Latest YouGov: Abbott 54, Davis 37

Not the TexTrib this time, but CBS/NYT commissioning the poll.  I saw it first at DK early yesterday morning, posted about it here and Tweeted that at lunchtime, and the Houston Chronicle had it yesterday afternoon.  As disclosure, I was included again among poll respondents.  The results for the US Senate race in Texas ran similar to the gubernatorial, with John Cornyn ahead of David Alameel 51-35, and the generic Congressional Democrat coming in behind the R, 50-31 (counting leaners in both).

It's also important to note that there were no third party candidates included in the poll questions, just 'independent' in the Congressional query.  That's how you get such a small number of undecideds -- 'other' and not sure', in this case.  The most significant finding to me was the 7% who declared they would not be voting at all.

YouGov's polling methodoly has long been questioned because of its online, opt-in nature.  The best explanation of this comes from the NYT.

YouGov’s work is worthy of its own discussion because it’s the first set of data from an online panel this year. The other nonpartisan surveys have used traditional, random-digit dialing to reach a sample of adults by telephone.

Random-digit dialing has long been the gold standard for public polling, but declining response rates may be complicating the ability of telephone polls to capitalize on the advantages of random sampling. Most polls underestimated President Obama’s standing in 2012, perhaps because young and nonwhite voters were least likely to own a landline and least likely to respond to telephone pollsters. Polls may also have exaggerated Mr. Romney’s gains after the first presidential debate, because Mr. Obama’s supporters were less willing to respond after his weak performance. The phenomenon is known as “differential non-response.”

CBS/NYT had YouGov poll over 100,000 members in all fifty states.  The full tabs for the Texas races can be found at this link.

As the young voters who are less likely to respond to telephone surveys become an ever-greater share of the population over time, it is probably more important for analysts to have an ensemble of surveys using diverse sampling and weighting practices.

YouGov has emerged as a part of that ensemble. It has tracked many of its respondents over months, if not years, which gives it additional variables, such as a panelist’s voting history, to try to correct for non-response. After the first 2012 debate, YouGov showed less of a swing than many other polls, and its final pre-election polls were as good as or better than many other surveys in forecasting the results.

There are still questions about the effectiveness of web panels, which can reach only the 81 percent of Americans who use the Internet. That’s worse than the 98 percent of households that can be reached by a live interview telephone survey, although it’s better than the 63.5 percent of Americans who have a landline telephone and can therefore be contacted by automated polling firms, which are prohibited by federal regulations from calling people on their cellphones.

Non-Internet users tend to be less educated, less affluent and more likely to be Hispanic or over age 65. These concerns aren’t strictly theoretical: YouGov most likely underestimated President Obama’s share of the Hispanic vote in 2012. Its final survey showed Mr. Obama with 59 percent of the Hispanic vote, far lower than the 71 percent in the exit polls.

So the silver lining for Davis (and Alameel and other Dems down the ballot) is that younger voters and Latinos are widely under-represented in these numbers.

Another issue is that the YouGov panel does not use probability sampling, the theoretical underpinning of modern polling. In a probability sample, every voter should have an equal chance of being randomly selected, making the sample representative. Phone numbers provide a device for randomization that is impossible online.

Instead, YouGov attempts to build a large, diverse panel and then match its panelists to demographically similar respondents from the American Community Survey, an extremely rigorous probability survey conducted by the Census Bureau. This step is intended to mimic probability sampling. But it can require significant assumptions about the composition of the electorate, including partisanship. These assumptions are contestable and based on varying amounts of evidence.

All of this is controversial among survey methodologists, who are vigorously debating whether a non-probability web panel should be used for survey research. At the same time, they’re also debating whether the sharp rise in non-response is undermining the advantages of probability sampling. Only 9 percent of sampled households responded to traditional telephone polls in 2012, down from 21 percent in 2006 and 36 percent in 1997, according to the Pew Research Center.

John Zogby is the fellow who pioneered this polling model, and everyone should be familiar by now with his reputation for accuracy.  YouGov has refined its methods over time, and to its credit, has managed better outcomes in predictive analysis.

While the methodology debate rages, it’s probably best to have an eye on a diverse suite of surveys employing diverse methodologies, with the knowledge that none are perfect in an increasingly challenging era for public-opinion research.

One striking aspect of the YouGov results is that they are broadly consistent with previous data on the campaign. Republicans appear to have narrow leads in enough states to win the Senate, but only narrow leads. The Republican lead is less than two percentage points in Michigan, Iowa, Louisiana and North Carolina. In Arkansas, Tom Cotton, a Republican challenger, leads Senator Mark Pryor, the Democratic incumbent, by four points.

The panel provides its best news for Democrats in Colorado, where Mark Udall, a Democratic incumbent, has a four-point lead. That’s far better than a recent Quinnipiac poll, which showed Mr. Udall trailing by two points, but it’s about the same as a recent NBC/Marist poll, which showed Mr. Udall up by seven points among registered voters.

Real Clear Politics summarizes polling for US races in a way similar to what Nate Silver does: taking all polls and averaging them to come to a consensus.  Here's that for Texas.  Rasmussen is widely understood to oversample Republicans, PPP is run by DK so it's suspected of having a Democratic bias.

