Scattershooting Trump, Abbott, abortion lawsuits, and the Democratic Party

Not in quite the same way your generic Democrat might (scattershoot them).

-- After the Hillbots on the DNC platform committee nullified the Berners by refusing to disavow the TPP (and several other things, as you might already know), Sanders broke some balls with this NYT op-ed entitled "Democrats Need to Wake Up".

But it was Donald Trump who seized the reins by going to Rust Belt, Pennsylvania and blasting NAFTA specifically and free trade generally.

"Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very, very wealthy ... but it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache," Trump told supporters during a prepared speech [...] devoted to what he called "How To Make America Wealthy Again" ...

Trump offered a series of familiar plans designed to deal with what he called "failed trade policies" — including rejection of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with Pacific Rim nations and re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico, withdrawing from it if necessary.

Drumpf is doing a fairly masterful job of catapulting the Brexit propaganda here, and like my friend David Courtney, I believe this will be a very effective line of attack against Hillary Clinton.  It's a pure populist economic message that will resonate with lots and lots of independents, provided Trump can be convincingly sincere about it.  He'll never meet my threshold for candor, but I'm not your average disgusted-with-both-parties voter.

-- Take note of who is actually doing the knife-twisting here.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott appears to be deeply dissatisfied with how Land Commissioner George P. Bush's office handled a recent lawsuit over historical items at the Alamo, according to an internal memo obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

The June 20 memo, which was written by Abbott chief of staff Daniel Hodge as part of the process of approving the settlement, called the deal "regrettable" and "avoidable."

"Had the General Land Office more vigorously defended the State's interests in this matter, the agency would not have found itself in a position in which the (Daughters of the Republic of Texas) can demand this settlement," Hodge wrote.

"The Governor approves this settlement to take place solely out of deference to the independent constitutional officeholder requesting it," he added.

Abbott's blessing came as the settlement received final approval last week.

The General Land Office agreed in the settlement to relinquish its claim on thousands of artifacts in the Alamo's collection and pay $200,000 to cover the legal fees of the rightful owners, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.

Pee Bush has been a disaster in in his first real job, and if Abbott is delegating his top stooge to do the screwing ... well, I'd say it's only a matter of time before someone finds himself challenged in a Republican primary.  A Bush Family vs. Abbott war for the soul of the RPTX might be in the offing, and wouldn't that be fun to watch.  (Sidebar: Did you ever think that the Bushes would be mentioned with the less insane, moderate/liberal/RINO wing of the the GOP?  Nobody could have predicted that.)  But it's Hodge you should take note of here; he's been one of Abbott's Knights Templar from the get-go, the power behind the wheelchair.  Watch for his name to eventually pop up on a ballot near you.

-- The landmark SCOTUS ruling on Monday striking down Texas' onerous restrictions on women's health should birth a passel of new litigation aimed at the anti-choice effort.

Since the Supreme Court has long held that women have a constitutional right to an abortion, anti-abortion groups over the past decade have turned to the states to pass hundreds of laws designed to discourage abortions, such as waiting periods, mandated fetal sonograms and parental consent requirements.

Bring on the lawsuits, ladies and gentlemen, and let's start with that goddamned sonogram law.  In your not-The-Onion update, Greg Abbott got served with a class-action vagina eviction notice.

The Governor of Texas has been served with a 30 day eviction notice, and by court order he must be vacated from all Texan vaginae before that time. The writ of eviction comes just a day after the Supreme Court batted down his state’s law that would have shuttered nearly every abortion clinic in the Lone Star State had it withstood judicial review.

“I have been given this notice,” Gov. Greg Abbott told reporters as he was seen moving a large U-Haul box out of a woman’s uterus on 4th and Stubb’s Ave in Austin this morning, “and I will comply. I will be out of every vagina in the state by the end of the month.” Abbott said it would “take awhile” but that he heard the message from the Supreme Court “loud and clear.”

