The Weekly Wrangle

Time for another edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance's weekly blog round-up, comprised each week by the TPA based on submissions made by member blogs and bloggers, and compiled by Vince from Capitol Annex.

The leader of McBlogger's crack legal team has an interesting take on Gov. Spitzer's premium taste in hookers.

TXsharon at Bluedaze asks if Texas Railroad Commission malpractice like this will cost you your life or only your health.

WhosPlayin looks at plagiarism by a Republican candidate for city council: John Gorena of Lewisville, who lifted quite a bit of his website from a Democratic judicial candidate.

Off the Kuff takes a look at downballot voting in the Democratic primary in Harris County.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson shines a light on the latest Texas GOP voucher scam in HD-52 Education Matters.

Hal at Half Empty came across the latest production by the DSCC, and to his surprise and delight found it was about (or going to be, eventually) our own senatorial candidate, Rick Noriega.

Good luck, unemployed people of Texas. The Texas Cloverleaf exposes Governor 39%'s recent appointment of GOP idealogue and fellow blogger, Tom Pauken, as the new chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission.

CouldBeTrue at South Texas Chisme shows how Republicans shaft Texas workers on behalf of their business cronies. Insurance companies are forced to reveal medical data on perspective employees and unemployment insurance premiums are cut to give companies a 'tax break'.

Vince at Capitol Annex takes a look at a number of scorecards ranking Texas' Congressional delegation in which Texas' Republicans score big fat "F's" when it comes to children, families, the middle class, the environment, working Americans, and more.

In "Bulletins from the front lines", PDiddie at Brains and Eggs advances some of the challenges the forthcoming Senate District conventions will face, with the expected huge turnout expected to overrun facilities and organizers.

nytexan at BlueBloggin looks at the different delegate counts provided by the media and asks So You Think You Know The Delegate Count.

Refinish69 at Doing My Part For The Left writes a letter to Hillary.

Fake Consultant takes a shot at predicting a perfect VP for Obama at Texas Kaos.

Sunday Funnies (Clinton Fatigue Syndrome)

Noriega's Senate bid linked to Democratic nominee

Arnold Garcia in the Statesman nails the quandary for Rick Noriega:

Ask Rick Noriega whom he'd like to see at the top of the Democratic Party ticket and he does an artful dance — with a Texas twist — around the question.

"I'm for whoever wins," he replies diplomatically, before twirling into the second half of his answer: "I'm for who's going to come back to Texas and help us fight (to) win Texas." ...

The Clintons were in and out of Texas to raise money in the 1990s but spent the bulk of it elsewhere, leaving state and local Democratic candidates to do the best they could.

With Republicans firmly in control of all statewide elected offices, the best Democrats could do wasn't very good. Even the courthouses in North, West and East Texas fell to the GOP.

This year, however, Texans voted in Democratic primary races in record numbers — even in areas tightly controlled by the GOP — raising hope that those numbers were the first rays of light of a Democratic dawn.

It may be dawn at the Alamo if national Democrats once again cede Texas to the GOP in the November race. No one knows that better than Noriega, who is watching the Democratic presidential fight unfold. Though he won't say it, there are plenty of others who will: He faces long odds to begin with, but put Hillary Clinton at the top of the ticket and they get longer.

There is no comfort for Noriega in the Clintons' history of using Texas as an ATM with only one button — for withdrawals.

Clinton's strength as known quantity is also a weakness. She's known — for good or ill, voters have an idea of who she is. And Barack Obama? If he continues to attract new and independent voters, he might grow coat tails.

Hillary Clinton at the top of the Texas ballot in November is death for Democrats. Rick Noriega knows it just as clearly as all the rest of us do. It doesn't matter how many extra Hispanics she or Noriega draw to the polls, it won't be enough to overcome the loss of energized Obama voters disgusted by whatever machination she manages to use to deny the will of the people and steal the nomination.

The huge surge of Democratic voters in the Lone Star and across the nation are NOT turning out to vote for her now, and they will not do so in the fall. There's a very obvious reason she's losing by every measurement: pledged delegates, popular vote, and gradually now, even the supers.

