but I would not expect these laws to withstand legal/judicial/constitutional muster.)

There was a raft of election law developments that was good news/bad news: SOS David Whitley caught all the blame for the ill-fated voter roll purge and went unconfirmed by the state Senate, thus forcing him to resign.  Many of the worst bills meant to intimidate voters were similarly defeated; SB9's failure was one of Progress Texas' best moments of the session.  But Houston Public Media reported that Harris County remains one of the most difficult places in the United States for people to both register and vote.

“Registration rates in Texas are among the lowest in the United States. Yet voter registration rates in Harris County are far lower, and increasingly so,” said University of Houston researcher Suzanne Pritzker. “If we look between 2010 and 2016, we see that the voter registration gap between Texas and Harris County has been increasing.”

Meanwhile, Texas Public Radio reported on Bexar County's $11 million dollar acquisition of new voting machines that include a paper trail.

Several bloggers opined about the bill that enables the Texas Green Party to be on the 2020 ballot.  David Collins has been tracking its progress; it's now awaiting the governor's signature.  Socratic Gadfly also had some thoughts prior to passage.  Kuff's take is just as elitist as you would expect from a Democratic establishment suck-up, but at least it's not as whiny as it could have been.  And in other third party developments, Ballot Access News says that an Odessa Libertarian Party member has won a seat on the Ector County Hospital Board.

(Gadfly also looked at the latest woes of the Dallas Morning News.)

Stephen Young at the Dallas Observer has the news about CBD oil's legalized usage for certain medical conditions, but most experts agree that the Lege made the barest measurable expansion of cannabis decriminalization.

There's some 2019 and 2020 election news that Texas blogs and news sources had last week.  First: Joe Biden makes a campaign and fundraising appearance in Houston today.  He's running precisely as you'd expect the front-runner would.


Hillary Clinton also spoke at the Harris County Democratic Party's Johnson Rayburn Richards luncheon last Friday, and in what must have created some awkward moments, it was revealed by Justin Miller at the Texas Observer that Tony Buzbee, a Houston mayoral challenger to Sylvester Turner who donated over $500,000 to two of Donald Trump's PACs in 2016, also gave the HCDP $5000 as a "White Pantsuit" sponsor for the JRR fundraiser.

Early voting begins today in most Texas jurisdictions with municipal runoff elections on June 8.  The Rivard Report highlights the nastiness of the mayoral runoff in San Antonio.  Mark Jones at Rice's Kinder Institute (Urban Edge blog) reminds us that there are less than six months until Houston holds its city elections.

US Rep. Chip Roy single-handedly delayed a $19.1 billion disaster aid funding package, including Harvey relief, that John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump had all approved, drawing universal condemnation.

Texas Standard also reported that Galveston Bay's oyster harvest was halted shortly after the ITC chemical fire caused a benzene spill into the Houston Ship Channel two weeks ago.

Last weekend at Crystal Beach, a Jeep rally got so out of control that even the libertine, libertarian locals were terrified and appalled.  John Nova Lomax at Texas Monthly:

Nobody knows for sure how many Jeeps, lifted trucks, ATVs, side-by-sides, and four-by-fours descended on the Bolivar Peninsula - -a narrow spit of storm-wracked sand between Galveston and Port Arthur -- during last weekend’s chaos. One estimate pegged the number at no fewer than 40,000 vehicles, many with intoxicated drivers zigzagging beaches with no marked lanes or navigating a two-lane highway with lots of construction zones, often with up to a dozen people riding unsecured in the backs of pickups.


Galveston County authorities made at least 100 arrests (most for alcohol-related offenses) as Jeep enthusiasts converged for Go Topless Weekend, an annual car show and campout in Crystal Beach. Of eighteen wrecks in the area, eight were deemed serious. EMS dispatchers were barraged with more than 600 calls for service, and one of the accidents snarled traffic on Highway 87 -- the sole east-west thoroughfare and only way to drive on or off the peninsula --for about six hours. Videos of the weekend’s drunken brawls have been posted to YouTube. A young man emerged from a coma on Monday after his head was run over by a truck from which he’d fallen, and at least a half-dozen injured passengers were evacuated by helicopter to the UTMB hospital in Galveston.


Yet it’s far from just Jeep owners who are to blame for the mayhem. The event coincided with prom weekend for many schools in Deep East Texas, leading to the presence of hordes of young people arriving in jacked-up trucks and zipping around on dirt bikes and four-wheelers. Thanks to a swirl of teenage hormones, copious amounts of alcohol, and the revving of high-powered engines, fights inevitably broke out, and some young women took the event’s invitation to Go Topless literally. The Texas Patriot Network’s MAGA Beach Bash was also taking place nearby, near the town of Port Bolivar, adding to the crowds on the peninsula. On top of it all, a whim of Mother Nature—an abnormally high “bull tide”—forced all this humanity into a narrower and narrower slice of drunken, thrown-together life, hemmed in by saltwater on one side and dunes on the other.


Finally, Pages of Victory has some voting advice for progressives, while Harry Hamid contemplates his reality.
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