Wendy Davis introduces herself

In this campaign video, also released today.

Annise Parker isn't counter-punching any longer

She went on offense yesterday with the spot embedded below, airing it several times during the Sunday morning blabfest.



It's not a new ad; it was posted to Youtube a week ago. But her press conference at lunchtime today -- happening as this post goes live -- is the second of two punches she's landing against her leading challenger.

Mayor Annise Parker will be available to the media to discuss today’s Houston Chronicle story revealing that Ben Hall again has had to pay back taxes and penalties to the IRS. Hall agreed to pay $680,000 in January 2013.

Here's the Chron with the details on that.

Top mayoral challenger Ben Hall agreed to pay the IRS more than $680,000 in back taxes and penalties earlier this year, court documents show.

On Jan. 16, less than a week before Hall made his first campaign expenditures as a mayoral candidate, the challenger and his wife signed a document in U.S. Tax Court agreeing to pay $520,782 in back taxes and about $160,350 in penalties to cover four years of deficiencies, from 2005 through 2008. The amount was a little more than half of the $1.28 million the IRS claimed the Halls owed when it issued a formal "notice of deficiency" in June 2011.

Hall is going to pick up a few extra Republican votes with this response.

"It's clear there's no intent to hide or misrepresent revenue," Hall said. "The way I look at this is, I won because I sued them and I reduced their amounts and justified my conduct. I'm willing to live on that record. I'm going to pay exactly what I'm supposed to pay in taxes and I'm not going to let anybody bully me, especially not an IRS that's out of control."

The IRS did not respond to requests for comment due to the federal government shutdown.

Every one of the usual insider suspects the newspaper calls for reaction to these stories managed to curb-stomp Hall while he was down.

Democratic political consultant Mustafa Tameez said the case raises questions about Hall's ability to manage details, undercutting the challenger's criticism of Parker as a manager who lacks a grander vision.

"One way to look at it would be that many of the issues that Ben Hall has had regarding his taxes can individually be explained, and some of it is unfair to him," Tameez said. "The challenge he faces is that he has so many of these issues that now it looks like a pattern. There's a sense of carelessness on his personal finances that will make voters question his ability to manage the details of a city the size of Houston."

Republican communications consultant Jim McGrath said, "People understand accountants getting things wrong. You trust accountants to handle these matters because the tax code is such a monster. I'm sympathetic there, but when you put it in the broader fact pattern, it just raises that many more questions. One thing you don't need as a challenger coming up against an incumbent with a strong economy are doubts as to whether your own financial house is in order."

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said the case either is a business lapse or an ethical one, neither of which helps Hall.

"In the best case, he did not do a particularly good job managing his business affairs, which is not a good attribute for a mayor, particularly in a strong mayor system, because the mayor is a chief executive and one of the mayor's jobs is to hire the right people and to manage those people," Jones said. "From the worst light, he was trying to avoid his fair share of taxes."

The odds for Parker clearing the field and avoiding a runoff just got a lot shorter.

An ACA showdown, a Cornyn fail, a D for Comptroller, and the Texas Libertarian slate

-- It's high noon here between the Poop Cruzers and the Affordable Healthcare Act supporters.

The ground war over Obamacare — the one that will determine whether people sign up — will be won and lost in places like Texas.

If Obamacare fails in the Lone Star State — that is, if a significant portion of the 6.1 million uninsured Texans don’t or can’t enroll — then the White House could miss its national enrollment targets, the new health insurance exchanges could falter and insurance rates could spike.

[...]

Advocates are banking on the idea that a grass-roots push in more liberal, urban areas of Texas, plus the demand among the uninsured to get health coverage, will overcome the state’s institutional opposition and deliver on the promise of Obamacare.

“Some of my friends on the other side of the aisle are doing as much as they can to make it difficult for this program to work,” state Sen. Rodney Ellis, a Democrat from Houston and prominent supporter of the law, said as enrollment began a few days ago. He thinks the Republican strategy will backfire. “One more election cycle and all of this is going to go away,” he predicted.

I'm going to keep shouting out to my state senator to run against John "RINO" Cornyn next year.  Go read the whole article as always.  Here's more to tease you.

The best hope of Obamacare backers is to support the efforts of local allies in regions such as Houston, Dallas and Austin, the bluest areas of a deeply red state. That’s because these areas lean liberal and also have an existing network of progressive activists. The Obama administration sent Texas nearly $11 million — more federal grant money than any other state — to fund “navigators” who are trained and tasked with helping people through the sign-up process.