My humble O is that YouGov is weighted too far right in this poll to the tune of about 5 points, which would leave Davis, Alameel, et.al in the 49-42 range or thereabout, which makes much more sense.  Irrespective of what the polling reveals, Abbott will blitz the airwaves beginning soon, and Texpate thinks Davis should as well.  I don't agree with him on that, but we'll see what happens.

Democrats should simply ignore the inevitability meme and keep grinding away on the phones, keep walking the blocks and keep donating what they can.  Wendy Davis still has a puncher's chance against Greg Abbott, and the rest of the Democrats down the ballot may have better than that, as they won't have to contend with the multi-million dollar broadcast onslaught from a well-heeled Republican opponent.

The race isn't over, even as much as the GOP and the corporate media would like to keep saying it is.  It's entering the homestretch, however, and Davis needs to make a move.

Update: If you needed reminding about why you should be skeptical about polls... here you go.

Update II: Forrest Wilder at the Texas Observer has a terrific suggestion for something the Davis campaign could emphasize: Medicaid expansion.

It is understandable that Davis hasn’t made abortion—or even women’s health—a cornerstone of her campaign. This is Texas, after all, and it’s wise for a Democrat to run on issues that are more unifying. But why not a seven-city tour on, say, Medicaid expansion? Expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act will not only save lives and put more than a million Texans on health insurance, it’s a terrific deal for the state. The feds will pay 90 percent of the cost. By rejecting the expansion, Rick Perry and Abbott are leaving $100 billion on the table, according to recent estimates.

It’s good politics too—even if Republicans start hollering about “Obamacare.” (They will anyway.) Democratic governors in some red states, like Kentucky, have made Obamacare a winning issue. In Arkansas, Gov. Mike Beebe—one of the most popular governors in the nation—got a Republican-controlled Legislature to sign off on a Medicaid model that uses federal dollars to help people buy private insurance. That’s the same basic idea touted by some Republicans in the Texas Legislature. Polls, including one by Rick Perry’s own pollster, also show that a solid majority of Texans favors expanding Medicaid.

Davis, when asked recently by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, was unequivocal in her support (“I absolutely do”) for Medicaid expansion. And in mid-June, she unveiled her economic development plan, which included Medicaid expansion. But otherwise she’s rarely discussed health care so far. The word “Medicaid” doesn’t appear once on her campaign site. 

Democratic strategists I spoke with cautioned that it’s still early in the campaign; that the Davis grassroots effort feels and sounds different than the “messaging” in the media; and that her team has been frustrated by the media’s indifference to her policy ideas.

As Paul Burka of Texas Monthly has pointed out, if she made it a central issue she’d have the doctors on her side, the hospitals, and much of the business community, not to mention local governments and—most important—millions of Texans who would see the benefits of healthier families.

Go read the whole thing.

Still never going to be casino gambling in Texas, and maybe no more lottery

First, a correction: in my post about the Astrodome last week, I mentioned that a potential Governor Greg Abbott would never sign legislation supporting gambling in Texas. Specifically I wrote the following...

As for the Dome being converted into a hotel/casino... that will NEVER happen as long as Talibaptist Republicans rule in the Lege.  And a Governor Greg Abbott would veto it even if Hell caught a polar vortex blizzard and a bill did pass legalizing casino gambling in Texas.  How do I know this?  I point you back to this post about campaign finance reports, and this sentence from Wayne Slater's story within it.

Abbott’s largest out-of-state contribution was $50,000 from the Chickasaw Nation political committee, which operates casinos in Oklahoma.

What's incorrect is that the governor of Texas has no say whatsoever in any legislation that regards amending the Texas Constitution.  In order for there to be casinos in the Great State, there would have to be a two-thirds majority in both houses of the Texas Legislature approving the measure, after which the proposal becomes a ballot referendum for Texas voters.  The excerpt does beg another question, though:  what did the Chickasaws buy with their 50 large to Abbott?  A lobbyist?  Who does Abbott think he is, Michael Quinn Sullivan?

We know how Texans would vote on casino gambling if  they ever got the chance.  But they won't.  And just so everyone is clear, there is still no chance the Republicans in the Lege will approve anything that even sounds like gambling.  John Carona tried last session, and he lost his primary this year (to one of the men mentioned in the next excerpt).  Today in the TexTrib...

Five Republican nominees for seats in the Texas Senate voiced opposition Monday to a proposal that would allow a controversial new form of betting on horse races in Texas.

Paul Bettencourt of Houston, Konni Burton of Colleyville, Bob Hall of Edgewood, Don Huffines of Dallas and Rep. Van Taylor, R-Plano, urged the Texas Racing Commission to reject the commission’s proposed rules allowing historical racing, saying in a joint statement that it “would effectively authorize Las Vegas-style gaming in Texas.”

