TX exit poll: Clinton 41, Obama 38

Other 17% (presumably Edwards, Dodd, Richardson, and other presidential candidates who have suspended campaigns but remain on the Texas ballot) and Undecided 4%.

This outfit -- People Calling People/Texas Voyager (.pdf, scroll to bottom) -- used an automated interactive call to 408 respondents, self-declared Democrats who have already voted in the March 4 primary. The MoE is 4.85%, and calls were conducted between 6 and 9 p.m. on the evenings of February 26 and 27.

Neither Kuffner nor BOR, the real gurus for these sorts of numbers, appear to have blogged this yet so opinions as to validity, integrity and so on I'll leave to them and similar experts as to whether or not this is good data.

It seems to contradict the supposition that the "surge x 10" of early voting is driven by the Obama campaign. I suppose we will have to wait and see.

Update: That 17% 'other' -- as well as the 4% undecided -- calls into question the accuracy of an exit poll, particularly one in which the participants declare as having voted to an auto-dialer. K-T at BOR mentions that the poll doesn't appear in the Pollster.com list, or the Real Clear Politics aggregate.

Update (2/29): Kuffner -- with the assist from John Zogby -- makes it make a little more sense.

Gene Kelly for Senate

Not an endorsement. The reclusive perennial candidate finally has a website:

http://www.genekellyforsenate.com

I did, however, volunteer to work on his outreach campaign. Here's a snapshot of me providing my resume':

To Beaumont to see Rick Noriega today

and a few clients. Light posting ahead to Election Day. Perhaps if the Ohio debate amounts to something besides more mud slung from Mrs. Clinton I'll have something to say, otherwise I'll leave you to play in other peoples' sandboxes for awhile.

Update (2/27) Here's video. Here's another. See if you can spot me.

Update II (2/27): Join me in calling on Senator Box Turtle to match Noriega and release his military records.

Oh yeah ... Student deferments from 1971 aren't actually "military" records. My bad.

The eventual post-mortem on the Clinton campaign

That damned New York Times, having "destroyed" one Maverick, turns its vulturous eyes toward the only other inevitable loser still standing:

There is a widespread feeling among donors and some advisers, though, that a comeback this time may be improbable. Her advisers said internal polls showed a very tough race to win the Texas primary — a contest that no less than Mr. Clinton has said is a “must win.” And while advisers are drawing some hope from Mrs. Clinton’s indefatigable nature, some are burning out.

Morale is low. After 13 months of dawn-to-dark seven-day weeks, the staff is exhausted. Some have taken to going home early — 9 p.m. — turning off their BlackBerrys, and polishing off bottles of wine, several senior staff members said.

Some advisers have been heard yelling at close friends and colleagues. In a much-reported incident, Mr. Penn and the campaign advertising chief, Mandy Grunwald, had a screaming match over strategy recently that prompted another senior aide, Guy Cecil, to leave the room. “I have work to do — you’re acting like kids,” Mr. Cecil said, according to three people in the room.

Others have taken several days off, despite it being crunch time. Some have grown depressed, be it over Mr. Obama’s momentum, the attacks on the campaign’s management from outside critics or their view that the news media has been much rougher on Mrs. Clinton than on Mr. Obama.

And some of her major fund-raisers have begun playing down their roles, asking reporters to refer to them simply as “donors,” to try to rein in their image as unfailingly loyal to the Clintons.

I know the feeling. I went through it with John Edwards, from the morning after the Iowa caucuses to the day in New Orleans when he finally pulled the plug. In between I donated hundreds as part of a fundraiser the campaign itself never acknowledged, blogged like hell, and kept attending meetings and making phone calls though it was painfully obvious that the miracle was not going to materialize.

I did all that mostly because I thought Edwards was the best progressive, populist and electable candidate running, but I also did it because the thought of a Clinton nomination weighed so heavily on my mind and heart for at least a year that it felt like a case of influenza. The sense of imminent relief I feel just knowing that a concession speech is coming some time soon must be matched by a similar feeling of dread and disillusionment in those that have supported and believed in the Clintons.

The article goes on ...