What a pussy.  And some people said he was a fighter.

-- So you still think you can reform the Democratic Party?  Don't be a sucker.

The latest Gallup poll on the subject showed that 60 percent of Americans believed that a third party was needed nationally in order to “do an adequate job of representing the American people”. Lest you think that this is some surge due to the current election cycle, a majority of Americans have stated the need for a third party in almost every Gallup poll since 2007. This system is crumbling because Americans look around and see two political parties that are enthralled with Wall Street and diffident (at best) to the concerns of the working class and the marginalized.

Meanwhile, wage growth is stagnant, high-paying manufacturing jobs are being replaced by low-wage, low-stability service jobs, police brutality continues with an official imprimatur from local officials, and mass acts of violence directed at the bodily autonomy of women and the human rights of LGBTQ people go off with only the most cursory of responses (for prayers and reflection, of course) from the leaders of the major parties. That is, when they cannot pin this on the brown people who will inevitably be the targets of an ever-increasing police state.

Instead of spending the next 10, 20, 30, or 60 years trying to take over a party that has demonstrated its rank hostility to leftists and their vision for a new world, why not begin the process of building a party organization from the ground up? A party organization that works alongside movements for change rather than co-opting them. A party organization that recognizes that fundamental humanity of people both domestic and abroad. Why place such a revolutionary vision of society and economy within the tight constraints of two-party politics? Because if the Bernie campaign has taught the American Left anything, it is that Democratic partisans and their allies in the media will work hand-in-hand to snuff out any challenge that could threaten the dominance of neoliberalism within the party.

We can do better. We should do better. And if we trust in the collective efforts of those committed to political, social, and economic liberation, we will do better.

If you're buying in, there's lots of work to be done.  You can ask me how if you want some directions on where to get started.

No #DumpingTrump

No pasaran.  He's going to be the nominee.  What now, #NeverTrumpets?

Your New Republican Party.

Republicans looking to dump Donald Trump at next month’s convention have passion, energy and a fierce sense that their party will suffer unless Trump is unseated. What they appear to lack, however, are the votes to make it happen.

POLITICO reached out to all 112 members of the committee that will write the rules of the national GOP convention. This is the panel that anti-Trump activists hope to jam a proposal through to free convention delegates to spurn Trump and select another candidate instead.

What emerged from the survey, though, is a portrait of a committee with little interest in the dump Trump crowd. In fact, most members may be eager to stop them.
“I support DJT 100%,” said Alabama rules committee member Laura Payne in an email. “I ran to support … Trump & to represent the voters of Alabama. It may or may not be an attempt, but the voters will prevail.”

"Trying to change the rules in mid-game because you don't like the outcome is tantamount to saying you are going to take your ball and go home because you are losing," said Christine Serrano-Glassner, a Rules Committee delegate from New Jersey. "I will be supporting our Nominee, Donald J. Trump."

It was a common sentiment. Among the 32 committee members who responded, 25 said they would fight efforts to stop Trump’s nomination. Another 33 members of the panel have been previously on record as endorsing Trump or rejecting efforts to rip the nomination away from him at the convention.

The NYT piles on.  It's such a fascinating thing to me in this cycle that so many binary thinkers are going to be suffering so much cognitive dissonance.  Those that were once psychologically shackled inside the two-party box are suddenly forced to think outside it.

-- The media will be compelled to include the Green and the Libertarian in the horse-race polling, or else show themselves as duopoly frauds.  Polls without them won't reflect reality; just another attempt to silence their voices.  Manipulating the data by removing third party votes altogether and then presenting the D and Rs as the full universe of the electorate is one of the transgressions I would imagine I'll be forced to point out.  More times than I would wish.

-- There will be an ever-louder cry to include the two minor-party candidates in the presidential debates, which are currently micromanaged by the CPD aka Ds and Rs to the exclusion of voices outside the two main lanes.