Go to the link above for an explanation of historical horse race betting.  I consider it as ridiculous a betting proposition as I do polling political races after the fact, but speaking as a horse player myself, it seems fairly innocuous. Since thoroughbred and quarter horse racing is already legal in Texas, what could possibly be the problem?  The message is clear: there will never be any slots at racetracks, no offtrack betting, no poker parlors, no nothing like that and certainly no blackjack or craps at resort hotels in the metros or along the Gulf coast.  It's Satan preying on the po' folk, and we need the GOP to save us from that (the party of less intrusive government and personal responsibility, after all).  The Trib again, having gotten granular polling data when the gambling measure got close last year, is cautious even in forecasting that an amendment would clear the voters.

But given the strength of the socially conservative wing of the Republican Party, coupled with the opposition of radical fiscal conservatives to gaming, a bet on gambling might still be a longshot. 

I grow weary of people saying the Dome should be a casino.  It's the hallmark of an extremely low information voter, one who probably casts a straight Republican ticket.  To be fair however, it's not just Republicans.  Speaking of poor people being preyed upon, one of the most liberal Democrats in the Texas House, Garnet Coleman and the Texas Lottery are in the news.

House Speaker Joe Straus on Thursday announced his appointments to the Legislative Committee to Review the Texas Lottery and Texas Lottery Commission, a new panel charged with studying the ramifications of ending the lottery, along with examining charitable bingo and how its revenue is distributed.

The appointees include three Harris County lawmakers, one of whom is a vocal lottery critic.

Houston Democrat Garnet Coleman has accused the lottery commission of a cozy relationship with the game operator and criticized how most players are poor. He will be joined by Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston; Rick Miller, R-Sugar Land; Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake and co-chair John Kuempel, R-Seguin.

More from the local news radio station.

“Lottery money is stagnant, we raised the same billion dollars in the early 1990s, nothing more per year,” the Houston Democrat tells KTRH News. “So in terms of the lottery being a solution for public education, its not.”

Sugar Land Republican Rick Miller has his own concerns.

“How effective is this? How much money is going to the school fund? What's the overhead for this administration?” Miller asks.

Coleman and others believe the lottery is just another form of gambling which preys on the poor.

“What the lottery has had to do is create more games that have a worse chance of winning, and get the people who play to play more and more,” he says.

Miller believes there is some truth to that.

“It is what might be considered a tax on the poor,” he says. “How they look at it and do they have the resources to participate, that is a question. But it is still a personal choice.”

I would have to say I would be shocked if the Lege let the sun go down on the state lottery.  A billion dollars -- it's actually more than two -- is a billion dollars, and there would still seemingly be the multi-state lotteries like Powerball and Mega Millions, which presumably would not be affected here.  Even with Texas running a budget surplus now, $2.2 billion leaves a pretty large hole to be filled.  Which is why the Lege crawfished last year.

Sometimes it's about the money, and sometimes it's not.  And when it isn't, you can be almost certain it's about Jesus.  Specifically, Republican Jesus.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance prioritizes due process over expediency as it brings you this week's roundup of the best of the left of Texas from last week.

Off the Kuff is happy to hear that there will be exit polls in Texas this year.

From WCNews at Eye on Williamson, an interesting reaction to a sexual assault conviction in Williamson County: The Case Of Greg Kelley.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos notes that while John Cornyn rails bemoans federal inaction over the Texas/Mexico border crisis, Mr. Cornyn and Ted Cruz have not advanced one name for nomination to the six current federal judicial vacancies in the state: Cornyn rails against political malpractice while practicing same.

Texas statewide candidates have been separated at birth from their fraternal twins: Junior Samples and Jim Hogan, Archie Bunker and Sid Miller, Glenn Hegar and Jethro Bodine, Greg Abbott and Dr. Strangelove. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs admits that once you stop laughing, it's a kind of a scary thought that these guys stand even the slightest chance of getting elected.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme knows that Republicans blow smoke when they're not blowing hate. What we really need are solutions to problems for the flood of immigrant children.

Neil at All People Have Value wrote about the need for modern victory gardens to combat climate change and all the toxic food we are offered each day. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

It's no surprise to Texas Leftist that marriage equality makes economic sense for the Lone Star State. But thanks to a new report from the Williams Institute, we finally have numbers to show just how much business Texas is losing.

In the wake of Harris County district attorney candidate Kim Ogg's declaration to end prosecutions for misdemeanor marijuana offenses, Texpate took a look at whether the laws regarding other intoxicants might be worth revisiting.

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

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

Socratic Gadfly responds to the corporations who blamed first responders for the West fertilizer explosion.

Isiah Carey had video of the dueling Palestinian and Israeli protests near the Galleria in Houston.

TexasVox points out that some of your household cleaning products are worse for you and the environment than the grime that you're cleaning up.

BOR posted Texas' rankings for states with the highest energy costs (10th in the nation) and production of greenhouses gases (first).  Why do we have to pay through the nose twice?

Lone Star Q examines the impact of LGBT donors on Wendy Davis' fundraising.

The Bloggess explains what feminism is all about, and why feminists are (in a good way!) like sharks and bees.

Equality Texas calls on AG Greg Abbott to drop the appeal of the ruling that struck down Texas' ban on same sex marriage.

SciGuy thinks it's time we consider going back to the moon instead of going to Mars.

Beyond Bones tells us what Jurassic Park got right -- and wrong -- about dinosaur anatomy.

