Sunday Funnies

"I mean, have you seen the other guys?"

Shades of "We're not perfect, but they're nuts".

Dems are asking people to vote on a new sticker and I'm not sure anyone in history has been as bad at this. pic.twitter.com/isYaZV60Dp

— Mazel Tov Cocktail (@AdamSerwer) July 5, 2017

Again, gonna be as kind as I can about it.

Yes, national Democrats, I have seen the other guys. But being "not the other guys" isn't enough to wrest control of Washington away from them.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee became a bit of an internet laughingstock on Wednesday due to the circulation of some stickers with prospective 2018 midterm election slogans. One of them read "Democrats 2018: I mean, have you seen the other guys?" The "hey, we're not them!" message didn't go over super-well with plenty of pundits and tweeters, who noted that it packs a whole lot less punch and has a lot less loft than something like "Yes, we can."

Sure, it may have been only a silly sticker, not a party manifesto. But that someone over at DCCC headquarters felt secure enough to promote such a slogan publicly is also emblematic of a party that still hasn't figured out what it wants to be following a wholly unexpected loss to a reality television actor, after a campaign that was in large part premised on "hey, we're not that crazy Trump guy."

Plenty of others, mostly on Twitter, were meaner, so no need for me to pile on.  Oh, wait a minute ... yes there is.

(These pitiful slogans) are coming from the same organization that poured millions of dollars into Jon Ossoff’s failed congressional campaign and that has focused its recovery strategy on converting moderate Republicans. Since Barack Obama assumed office in 2009, the Democratic Party has lost nearly 1,100 seats in elected offices across the country to “the other guys.” Instead of stopping their losing streak with meaningful policies that would risk alienating their donors -- such as single-payer health care -- Democrats have obsessed about Donald Trump’s connection to Russia.

These slogans epitomize the current state of Democratic Party. None of the slogans address important issues or convey moral conviction. Rather, they expect their support base to “vote blue no matter who.” Democrats market themselves as better than Republicans, but they fail to address issues important to voters.

Right now, Democrats are the losing party, and leadership makes it increasingly more embarrassing to be affiliated with the party. It’s not a coincidence that Sen. Bernie Sanders -- an independent who won’t tarnish his name by affiliating with the party -- is the most popular politician in the country.  Americans (including Democratic Congressional candidates in red states like Texas) are increasingly identifying as independent, a symptom of their disenfranchisement from both political parties. Democrats fail to realize that trying to capitalize on hatred of the Republican party only creates more apathy. So far, Democrats have failed to develop a vision that resonates with voters and to sever ties with their corporate donors or widely unpopular leaders. Nancy Pelosi, Charles Schumer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Tom Perez and Hillary Clinton -- all widely disliked -- are the current party spokespersons. All these aspects combined ensure Democrats will continue losing until they drastically change course.

Ouch.  A less harsh take on the state of play, from the US News link at the top.

As befits a national party that is a bit lost in the wilderness, Democrats are being pulled in several different directions at the moment: There's the so-called Sanders-Warren wing, so named because of Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who espouse an unapologetically progressive vision. There's the tech-bro wing attempting to use Silicon Valley-style thinking to "hack" the party for the internet age. And then there's the rump of Blue Dogs and mealy-mouthed centrists who believe that triangulating and being OK with bigotry is the only way to win back those disaffected white, working-class voters so famously wooed by now-President Donald Trump.

And a sunnier point of view from McClatchy, via Raw Story.

A trio of new political action committees — the People's House Project, Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats — are looking for ways to support candidates with economically progressive platforms and to challenge the party establishment, especially in Rust Belt states where President Donald Trump saw much unexpected success last November.

The activists aren't daunted by the odds.

"Democrats should be able to win in all these places," said Krystal Ball, founder of the People's House Project, which has endorsed its first candidate, Randy Bryce, an iron worker with an attention-getting advertising shtick who is running for House Speaker Paul Ryan's seat in Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District.