-- Most importantly, people who never would have considered the most proper protest vote will now be casting one.  Whether it turns out to be an extra couple of percent above their usual one or two, or whether it's more than that -- or much more than that -- is basically the most interesting conversation that's going to be happening this cycle.  Trump and Clinton's gaffes, legal problems, and assorted other he said/she said bullshit and negativity -- as fascinating as the corporate media will keep telling us it is -- just aren't going to do anything except suppress voter interest and correspondingly turnout, as polling traditionally demonstrates.

There remain far too may people who will insist that you only have two options, and a vote for one helps elect the other.  Stop falling for that crap.  Stop, also, listening to people who say that your vote is wasted, thrown away, or otherwise cancelled out unless you pick Coke or Pepsi.  Frick or Frack.  Ford or Chevy.  In a world full of multiple choices of everything, why should anyone settle for evil or less evil?

My teevee just isn't going to tell me anything about this election.  My recommendation is to not let yours tell you much either.  The Fox/sheep effect is nothing for so-called liberals to emulate.

Let's show that we're smarter than they think we are.  That's not too difficult a task, is it?  Not too much to ask?  It would be easy to be cynical, I know.  I still have hope for something more than incremental progress.  Call me naive'...

UT/TexTrib polling has some surprises

Let's get Trail Blazers' take, since they were first (after the actual sponsor, that is):

Texas supporters of Bernie Sanders are more reluctant to support Hillary Clinton than Ted Cruz supporters are to support Donald Trump, according to a new poll released Monday morning.

The University of Texas / Texas Politics Project Poll found Texas voters who supported Cruz's presidential campaign are more likely to support Trump than Sanders supporters are to support Clinton. Nearly 70 percent of Cruz voters are ready to vote for Trump, but just 40 percent of Sanders supporters are ready to vote for the former secretary of state.

WaPo's poll from just this past weekend begs to differ on the rapidity with which Sandernistas are boarding the Clinton bandwagon.  So Jim Henson may just be spinning here.

"Sanders has been reluctant to throw in the towel and endorse Clinton. That's showing in these numbers," said James Henson, a UT-Austin professor and the director of the Texas Politics Project. "Clinton has plenty of time to work with Sanders and his supporters. But I think the ball is very much in Sanders' court right now. The Sanders' voters are likely in large numbers to follow the lead of their candidate. But he's gotta lead them to that place." 

Whether that happens or doesn't, what I'm gathering from social media is that Berners aren't waiting to be led anywhere.  I believe Henson's supposition is false, but time (and more data) will tell.  Here's the counterpoint.
 

Since Clinton became the presumptive nominee, Sanders has refused to concede. While acknowledging that he's not going to be the nominee and that he'll likely vote for Clinton in November, the Vermont senator hasn't dropped out yet. He has also not formally endorsed Clinton.

Accurate, and it doesn't reference the platform arguments that Sanders' people lost over the weekend, and some seething I'm seeing about that.  So is WaPo's poll wrong about Berners jumping on with Clinton and TexTrib's right here?

And there's the usual caveats about polling methodology.

The poll was conducted online from June 10 to June 19 and surveyed 1,200 voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.83 percent meaning that results can vary by that much in either direction. Some public opinion experts question the effectiveness of online polling, because it relies on "sample matching." 

This statistical tool draws samples from online groups of pre-selected respondents and weighs them to represent demographic groups.

Typically, the best polls are conducted over telephone. Still, the University of Texas / Texas Politics Project Poll provides interesting insight into the upcoming general election. 

And the DMN's political blog buried the lede ...

Trump leads over Clinton 41 to 33 percent, according to the poll.  

That's going to excite all those Democrats who believe Hillary when she says "I can win Texas".  But hey, if you were ignorant enough to have swallowed all her lies up to this point... why would you suddenly stop now?

