No Campaign Finance Reports Roundup

-- No campaign finance reports posted here. Ever. As written many times previously, that is a poor way -- probably the poorest -- of evaluating the quality of a political candidate. In fact it's sort of like picking a horse to bet on at the track based on the size of its owner's bank account. Or declaring which team might win the World Series or the Super Bowl strictly on the amount of the team's payroll.

I'm just not interested in the political insiders -- and those who crave access to them -- telling me what I should think about who is a better man or a woman of the people (sometimes erroneously referred to as "grassroots")  based on how much money they have raised. Not only don't I care, it actually has the opposite effect of convincing me that they care about the 99%. By all evidence of voter turnout in municipal elections, a vast majority of that 99% doesn't care too much either.

If it was in the best interest of our city, state, and nation to vote for people who proved themselves the most adept at pandering for campaign contributions, we'd have the kind of representation in Washington and Austin that we already have. The definition of insanity and all that.

If you don't think there's something wrong in a political system where money is scrutinized and evaluated as the most important thing to getting elected, then you might be part of the problem and not the solution.

There's an app for that. To fix it, I mean.

-- Will almost a million people quit their jobs when (perhaps I should say 'if') Obamacare is fully enacted?

A new study distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that somewhere between 530,000 and 940,000 Americans might quit their jobs after January 1, 2014, as they’re able to get affordable health insurance through one of the public exchanges to be set up under Obamacare. That could provide ammunition for both critics and supporters of the politically explosive law. Critics might see it as evidence that Obama’s reforms encourage idleness while contributing to a growing welfare state. But it might also be a sign that workers have more freedom to pursue meaningful work or other interests instead of sticking to one job just because of the benefits, a phenomenon economists have dubbed “employment lock.”

This is a bad thing how for corporations? It's like mass voluntary layoffs without the separation packages; why would they be upset about that?

-- Justice for Trayvon rallies in a hundred American cities this weekend; noon Saturday, at federal courthouses across the nation. "Juror B37 does not speak for us", according to four of the other five jurors. Here's the story of the Twitterer who single-handedly killed B37′s book deal. (Now that's what I call the invisible hand of the free market.)

Between the injustice served by a clearly biased set of panelists charged with evaluating the guilt of George Zimmerman and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, I have to wonder if the Supreme Court justices who bought the argument that racism is over in America are having second thoughts about that. Perhaps the federal judges who were planning on going in to the office this Saturday have a better understanding.

-- State representative Harold Dutton (D-Houston) has filed a pro-life bill: No abortion restrictions can be implemented until the death penalty is abolished. Sounds good to me.

What I think I like best about it is how it paints pro-birth radicals right into a corner. And they won't be able to tiptoe out of it without getting blood on their shoes.

-- Big Jolly hyperbolically -- or maybe it's hyperventilatingly -- defends Dr. Mark Jones (because he can't defend himself) and Greg calmly bats that away. What's a clown got to do to get in this fight, Dave?

-- Is the tide actually turning, or might it be a storm surge signaling a hurricane? Read all about it in Texas Monthly.

Can Texas Democrats win in 2014 just by increasing the female vote?

The short answer is 'no', but let's dig a little deeper.

The above is a bar graph that Michael Li posted on his FB page a couple of days ago (by the way, he has the best public forum around on Texas politics and if you're not following him there and on Twitter then you're missing out). I responded: "So the way I read this is: women already registered to vote in Texas can easily elect Wendy Davis governor... if they will just show up at the polls and do so."

Li's response was that it isn't quite that simple. After crunching a few numbers I am forced to agree, but since he posted it to "suggest opportunity", let's explore that.

(I'm not going to post any more charts, graphs, or spreadsheets, and we already know math isn't my strongest subject, so if somebody wants to challenge my premise, I'll welcome that discussion in the comments.)

Without having access to Li's precise figures, I have to extrapolate from the bars above to determine what the potential Democratic gain might be, given some other assumptions like: "Can 10% of the registered but not voting women in the 18-24 age bracket be motivated to cast a ballot, or should a more reasonable goal be increasing  existing turnout by that percentage?" The difference in this case is 25,000 versus almost 70,000. And not all of those will be Democratic votes, of course; the split goes more red the older the demographic.

And there's got to be a lot of rounding and estimating, which clouds our analysis. I'm thinking I can still reach a more accurate conclusion than Dr. Mark Jones of Rice University, however.

So let's open with the following parameters.

-- Increasing existing turnout by a factor of 10% is perhaps the most liberal and the most conservative goal for Dems to realize. It might be greater in the younger demographics and less in the older ones, so this will be used as the average.