In Houston, with 1.4 million uninsured residents, city officials are modeling their efforts on hurricane-force emergency response to counter the adamant state opposition, said Stephen Williams, director of the Houston Department of Health and Human Services.

“We believe this effort is so critical that we have created an incident command structure,” Williams said. “This is the same structure that we use to respond to hurricanes and to respond to public health disasters.”

The city of Houston has provided free office space to Enroll America, a nonprofit group closely associated with the former Obama campaign that is now spreading the word about the health law. The city has provided at least 55 people to help residents enroll and created space for a phone bank. It has ordered public library computers to have links to enroll access and it’s even printing Obamacare information on local water bills “so the broader population can all be informed,” said Mayor Pro-Tem Ed Gonzalez, a Democrat.

-- Speaking of Corndog, he was humiliated by Bob Schieffer on Facepalm the Nation yesterday, and appeared to be completely oblivious to it.  There's video of the exchange at the link.  It's just laughably absurd to watch Cornyn parrot his talking points as Schieffer compared Republicans to colicky babies, and then gangsters.

Update: Cornyn's TV spot joined the flurry of campaign ads breaking today -- trumpeting his "Conservative" bonafides -- but the senior senator from Texas has already lost the race; Glenn Beck has informed Louie Gohmert that God wants him to run for the US Senate.

-- Mike Collier makes official his bid to be the state's Comptroller of Public Accounts.



Please, somebody tell the man how to pronounce the name of the office he's running for.

-- Texas Libertarians are once again fielding a full slate of candidates next year.

Saying that the current federal government shutdown and tensions between Republicans and Democrats have made Texans ready for a change in leadership, Libertarian Kathie Glass on Wednesday officially announced her candidacy in the 2014 governor’s race.

"We’re going to be active in every aspect of this race,” said Glass, a Houston lawyer who also ran for governor in 2010. “We are getting out there a lot sooner.”

Glass said she plans to visit every county in Texas during her campaign and will talk to Texans about their frustrations with the current state of affairs.

That's a page out of the David Van Os playbook.

“This shutdown is just a glimpse of what might happen,” Glass said at her Austin news conference, at which several other Texas Libertarian hopefuls also announced their candidacies. “Voters know that what they want they are not going to get from the two other parties, so we are looking forward to offering them this alternative from the Libertarian Party.”

Glass said her campaign would focus on the idea of nullification, a legal theory that a state can invalidate federal laws it finds unconstitutional. [...]

She said she would nullify the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, and federal regulations on companies that lead them to ship jobs overseas to nations with laxer regulations.

More on the Libs down the ballot.

Her husband, Tom Glass, the vice chairman of the Texas Libertarian Party, announced at Wednesday’s news conference that he will be running for attorney general in 2014. He said he is running to battle unnecessary restrictions from the federal government.

“I will use the force of the office to stop unconstitutional federal acts in Texas,” Glass said, citing Obamacare, privacy laws, prison regulations and spending.

[...]

Other Libertarians who announced their candidacies Wednesday include journalist Brandon de Hoyos and Allen businessman Ed Kless, who are running for lieutenant governor; Lago Vista City Council member Ed Tidwell, who’s running for land commissioner; rancher Rocky Palmquist, who’s seeking to become agriculture commissioner; and Austin businessman Mark Miller, who’s running for railroad commissioner.

The Libertarians are always entertaining, and if Texans who vote in the GOP primary actually paid attention to them, they'd see that the Libs come closest to representing their isolationist, xenophobic views.

I simply don't think those voters are intelligent enough to figure that out, though.

Will Mostyn fund Medina?

Robert Miller.

An ancient Arabian proverb says the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The concept is that two parties, opposed in most respects, unite against a common opponent. In Texas, it has aligned Steve Mostyn, a passionate liberal and prolific contributor to Democrats, with Debra Medina, a libertarian Republican now contemplating a run for governor as an independent in 2014.

Mostyn began supporting Medina because she opposed Gov. Rick Perry in the 2010 Republican primary. Mostyn also created the Back to Basics PAC and contributed almost $4 million in 2010 to attack Gov. Perry.

I trust Miller's hunches and sources and instincts and whatever else he uses to blog with when it comes to Republicans. I have to question virtually everything he writes when it comes to Democrats; his track record is poor in that regard. He's actually trying to follow money that hasn't been donated (yet).

(A)ccording to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Medina “has received millions of dollars in pledges on the condition that she instead run for governor as an independent.” It doesn’t take a Rice graduate to figure out the source of those pledges. Steve Mostyn and his wife, Amber, are fervent backers of Sen. Wendy Davis and her gubernatorial campaign. It is a time-honored political tactic to entice other candidates into a race to siphon votes from the frontrunner, in this case Attorney General Greg Abbott.