Engaging in hindsight, several advisers have now concluded that they were not smart to use former President Bill Clinton as much as they did, that “his presence, aura and legacy caused national fatigue with the Clintons,” in the words of one senior adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity to assess the campaign candidly.

Yet even today -- well, yesterday and tomorrow -- he's out here stumping away. For her part, Hillary's tried nice, she's tried nasty, now she's trying shame and sarcasm as her flailing, thrashing presidential aspirations swirl the drain, soon to vanish out of sight.

I think the interesting part is that the Clintons looked at some polling and came to the conclusion that they were overwhelmingly popular with Democrats. They weren't. The primary reason for that is because the core of the party between presidential elections -- call them the "grassroots", or "liberal activists" or whatever you wish -- had no connection to the conservative, corporate Clintons that fleshed themselves out from the DLC model in the wake of their departure from the White House in January 2001. These progressives resented the inevitability meme that accessorized Hillary's run for the Senate and subsequent preparations for 2008. Secondly, while many of these loyal Democrats were incensed by Kenneth Starr and the impeachment proceedings (count me as one), they were even more exhausted by it. Third, hindsight doesn't make the Clintons look better, but worse; the Clintons gave us NAFTA. It was Bill Clinton that said the war in Iraq was a good idea and it was Hillary Clinton that voted for it. It was Bill who spent the Dubya years globetrotting with Poppy instead of standing up for the Constitution, the rule of law, and global peacemaking rather than war-mongering.

The Clintons should have taken it as a sign when Connecticut Democrats kicked the 2000 vice-presidential nominee clean out of the party in 2006. The forthcoming progressive years aren't going to have much nostalgia for the leaders of yesterday. (This same thing happened, of course, to Edward Kennedy in the Seventies and Eighties, and the Clintons were -- eventually, in the Nineties -- the beneficiaries.)

Hillary Clinton ran a very good campaign in many respects. She was excellent in all but one of nineteen debates. She was solid, if lacking some of her opponent's evangelical zeal, in town hall meetings. She was well-versed on the facts and detailed in the policy. The Austin debate last week was her best moment. She mixed attack dog -- that cringe-worthy "Xerox" throw-away line -- with den mother, closing on a standing-ovation-worthy emotional appeal that proved effective for her in New Hampshire. But there just isn't another electoral rabbit left to pull out of the top hat.

Hillary Clinton isn't losing because she isn't a good politician. She is losing because the party wants something else ... the country wants something else. She is also losing, as suggested by those unnamed senior advisers above, because Bill Clinton simply isn't very popular any more when it comes right down to it. Every time he showed up in this campaign Hillary took a little bit of a hit. The nostalgia for Bill has been mostly relegated to white women young and middling reliving the mid-Nineties -- or maybe the Eighties, depending on the generation -- when rock stars got undergarments thrown at them onstage. The sad truth is that very few people were comforted by the prospect of the Big Dog, as Mitt Romney put it, "running around the West Wing with nothing to do."

Yes, she also lost because Obama's campaign outsmarted and outworked hers by running a 50-state ground strategy. He was like Muhammed Ali rope-a-doping Clinton's George Foreman.

And where did all the Clintons' money go?

Regardless, I can't wait for it to be over. I'm anxious to begin a totally new and fresh era, a new age of progressivism, accompanied by a super-majority -- somewhere from thirty to sixty new Democrats in the House of Representatives -- and even perhaps, dare we dream, a Senate that will no longer capitulate to fear of conservative boogeymen.

Well, maybe that last is a stretch ...

The Weekly Wrangle

This week's Texas Progressive Alliance Blog Round-Up comes exactly one week and one day before the all-important Texas prima-caucus. Have you voted yet? Did you get your voter registration card stamped if you have, or a "receipt" so that you can attend the caucus on the evening of Election Day? Avoid the long lines on March 4 and vote early this week. The round-up is compiled, as it nearly always is, by Vince from Capitol Annex.

TXsharon has a broken modem so Bluedaze is suffering, but she managed to post about the RRC's approval of Atmos Energy's extravagant spending -- bend over Texans. Also read about how Phil King meets karma in Wise County and hear the horrendous sounds of the Barnett Shale.

