The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is happy this election is over as it brings you this last blog post roundup before Election Day.

Off the Kuff offers a modicum of sympathy to Republican women for the plague of Sid Miller.

Libby Shaw at Daily Kos shares her personal observations and polling data from a class she is taking to that shows Hillary Clinton carrying Houston and Harris County.

Switching gears away from politics, Socratic Gadfly offers up his 2016-17 NBA preview.  (Sorry, Mavs fans.)

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants everyone to know just how much Texas Republicans have abused workers, worker rights and their safety.

Neil at All People Have Value reminded folks that nasty Sid Miller was a big part of the forced sonogram law in Texas that is state-mandated rape. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

Control of the US Senate in 2017 looks to be a tighter race than the one for the White House, says PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

A Lewisville Texan-Journal reporter was arrested in North Dakota while covering the #NoDAPL protests, making the issue hit close to home.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston says you should wait until some election contests are decided -- win for your your side or no -- before you start drinking heavily on Tuesday night.

And Texas Vox points out that Thursday, November 10 -- not Election Day -- is decision day for the Texas Railroad Commission.

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

FPH introduces us to Kelcy Warren, the man behind the DAPL and his role in this week's Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission hearing.

CultureMap Houston was at the Texas Book Festival in Austin weekend before last.

Amy McCarthy recaps the highlights of Anthony Bourdain's visit to Houston.

Kyrie O'Connor reminds us that "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" is at heart a feminist anthem.

Eva Ruth Moravec took the eight-hour DPS course on verbal de-escalation.

Susan Nold asserts that voting is not "rigged", it's power.

Jacquielynn Floyd calls Sid Miller's latest tweet abomination a "breaking point".

The Texas Election Law Blog gives credit where it is due on tamping down fear about "election rigging".

Somervell County Salon asks if you believe in open government.

Ashton Woods at Strength in Numbers explains intersectionality and the problematic 'white gaze' as it relates to black feminism.

The Rag Blog marked the night of the dead and the day of the living.

DBC Green Blog reminded Democrats and Republicans that voting a straight ticket is still stupid and lazy.

And Pages of Victory explained (via Viggo Mortensen) why he voted for Jill Stein, and also why he voted for Kim Ogg for Harris County District Attorney.

Sunday Funnies

Tear gas, rubber bullets, sound cannon, and Tasers fired from a drone 

used on Standing Rock water protectors

The Men Feminists Left Behind

Control of US Senate a tighter race than for White House

And the outcome means all the difference for the next two years.  The expert consensus four days from Election Day is a dead solid tie.

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

-- First of all, I don't think Wisconsin's Russ Feingold is in as much trouble as all those screaming subject line fundraising emails we're getting would have us believe.

-- Evan Bayh, the Democrat who held a lead most of the year for the open seat in the Hoosier State, has coughed it up.  Reports like this aren't going to help him.  There are still a lot of undecideds as reflected in the polls, and perhaps the Libertarian, the only other candidate in the race there, can influence the result to some degree.

-- Roy Blount, the Republican incumbent in the Show Me State, will probably hang on.  He has to overcome whatever percentages the Libertarian and Constitution Party nominees may take away from him, the only question mark I see.  That makes MO and IN holds for the GOP, and that gets the Elephants to 50.  Nate Silver has them both turning pink just yesterday.

-- New Hampshire's presidential polling volatility, coupled with incumbent R Kelly Ayotte clinging to a small lead probably means the Granite State isn't so much of a tossup.  That's 51 for the Reds.

-- That leaves Nevada, and I'll predict that the Silver State elects Catherine Cortez Masto, riding on the coattails of Hillary Clinton.  See Robby Mook's confidence about NV in the most recent post.

This is the last of these I'll do unless news breaks something of value, so put me down for a Republican Senate by just one seat.  That pits me against Silver and the NYT's Upshot, who are both predicting a 55% chance of it turning blue as of this morning.  Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball has the whip count at 48-47 Dems, with five tossups.

Update: Via Down with Tyranny, Rep. Alan Grayson (whom I wish was the Democratic nominee for the US Senate for Florida, and not Patrick Murphy)  has more detail, but sees it exactly the same way as I do.  Great minds and all that.

Here's a question I can't find the answer to: if somebody on the right side were to change parties, resign, or pass away in the next year or two, and a Democratic governor made an appointment to fill the vacancy that puts the upper chamber into a tie, does control of the Senate change mid-term or must it wait for the next election, special or regularly-scheduled in 2018?

Jim Jeffords' party switch in 2001 -- from Republican to independent caucusing with the Democrats -- flipped control, but the Senate was 50-50 at the time and Jeffords gave the Dems a pure 51-49 majority.  So by my understanding, pushing the body into 50-50 would only give a Vice President Tim Kaine the ability to break tie votes, and not change which party controls the flow of legislation, appointment of committee chairs, and the like.  Am I right or not?