And in Appalachia.

They've already begun gathering candidates, and they're not just going after Republicans.

Frustrated with increased poverty and poor working conditions in her home state of West Virginia, environmental activist Paula Jean Swearengin launched a campaign with the help of Brand New Congress to challenge centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in 2018.

"It's a disgrace as a coal miner's daughter that I have to beg for clean water and clean air for my children," she said. "He challenged us to primary him, so shame on Joe Manchin that a single mom of four is going after his seat."

Since launching her campaign in early May, Swearengin said she has raised $81,000 through small donations from more than 5,000 people.

While she said it's unlikely she could raise more donations than Manchin, who has the financial backing of the coal industry, Swearengin believes her progressive messaging could resonate with discouraged West Virginians.

Sanders won 51 percent of West Virginia's Democrats in last year's primary, easily defeating runner-up Hillary Clinton, who eight years before handily defeated then-Sen. Barack Obama in the state's Democratic primary.

In Texas, we have Libertarians who voted in the GOP primary in 2016 (read the comments) running as Democrats in places like TX-31 against incumbent John Carter.  Some people believe this is the only kind of Democrat that can get elected in Republican districts.  James Cargas, the CD-7 Democrat who supports fracking and still does not live in the district, has sold that line three consecutive times with no luck.  Annnnd he's back for a fourth go.

There remain plenty of twists and turns before November of 2018, but Democrats have a lot of work to do, and despite Charles' optimism about the locals, their compasses still aren't all pointing true north just yet.

Russians may be coming again ... but we've larger voting problems

Before we go to war with North Korea, before the unhinged Right starts killing CNN reporters, before acetamenophin destroys what's left of our empathy ...

When last we tuned in to RT while clicking on Sputnik News, we learned that our antagonists Boris and Natasha Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear (see here and here for the Wiki background) had been hard at work scaring the pants off moose and squirrel everybody from Jameses Comey and Clapper to your friendly neighborhood Dem precinct captain about what, precisely, they had been up to in the summer of 2016.  That is to say, beyond humiliating Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Brazile, John Podesta, Huma Abedin, and the rest of the DNC hacks that got hacked.

We learned that they hacked into 39 states' voter databases -- or tried to, and succeeded in getting into perhaps just one, Illinois.  Alex Ward at Vox has it, with a link over to the original at Bloomberg, and previously and briefly referenced by yours truly in the second half of this aggrepost.

While this is indeed alarming, I still find voter suppression via photo ID and partisan gerrymandering to be greater threats to our republic.  Paper ballots with verifiable paper trails -- something like the Scantron-style electronic voting machines Denton County has just adopted -- would resolve the  Russian problem, but nothing short of a blue tsunami will fix the other two, and unless they can find something to run on besides "Trump is evil/Russia/Impeach",  2018 isn't going to be the cycle the Donkeys are looking for.

(*Ed note: let me pause here and acknowledge my friend Brad Friedman's lasting concerns about anything machine count-related.  Experts appear to disagree on the hackability, or at least the ease thereof, of scanned ballot counters.)

For the benefit of my conspiratorially-minded Democratic friends, let me point out -- as I have repeatedly in the past -- that the key to cracking the Russian code lies not in tracing election hacking attempts but in Trump's still-concealed tax returns.  Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Felix Sater, and the rest of that ilk are the threads special counsel Mueller should be -- and hopefully is -- pulling on.  And if Trump, or Jeff Sessions, or Devin Nunes, or any Republican in the administration or the Congress is found to be obstructing that investigation, then the walls will come tumbling down.

Focusing on the wrong Russiagate is starting to show up in polling as a loser for Democrats.  It's a winner for the corporate media and ratings, however, especially MSNBC.  Before Mika B's facelift became an atrocious but ultimately distracting Tweet -- even Tucker Carlson thinks so, by Jeebus -- Trump usually didn't give half of one solid shit about the other liberal media news channel; he's mobilized his base to destroy CNN, and now even Julian Assange is piling on.