Todo Texas points out the cost of Austin's longstanding "gentleman's agreement" on minority representation on city council.

Juanita Jean comments on Louie Gohmert's national prominence.

Lone Star Ma has an easy and inexpensive way for anyone with a little compassion to help the young refugees from Central America.

Sunday Funnies

More Texas Republicans and their twins, separated at birth

Starring Glenn Hegar as Jethro Bodine.

Both of them.

Starring Sid Miller as Archie Bunker (in a hat).

And without.

Unhappy Sid.

Unhappy Sid again.

Previous editions include Greg Abbott as Dr. Strangelove.  More as they develop.

And starring Junior Samples as Jim Hogan

I can't claim having made the first comparison but I can sure riff off it.

While Hogan, who resembles the old Junior Samples character in Hee Haw, has granted a few interviews to Texas Observer and Fort Worth Star Telegram, (Hogan said) he's not going to do any more interviews. He notes NBC requested an interview, but Hogan wanted no part of it.

According to Randy Hanna, Democratic party parliamentarian for the Johnson County Democratic Party, where Hogan resides, "Jim Hogan is a nice enough fellow, but he's no Democrat."

Hanna says he was horrified when he attempted to determine Hogan's position vis a vis public school lunch programs, which are overseen by the agriculture commissioner.

"He said what poor people need to do is plant gardens and that would solve a lot of problems with the lunch programs," Hanna recalls. "I couldn't believe he was serious, that he would even say that, but he was dead serious."

Johnson County Democratic Party secretary LuAnne Leonard said she was stunned when Hanna related details of his interview to her.

"The kids in the lunch program here are from low-income families and a majority of them live in apartments, so I was flabbergasted when I heard the 'plant gardens' statement. Hogan really has no clue."

No straight ticket voting this year, Democrats.  Leave Hee Haw to the GOP.

Not a single politician or party operative we've spoken with can pinpoint any specific reason why Hogan is seeking the job, but many suspect some kind of backroom Republican shenanigans similar to Rush Limbaugh's 2008 Operation Chaos. (Limbaugh wanted Republicans to cross-over in the primaries and vote for the weakest Democratic candidates to ensure Republican victories in the general election.) In other words, Hogan could well be an insurance policy for Republican interests in a race where both Republican runoff candidates -- former state representatives Sid Miller and Tommy Merritt -- are weak and seen as fairly vulnerable. [...]

A check of Hogan's voting records finds that he usually votes in the Republican primary, but voted in the Democratic primary in 2008, presumably as Limbaugh urged. So the general consensus that Hogan is a straw-man candidate meant to be a weak sister who will be crushed in the November general election by Miller doesn't seem all that far-fetched.

Maybe it's not a conspiracy; maybe the vast majority of people in Texas really are this stupid.

Hogan has been an object of fascination for political junkies and media types. He may have won purely by chance, but his inexplicable success offers some relief from the absurdity and occasional cruelty of Texas political life. A Tumblr set up by admirers records his exploits. A Texas Monthly piece highlighted Hogan’s runoff win as one of the few bright spots of a generally disheartening night. A column Hogan wrote for the op-ed website TribTalk may go down in the record books as the most memorable piece of political rhetoric from the 2014 election:

It has been reported that I am unknown and do not campaign. If you will pause for a moment and Google “Jim Hogan Texas Agriculture Commissioner,” I believe you will be amazed at the amount of information available about me. I think you will agree that those reports can be put to rest.

Why is he doing this? Does he think he can win? Is he a playful imp, or Chauncey Gardiner? After meeting Hogan, it remains difficult to say. This much is certain: Hogan’s not a fool. He knows Miller will be the likely victor. But, he says, he wasn’t supposed to win the last two times. So who knows? He’s got a healthy belly laugh.

Everybody that can't vote for either Hogan or Sid Miller -- as if there's a difference-- is going to have a better option in November.  His name is Kenneth Kendrick, and he'll be the Green Party's nominee in this race.  More on him shortly.

Texpatriate has another vintage television show in mind, but the resemblance to Bob Crane just isn't there.  Nobody is, for only one example, suggesting that Hogan might be some sort of sexual deviant.

He's just a moron, and perhaps a trickster, a stooge for Sid Miller.  And that's lousy enough for everyone to vote for someone else all by itself.

Democratic consultants: pay me five grand and I'll tell you how to win

I have long chastised local political goofball (it's like a curveball, except dumber) Marc Campos for this sort of "hire-me-and-I'll-tell-you" baloney, and it's not really surprising to see a carpetbagger like Jeremy Bird recognizing a huge business opportunity in Texas when he sees one.

Two top veterans of President Obama’s campaigns are asking political campaigners to pay $5,000 per person for the chance to learn their secrets and then work for five weeks in an unpaid campaign job somewhere in America.

Democratic operatives and progressive activists are questioning this training program launched by Obama campaign architects Mitch Stewart and Jeremy Bird. The $5,000 program promises access to the wizardry of Obama’s presidential bids — and a five-week, unpaid gig on an “important Democratic campaign.”