I beat Miller to the punch on this last week, and the news first appeared over two weeks ago in the TexTrib, which credited Harvey Kronberg's Quorum Report for breaking it.  Miller, then, is spitballing here by throwing the Mostyns' name in; they have a ton of money set aside for political causes, but they also have a lot of folks in line with funding requests in 2014 besides Davis.  There's BGTX and there will soon be LVDP and other Democrats on the statewide ballot in due time.  I don't think even Steve and Amber are made of that much green.

Speaking of Green, Miller's scolding of Medina rings extremely hollow considering that Republicans have ALWAYS played this "muck with the other primary" business, and his morality appears to have been misplaced during those times.  If you read those links you'll pick up on my own disgust with the tactic; I wasn't much of a Green at all until well after then.

I'm still convinced, as I wrote previously, that Medina wants Greg Abbott to tell his benefactors to cut her a fat check to keep her in the comptroller's race.

It would make a great deal of sense for the Mostyns to pledge money to Medina, if for nothing else than it seems to piss off Republicans.  So I actually hope I'm wrong and Miller is right (I mean correct).

Update: Miller has appended his post with an unequivocal denial from the Mostyns' representative.

I want to state unambiguously to you that your post claiming the Mostyns have committed financial or political support to Debra Medina -- should she choose to run for Governor in 2014 -- is incorrect.

To be clear, the Mostyns have not spoken with Ms. Medina about any campaign for any office in 2014. Neither they, nor I on their behalf, have suggested that they would provide any kind of financial or political support to Ms. Medina in a 2014 gubernatorial run.

The Weekly Wrangle

With the kickoff of the Wendy Davis for Governor campaign last week, a Houston mayoral debate coming this week, and a nice fall cool snap, the Texas Progressive Alliance is feeling pretty damn good about now as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff shared a personal story from a friend about how Obamacare and the insurance exchanges will make a big difference in his life.

In the Houston suburbs live some of the absolute worst conservatives in the United States, and the Associated Press found one and told his miserable story. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs knows that when Republicans can't tell the difference between soil and dirt, ignorance is the biggest hurdle to Wendy Davis' chances of being elected governor of Texas.

Texas Leftist knows that blame for the current government shutdown rests ENTIRELY on the GOP's shoulders. But just in case anyone is unsure, Rachel Maddow has an epic takedown as proof positive. Do today's Republicans even believe in government??

Neil Aquino wrote about militarized police at his new blog, All People Have Value. All People Have Value is part of Neil's new website, NeilAquino.com.

Noah Horwitz at Texpatriate began a series of intermittent updates on the state of the Texas governor's race. He published three this week, the first of which appeared last Wednesday.

David Dewhurst tries to obfuscate about the racist DPS checkpoints in the Valley. CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme and every other sentient being in the Valley knows he spews BS.

Over at TexasKaos, Libby Shaw names names. It is on you, Ted . Give it a read.

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

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

John Coby invites Ted Cruz to join his new club.

Concerned Citizens wants to know what the 2014 election is going to be about.

Juanita introduces us to the next Republican member of Congress from Texas to make a fool of himself on TV.

New Media Texas posts video conversations with three Houston mayoral candidates.

Nonsequiteuse reminds us that there are many ways to volunteer for a campaign.

BOR analyzed Proposition 6, the water infrastructure amendment, as part of a series of analyses of the nine constitutional amendments on the ballot this year.

And finally, Blog con Queso published a recipe for Dr. Pepper sheet cake. Because you can't get any more Texas than that.

The difference between soil and dirt, explained for House Republicans

The thirty-two Republican Congress critters who have joined the kamikaze mission of Tail Gunner Ted Cruz in taking down the United States government include the following Texans:

John Carter, John Culberson, Louie Gohmert, Randy Neugebauer, Steve Stockman, and Randy Weber.

Their names come from the list James Fallows references.

Two more quick instances of the wanton damage that 30-odd legislators (named here) are doing to Americans at two levels: those running small businesses, and those working in the large research institutions on which so much of our long-term wealth and well-being depend.

And from there, Scott Slesinger of the National Resources Defense Council has this account from a virologist at an East Coast university.

Just don't get the flu next year and you will be OK. I happen to be vetted for a Federal committee that decides on which influenza antigens to use in next year's vaccine.  It doesn't take much imagination to figure out how fast this is going during The Shutdown.

[This researcher's lab is internationally recognized for having discovered two different viral causes of cancer, and yet] our research funding has been cut, a moving target, but somewhere between 10 and 25%.