Off the Kuff offers his incomplete list of endorsements for the Democratic primaries, and for his birthday rounds up his complete list of candidate interviews.

Gary at Easter Lemming Liberal News has blogged an eventful week or two climaxing with Paul Burka becoming a believer in the Obama Borg -- Democrats can take back Texas. Wow.

Over at McBlogger Mayor McSleaze commemorates Kirk Watson's deer-in-the-headlights moment while McBlogger, beverage in hand, watches the debate and puts the smackdown on wingnuts still drinking the school voucher Kool-Aid.

The Texas Cloverleaf makes it back safely from Oklahoma City and discusses the national Stonewall Democrats meeting there, as well as the upcoming LGBT Presidential Town Hall in Dallas on Monday night.

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs had a report on Obama's visit to Houston last Tuesday, and also noted the end of the Fidel Castro era in Cuba. Open Source Dem had part three of his "Texas in Play" series, entitled "Jim Crow Lives".

Hal, who writes Half Empty, went to early vote last Wednesday and has some poll observations and some Fort Bend County stats.

Bill Howell of StoutDemBlog reminds us of some Texas election history that is relevant for this year's Democratic Primary, in Don't Be Confused By Names.

Muse was at the Bill Clinton fundraiser in Houston this week where she fulfilled a lifelong dream to touch him –- handshake! She notes that not all college students are for Obama –- witness the Daily Texan endorsement for Hillary. And she receives an email where Obama encourages Republicans to crash the Democratic primary, to vote against the bad, scary Hillary. More Hillary stuff coming this week on musings!

WhosPlayin tries to explain the Obama movement, and has a rundown of which Texas blogs are endorsing Clinton or Obama.

Vince at Capitol Annex notes that the Texas Democratic Party has instructed county and precinct officials not to interpret election results for the media or political campaigns, and asks if national Democrats will still respect us (or call or visit) after March 4.

More Funnies (no cartoons)

Spike Lee at the Oscars, LHAO at Jon Stewart, who said: "Usually when we have a woman and a black man as the two leading candidates for President of the United States, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty."

"The band Abba wants John McCain to stop using their songs at his campaign rallies. Yeah. When asked about it, McCain said, 'Who cares about Abba? Kids today are into the Bee Gees.'" -- Conan O'Brien

"Experts believe that now that Fidel has resigned, he will either be succeeded by his brother, Raul, or by his idiot son, Fidel W. Castro." -- David Letterman

"And President Bush is now pushing Congress to expand the government's ability to spy on Americans now that the current phone tap bill has expired. In fact, to gain support for a new spying bill, they're bringing in coach Bill Belichick. Yeah. They are going to rename it the New England Patriot Act." -- Jay Leno

"The founders of Ben & Jerry's ice cream are endorsing Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton, which makes sense because Baracky Road is a catchier name for an ice cream than Pantsuits and Cream." --Conan O'Brien

"Have you been watching the Roger Clemens congressional hearings? He denies being injected by his trainer. But what I thought was interesting was every time they mentioned 'buttocks,' Sen. Larry Craig swooned." -- David Letterman

Sunday Evening Funnies

Aaron Peña is a putz.

Unbelievable, even for a duplicitous weasel like him:

One of Hillary Clinton’s top supporters in the Rio Grande Valley appeared at a Barack Obama rally Friday and said the presidential primary was the Illinois senator’s race to lose.

State Rep. Aaron Peña, who, in print and on TV has been a leading outreach activist in the Valley for Clinton, shocked many Friday morning when he sat down with his family in the stands behind the stage at an Obama rally at the University of Texas-Pan American.

Guardian video-journalists were sitting opposite in the press riser. Contacted by phone while he waited for Obama to arrive, Peña told the Guardian he was at the event to see history being made.

“First of all my son, Aaron Peña III, is working for the Obama campaign. Second, I am here with my family to see history being made,” Peña said. ...