Run by Bird and Stewart’s consulting company, 270 Strategies, the new program’s emphasis on placing paying customers in essentially volunteer roles on Democratic campaigns is atypical in the campaign training industry, and some Democrats say it sets a dangerous precedent. The firm’s first-ever “270/360 Training Intensive” program is scheduled to begin in September.

The program’s website describes a six-week program, consisting of five days of “intensive” campaign training at 270’s Chicago HQ featuring Stewart and Bird and other “architects of the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns,” followed by five weeks of volunteer work on an “an important Democratic campaign in the United States.”

The cost for the five-day training with Bird and Stewart is $3,500. It costs $1,500 more if a student wants the five weeks of work experience. Critics say those costs are way above the market rate for campaign trainings.

“It’s deeply concerning that leaders in our party are launching a ‘pay to play’ system for would-be campaign staff,” said a Democratic campaign veteran. “As Democrats, we should be working together to eliminate workforce barriers — such as unpaid internships — rather starting programs that further discourage participation in electoral work.”

I saw a Tweet from Houston's uber-Dem-activist Erik Vidor about this -- seeming to offer his own experience for hire -- and breezed on past it, thinking he was just being, you know, entrepreneurial.  But in context he's miffed, and then I saw that Juanita Jean was pretty steamed.  When she goes off on a Democrat about something, you know it's gotta be bad.

Yeah, it’s Jeremy Bird doing his damnest to turn Democratic politics into WalMart.

He also owns Battleground Texas (where they fight each other) and Ready for Hillary (where they openly admit that they want you to collect emails and phone numbers for them so they can “sell” them to Hillary if she decides to run).

When you put politics in the hands of people who want to get rich off of free labor, you’re might as well try to make honey out of pig poop or go on and elect the Tea Party because that’s what they want, too.

Worthless as corn flake recipes.   I’ll tell you something  - I’d rather have a four card flush than these guys.

Progressive Texans don’t know whether to laugh our butts off or to be totally mortified.  Mostly, we’re pretty damn mortified.

Democrats have long forgotten that they're supposed to be the party of "socialism" -- in the sharing sense of the word -- and not pure, raw, brutal, naked-and-afraid capitalism.  They've abandoned it because, like the the denigration of the word liberal (which only goes back to the Reagan administration) it's become a perjorative that they shirk from.

Give conservatives credit for being masters at framing the discussion.

Besides that, you might have noticed -- if you carefully read the links above -- a certain amount of frustration that extends to the Wendy Davis campaign.  As Kuff likes to say, make of that what you will.  I think it's notable that we haven't gotten to August yet and the criticism is starting to go public.  Another reminder that when someone says 'nobody pays attention to elections until Labor Day', that person is full of shit.

As far as paying a political expert for anything, you should know how I feel about that.  As far as paying a political expert this kind of money for this kind of experience, my advice is to negotiate a train car of lubricant for the sellers to throw in.  It's not like anything is going to blow up in your face, it'll just feel better after you have completed your training.

P.T. Barnum at work here, people.  It's just business.  My only question: is this a facet of the booming Texas economy for which we need to thank Rick Perry?

Unlike the credit he gets for having killed and buried all those dinosaurs millions of years ago in places like the Permian Basin and Spindletop and elsewhere across our Great State, in this case I would have to answer 'yes'.

The battle for control of the US Senate, updated

I'm not changing my mind; I'm just adding some point/counterpoint for the sake of watching the trend.  These updates deserved their own post.

Point (Booman):

I can't blame Stu Rothenberg for bitching about a polling firm that won't show its work, but I think he's just annoyed that polling keeps coming out that doesn't look good for Republican Senate candidates and governors. In the end, Rothenberg doesn't even really doubt that the race in Montana has grown closer and he lists it as a Toss-Up/Tilts Republican race, which is maybe even a little more of a pessimistic assessment than is warranted by the polling. I'd say that Montana Leans Republican right now, and the only toss-up part of it is that a lot can change between now and November.

A look at the latest polls shows Gov. Scott Walker in real trouble in Wisconsin, Gov. Rick Scott trailing in Florida, Udall and Hickenlooper up narrowly in Colorado, Sen. Kay Hagan up in North Carolina, Gov. Andrew Cuomo up by 37 points in New York, Michelle Nunn crushing David Perdue in Georgia, Rep. Gary Peters up by nine in Michigan, Mary Landrieu up in Louisiana, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen comfortably ahead in New Hampshire. People have already written obituaries for Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, and the Republican governors of Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, and Michigan aren't looking like they're in too great a shape, either. The last poll out of Maine has Democrat Mike Michaud win a narrow lead in a three-way race.

The news isn't all good. Some races are scarily close, for example, the Senate races in Iowa, Arkansas, and Colorado. But only in Arkansas does an incumbent look to be in truly serious danger. Unless these races all tilt against the Democrats in the end, the GOP is on course for a galactically bad election night. 

Counterpoint (Associated Press, referencing the Montana contest in the first paragraph above):

Montana Sen. John Walsh's thesis written to earn a master's degree from the U.S. Army War College contains unattributed passages taken word-for-word from previously published papers.