I just received an email from one of my more talented post-docs who took a job at FDA as a scientist several years ago.  They couldn't hire him on as permanent science staff because of temporary hiring blocks, "The Sequester", and so forth.

Since they are no longer giving him a paycheck, he says to hell with it and he is looking for a job in private biotechnology.

The problem with Congressional Republicans is that they do not know the difference between soil and dirt.  If you put soil in your oven and bake it at 450 C for an hour, it turns into dirt.  It doesn't matter how much manure you throw on dirt, it won't become soil again.   It's dirt with shit on it.

Fallows, back with the moneyshot and the action item.

Like Robert Costa of National Review, whose reporting on the Republican hard-line faction has clarified why they are willing to wreak so much damage on so many fellow citizens, McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed has been very well sourced among Republicans. Read his account "Where Ted Cruz Is Coming From" for an understanding of how irrelevant any normal concept of "compromise," "leverage," or "public opinion" is with the hard-line faction. And also how contemptible John Boehner* is for protecting his own job, by catering to these people, at the costs of hundreds of thousands of jobs around the country. Coppins writes:

From its genesis in 2009, the Tea Party movement has been fueled by the rhetoric of revolution.... While Nevada Senate candidate Sharon Angle outraged mainstream political observers when she suggested people may start looking for “Second Amendment remedies” to the country’s problems, one recent survey showed that nearly half of Republicans believe armed insurrection might be necessary “in the next few years.”

Data points like those have long been Democrats’ bread and butter as they work to cast the Tea Party as “extreme.” But they also show just how extreme conservatives consider America’s current peril to be. To believe an armed revolution could realistically be on the horizon is to live with the genuine suspicion that your government could, at any point, be overtaken by tyranny. In that context, some temporary furloughs seem like a small price to pay....

[M]any Tea Party lawmakers view Obamacare as such a catastrophic threat to the country’s healthcare system and long-term economic health that it’s worth the high-stakes legislative brinksmanship to try to slow it down.

At least, that’s what they hear when they return to their districts.

* Why do I single out the affable-seeming Boehner for contempt? He obviously is not a Tea Party hardliner himself. And it is within his power to end this damage in a minute, simply by allowing the House to vote on a "clean" budget measure (which would pass). That would probably cost him his job as Speaker — but his failure to do so is costing many other people their jobs, not to mention longer-term effects.

Here's the list of Republicans in Congress who are willing to vote right now in favor of a clean CR.  (Note that no Texans appear on that list.)

This has gone beyond ludicrous and straight to Insane.

If the only constituents the Congressional conservative sociopaths are hearing from are themselves exclusively motivated by revolution at this point, then that is quite obviously at the crux of our national problem.  So you know all those e-mail appeals you're getting about telling Boehner to take a vote?  The ones that say 'Call your Congressman'?   Maybe it's time to do those things.  Again.  And tomorrow also.  Maybe the day after that, if this shutdown continues.

Besides the real physical danger Americans are facing, the economic ramifications are also swelling.  Republicans are supposed to be the party of business, and even the 1% are figuring out they're getting screwed... along with all the rest of us.

There needs to be a cost to the terrorists responsible (once more, their names are at the top of this post) for the damage being done -- indeed, the lives that will be lost -- due to their wanton irresponsibility.  That cost needs to be extracted now, and again in 2014.

We cannot continue to let the Dale Hulses of Harris County and Texas elect the kooks who run this great state and nation.

Updates (this morning):

Boehner says "not enough votes" for clean CR

GOP in grave danger of losing House in 2014, polls say

Sunday Funnies

"How to end the government shutdown: I think if you hold down Texas and Maine at the same time, it automatically reboots."

-- Stephen Colbert

"People are saying now that before the government shutdown Congressmen went out and got drunk, celebrating that they had shut down the government. This is the kind of thing that could damage their 10 percent approval rating."

-- David Letterman

"Texas Senator Ted Cruz gave a 21-hour speech on the floor of the Senate during which he read Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham, did an impression of Darth Vader, and admitted his love for White Castle. I'm not sure what Cruz's speech was arguing for, but I'm guessing legalizing weed."

-- Seth Meyers

Texas has the worst conservatives in the country

No, not Ted Cruz or Greg Abbott or Rick Perry or even Dan Patrick.  Not Louie Gohmert or Steve Stockman.  Not Randy Noogie Boogie.  Not David Dewhurst or Todd Staples or even Jerry Patterson.

This guy. And the millions of Texans just like him.

Thanks to Texas' new senator, Dale Huls is out of a job -- at least for now. Yet Huls has never been prouder that he voted for him.

