Democrats debate in South Carolina tonight

More to say about Hustle Town's election in just a minute, but I'd like to shift back to the presidential contenders for a bit.

Voters in South Carolina will have their first chance to see the three candidates vying for the Democratic nomination together here on Friday, when Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley appear at a forum at Winthrop University.

The event, hosted by the state party and billed as the "First in the South Presidential Candidates Forum," will be broadcast live on MSNBC and focus on both regional and national issues. One issue, however, has become a flashpoint in the race this week as the candidates campaigned across the country: gun control.

The issues of gun control and criminal justice reform have revealed differences between the candidates on the Democratic side of the race and, as it has grown more competitive, the candidates have sought to take advantage.

It's not really a debate but more of an actual forum, with Rachel Maddow asking the three contenders questions separately, interview-style.  But It sure beats talking about Egyptian pyramids as granaries, or stabbing a close relative, or quarrels over teevee appearances, or whether the temperature in the hall is low enough to prevent Marco Rubio's flopsweat.

Clinton started her week in Chicago on Monday, when her campaign arranged a meeting with family members of victims of gun violence, including Sybrina Fulton and Lesley McSpadden, the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.

"They are determined to do what they can to try to prevent this from happening to any other family, and so am I," Clinton said the next day at a town hall in Coralville, Iowa. Her newest campaign ad, which started running on television in Iowa and New Hampshire that day, echoed her commitment.

It might be Martin O'Malley's last moment, so he'd better make it count.

Separately on Tuesday in Keene, New Hampshire, O'Malley laid out his plan to take seven separate executive actions as president to curb gun violence, including measures to effectively dismantle the law which shields gun sellers and manufacturers from liability if their firearms are used unlawfully.

O'Malley, who is trailing in national polls, has urged Clinton and Sanders to back certain parts of his plan to cut gun deaths in half by 2025. Clinton has also said she would work to repeal the shield law but stops short of suggesting she would use executive action to do so. Sanders, who voted for the law in 2005, said recently that he is willing to reconsider his position. And as the primary contests approach, O'Malley has started to go beyond calling for "consensus" into more personal, direct attacks.

"Secretary Clinton's been all over the place on this issue," O'Malley told NH1 News in an interview on Tuesday. "In the past when she was running against President Obama she was trying to portray herself as Annie Oakley. And in the past she has said she wasn't for universal background checks."

Sounds like sparks will fly.

He took his rhetoric up another notch on Wednesday, when his campaign released an online video comparing Clinton's past position on guns to Jeb Bush's stance. The clip, modeled after a video released by the Clinton campaign hitting Republicans for their views on gun control, showed Clinton in a debate in 2008 saying "blanket rules" imposed by the federal government on guns "doesn't make sense."

It's an argument that O'Malley will continue to use in South Carolina and elsewhere as he fights to gain traction as a progressive alternative to Clinton. 

Clinton has -- as Clintons can do effectively -- triangulated on gun safety, moving to the left of Bernie Sanders on the topic while twisting out a few sexism tropes as she did so.

On Oct. 23, Hillary Clinton opened a new front against Sen. Bernie Sanders: She framed him as a sexist. Clinton took a phrase Sanders had routinely used in talking about gun violence—that “shouting” wouldn’t solve the problem—and suggested that he had aimed it at her because “when women talk, some people think we’re shouting.”

Several journalists called out Clinton for this smear. But she refuses to withdraw it. Instead, her campaign officials and supporters have escalated the attack.  [...]

The next day, Clinton sat down for an interview in New Hampshire. Josh McElveen of WMUR asked her about Sanders: “Do you believe that he’s attacking you based solely on your gender?” Clinton replied: “When I heard him say that people should stop shouting about guns, I didn’t think I was shouting. I thought I was making a very strong case. … And I’m not going to be silenced.” McElveen followed up: “But as far as the implication that Bernie Sanders is sexist—you wouldn’t go that far?” Clinton shrugged, smiled, and sidestepped the question. “I said what I had to say about it,” she concluded.