The Democrat is running against Republican Rep. Steve Daines to keep the seat Walsh was appointed to in February when Max Baucus resigned to become U.S. ambassador to China, and national Democrats said Wednesday they remained "100 percent behind Sen. Walsh."

The apparent plagiarism in Walsh's 2007 thesis, titled "The Case for Democracy as a Long Term National Strategy," was first reported by The New York Times in a story posted online Wednesday afternoon. Walsh submitted the paper to earn his Master of Strategic Studies degree nearly two years after he returned from Iraq and about a year before he became Montana's adjutant general overseeing the state's National Guard and Department of Military Affairs.

Walsh's campaign said the senator did not intend to plagiarize and that he would speak to The Associated Press later Wednesday.

Walsh is saying he was suffering from PTSD at the time he "wrote" the thesis in question.

I think that race is safe for the GOP.

Safe abortions decline in Texas; late-term and unsafe ones rise

When abortions are outlawed, only outlaws will have abortions.  The actual effect -- not the Lege's intended one -- is already showing up in the statistics.

A new study released Wednesday reports in the six months since Texas' new anti-abortion law took effect, the number of legal medical abortions has dramatically declined while the number of second-trimester abortions has risen, suggesting to researchers that women are being forced to wait for the procedure.

HB-2 limits medical abortions, a non-surgical method, by restricting the time window during which the drug can be prescribed from 9 weeks to 7 weeks, and by forcing patients to return to a medical provider to ingest the medicine in front of a doctor four separate times rather than taking the regimen at home something not all women can afford financially or logistically. The law also requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at local hospitals, which many hospitals can't accommodate, and bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

HB-2 went into effect last November and has already had a dramatic impact on women's access to reproductive healthcare in the months since.

Of the 41 clinics open in May 2013, only 20 remain open, causing the number of women of reproductive age living more than 200 miles from a facility to jump from 10,000 to 290,000, according to the report.

Medical abortions, which allowed women seeking abortion early in their pregnancy to avoid an invasive and potentially traumatic surgical procedure, have dropped by 70 percent under HB-2.

Legal abortions have decreased 13 percent, 9,200 fewer than last year, and researchers, noting surprise this number wasn't higher, credited the state's network of non-profits and abortion funds helping to finance women's reproductive healthcare with mitigating the decline.

Many of the state's Republican leaders are going to celebrate this news. That would be a grave mistake on their part.

Despite the overall decline in abortions, the number of second-trimester abortions actually increased, suggesting the decrease in access to clinics and medication abortions is forcing women to wait until later in their pregnancies to have the procedure.

That's just the ones that are included in the official numbers.

Between HB-2's sweeping restrictions which limit access and Texas' 2011 cuts to family planning funding, Grossman says he expects the unintended birthrate to rise and worries the rate of self-induced and illegal abortions will rise as well.

"[Researchers] suspect that self-induced abortion will rise in Texas as access to clinic-based care becomes more difficult," Grossman told the Huffington Post. "Depending on the method used and when in pregnancy women attempt to do this, there may be health risks for women associated with self-induction."

'Suspect' and 'may be' are a little cautious, which is appropriate for a medical research analyst.  That person might be unaware that do-it-yourself abortions are already rising.

When the Texas Lege -- and many other states, to be clear -- passed reproductive rights restrictions in 2011 (the ultrasound law), state legislators were shocked to return in 2013 and discover the same thing that is happening now: more poor women were giving birth to more babies.  Any concerns they may have had about psychological trauma inflicted on the women involved, the extra expense associated with the waiting period, and the fact that they weren't changing any hearts or minds might have gotten lost in the fiduciary worries.

We already know how Texas Republicans feel about babies who are actually fetuses and zygotes.  "Once that umbilical cord is cut, kid, you're on your own."  And they DO mean 'on your own'.

We're in the process of watching the fruit of compassionate conservatism come to harvest.  And the damage is much deeper than the rare pricked conscience of someone like David Simpson.

More on clinic closings from Andrea Grimes.

The battle for control of the US Senate

Sorry, Dr. Alameel, you won't be mentioned in this post, or in any conversations going forward about the topic.

Many pundits, politicos, and prognosticators are giving the edge to the GOP for a flip this fall in the Congress' upper chamber.  I'm not one of them, and not for partisan reasons.  I have believed for some time now that there is some amount of unmeasured, unpolled support for candidates across the country who favor actual progressive populism, including women's issues such as reproductive choice and raises in the minimum wage, not to mention the revulsion of the policies and conduct of Republicans in general and Tea Party Republicans in particular.  And I also think that female candidates are somewhat uniquely positioned to take advantage of that.  And I have two recent data points that support this premise.

-- The first is the result from yesterday's Georgia Republican Senate primary, where former Dollar General Store chief David Perdue vanquished Rep. Jack Kingston for the right to face Democratic nominee Michelle Nunn in November's contest to replace retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss.

Despite Kingston having the stamp of approval from the Tea Party and the US Chamber of Commerce (the most disparate of bedfellows among conservative factions) and the fact that nearly all polling showed Kingston leading comfortably -- the last one taken just a week ago gave him a widening 7-point margin -- Perdue prevailed by a slim 51-49 margin.  (That's still Eric Cantor-ish.)  And Perdue won despite declaring his support for tax increases, in the home stretch of the GOP primary two months ago, a fact his conservative opponents repeatedly hammered him with in both the primary and runoff campaigns.