"Without Ted Cruz this doesn't happen," said Huls, a NASA systems engineer who was among roughly 3,000 federal employees furloughed from Houston's Johnson Space Center after tea party Republicans triggered the partial government shutdown.

"This is something Americans have to get used to," said Huls. "Even if it affects your livelihood, you've got to stand up."

When John Cornyn is considered to be on the left flank of the GOP, the sickness becomes more apparent.  There are actually some Republicans who can finally admit they are embarrassed to be Republican, but Dale Huls is never going to be one of them.

Huls said he has enough savings to tide him over for at least two months without a paycheck. But he's worried about not making up money he borrowed from his retirement plan and says he may eventually have to talk to other creditors about extensions.

"But I don't consider myself a victim," Huls said. "I'm in this fight too and this is my role."

Pedro Rivera, a space center programs specialist who is working on the Orion capsule the U.S. hopes to send to Mars, said he too is willing to accept being furloughed even if the shutdown means a delay in Orion's scheduled test launch next year.

"I think it's a small price to pay for the future generations," said Rivera, who says he considers the new health care law un-American.

As Jimmy Kimmel observed... "I want the names of the idiots who elected these people."

There just aren't the proper words to describe how pathetic this disconnect is.  We've all known for a long time that empathy wasn't any Republicans' strong suit, but Dale Huls and Pedro Rivera take it to a new and much lower level.

Clear Lake, the other Houston suburbs, and certainly the remaining exurban and rural parts of the state are full of people like Dale.  Except that most of them don't have a good job and two months of savings like him.  Most of them are broke, without health insurance, and if they vote at all, they vote GOP.

The biggest obstacle to Wendy Davis being elected governor is Dale Huls and every other Texan who has his mindset.  You can't change it, and it takes too long to wait for them to die.  Battleground Texas (and other organizations and campaigns with shared interests) must simply go out and find the millions of Texans who aren't voting, and then change that habit.

There are dozens and dozens of reasons why Davis -- and other Texas Democrats on the ballot in 2014 -- can win.  Not accomplishing that one very tall order is, as far as I am concerned, the only reason why she cannot win, and why so many people, even Democrats, think that she cannot.

We'll just have to watch and see how that plays out.

"A lot less Lone, and a lot more Star"

Yeah.  Especially as compared to the black hole that is Greg Abbott.

“We know that Texas is more than a state,” she said. “Texas has always been a promise. The promise that where you start has nothing to do with how far you can come. In Austin today, our current leadership thinks that promises are something you just make to the people who write the big checks.” 

That's one big difference between her and her opponent for certain.

"Texans don't want to sit back and watch Austin turn into Washington, D.C.," Davis said. "State leaders in power keep forcing people to opposite corners to prepare for a fight instead of coming together to get things done."

"Until the families who are burning the candle at both ends can finally make ends meet, we will keep going. Until the amazing health care advances being pioneered in this state reach everyone who needs them, we will keep going," she said.

What I am liking best are the populist undercurrents.  Speaking of Current...

However, there is nothing fuzzy about the math. The Democrats can take Texas in 2016 if they can tap into one a key segment: white Texans, and in particular white women, the new kingmakers–or queenmakers–of Lone Star politics.

Why? Women of color broadly support Democratic candidates, but that’s just the point: BGTX needs to mine new veins of voters. At least at this stage, minority population trends alone will not lock up the race, since heavily Republican non-Hispanic whites will still hold a slim majority through the next presidential cycle. Even if Battleground succeeds in ramping up meager Hispanic voter turnout to white levels, a Republican candidate would likely still prevail in 2016.

“I think [Battleground Texas] realizes that it’s not just a matter of finding and turning out minority voters,” says Ruy Teixeira, co-author of the book The Emerging Democratic Majority and a senior fellow at Center for American Progress. “It’s also a matter of finding and turning out relatively liberal white voters, given the structure of the Texas electorate and given how conservatively white voters have been voting. The treasure trove would presumably be more likely to be college educated, more likely to be younger, and more likely to be women living in the big metropolitan areas.”

"Get the gringa."  There's about fifty more grafs I want to cut and paste from there into this post, but that crowds the Fair Use etiquette, so read this and then go read the whole thing.

Make no mistake: Texans stand among the conservative crowd, but, unlike their government, squarely in a moderate vein. According to last month’s University of Texas at Austin/Texas Tribune Texas Politics Poll, a relative majority of registered voters self-identify as moderate, with an absolute majority describing themselves as moderate or moderate with a liberal or conservative leaning; only one-third label themselves somewhat or very conservative.