I would like to also point out that the Democratic Party has bigger fish to fry than continuing to demonize Jill Stein, but I'm convinced that unhealthy obsession has become part of their DNA.

So with all that, plus 1) Kris Kobach, 2) a Texas Legislature poised to over-reach once more with a photo ID law that will require a couple of years for the courts to once again nullify, and 3) gerrymandered congressional and statehouse districts thanks to Tom DeLay almost fifteen years ago, as Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker reminded us in his comprehensive and compelling piece "America's Future is Texas"... why are you more worried about what Russian hackers may or may not be doing in the next election cycle?  Your vote barely counts for anything as it is.

On a more positive note, here's an easily attainable goal for those of us in Harris County: #FireStanStanart and replace him with Diane Trautman, and then push the mostly Republican county commissioners to approve and purchase paper ballots for 2020.  Because if Democrats can actually win some elections -- particularly this one -- in 2018, those GOPers will be forced to do so, due to the caterwauling from their base about Ill Eagles voting.

See how easy this is?  Just requires a little focus on the proper thing.

Firecracker Funnies

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance hopes everyone has a better Fourth of July than Mitch McConnell as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff is outraged at the state Supreme Court trying to find a loophole in the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

SocraticGadfly takes a look at Sy Hersh's latest investigative work: Trump's lies about an alleged but non-existent "Syrian gas attack", and thoroughly endorses it as well as Hersh and others responding to his critics, with a reminder that other alleged "Syrian gas attacks" also didn't ring true.

It was not a particularly good week for Russian conspiracy theorists.  Or Nancy Pelosi.  But Sylvester Turner's week got a little better at the very end of it, all of which was noted for the record by PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

jobsanger disparages Trump's attacks on the media.

Bay Area Houston issues a Yellow Alert for CD-36 Congressman Brian Babin.

Neil at All People Have Value attended a Service Workers International Union protest for fair wages for janitors in Houston. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

The Lewisville Texan Journal reports that a local mall -- still hosting many tenants, including four anchor department stores and a movie theater complex -- will be auctioned online as part of its exit from the previous owner's receivership.

Rose Calahan at the Texas Observer has the news of the strange from far-flung towns around the state (like Dumas and Groves and Silsbee).

And Grits for Breakfast has an Equal Protection parable out of Commerce, Texas.

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More news and blog posts from around the state!

The Dallas Morning News has details about the three state homes for disabled Texans that have Flint-level amounts of lead in their drinking water.

The Texas Election Law Blog reminds you that the state government is legally prohibited from giving vote suppressor Kris Kobach your confidential voter information.

The McAllen Monitor sees the Ted Cruz re-election campaign strategy starting to come together in the RGV.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry took a star turn at a recent White House press briefing, and had the DC media begging for more, as PoliTex at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram told it.

That time the Rice MOB trolled Baylor over its Title IX scandals.

The Waco Tribune, in its latest account of the Title IX lawsuits against Baylor University, quoted emails from a former regent who referred to female students he suspected of drinking alcohol as “perverted little tarts,” “very bad apples,” “insidious and inbred” and “the vilest and most despicable of girls”.

The Texas Living Waters Project provides eight simple ways to protect rivers and wildlife.

Megan Smith at Spectrum South considers queer femme identity, and Alex Zielinski at the San Antonio Current celebrates having an LGBT ally in the San Antonio mayor's office again.

Lone Star Ma wonders why exposure is losing its effectiveness as a remedy for prejudice.

The WAWG Blog documents some of the Libertarians' stealth war on American democracy.

High Plains Blogger thinks that having too many people downtown (as in Amarillo, where he lives, and Nashville, where he recently visited) is both a good thing and a bad thing.

 And Michael Hardy at Texas Monthly said goodbye to Jimmy's, the soon-to-be-closed Houston Heights icehouse.