The head-to-head matchup is presenting itself as a very skewed and blinkered way to look at this election cycle.  In a three-horse race (with Lib Gary Johnson), it's 39-32-7, with 14% saying 'someone else'.  And this poll neglects mentioning Jill Stein or the Green Party completely, which I think is flawed methodology especially when you consider the wildest of UT/TexTrib/YouGov polling results over their relatively long history of comical errors.  Even if you're a Democrat who is hostile to Greens, it's a dumb thing to do to simply ignore them (or hide their support in other ways).  And we'll probably see more of that.

More from the Austin Statesman.

*Disclosure: I was surveyed for this poll by YouGov.

The burden is undue.

Pretty straightforward.

this is beautiful string of words right here #StopTheSham #waitingforlyle pic.twitter.com/OLpHg7eRwm

— Adrienne Kirk (@msadriennekirk) June 27, 2016

In the other pending Supreme Court decisions remaining for the last term we'll ever have to be #WaitingForLyle, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell will not go to jail, payday lenders will be subject to interest rate caps ...

Rejecting calls from across the financial-services industry, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a ruling that gives borrowers more power to enforce state limits on interest rates.
The justices turned away a company’s effort to avoid a class-action lawsuit over its efforts to collect credit-card debt from New York consumers.

The rebuff leaves intact a federal appeals court ruling that lenders say is already having far-reaching effects by undercutting the burgeoning internet lending business and raising questions about debt-backed securities that contain high-interest loans.

The practical effects "are difficult to overstate," the debt collector, Encore Capital Group Inc.’s Midland unit, argued in the appeal.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said borrowers in some circumstances can invoke their state’s usury laws, as the interest-rate caps are known, even if the loan originates elsewhere.

... and domestic abusers will lose their guns.

The U.S. Supreme Court backed the broad application of a federal law barring firearm possession by people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence, ruling it could be used against two men convicted under a Maine law.

The justices voted 6-2 in the case, which drew attention in February when Justice Clarence Thomas asked questions during arguments for the first time in a decade. Thomas dissented from the ruling.

A great day for justice overall.

The Weekly Wrangle

With this week's blog post roundup, the Texas Progressive Alliance cautiously awaits the Supreme Court's imminent ruling on the reproductive freedoms of women in Texas... and the United States.

Off the Kuff takes a look at the first general election poll of Texas, which has some encouraging bits for Democrats.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos explains, with the help of two award-winning political writers, how the Republican Party has become like a religious cult. The cult called the Republican Party.

Socratic Gadfly notes how the Supreme Court's recent anti-Fourth Amendment ruling was decided by the fifth vote of a Democrat-appointed justice, notes it's not the first time this has happened, and uses this to undercut one argument against third-party voting.

Texas Leftist took note of the evisceration of the Fourth Amendment. 

As Bernie Sanders climbs on the Clinton bandwagon, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs steps away from the Democratic Party.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders why Mark Scott is so anti-wind farm for Corpus Christi. One smells a large rat.

Chris Faulkner of Breitling Energy is being prosecuted by the SEC for fraud, reports TXsharon's Bluedaze.

Egberto Willies posted the thought-provoking racial justice speech given by Jesse Williams at the BET awards.

The Lewisville Texan Journal highlights the call from the DFW regional pet control authority to "clear the shelters" next month.

Neil at All People Have Value kept an eye open for the value of everyday life. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

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

As we anticipate a ruling from the Supreme Court today on the abortion restrictions imposed by the Texas Lege, Teddy Wilson at Rewire has numbers that show a surge in Texas women leaving the state to have an abortion.

Zachery Taylor observed the political kabuki that is the House sit-in protest on a gun vote.

Grits for Breakfast also noticed the body blows suffered by the Fourth Amendment.

The Houston Press says it's raining dogs and dogs at BARC.

On the first anniversary of #LoveWins, TFN lists five predictions of the Right-Wing Fear Machine that never came true.

TransGriot congratulates Lou Weaver for being the first-ever out trans masculine Texan to serve as a national Democratic delegate.