The same poll reveals a majority of support for background checks on all gun purchases, including gun shows and private sales, the right to same-sex marriage, access to legal abortion, boosting funding for public education, and comprehensive immigration reform. Yet time and again Perry and like-minded lawmakers soften gun laws, denounce gay unions, and shortchange education and healthcare. (Though this topic was not in the most recent UT/TT poll, other surveys such as the Lyceum indicated most Texans favored accepting the Medicaid expansion, rejected by the state for an estimated loss of $100 billion in federal health care funds.)

These are among the reasons why Abbott and those who support him are so scared.

Last month, when Senator Davis postponed her announcement because she was mourning her father who died unexpectedly, the campaign of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, her most likely opponent, took the opportunity to disrespect her, gleefully retweeting a tweet that referred to her as “Retard Barbie” and calling her “too stupid to be governor” on Twitter.

The Texas Republicans pretend to be unconcerned, but there is evidence to the contrary. Today, within one hour after her official announcement, the state party was up with a website TheRealWendy.com complaining that Wendy was anti-gun and pro-choice. (Well, duh. Isn’t that what this election is about?)

That’s all you need to know about how they really feel about the candidacy of Senator Wendy Davis.

The Republicans can tweet and retweet all the insults they want. The website they had ready and waiting proves they take Senator Davis seriously. Though they haven’t the manners to show it, they respect Wendy Davis. I would go as far as to say they fear her. At least four clinics have closed since her history making filibuster. They know if she can liberate Texas women from Texas “man-splaining” Wendy Davis could be governor.

M. E. Williams at Salon has a good explanation about how bogus this attack is.

And that quote that late term abortion is “sacred ground”? What Davis said during an August luncheon: “I will seek common ground because we all must. But sometimes you have to take a stand on sacred ground. Liberty: the freedom to choose what your future will hold.” She didn’t call abortion sacred, you illiterate numbskulls, she called liberty sacred.

But the best response is being worn by those two guys in the top photo, slightly to the right of center.  These guys.

Governor Barbie #TeamWendy #WD4G pic.twitter.com/YfKkmPpLBG
— Jessica W. Luther (@scATX) October 3, 2013

That right there is pretty much the key to a Democratic victory in November 2014: White dudes, slightly right of center.  And their moms and aunts and sisters and every woman they are friends with, and all the other women they know.

Update:

You'll hear a lot about the growing Hispanic vote and how it may become the catalyst for a "blue" Texas. But what makes Texas harder today for Democrats than some other high-growth, demographically changing states in the west and south is that Democrats in Texas get a very, very low share of the white vote -- so low that minority voters and Hispanic voters cannot yet make up the difference.

For instance: in the last midterm cycle of 2010, Texas' white voters gave the Democratic gubernatorial candidate just 29 percent of their votes. At the same time, Colorado's Democratic candidate got 47 percent of whites -- and then the Hispanic vote put him over the top. In Florida, even in losing, the Democratic candidate got 41 percent of whites. For Democrats and the white vote in states like this, it's not about winning, it's about not losing by too much. (On the presidential level, Barack Obama had gotten 26 percent of Texas' white vote in 2008. That same year, he got 39 percent of it in Virginia, which he won, just to offer an example.)

If we look deeper into that Texas white vote, we see a lot of conservatives -- and it isn't clear Davis is poised to run on an appeal to conservatives, given her history. Most Texas voters (51 percent) were conservative in the last midterm -- yes, that's most voters, not just most Republicans. Even 20 percent of Texas Democrats in 2010 called themselves conservative, a relatively high percent compared to Democrats in blue states. Davis may look to appeal to women voters on women's issues, and that may well be effective. But in Texas, a lot of women independents are conservative, too: 40 percent, more than three times the number who called themselves liberal.

Scatter-shooting while waiting for Wendy

-- What Wendy Davis could learn from Ann Richards, by Mary Beth Rogers.

There are some hopeful signs for Davis in the Texas numbers today.

The base Republican vote has peaked and is declining. The downward trends are evident in county-by-county voting analyses during the past two gubernatorial elections in non-presidential election years. On the other side, the base Democratic vote is growing organically, although it has rarely been extended effectively in recent elections. Both large and mid-size Texas cities are seeing extensive shifts in partisan voting patterns, primarily because of Hispanic population growth, but also because urban voters are bringing a more tolerant and progressive cultural mind-set to election contests. The challenge for the Davis campaign is to turn out this base Democratic vote, plus bring in an additional 20 percent of new Democratic voters.