Sunday Funnies

Sylvester Turner's ups and downs

Maybe he hasn't had such a bad week after all, given late developments.  Yesterday's post mentioned an update on some of the latest of Mayor Sly's tribulations, one of which has already taken a turn in his favor.

A state district judge on Friday dismissed Houston firefighters' lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the city's pension reform package, leaving the law to go into effect Saturday.

State District Judge Patricia Kerrigan granted the city's request to dismiss the case while denying firefighters' motion to temporarily block the law from being implemented.

Mayor Sylvester Turner said he was "pleased" with the decision. 

As well he should be.  The mayor has a pretty good track record defeating the public servants of the city at their attempts to be equitably compensated, during employment and in retirement, and the mayor's most important supporters -- not the HGLBT Caucus but the 1% of Houston, who can write him five-figure checks for whenever he may next stand for re-election -- appreciate the way he scrimps on city expenses that are not parks or incentives for corporations to do business here.  In other words, he performs just like every other mayor Houston has had for twenty years: bow and scrape to the powers that be, crush the poor, disadvantaged, and middle class while you do so.

All this bowing and scraping leads to the next big thing on his agenda: a half-billion dollar bond issue on the fall ballot for parks, etc.

Mayor Sylvester Turner is poised ask voters to approve bonds this fall to fund improvements to city parks, community centers, fire stations and health clinics, adding hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to a crowded November ballot.

City officials say the size of the bond request has yet to be determined, but a political action committee formed to support the bonds, Lift Up Houston, lists the amount as $490 million on its website.

The referendum is part of the city's latest five-year Capital Improvement Plan, which was unveiled at a City Council committee meeting Tuesday.

The proposed plan calls for $538 million in improvements to city facilities, such as expanded police and fire stations, renovated libraries, miles of bike trails and repairs to city buildings, to be paid for with tax revenues and philanthropic donations.

The plan, known as the CIP, relies on a November bond vote as a key funding source.

This is on top of the billion-dollar bond vote Turner has already set forth for the city's pension obligations.  Anyway, Turner got his wish, though not without enduring some carping from a few CMs, mostly about the amount of pork on their respective plates.

Mayor Sylvester Turner weathered several hours of consternation from City Council members upset about delayed projects Wednesday before securing passage, by a 14-2 vote, of his first capital spending plan.

The five-year proposal calls for $7.1 billion in new airport and utility projects, to be funded by user fees, as well as $567 million in public improvements, such as expanded police and fire stations, renovated libraries, miles of bike trails and repairs to city buildings.

What follows in the next excerpt is some of the nastier exchanges that mayors and council members past (at least those of the same political persuasion) have tended to keep behind closed doors.

Councilman Larry Green, who represents southwestern District K, questioned how and why projects he thought were funded had disappeared or been left at the mercy of tenuous grant funding. His district, he said, had been "overtly screwed," a phrase Councilman Dave Martin quickly turned into the day's catchphrase.

Councilwoman Brenda Stardig, in northwestern District A, suggested she had been misled by city staff, and Councilman Greg Travis, in westside District G, said "Enron accounting" had been employed to suggest that his district is rich with projects when most of that work will occur only within city economic development zones.

"The process is I make the decision," Turner told Green at one point. "If you don't like something then hold me responsible. I make the call."

By the end of the meeting, which slogged into early afternoon, Turner had pronounced himself "fed up" with council members suggesting his staff had bamboozled them.

"I've followed city politics for a long time. The Acres Homes Multi-Service Center was 10 to 12 years in coming in the CIP," Turner said, referencing the main city facility in his northside neighborhood. "It has always been the practice around here at City Hall to put things in the CIP when there was not enough funding. Let's not act like this is something new. Let's not play this game. There will always be more projects than there is money."

It gets a little worse and certainly deeper in the weeds from there so I'll leave it to those of you who are into that.  But note this at the very end.