BOR observes the difference between "thoughts and prayers" and actions.

Scott Braddock reports on worker misclassification and how it may affect the upcoming Uber/Lyft legislative debate.

Juanita Jean has had it with Paul Ryan.

Prairie Weather points out how far the GOP is ahead of the Democrats when it comes to gerrymandering.

Save Buffalo Bayou flew a camera-equipped drone down the length of the Bayou's City's most prominent body of water.

And Pages of Victory comes out in support of Jill Stein.

Sunday Stay or Go Funnies

"At state convention, Texas Democrats underwhelm again":

Trump's planes, trains, and automobiles:

Bernie climbs on the bandwagon

If you weren't asleep or kidding yourself, you saw it coming a long, long, time ago.

We can count on some Hillbots acting the predictable part of being assholes who can't be satisfied, some who are still parsing his words, and as best I can tell there's a not-insignificant number of Berners who aren't climbing on with him.

I'm #FineWithStein, have been for a long time now and not because Bernie's really done anything to lose me.  I don't object to his not-quite liberal gun stances (he's from a very rural state, after all, and he isn't a gun nut, despite what my pal Gadfly thinks) and only have had some mild objections -- call them sad realizations -- to his advocating for the military/industrial complex in Vermont.  It was the objective of the Defense Department long, long ago to tie military bases, production facilities, etc. firmly to the US economy in towns small and large (just look at the local angst and fury every time the military has closed a base) from sea to shining sea, gathering up all of the procurement votes of Republicans, Democrats, and yes, independent Democratic Socialists in executing that task.  Mission accomplished.

I'd like to have lived the past 58 years in a different world, but you get what you get and that's all that you get.  If we can thwart President Hillary Clinton's desperate urge to start a fresh war in Iran or somewhere else in the world... I can be okay with that alone over the course of the next four years.  Happiness = low expectations, you know.  That was my problem ultimately with Barack Obama: high hopes.  Far too high for the amount of change delivered that he promised (or that I mistakenly inferred he promised).

As for Bernie, he's put the right people in the right places to effect change in the Democratic Party platform and its other procedures that is his revised-downward goal.  The establishment Democrats -- more corporate, more hawkish, more conservative than him -- will probably succeed in making only the smallest revisions to their system.  If Clinton and her minions have spoken -- and acted -- truthfully about anything at all, it's that.  She's simply not going to do anything more than tinker around the margins of progress.

That's why my vote, unlike Bernie's, is #NeverHillary.

His greatest transgression in my view is swallowing all of the same mythology that has kept Democrats scared and inside the pen for a few generations now.  We used to have active Socialist, Progressive, and other political parties in this country that thrived before there was a mass media to ignore them, so it's partly the fault of our dumbed-down electorate.  And Democrats did make strides during the past decade or so to create their own media, like the GOP; Al Franken and Janeane Garafalo were the first on the radio to left-counter punch the Limbaugh-esque brain food, MSNBC early on had Phil Donahue opposing the Iraq war before they canned him due to corporate and "Merrcan patriot" objections, and then there was the rise of the progressive blogosphere in the new century -- when 'progressive' stood in for Democrat and 'liberal', a word made dirty by the conservatives going back to Reagan.

But this is about Bernie Sanders and his 'not wanting to be a spoiler' mentality from as far back as 2011 (thanks Blue Nation Review; this is the only time I will write that), a stubborn urban legend most recently perpetuated by the execrable Jonathan Chait.

I have grown weary of correcting people on social media that still believe and regurgitate the Gore/Nader/Bush/2000 lies.  Repeating them has become grounds for immediate friend/follow termination at this point.  If Jim Hightower and others figured it out in November of 2000, which was a couple of weeks before Gore conceded after his 5-4 loss at the Supreme Court, then it's a marvel of modern ignorance that so many Democrats still don't get it.