Even Digby thought that Perdue was dead after that.

This is more than the usual significant: a Republican candidate deviated sharply from longstanding Republican orthodoxy, and finished first in a crowded primary and then won his runoff.  In Georgia.

Perdue's autumn opponent, Nunn, also a relative of previous Peach State electeds, currently holds a 5-6 point lead in the recent polls.  In Georgia.

Are Republicans really in this much trouble in their bid to take back the US Senate?  Well, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell certainly is, and his challenger, Allison Grimes, seems well-positioned for the shades-of-Tom-Daschle upset.  And we could go on from there about female Democrats -- and male ones too -- either holding their own in unlikely places or showing uncharacteristic strength in their races.

-- The second data point comes from a source I am usually in vehement disagreement with: a pair of very establishment Democrats who are among the highest paid consultants in the nation.

Look at the most competitive US Senate seats up for grabs in 2014, and you might be surprised that they are, in fact, competitive.

Of the 12 states in which there is so far no likely winner, eight are traditionally conservative. Mitt Romney won those states in 2012 – six by double digits.

But according to Democracy Corps, a political nonprofit formed by Democratic strategists James Carville and Stanley Greenberg in 1999, their polling indicates that the Democratic candidates are not that far behind.

The group points to what it says is a spillover effect of the House GOP’s record-low favorability rating as the main reason that the Democratic Senate candidates in the 12 states are within striking distance.

And the group has advice for how the Democratic candidates can close the remaining gap with their opponents: Rebrand their message to unmarried women, an undermobilized electorate.

“Unmarried women comprise about a quarter of the electorate, so they have a lot of sway in terms of determining who is and who is not elected,” says Page Gardner, founder and president of the nonprofit Voter Participation Center, a research-driven non-profit seeking to increase the political participation of historically under-represented groups. According to Ms. Gardner, the changing views of women in the 12 states result in significant shifts in polling results.

Read on there.

It's accurate to point out that this same demographic is the low-hanging fruit for the Wendy Davis campaign, and she will certainly harvest it.  I have previously underscored my concerns about her actions that degrade critical electoral support among Latinos, however, and Texas is still Texas and not Georgia.  Unless I am gravely mistaken -- always a possibility, and I would be delighted to be wrong about this -- she has already committed a fatal error by lining up alongside our Full Metal Jackass governor on the border.

Even as Greg Abbott demonstrates new depths of corruption, she is unable to capitalize.

But this post is about the US Senate.  Which, as of today, will very probably remain under Harry Reid's control.  That would be a good thing for Barack Obama, as he would not have to deal with an impeachment proceeding in his final two years in office.  (That doesn't mean the president should keep attending fundraisers as Palestinian civilians are slaughtered, and a humanitarian crisis in South Texas continues.  Optics and all that.)

Now if we could get some vampires to actually crash a Ted Cruz fundraiser at the W library... why, we would have a true moral victory in Texas.

Rick Perry's border surge

"I will not stand idly by while our citizens are under assault and little children from Central America are detained in squalor," Perry said at a briefing in Austin. "The price of inaction is too high for Texans to pay."

Perry's move came just hours after the White House announced that the number of unaccompanied minors arriving at the border is dropping – from 355 per day in June to 150 in early July, according to spokesman Josh Earnest.

Earnest said the reasons for the drop remain unclear, but suggested the administration's efforts "to work with Central American leaders to publicize the dangers of the journey" have contributed significantly.

Perry on Monday acknowledged the drop in the new arrivals in recent weeks, but he offered a different theory for the trend, saying it was a "clear indication" that local, state and federal law enforcement efforts are working.

I'm already dizzy from the spin. The governor finally took this action after the president refused his request to do so.  The difference between the two?  When Obama does it uses federal dollars; when Perry does it, it's Texas money that pays for it.  And it's going to cost us $5 million a week.  And then there are the legality questions.

Perry’s move could also run into constitutional problems. The Constitution’s Supremacy Clause prohibits states from interfering with areas of regulation that have been preempted by the federal government, and the U.S. Supreme Court has already invalidated provisions of state law that seek to legislate on immigration reform. Washington and Lee University law professor Margaret Hu told ThinkProgress this provision could suffer similar constitutional problems, particularly because it interferes with national security and Department of Homeland Security policies also.

Perry’s announcement comes several days after several House of Representatives members introduced a resolution calling on Perry and several other governors in border states to send National Guard troops to the border. The resolution “recognizes, supports, and defends the Constitutional authority” of these governors to send troops to the border, and “urges” them to immediately deploy troops. But this, too, raises constitutional flags.

The resolution also commits to covering the cost of the troops — estimated to be $5 million per week just in Texas. The state is already spending $1.3 million on a state-funded border surge.

I guess we're not broke after all.  A bit more from Kimberly Reeves at Quorum Report.