The 1990 Richards campaign for governor was about suburban women. We developed relevant targeted messages and voter contact activities aimed at moderate suburban women. It paid off on election day.

The Wendy Davis campaign has the potential to do the same. Suburban women are turning away in droves from extremist Tea Party/Republican messages. 

Even Anita Perry, as it turns out.  Davis needs the votes of women of all races, creeds, and colors, and the men who love and respect them... and then she still needs more men to vote for her.

The decision to focus on Williams was a critical factor in Ann’s winning campaign and it may be the most important lesson for the Davis campaign in 2014. We made the campaign about Clayton Williams, rather than about Ann Richards. The Davis campaign can also force a referendum on the mean-spirited acts and opinions of Greg Abbott.

[...]

Greg Abbott’s record is ripe for similar disclosure. After holding statewide office for more than 20 years, he is still unknown and untested. He has already begun to make the kinds of gaffes that could torpedo his campaign. And even in red Texas, his ideas are out of touch on dozens of issues that matter to the majority of voters. He is against requiring employer-based health insurance policies to provide contraception coverage. He is against requiring background checks that prevent mentally ill people from buying guns. He is against providing adequate funding to improve the quality of Texas public schools. And he has done everything in his power to restrict the right to vote for ordinary people, particularly for those who are old or poor or who don’t have a driver’s license to show for identification. These are not left-right issues. They are issues that matter to suburban voters, as well as to the Democratic base.

These are extremist views in an already-too-extreme state.  There's evidence everywhere of that.  There isn't going to be any moderate voice that gets nominated by Texas Republicans.  People who haven't been voting in recent elections are the linchpin in turning back this red tide of derangement and insanity.  That's going to require a herculean effort.  And a little good fortune.

-- Democrats still have no prospects to run against John Cornyn.  But there are several hints that he gets challenged from his right.

At last weekend's Texas Tribune Festival, the Tea Party lobbed a couple of cannonballs across Sen. John Cornyn’s bow. When asked if Texas’ senior senator should be challenged in the 2014 GOP primary, all six members of a lively Tea Party panel unequivocally answered yes. Earlier, Cornyn’s junior colleague, Tea Party hero Ted Cruz, offered a polite but definite demurral when offered a chance to endorse Cornyn in that primary.

This is the mainstream media just catching up with me.

-- A few things on the shutdown worth reading.

Government shutdown: Why many Republicans have no reason to deal

If Congress Won't Raise the Debt Ceiling, Obama Will Be Forced to Break the Law

The Atlantic asks: Wouldn't it be better to save the nation from default by invoking the Fourteenth Amendment than to stand by and do nothing?

30 Ways the Shutdown Is Already Screwing People

Kids with cancer: 30 children who were supposed to be admitted for cancer treatment at the National Institute of Health's clinical center were put on hold, along with 170 adults.

Head Start kids: When a new grant didn't come in, Bridgeport, Connecticut, closed 13 Head Start facilities serving 1,000 kids. Calhoun County, Alabama, shut down its Head Start program, which serves 800 kids. Some were relocated to a local church.

Pregnant women: Several states had promised to pick up the tab if the US Department of Agriculture stopped funding the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC)—but not Arkansas, where 85,000 meals will no longer be provided to low income women and their children.

Babies: 2,000 newborn babies won't receive baby formula in Arkansas, due to those WIC cuts.

People who help pregnant women and babies: The 16 people who administer the WIC program in Utah will be furloughed—in order to free up money to continue funding the program.

Ah, the pro-life party strikes again.  Maybe Republicans in Congress will listen to Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein.

"There's a consensus that we shouldn't do anything that hurts this recovery that's a little bit shallow, not very well established and is quite vulnerable," Blankfein said. "The shutdown of the government and particularly, a failure to raise the debt ceiling, would accomplish that." 

When you've lost the Big Banks, when you've lost the Big Healthcare Insurance companies...

Annise Parker, Wendy Davis, and Kim Ogg

One week to go before the only televised appearance of all Houston mayor candidates, three weeks before early voting begins, and a month until Election Day in the most boring election season on record.  There's not even a strong majority -- and few strong opinions -- for either keeping or tearing down the Astrodome, also on the ballot.  And what little excitement does exist is about to be eclipsed by the 2014 Texas governor's contest.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?  Depends on who you are.

Mayor Parker's team is content to hold the ball and run out the clock on the bid for her final re-election.  The polls suggest she'll skate through, but she may have to vanquish the mud-slinging Ben Hall one more time in December.  That's when things will really get ugly.