Hillary Clinton is a losing candidate. A loser now, a loser in November.

Let's hope that someone is capable of preventing her from destroying the Democratic party nationally, and most certainly in Texas, before it's too late.

"Dear Boyd"

Garry Mauro, the Clinton campaign's point man in Texas, says it's splitsville for him and Hill if the TDP doesn't quash those mean old caucuses:

In a letter sent to the state Democratic Party late Friday, the Clinton campaign asked that the March 29 county and state senatorial district conventions be postponed until the eligibility of the estimated 1 million caucus-goers that turned out March 4 are double-checked, the Associated Press reported Saturday.

Verifying that caucus participants were qualified by voting in the primary and that they were at their appropriate precinct caucus is the biggest challenge that remains for the party, Mauro said.

Without that, Mauro said, it will be impossible to know whether the regional convention delegates accurately reflect caucus turnout.

"We have to wait and see who shows up (at the regional conventions) and who's qualified to show up," Mauro said.

Boyd seems a little unsympathetic to the Clinton campaign's dilemma:

State Democratic Chairman Boyd Richie said the party has received about 2,000 caucus complaints, ranging from people butting in line to someone possibly stealing caucus sign-in sheets so that certifying a victor will be difficult. But he said with a record caucus turnout, he considered the problems to be a small part of a successful caucus process that energized Democrats.

Most of the whining coming out of the Clinton camp these days regarding the Texas caucuses has to do with the "unfairness" of it all: because Mrs. Clinton narrowly won the primary half (two-thirds, actually) and lost the caucus half (one-third, to be precise) by nearly a two-to-one margin, cries of "It's Bush 2000 all over again" and "one man, one vote" have become nearly a cacophony of squawking. The upshot is that precinct convention delegates and alternates can expect Clinton supporters within the ranks of senate district leadership -- particularly those who have hand-picked their pals to staff the temporary rules and credentials committees at the SD conventions -- to either go out of their way to deny Obama delegates, or slow down an already cumbersome sign-in process on the morning of March 29. They want some payback for the grassroots activists beating them on the evening of March 4, and intend to take it at the end of this month. They'll use the swollen turnout as excuse to try to shaft a whole bunch of green-behind-the-ears Obama delegates showing up for the first time. The Obama campaign has to prepare their delegations for this possible sabotage of the will of the caucuses, else they will be easily rolled by the seasoned Clinton operatives.

More drama ahead, and likely more whining from some quarter.

Sunday Funnies

I hope I never have to disavow something my pastor said.

Oh yeah; I don't go to church. Thank God.

Pelosi: No Obama-Clinton (that goes for me, too)

I don't agree with Nancy Pelosi very often but after the past week I believe she's spot on with this:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it's "impossible" that Democratic presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will join together as running mates this year.

"I do think we'll have a dream team," Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. "It just won't be those two names."

Pelosi earlier this week told Boston TV station NECN that the two wouldn't combine their efforts because Clinton has suggested the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, would be a better commander-in-chief than Obama.

I think Speaker Pelosi is absolutely correct.

Obama has never expressed any indication that he would want Clinton as his running mate, and the recent racist smears by the odious Geraldine Ferraro eliminated any remaining possibility of his adding her to his ticket.

And FWIW I can't see how Obama can accept the V-P slot if Clinton manages to steal the nomination, when it would just give McCain all the ad material he needs to attack the both of them -- Obama for being "inexperienced" and Clinton for being a hypocrite and a political opportunist of the first order.

Needless to say, this offer has now expired.

Bulletins from the front lines

Christian Science Monitor:

"These six weeks are one of the most critical periods for the Democrats," says Joseph Aistrup, a political scientist at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan. "The candidates will be floating a lot of trial balloons to see what particular angles work."

The audience is only partly the voters who will award Pennsylvania's 158 delegates.