Asked if he had now flipped over to Obama, Peña said: “I will maintain my commitment but it appears to me that the decision will be made by the public on March 4. I made a commitment to Hillary Clinton and I must maintain it. I gave my word. However, as an observer, it appears to be increasingly evident who is going to win.”

A switch by Peña to the Obama camp will come as a major disappointment to Clinton and her campaign in Texas. Clinton introduced Peña at a rally in McAllen last week.

I'm obviously no supporter of Senator Clinton's but this is just ridiculously sorry of Peña. He's shown more lasting support for Tom Craddick. He could have just switched his endorsement, or let his family go to the Obama rally without him, or re-declare himself "undecided" and any of those would've looked less stupid than sitting in the stands behind Barack Obama after standing in a crowd of Hillary supporters in the same week.

Aaron Peña is in a contested primary for the HD-40 seat with Eddie Saenz, who would be a much more effective representative in the Texas House.

Jim Crow lives

Once again the searing commentary on state and county political machinations, along with the biting wit, of Open Source Dem:

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

Election officials at early voting in Harris County are being told by the GOP County Clerk to ration convention tickets -- or caucus slips, as they are known -- as well as to stamp voter registration certificates with party affiliation only optionally. The hapless Democratic primary director has to settle for assurances that the Republican Clerk will get the Hart InterCivic company to print some more slips ... eventually. ;-)

Note: These dinky slips and stamps are all there is in the way of party credentials. They are quite deliberately shabby and insecure so the party establishment can discriminate in admitting or ejecting Democrats from the conventions, but look the other way at police informants and agents provocateur planted in the Democratic conventions by the GOP. Texas law provides for “closed primaries” but bi-partisan coalitions in Austin and Houston – the establishments of both parties, lawyers mostly – make sure not to enforce or administer that part of the law. This is legalism: clerical democracy – an oxymoron – not republican democracy.

This will frustrate the CLINTON campaign in Harris County (if there actually is one) but thwart the OBAMA campaign even more. The deception, confusion, and time-wasting in primary elections and three levels of caucus/convention are no accident.

The Democratic Party state and county chairs assiduously avoid controversy with GOP county and state officials by deferring to them abjectly and by relying exclusively on the closely held, now GOP-controlled Hart firm to micromanage Texas election law, logistics, and technology since the heyday of segregation. In Harris County, the Democratic Party does not contract with the county to conduct the Democratic primary.

There is no fund, no contract. The Republican County Clerk runs the Democratic primary and counts on the Democratic county chairman to keep quiet about it.

“The Way We’ve Always Done It!”

And, of course, neither the voter registration card (still in the form of a poll tax receipt) nor the caucus slip gives a Democratic voter the least clue when and where precinct conventions will be held.

This would be a small matter were it not just one of myriad impediments to republican democracy within the Texas Democratic Party that the establishment has created and carefully maintained for over a century. Most recently, the cringing party leaders gifted the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature with custody of the Jim Crow-vintage Texas Election Code and punted lawyer-mediated “civil rights” gestures to the GOP-controlled Department of Justice.

Basically we have a competition here in Harris County within the Democratic Party between a low turnout, self-perpetuating party establishment which routinely collaborates with the GOP in county and state government to tend the government concessions that yield large campaign donations and to protect incumbent “CRADDICK Democrats”, and now to support the DLC/CLINTON candidacy ...

... versus the "high-information" OBAMA campaign, which could be sabotaged and is already clearly bewildered by the state party establishment and its perversely complex “prima-caucus” system -- a kludge, actually.

This is a “class war” (the party aristocracy and their mercenary pimp-consultants within the Democratic Party versus bourgeois volunteer “envelope stuffers”, and now the “net-roots”) as described here and here by Chris BOWERS at Open Left:

Superdelegate endorsements (aristocratic) Caucus support (bourgeois):

Clinton: 240 (60%) Obama: 278 delegates (65%)
Obama: 162.5 (40%) Clinton: 151 delegates (35%)

Contributions from large donors Contributions from small donors
(as of 12/31, aristocratic): (as of 12/31, bourgeois):

Clinton: $49.4M Obama: $31.9M
Obama: $33.2M Clinton: $13.8M

This is not “class war” as a Marxist would use the term. It is the old Federalist-Whig versus Republican-Democrat division in American politics since 1800, and as manifested by a Jim Crow coalition in Washington and Austin between “Moderate Republicans” and “Conservative Democrats” since 1874.