-- The percentage of Democratic votes in this increase should be fairly high. I don't think the Republican women (or for that matter, men) who did not vote in 2012 have much to grow on, no matter what Phylliss Schlafly says. Not in the country, not in Texas. Still, I'm going to use a conservative estimate of the potential increase for the Ds: 75% for the 18-24 and 25-34 demographics, 67% for 35-49, 60% for 50-64, and 50% for 65+.

So on that basis, what do we have?

-- In the age range from 18-24, it looks like about three-quarters of 25,000 votes, or 18,750.

-- From 25-34, 75% of 10% of almost 600,000 (we'll call it 575K) = 43,125 Democratic votes.

-- 35-49: Ten percent of 1.1 million women who voted in 2012 is 110,000 and two-thirds of that is 73,700.

-- Texas female voters from age 50-64 total over 1.3 million according to the bar graph above, but let's round down to that 1.3 figure and take 10% of it and then 60% of that. That equals 78,000 D votes.

-- Finally, in the 65+ category, half of 10% of something around 950,000 is 47,500.

18,750 + 43,125 + 73,700 + 78,000 + 47,500 = 261,075. Again, a conservative estimate of additional Democratic votes from Texas women who are already registered to vote.

In a recent article at the Texas Tribune they helpfully disclose the vote tallies by which certain Democrats lost to Republicans in recent statewide elections. Here's that excerpt.

The grim performance of Democratic candidates in Texas over the last 10 years is hard to understate. Over the previous decade, the closest Democrats have been to any of the big ticket offices were 11 points in the 2008 presidential contest (950,695 votes), 12 points in the 2002 and 2008 Senate races (540,485 votes and 948,104 votes, respectively) and 9 points in the 2006 governor’s race (406,455 votes). 

The TexTrib goes a little farther in that piece with their back-of-the-envelope calculations of what the Latino effect might be. But they reach the same conclusion as me.

Suppose that some combination of Battleground Texas, amplified mobilization and good old-fashioned political persuasion increases Hispanic turnout in the state from 48 percent to, let’s say, 60 percent (no small feat) and, further, that the Democrats maintain a nearly 3-to-1 advantage in their vote choice (based on that 71 percent figure). That would create an additional 356,560 votes — about a third of the way toward closing the 1 million vote shortfall the Democrats suffered in the 2008 election in Texas (and remember, that was on a good day). 

I prefer to look at gender demographics as opposed to ethnic ones just for the sake of simplicity. There are people with Latino surnames who are Caucasian, to use just one example. (Exhibit A: my pal Neil Aquino. Hurry up with that new blog, by the way.) But everybody is fairly identifiable as male or female.

So what we have learned here is that -- short of a massive die-off of dessicated conservatives in the next 18 months in Texas -- Democrats still have a long, long way to go. That doesn't mean they shouldn't keep pushing, of course.

The sun is rising and the tide is turning, sooner than later. The events in the state Capitol -- and the events that occurred over the weekend in Sanford, Florida -- suggest extra motivation for people who can be convinced that voting might change things for the better. Latinos should already have all the motivation they need, and represent the greatest untapped resource. But everybody who is motivated is going to have to get registered, make sure their ID is current, and then get themselves to their polling place armed with enough knowledge to make the right choices for the future of Texas.

A tall but not insurmountable order.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance joins the family of Trayvon Martin in being "saddened" by the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff gives some advice on what to do now that the anti-abortion bill has passed.

Horwitz at Texpatriate explains why he is a Democrat.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson says the dream that once made America great has become a nightmare for too many: We must “make morality possible again”.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme can hardly wait to see the results of the republican War on Women in 2014. Some Blue Dogs like Eddie Lucio Jr. are already feeling a pinch.

Dr. Mark Jones of Rice University tried to take down Wendy Davis' political prospects, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs had to take down Jones. Conservatives drinking "librul" whine still smell like vinegar.

At TexasKaos, lightseeker foresees the destruction of Texas Republican Party. Check it out: Texas Republicans - The Coming Crackup?

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

Juanita eulogizes Bev Carter, Fort Bend political journalist and rabble-rouser.

Lone Star Ma deplores the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

Jason Stanford has a personal story about why the omnibus anti-abortion bill is such a miscarriage of justice.

Equality Texas reports from the Texas GSA Network Activist Camp.

Greg Wythe shreds a recent story that claims Sen. Wendy Davis is "too liberal" to win in Texas.

Texas Vox looks at a series of new studies that focus on the destructive effects of pollution.

The Texas Green Report explains why you should care about the cost of tap water.

Concerned Citizens reminds us once again that elections have consequences.

BOR analyzes the litigation that is likely to arise from the passage of the omnibus anti-abortion bill.

Sunday Rude and Crude Funnies

Look at all those dicks in her uterus...

Greg Abbott performs a River Walk later this afternoon...