Perhaps more important, analysts say, are the nearly 800 elected officials and party leaders known as superdelegates who may well tip the race; the ordinary Americans whose poll responses journalists use to gauge shifts in political momentum; and the Democratic leaders who will decide whether and how to proceed with do-overs of the primaries in Michigan and Florida, which had been stripped of their delegates because they moved up their contests in violation of party rules.

Clinton won Michigan and Florida. But Obama didn't appear on the Michigan ballot, and to honor the party sanctions, neither campaigned in the two states.

Those primaries, if replayed in some form, would throw 366 delegates back into play. But it would also raise the threshold to win the nomination from 2,025 to 2,208. According to an Associated Press tally, Obama now has 1,598 delegates and Clinton 1,487, including pledged and superdelegates. Neither candidate is likely to pile up enough pledged delegates – those awarded through voting – in the 10 remaining contests to seal the nomination.

A decision on whether to rerun the Michigan and Florida primaries could come in the next couple of weeks, a move likely to divert a raft of campaign resources to those delegate-rich states.

More at the link. From a report filed at the Harris county executive committee meeting (of Democratic precinct chairs) last evening:

About 600 voters voted twice mostly on EVPA (Early Voting - Personal Appearance) and on Election Day. ... about 1100 voted in both primaries, (perhaps) in a combination of EV and Election Day voting. Actually some may have voted in the R primary and showed up for the D precinct conventions but that will not be known until the SD credentials are done.

I posted already about encountering one of these double voters. Of course this is voter fraud, but not the kind the OAG of Texas usually chooses to prosecute. Some of these cases will eventually be turned over to the Harris County DA's office; a new man starts there soon.

Senate District conventions promise to be chaos, as the final allocation of Texas delegates is at stake:

Curious whether Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton won Texas' Democratic caucuses March 4? The official results won't be available until March 29. ...

The (Texas) Democratic Party gave up Monday on its effort to produce a running public tally of the (delegate) count. The state party had set up a reporting system, outside the official count, that relied on 8,247 precinct chairmen to voluntarily call their results to 254 county chairmen who would relay them to state party headquarters.

But an estimated 1 million Democrats — far more than ever before — showed up for the caucuses, which were held right after voting ended in the first part of the Democratic contest: a standard primary administered by state government.

The huge turnout played havoc with the caucuses, creating confusion, long waits and even a few calls to the police to calm frustrations late on March 4. It hasn't made the count any easier either. ...

Now the party will rely on the official system laid down in its rules. Those rules require only that precinct chairmen mail the results of their caucuses to their county party chairmen 72 hours after primary election day. County chairmen don't have to reveal those results until county or state senate district conventions on March 29.

As in many states with caucuses, these district conventions pick delegates to a state convention in June which picks the actual national convention delegates. The Associated Press uses the results from local caucuses to calculate the number of national delegates each candidate will win, if the candidate's level of support doesn't change during this multi-stage process. ...

This is why the Texas Two-Step is actually four steps: primary, caucus, senate district, and state convention. It allows for lots of manipulation by those who know the system (i.e. Clinton supporters) and those who don't (i.e. Obama supporters).

Houston's 857 precinct results are still coming in, said Harris County Democratic chairman Gerald Birnberg. The count has been slowed because precinct convention chairmen ran out of official sign-in sheets, so they tore "Democrats Vote Here" signs off the wall and scrawled the preferences of caucus-goers in long hand. Birnberg said a dozen workers have put in 12-hour days since March 4 just making sure the paperwork was right, without even counting the votes yet in the state's largest city.

My SD will have 1522 delegates to the convention; at the moment to convene in a high school gymnasium capable of holding between 11-1200. The chairman's response is to seat overflow delegates in a separate auditorium.

That scenario is fraught with legal peril. The 'plan B' response was "Not all the delegates show up anyway."

This development bodes further ill for participatory democracy in Texas. Thousands of disenfranchised voters, delegates, and alternates coming to the process for the first time are likely to be more than a little disillusioned by their exclusion, which doesn't have rosy portent for their continuing their participation in the future, now does it?

Some will stay and fight while others will leave, turned off by the sausage-making of democracy. The only question left to know is how many and who wins as a result.