“Jes’ He’p Ever’body!”

Without regard to the personal merits of either Hillary CLINTON or Barack OBAMA, the challenge to Texas Democrats -- other than about 200 of the party’s ruling elite -- is to overthow the party establishment in convention and to repeal the last vestiges of Jim Crow starting with the absurd party rules! This is in the interest of both candidates. Remember, the party elite would rather lose the election in November than lose control of the state or county party, and they have done exactly that again and again, consistently:

Texas is a battleground state with a latent Democratic majority and has been since at least 2000. Harris County is damn nearly the 25^th largest blue state in its own right. And we will or will not elect the next President of the United States depending on the state and county political mobilization -- aka Get Out The Vote. Only the Democratic Party in Texas does not have a Get Out the Vote capability or interest. The party is optimized for (a) protecting corrupt incumbents and (b) sharing power in Austin and other large cities with the GOP. That is the Jim Crow coalition today. It used to be notorious for overt racism. Now it just deals in racial patronage. But Jim Crow was always about economic discrimination and privilege, especially within the Democratic Party.

So the main difference between Texas and Ohio is our cornpone party establishment: straight out of the latest Grisham novel set in Mississippi, or “Texas with bad roads”, as Molly IVINS might quip. But that will shortly be the responsibility of Democratic state convention delegates.

Those delegates in convention are the highest authority in this party, not the party elite.

Delegates will be deceived, confused, and have their time wasted by the party elite through their control of the county and state party apparatus. But the bourgeois can and should defeat the clerical aristocracy of this party. The Texas Democratic elites will claim that they are only advocates for the "poor, pitiful (fill in the blank)" and try to shame or intimidate the delegates who pay their own way to the convention and do not bill by the hour or collect contingent fees like lawyers.

But, in convention, all Democrats -- for two days -- are equal.

Note: The convention convenes the afternoon of Thursday, 4 June 2008. But, the state party tells delegates to show up the next afternoon after various tricks and traps to protect the incumbent party officials are in place.

The party aristocracy controls the microphones, the walkie-talkies, and the mumbo-jumbo. But, 6,000 delegates ought to be able to defeat about 200 aristocrats, a few dozen mercenary pimp-consultants, and maybe 600 sycophantic hangers-on in convention before they can sabotage both campaigns, squander our money, and lose yet another general election.

There will be a “Coalition for Change” challenging the party elite in convention.

Both CLINTON and OBAMA supporters should get behind it. From March to June, this populist coalition will make the difference between real conventions and a mock beauty pageant. From June to November, it will make the difference between a real party and keeping Texas a red state run by a Jim Crow coalition.

McCain had an affair?

At his age? With a wife as cute as this?

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, in his offices and aboard a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

Maverick is on the verge of clinching the nomination, and now there's a bimbo eruption?

I'm guessing this won't amount to much, but still.

McCain had a lobbyist girlfriend when he was in his mid-sixties?

Say what you want about the ethical lapse or the appearance of corruption, but ... McCain had a chippy on the side? That is just remarkable. Viagra truly is a wonder drug.

Update: Scout Finch ...

Regardless of whether they were having an intimate affair or not, didn't John McCain realize that it was inappropriate for a telecommunications lobbyist to be "turning up with him at fund-raisers, in his offices and aboard a client’s corporate jet?" How could he not realize how inappropriate that is on a variety of levels? But this isn't the first time that John McCain used poor judgement when it comes to lobbyists. And it wouldn't be the first time (by his own admission) that he cheated on his wife. He married his current wife, Cindy, only one month after he divorced his first wife. ...

It seems that poor judgement is a theme in John McCain's life. This story is bad for him from so many angles. I'm not sure if McCain survives this one. Speculation about an affair is one thing, but an intimate relationship with a telecommunications lobbyist? Not smart. Not smart at all.

And somewhere Mike Huckabee is smiling. Stay tuned.