'Poor me, the boys are pickin' on me' is a whine we're going to hear a lot of for the next year.  Especially tonight.

Clinton used her initial sound bite—“when women talk, some people think we’re shouting”—in at least six places. She posted it on Twitter, Facebook, and her campaign website. She also delivered it in three speeches: in Washington, D.C., and Alexandria, Virginia, on Oct. 23, and in Des Moines, Iowa, on Oct. 24. After that, I didn’t hear it, except in her interview in New Hampshire. I thought she might be done with it. But then, on Friday, she raised a new issue.

Clinton was in Charleston, South Carolina, addressing the local NAACP. She spoke against a tragic background: the massacre of nine black people in a Charleston church by a white racist. Naturally, she talked about guns. But she added a new line: “There are some who say that this [gun violence] is an urban problem. Sometimes what they mean by that is: It’s a black problem. But it’s not. It’s not black, it’s not urban. It’s a deep, profound challenge to who we are.”

You might also look for the dogwhistling Clinton will be doing by using the word 'urban'.

The idea that urban is code for black has been around a long time. It’s often true. And it’s not necessarily derogatory: In 1920, the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes shortened its name to the National Urban League. But why would Clinton suddenly bring up, in a damning tone, people who call guns an urban problem? Who was she talking about? It can’t be the Republican presidential candidates: They haven’t disagreed enough to debate the issue at that level of granularity. The only recent forum in which guns have been discussed as an urban concern is the forum that inspired Clinton’s initial accusation of sexism: the Oct. 13 Democratic debate in Las Vegas. Pull up the transcript of that debate, search for “urban,” and you’ll see whom Clinton is talking about: Sanders.

In fact, it’s from the same moments of the debate that Clinton had already seized on. In the debate, Sanders began by saying, “As a senator from a rural state, what I can tell Secretary Clinton [is] that all the shouting in the world is not going to do what I would hope all of us want.” A couple of minutes later, Sanders told former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley: “We can raise our voices, but I come from a rural state, and the views on gun control in rural states are different than in urban states, whether we like it or not.” O’Malley insisted that the issue was “not about rural and urban.” Sanders replied: “It’s exactly about rural.” [...] So when Clinton, on Friday, spoke scathingly of people who call guns an “urban problem” but mean it’s a “black problem,” it’s obvious to whom she was referring.

This is pretty powerful stuff, because in the wake of our local elections where black and white Democrats split not just on their preferred candidates but also on Prop 1, we're about to see some more of that cleaving between our presidential candidates.

This line of attack is rich in irony. When Clinton ran for president in 2008, she explicitly used race against Obama. She told USA Today that she should be the Democratic nominee because “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.” Clinton cited an article that, in her words, showed “how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in [Indiana and Pennsylvania] who had not completed college were supporting me.” A reporter asked Clinton whether this argument was racially divisive. “These are the people you have to win if you’re a Democrat,” Clinton replied dismissively. “Everybody knows that.”

Now Clinton accuses others of playing the race card. In Charleston, she told the NAACP, “Some candidates talk in coded racial language about ‘free stuff,’ about ‘takers’ and ‘losers.’ And boy, are they quick to demonize President Obama. This kind of talk has no place in our politics.”

A digression back to last Tuesday here in H-Town:  Sylvester Turner said all the right things in his victory speech about diversity and inclusiveness.  I'll be proud to vote for him in December.  It's going to a lot tougher to hold my nose and vote for Sharon Moses and Georgia Provost in their At Large runoffs because of their under-the-radar opposition to HERO.  ConservaDems have been a personal scourge of mine for a long time now, and as long as they hold sway locally, statewide, and nationally, there will be very little I will feel like doing for the Democratic Party.  But like I wrote, that's a digression.