Perry deflected criticism of his executive order to send 1,000 National Guard troops to the border this afternoon, shifting the focus from deportee children from war-torn countries to drug traffickers and criminal opportunists crossing the Texas border to commit hundreds of thousands of crimes over the last 6 years.

News of Perry’s decision to deploy the National Guard troops to assist the Department of Public Safety in the ongoing effort called Operation Strong Safety leaked out over the weekend, giving critics enough time to question the how, why and how useful the National Guard would be at the state’s southern border.

Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, called for support along the border last month with emergency funds, but he balked at the use of additional law enforcement in The Monitor over the weekend.

“They (cartels) are taking advantage of the situation,” Hinojosa told The Monitor. “But our local law enforcement from the sheriff’s offices of the different counties to the different police departments are taking care of the situation. This is a civil matter, not a military matter. What we need is more resources to hire more deputies, hire more Border Patrol. These are young people, just families coming across. They’re not armed. They’re not carrying weapons.”

For her part, Wendy Davis wishes some law enforcement officers could have been mobilized, so that some of those children could be arrested.

(Davis) responded to Perry’s announcement by calling for a different border surge—adding more sheriff’s deputies to the region.

Davis reiterated her demand last month that Perry convene an emergency legislative session to deploy the deputies.

“If the federal government won't act, Texas must and will. However, we should be deploying additional deputy sheriffs to the border like local law enforcement is calling for, rather than Texas National Guard units who aren't even authorized to make arrests,” she said in a statement following Perry’s briefing.

Okay then.  I have already posted my opinion about Davis' mistakes with regard to the border crisis, so this doesn't surprise me in the least.  Hope she gets a whole lot of Republican votes out of it, because she'll need them to replace the Democratic ones she's going to lose.

One last observation about the money it's costing us for this show of bravado force.

The National Guard deployment — added to the DPS surge — will bring the price tag of troopers on the border to about $5 million per week, the memo said. And the funding source for the effort remains unclear.

“It is not clear where the money will come from in the budget,” the memo states, adding that Perry's office has said the money will come from “non-critical” areas, such as health care or transportation.

Read that as Medicaid and highway construction.

I just exhausted my week's ration of outrage.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance isn't ready for the hottest part of summer as it brings you the roundup of the best of lefty Texas blogs from last week.

Off the Kuff looks at Travis County's design for a new kind of voting machine, one that will add security, ease of use, and an honest to goodness paper receipt.

From WCNews at Eye on Williamson, Democrats running for office in Texas should make every Republican answer about Greg Abbott's "drive around" remark about explosive chemical storage in their neighborhoods: Abbott hemmed in by the GOP's ideology.

As the federal trial over Texas redistricting began, a series of GOP e-mails outlining their anti-Latino mapping strategy was revealed. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs observes that the ooutcome won't be known for months, and the decision won't affect the 2014 midterm elections, but the case for the Republicans looks very grim.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants everyone to know that the Texas Tribune exposes Dan Patrick as a liar and Leticia Van de Putte as a truth-teller.

Stace at Dos Centavos handed out a few bouquets and also had some brickbats for Texas and national leaders on immigration reform.

In the wake of Denton City Council's failure to ban fracking, TXsharon at BlueDaze kept up the pressure by remobilizing her community for the November ballot referendum.  She also noted the Russian connections between the frackers (and the anti-frackers).

The Lewisville Texan Journal posted his local roundup of news and views, starting with the worsening Texas drought.

Texas (more like Rick Perry, Greg Abbott and Republicans) did not accept the Medicaid expansion, leaving millions of Texas' poorest families without healthcare options. But as Texas Leftist discovered, there are over 800,000 Texans that qualify for Medicaid and CHIP under current policy and just don't know to sign up. Even as we fight for expansion, helping these families is something that can be done right now.

Egberto Willies attended Netroots Nation and had a few posts on some of the highlights, including Joe Biden's keynote speech.

Neil at All People of Value took the Wendy Davis campaign to task for having nothing on its website about immigration reform.

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

Joe the Pleb at Burnt Orange Report posted the rescheduling of Open Carry Texas' march through Houston's Fifth Ward for August 16th.  That's going to be almost as incendiary as concealed chemical storage caches.

Greg Abbott gave Socratic Gadfly one more reason not to go to the movies, and suggested everyone text the attorney general and GOP gubernatorial candidate a different F-word than "Freedom" to him.

Lone Star Q notes that only six Texas mayors have signed on to the national bipartisan coalition Mayors for the Freedom to Marry, and none from North Texas.

Bay Area Houston connected the dots between Greg Abbott and state representatives Gary Elkins and Vicki Truitt on payday lending "reform" in the Texas Lege.

Lone Star Ma is busy block-walking for Wendy.

The Texas Election Law Blog highlights a few issues with the Comptroller's webpage on the relative level of debt financing of counties, cities, school districts, and special law districts.

The Lunch Tray reminds us that summer camp is another opportunity for kids to get loaded up with junk food.

Grits for Breakfast wants to know why DPS is doing a full set of fingerprints for every drivers license renewal, even though the Lege has not authorized that.

And finally, the TPA congratulates Andrea Grimes on her new gig as "State of the Media" columnist for the Texas Observer.