Hall's campaign has been nothing short of a disaster.  Incoherent one week, overfloweth with vitriol the next.  The other eight candidates have just been studiously ignored by the media and thus the electorate.  Everybody has a last chance to make up for that -- the ones doing the ignoring and the ones being ignored -- in the remaining days.

As for city council races, thank goodness there have been Texpatriate and Texas Leftist with some questionnaires and endorsements.  They have supplemented Off the Kuff's usual comprehensive interview series.  Anybody seeking information on municipal races hasn't had to wait on the corporate legacy media to put something behind their paywall.

I can't say a thing about educational candidates and elections because they have been so far under the radar that they're subterranean.

So while we all wait one more day for the erstwhile Democratic gubernatorial nominee -- the one in the orange tennies -- to kick things off, we can focus for a moment on a recent positive development: the newly-announced challenger to the freshly-appointed Harris County district attorney.  A tip o' the chapeau to Houston's most prominent Republican blogger for the write-up and photos of Kim Ogg's declaration last Monday.

At a well-attended announcement today on the steps of the renovated Harris County Courthouse at 301 Fannin in downtown Houston, Ms. Ogg promised the attendees that the duty of district attorney was not only to convict but to see that justice is done. She also promised to ensure that criminal cases are based on sound evidence so that crime victims and those accused are treated fairly. As a long-time crime victims advocate, she promised to prioritize crimes of violence against individual victims, business crimes against crime victims for businesses, and environmental crimes against all of us. She will do this by putting non-violent misdemeanor offenders to work and by changing the ways forfeiture funds are spent. She will change the focus from low level criminals to the prosecution and dismantling of organized crime and gangs from the top down. She will immediately halt the practice of treating economically disadvantaged criminals differently than others by promising that no one will be above the law in Harris County, regardless of the neighborhood you live in, the size of your bank account, or the uniform you wear. She will use 21st century tactics to combat 21st century crime. 

Ogg made some news by saying she would not prosecute drug crimes on trace evidence.  This is a return to a policy instituted by former Republican DA Pat Lykos.  Here's Ogg on KTRK video talking about the indictments of HPD officers in one of the many teenager beatings they have performed in recent years.  But Imma let Big Jolly finish.

Texas needs a revitalized Democratic Party if Republicans are to eschew complacency. Complacency amongst Texas Republicans will result in Democratic control of the state. We need qualified candidates at all levels of government. Too often Republican primary voters settle for unqualified candidates that are adept at spouting talking points the voters want to hear. Take a look at this year’s primary for Railroad Commissioner if you don’t believe me. Just today, former Rep. Wayne Christian touted his endorsement by “conservatives and religious leaders” and the Texas Right to Life groups. If you can explain to me what those endorsements have to do with oil and gas policy, I’ll buy you some beachfront property in Arizona.

Another interesting aspect of the 2014 DA’s race will be, assuming Ms. Ogg and the current appointed DA make it through their respective primaries, that the issue of abortion will be taken off the table. The race might (hopefully?) be about ideas pertaining to criminal justice.

That's better and so much nicer than I could have said it.

'House of Turds'

The New York Daily News for the win.

As soon as the markets start dropping, Jamie Dimon will call Boehner and tell him to cut the crap. But I don't expect that to happen before the end of the week.  In the meantime, the cost is harsh for some (and it's not a political one, either).

Federal employees who are considered essential will continue working. Those deemed non-essential -- more than 800,000 -- will be furloughed, unsure when they'll be able to work or get paid again. Most furloughed federal workers are supposed to be out of their offices within four hours of the start of business Tuesday. 

The shutdown could cost the still-struggling U.S. economy about $1 billion a week in pay lost by furloughed federal workers. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

While many agencies have reserve funds and contingency plans that would give them some short-term leeway, the economic loss would snowball as the shutdown continued.

The total economic impact is likely to be at least 10 times greater than the simple calculation of lost wages of federal workers, said Brian Kessler, economist with Moody's Analytics. His firm estimates that a three- to four-week shutdown would cost the economy about $55 billion.

Eight hundred thousand people is roughly the size of San Francisco (which by itself provides incentive in the TeaBagger mind).  Locally, NASA is all but closed today. But the troops, Medicare and Social Security recipients, and yes, members of the House and Senate still get their paychecks.

And Obamacare is gearing up right on schedule.  It's obviously more popular than Ted Cruz says.

So the next time the Democrats have the House of Representatives and a Republican is in the White House (maybe never again in my lifetime for the latter), let's see the House shut down the government over going to war.  Or rolling back the Bush tax cuts.  Hell, since this is a dream, a tax increase on the wealthiest 1%.

Makes sense in this world turned upside down, doesn't it?