Clinton, too, speaks in code. But in this election, her coded phrases—“some people think we’re shouting,” “some who say that this is an urban problem”—aren’t designed to veil racism. They’re designed to veil her meritless insinuations that her Democratic opponent is sexist and racist. You can argue, based on power or privilege, that playing the race card or sex card from the left isn’t as bad as playing it from the right. But even if you believe that, Clinton’s smears bring discredit on the whole idea of bigotry. If accusations of misogyny and racism are casually thrown at Sanders, voters will conclude that these terms are just rhetoric.

Seven years ago, when Clinton’s own campaign was accused of prejudice, her husband was outraged. “She did not play the race card, but they did,” Bill Clinton said of the Obama campaign. The former president went on: “This is almost like, once you accuse somebody of racism or bigotry or something, the facts become irrelevant.” Three months later, Mr. Clinton was still fuming. “They played the race card on me, and we now know from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it all along,” he protested. “This was used out of context and twisted for political purposes by the Obama campaign to try to breed resentment elsewhere. … You really got to go some to try to portray me as a racist.”

They're always running the next campaign like the last one.

Now Hillary Clinton is doing to Sanders what her husband said was done to her. She’s taking Sanders’ remarks out of context and twisting them to breed resentment. You’ve got to twist the facts pretty hard to portray Sanders as a racist or sexist. But politically, it’s easy, because once you start throwing around charges of bigotry, the facts become irrelevant. You’re just another beautiful baiter. And you won’t be silenced.

Let's finish with the topic for tonight: guns.

"There's strong support among Democrats here to try to come up with new initiatives that keep the guns away from criminals and come up with some sensible policies that can make our country safer," added former Gov. Jim Hodges, who has endorsed Clinton. He continued: "In a Republican primary, talking about gun issues is a third rail. That's not so true in the Democratic primary here."

More than 3,400 people will be in the audience at the Byrnes Auditorium with hundreds more expected to turn out for other party events scheduled around the main event.

"People are engaged," said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist and consultant based in Columbia. "Every time I go to the barber shop, there's always a discussion about national politics and talking about what's next."

Seawright, who worked on Clinton's first presidential campaign but is not involved with her second bid, added that bread and butter issues like jobs, infrastructure and education are also important to voters watching the forum, especially those from low-income, rural communities.

"When you come to South Carolina, it's important that voters feel as if you are going to talk about South Carolina issues," he said, "that you will remember the people in South Carolina."

Both Sanders and O'Malley have to make up some ground here in the Palmetto State, so in many ways it will be a turning point of sorts.  Either the Clinton steamroller picks up momentum, or one of her two challengers slows her roll.

Picking up the pieces

-- Read, please, the definitive account of why HERO went down in flames even as Sylvester Turner surged.  Look at the precinct maps if you're into that.  My own two Meyerland/Willowbend precincts had turnout in the mid-forties, and turned back the ordinance with low-50's percentages.

-- Business leaders are concerned about the future of Houston's tourism, an economic engine meant to sustain the region during the oil economy's latest collapse.

Business and tourism leaders worried Wednesday that voters' rejection of a citywide anti-discrimination ordinance has hurt what had been one of their best recruiting tools: Houston's emerging reputation as a diverse metropolis that supported an openly gay mayor and welcomes young talent looking to launch careers in a progressive environment.

Suddenly at risk, they say, are corporate relocations, nationally prominent sporting events and the lucrative convention business that generate millions of dollars and help the region thrive.

"In recent years, we have done a remarkable job of changing the perception and attracting people to Houston," said Bob Harvey, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership. " ... We have to quickly re-establish that this is a modern, open city."

Statistics show that the economic arguments against rejecting HERO found traction among African Americans, and particularly black women.  When the rationale was employed, that is.   Indeed, at Houston's leading voice for transgenders, Transgriot all but pleaded for Houston Unites to canvass the black communities for support.  That did not happen until too late (if it happened at all), and the "not getting it" part is reflective of a societal concern that transcends GLBT and even politics generally: white privilege.  The HGLBT Caucus has far too many middle-aged white guys and gals wearing white collars running the show; they're more clique-ish and exclusive than anybody, and they did the things they wanted to do without much input from the locals on the ground, which resulted in reacting too late or dropping the ball altogether.  The paid professionals at ACLU and HRC helped them lose this.  Why does a guy from Minnesota need to be in charge?