Hillary builds a wall, too

With early votes in battleground states.

The word of the day is "firewall."[...]

Jon Ralston, the savviest political analyst in Nevada, used the term "firewall" to describe the early vote margin Democrats seem to be running up in that state. As of Friday morning, he figured Democrats had banked a 37,000-vote margin. "So he can win Nevada," Ralston wrote Friday morning. "But Trump would need base numbers and indie numbers that seem unlikely right now." Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, told reporters on a conference call that the campaign figures Trump would have to win Nevada by 10 percentage points on Election Day to overcome her advantage there.

I don't consider Ralston all that savvy after this episode from two years ago, but hard data is one of those things that is difficult for almost anybody to screw up.  And that's really why Clintonoids should breathe easier: there are over 30 million votes already in the can, and we don't have to rely on an admittedly shaky Nate Silver to tell us what to think any longer.

In Florida early voting, Democratic strategist Steve Schale sees further positive signs for Clinton, specifically a marked uptick in Latino voting. "The two places with the highest Puerto Rican populations, Orange and Osceola counties both out-performed their projected share of the statewide vote," he wrote Friday morning. Florida Hispanics are typically thought of as being Cuban, but Puerto Ricans have been migrating to the state in great numbers in recent years. More broadly, Schale wrote, Hispanic voting patterns so far are the "definition of a surge." It should be obvious, but is worth noting anyway: Hispanics aren't turning out in greater numbers to vote for Donald Trump. Schale goes on to add: "Right now, Democrats hold a 117K vote advantage among all low propensity voters, in large part due to this Hispanic surge. 32% of Democratic voters so far are low propensity voters, compared to 26% of the GOP voters. But among [no party affiliation voters or NPAs], the number rises to 48%. That's right, 48% of NPAs who have voted so far are low propensity – and 25% of those are Hispanic. In fact, of the NPA low propensity voters, a full 42% of them are non-white. That right there is the Clinton turnout machine edge." Reminder: Turnout is important, even if Donald Trump doesn't seem to think it is. Mook told reporters that the campaign believes it's leading in Florida by around 170,000 votes overall and said that at this time four years ago, the Obama campaign figured that it was behind by 15,000 votes. (Obama won the state, narrowly.) Schale sums up: "All of this has me leaning a bit that the state is shaping up nicely for HRC, but while I think that, in no way is it in the bag, or close to it."

The Hispanic surge isn't confined to Florida. Per Talking Points Memo's Lauren Fox, the polling firm Latino Decisions reported early Hispanic voting "is up 100 percent in Florida, 60 percent in North Carolina and up 25 percent in Colorado and Nevada." See my previous comment about Hispanics and Donald Trump. Fox adds: "Latino Decisions is estimating – using their own turnout predictor – that Clinton is on track to capture 79 percent of the Latino vote. Trump, on the other hand, is expected to garner only 18 percent (almost 10 points down from Romney's 27 percent performance.)" Remember that Trump's theory of winning through running up the white vote doesn't only motivate white voters. The backlash could well end up benefiting Clinton in a big way.

North Carolina is IMHO the true decider for both president and Senate in 2016.  Black turnout was reported soft in North Carolina (and Florida and Ohio as well) earlier this week, and there have been serious efforts by the Republicans in charge to stifle the vote there.  So I see the Tar Heelers being decided very late on Election Night.

Across the country, Mook told reporters Friday, early voting is breaking records. And for whatever it's worth, the Clinton campaign sees itself as having "leverage[d] this early voting period to build a firewall in states with early voting to turn out our supporters early and build up a lead that Donald Trump is incapable of overcoming."

Bloomberg's Mark Niquette and John McCormick took a broader look at early voting. "Donald Trump is showing strength in Iowa and Ohio pre-Election Day voting, while Hillary Clinton's advantage in early balloting looks stronger in North Carolina and Nevada, a Bloomberg Politics analysis shows," they wrote. Hold on there, Robert, my target audience responds, this post is supposed to soothe my nerves but you just quoted someone saying Trump looks strong in Ohio. The key point as we hurtle toward Nov. 8 is that given the state of the electoral map, Trump needs to look strong in all the contested states. If early voting carries Clinton to victory in Nevada (see Ralston above) and North Carolina (which my colleagues Dave Catanese and Seth Cline described on Friday as her ultimate firewall) the game is over.

Whoa theyah, podnah; it ain't over 'til it's over.

It's called being ahead, which Clinton still is. It may be a narrow lead, but it's a lead nevertheless, and with the days dwindling it's better to be front-running than trying to play catch-up.

The Comey Effect may have run its course, and any further late-breaking developments such as this are too late to move the needle.  But if the Senate does not flip, that will be added to the foundation for impeachment proceedings in 2017.

A fresh Senate forecast is coming shortly.