(For a treat, read this PBS transcript of the debate between Hightower and the late Sen. Paul Wellstone from October of 2000 and realize how long we have been having this conversation.  Two things worth noting: Wellstone advocated the 'safe states' premise, which Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb ran on in 2004, and underperformed badly.  And Al Franken, as we know, eventually took Wellstone's Senate seat back from the GOP... and endorsed Hillary.  In 2014.

So as this article carefully details, it's always been an illusion that progressives -- the modern definition, not to suggest those social but corporate and and 'foreign policy'-weighted liberals who have come to be known as neoliberals in their tack to the center-right over the past few years --  could reform the Democratic Party from within.  Nobody has written more cogently about the self-defeating mentality; indeed the Democratic delusions -- 'safe  states', 'inside-outside', 'party within the party', voting LOTE, and the Berners' cry of writing his name in -- than Howie Hawkins.  Here's just one must-read pull-quote.

When I wrote a critique of [the 'inside-outside' tactic] in the Summer 1989 issue of New Politics, I was addressing the left wing of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, which proposed an inside-outside strategy of supporting progressives inside the Democratic Party and running progressive independents against corporate Democrats. By the time the next iteration of the inside-outside strategy was promulgated by the Progressive Democrats of America, which grew out of the Kucinich campaign in 2004, outside was now reduced to lobbying the Democrats for progressive reforms. Running independent progressives against corporate Democrats was not part of the outside strategy anymore.

The inside-outside proponents from the Rainbow Coalition believed their strategy would heighten the contradictions between progressive and corporate Democrats, leading to a split where either the progressives took over the Democrats or the progressives broke away to form a viable left third party with a mass base among labor, minorities, environmentalists, and the peace movement. But the logic of working inside meant forswearing any outside options in order to be allowed to inside Democratic committees, campaigns, primary ballots, and debates. Many of the Rainbow veterans became Democratic Party operatives and politicians whose careers depend on Democratic loyalty. Meanwhile, the corporate New Democrats consolidated their control of the policy agenda. And today the “outside” of the inside-outside strategy has been scaled down to pathetic attempts at political ventriloquism – clicking, lobbying, and demonstrating to try to get corporate Democrats to utter messages and enact polices that are progressive.

So it's very frustrating for this observer to have to watch leftish Democrats and even avowed and elected socialists like Kshama Sawant (who absolutely ought to know better)  perform this quadrennial insanity definition ritual again.  Running as an independent for president is now something to do in 2020, because it's too late to do so in 2016.  Sanders hasn't figured out something many of his smartest supporters have: it's time to Go Green.

Make your own choice about whether to accept the blame for Clinton's defeat in November after a close swing state loss, like Ohio maybe.  As Matt Taibbi points out, lesser evilism means Democrats can be lazier than ever this year.  Know that the blame will be applied irrespective of how shitty a campaign Clinton runs to lose the election at this point.  I don't think she'll lose, close or otherwise, but there's plenty of time and lots of unpredictable developments that could occur over the course of these remaining 120 days (remember we'll be voting early in late October).  Essentially the one thing that can upset her applecart is a federal grand jury indictment for mishandling classified information, and I'm on record as doubtful of that happening despite the evidence for it.

If you're a leftist who wants peace and not war, to start the process of healing the Earth (it might be too late already), to remove the corporate money from our political system and a whole lot of other democratic principles, then it's time to abandon the so-called Democratic Party as your default voting option.  Don't be an enabler of bad behavior.  They're still the only leftish choice locally you'll have in too many races on your ballot as it is, and some of those aren't really all that left, so you'll have to decide if ethical pillars of the community like Ron Reynolds, an "environmental rock star" who loves fracking like James Cargas, Dems who are terribly confused or determinedly misleading when they call themselves 'progressive' like Chris Bell, and all but invisible flakes with semi-famous names are worthy of your vote.

My own choices have gotten a lot clearer over the years.  As Eugene Debs observed, I'd rather vote for something I want, and not get it, than vote for something I don't and get that.