Moni wasn't a big fan of the #BeyBeaHERO thing either.  Another big red flag -- waved in mid-August, mind you -- that was missed.

-- One thing that didn't surge was the Latino vote.  Again.  "The community turning out in historic numbers" is now as prevalent an urban legend as La Chupacabra, except that she's engaged to Bigfoot and they're shacked up somewhere between the "boarder" and the East Texas Piney Woods.

If they're already having babies growing up to be Republicans... I'm moving to Syracuse.

-- Speaking of hideous creatures... it's the Ghost of Lee Atwater.  Seriously, fuck this Jeff Norwood dude.   Dead, face-down in a ditch, on the side of the road. 

-- And finally, let's hope that the mayoral runoff really doesn't come down to "Linebarger Goggan versus Linebarger Goggan".

Where HERO was lost

And also, in more topographic terms, here.

As long as the supporters of Sylvester Turner are unable to acknowledge that many of the voters who put him in the runoff also voted 'No' on HERO, then we're going to have some cognitive dissonance about who Democrats are and what they stand for, who and what liberals are, and of course the meaning of 'progressive' and who qualifies by word and deed.  And who do not.  These are distinctions with great differences (as long as you're not a Republican, that is).

We've seen it already with self-described progressives (sic) declaring that Hillary Clinton is more liberal "than some think", and supporting her in the primary because of the 'Supreme Court', two facetious premises rolled into one.  We'll see it again when Bernie Sanders supporters finally realize he's been defeated for the nomination, and then helpfully allow themselves to be herded onto the Clinton bandwagon.  (Way back in the summer I offered a Plan B for them when this happens.  It's time to at least start considering that, Berners.)

These things (HERO's defeat, the false choice of Clinton or Sanders, how each of these uses its version of our cash-corrupted politics to get what they desire, losing several times before finally succeeding) are, as my brother Neil says frequently, all connected.

We just don't need two major parties in this country when most Americans have no use for either one.  Try as they might to distinguish themselves, they both still look alike to the vast majority of people who have quit voting, having all but given up on the "democracy" we thought we knew, loved, and that soldiers believed they died for.  It would be best if the Tea Party hurried up and cleaved itself away from the Tories, and the Whigs finished pushing out the Progressives (or Democratic Socialists, or what have you).  So that we could all better find our own way.

Hope I live to see it, but don't believe I will.

Turner and King move on, HERO falls, some incumbents in trouble

Winners:

-- Sylvester Turner and Bill King.

Hats off to Bob Stein, who called it early and kept whipping it until it hit the wire.  Adrian Garcia coming in third has to be something of a moral victory, but a shallow and short one.  He's mostly a loser this morning: unemployed by choice, with a horrible mess left at his last gig that a nasty Republican isn't interested in cleaning up, and a soiled reputation as a lousy manager and lousier politician.  I wouldn't want to be him or any of his supporters, who are feeling more sour than anybody after last night.

What the mayor's race is telling you:  Ben Hall's black support -- and some of Sylvester Turner's as well -- put the blade through HERO's heart.  It won't mean much for the runoff unless Sylvester makes an issue of it.  He didn't say much about it in the general and I doubt he says much in December.  If he does, he'll leak support to King, who will certainly be saying all of the worst things Republicans usually say in order to win elections.

-- Among At Larges and incumbents: Kubosh, Stardig, and Greg Travis join Dave Martin (all Republicans) as a solid red wall on Council next year.  Mike Knox and Bill Frazer in the controller's office look to join them; they both lead their races going into the runoff.  Among the Blues: Jerry Davis, Ellen Cohen, Robert Gallegos, David Robinson, and Amanda Edwards showed the most strength.  But incumbents Mike Laster, and Richard Nguyen even more so, need help to return to the horseshoe.

The To-Be-Determined-in-Decembers:

-- Richard Nguyen versus Dr. Steve Le in District F:  After defeating the Republican incumbent two years ago, Nguyen switched parties and became a Democrat in 2014.  That appears to have drawn the ire of the conservative Vietnamese in this far-west district, who have Le in the lead after the first round.

-- Karla Cisneros versus Jason Cisneroz in District H:  My choice was "Z"; Campos and the Chronicle picked "S".  You may remember a comment here pointing out Karla is a stealth Latina.  Runoffs are all about turning out your vote, so let's see how it goes.

-- Mike Laster versus Jim Bigham in District J:  In this bathroom election cycle, Laster was bound to draw some haters and get forced into a runoff.  He could have done worse with the odious Manny Barrera but he gets Bigham instead.  Bigham's got a good ground game so Laster will be pushed hard.  He'll need all the help he can get from HGLBT Caucus and other progressives to return to council.

Mike Knox versus Georgia Provost in At Large 1:  As I wrote in my early advance for this race, Provost had a chance to prevail based on her business connections and her previous run for council.  Heavy black turnout lifted her into the runoff, and I'll be curious to determine where she stood on HERO and whether that factored into her support.  Knox, the archtype Republican Hater Caucus member, is going to benefit from King and Frazer up the ballot turning out R's to help his bid.  The question in my mind is where do the old white Democrats go for this faceoff: to Provost or back on the couch.  The city's alleged base voters need a reason to vote in this one.

Update: Provost was under my radar as a HERO hater.

If Provost can earn the endorsements of the also-rans -- Tom McCasland, Lane Lewis, Jenifer Rene Pool, Chris Oliver -- and if she has the ground game, then she can take this seat from its soft Republican termed-out council member, Steve Costello.

Update: I question whether Lewis and Pool, at the very least, will be endorsing Provost.

David Robinson versus Pastor Willie Davis in At Large 2.  Once more, if the Black Bigot Caucus wants to turn out next month and flip a seat from blue to red, they're going to have give it all they've got.  Robinson should have all the resources he needs to hold his seat.

Amanda Edwards versus Roy Morales in At Large 4.  This ought to be a cakewalk for Edwards; it's the so-called 'black at large seat" on council; she was far and away the best choice in the first round, and the woman who could have been her nemesis in a runoff, Laurie Robinson, just missed.  So she draws Morales, who's lost more runoffs than I feel like counting right now.

Jack Christie versus Sharon Moses in At Large 5.  Christie has perennially been the weakest At Large incumbent during his duration on council, and his luck may finally run out with the qualified Moses taking him on in round two.

Update: As with Provost, Moses ran a stealth campaign, whispering that she was against the ordinance to her base vote.  They'll probably turn back out in a month to support Turner, Provost, and Edwards.  At least she should hope.

Bill Frazer versus Chris Brown for Controller.  In many ways this will be the race to watch next month, as the two powers draw all of their supporters and assets for a final holiday showdown.  Frazer was a strong challenger to a wounded incumbent two years ago and Brown is a legacy.  Both men will raise and spend a lot to try to win.  It's going to come down, as usual, to whether Democrats will show up and support their candidates.

Losers:

HERO of course; Mayor Parker, who leaves a legacy unfinished; my candidate Chris Bell and the moderate Republican Steve Costello, a host of good Democrats in AL1 and a handful of lousy ones (and some perennials and Republicans, too) scattered elsewhere, like Adrian Garcia and Ben Hall, Griff Griffin in AL1, Manny Barrera in J, Eric Dick and Andrew Burks in AL2, and the foul-smelling Carroll Robinson in the controller's race, who got way too many votes from rubes and dupes.

More after I rest some.