(Along with CM Michael Kubosh), Councilman Mike Laster also voted against the plan, having argued that his District J had been slighted. Councilman Jerry Davis had stepped out of the room at the time of vote.

So a 14-2 win shows solidarity, even with some of the whiners mentioned above, but Laster's 'no' and Davis' abstention follow on their objections to the new and still pending contract for the city's waste recycling and processing, which Turner summarily pulled off council's agenda because he suddenly realized it lacked their support.  We'll  pick that up about halfway through.

Councilman Jerry Davis, who represents the area around the proposed (recycling) plant, said the site is mostly industrial but he plans to hold town hall meetings to answer residents' questions and to try to connect job seekers with FCC Environmental officials.

"The information they've given is it's a recycling facility, it's not a transfer station, it's not any of that as a negative," Davis said. "That was the No. 1 thing some of the people in my district wanted to make sure of."

As for the merits of the proposal itself, Davis said he still is sifting through the terms.

Councilman Mike Laster, who was to chair the canceled committee hearing on the topic Tuesday, echoed his colleague.

"There's still a lot of a lot of questions to be answered," he said. "That gives me concern, and I look forward to doing all I can to get the best information."

Laster and Davis are Democrats representing minority-majority districts, and their butting heads with Turner twice in a row is kind of a big deal.  They don't serve the sort of neighborhoods that the Caucus is going to be blockwalking for the mayor next election.  Then again, maybe the Caucus is counting on not having to, like always.

This isn't the kind of background you're going to see anywhere at Off the Kuff, and I promise I'm not going to kill this blog's traffic by posting too much about Turner and and his beeves with city council members, especially those that he ought to have in his vest pocket, but it shows -- to me -- a continuing demonstration of his weak leadership.  If he can't get his way the first time, he'll browbeat his opponents until they are forced to submit.  That's not good for long-term relations, and unless the SCOTX comes to our rescue with a decree ordering municipal elections this year, Turner's adversarial way of managing will, over the next few years, come back to bite his ass, and by extension yours and mine.  As I always understood it, Bill White and Annise Parker were better at building consensus with CMs before votes, even if that meant giving away the farm to the Republicans on council.

Hard to say which management style is worse for progressive values, but perhaps my expectations for Turner to be better were simply too high, which is why his fall seems farther.

Still waiting for him to bust an aggressive move on the homeless, which seems to be in neutral at the moment but is surely coming down the pike.

A bad week to be a Russian conspiracy theorist

-- Or maybe just a member of the mainstream media.

(Ed note: A thoughtful reader pointed out that the 'toon previously appearing in this space was produced by a recently-defunct Houston neo-Nazi/alt-right/white supremacist/whatever they are calling themselves this week; not an endorsement I intended to make.  Hope everyone got their screenshot.  I've replaced it with this one.)

CNN was forced to apologize after retracting a story on its website that a Russian bank linked to a close ally of President Trump was under Senate investigation. Three high-ranking journalists at the network resigned.

Also the NYT themselves.

On (June 29), the Times appended a correction to a June 25 article that had repeated the false claim, which has been used by Democrats and the mainstream media for months to brush aside any doubts about the foundation of the Russia-gate scandal and portray President Trump as delusional for doubting what all 17 intelligence agencies supposedly knew to be true.

In the Times’ White House Memo of June 25, correspondent Maggie Haberman mocked Trump for “still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him elected.”

However, (yesterday), the Times – while leaving most of Haberman’s ridicule of Trump in place – noted in a correction that the relevant intelligence “assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.”

Four outta 17 ain't bad, some people say.

The Times’ grudging correction was vindication for some Russia-gate skeptics who had questioned the claim of a full-scale intelligence assessment, which would usually take the form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE), a product that seeks out the views of the entire Intelligence Community and includes dissents.

Remarkably, some of us knew this already.  Like several weeks ago.  Of course, you have to be willing to believe the words of James Clapper under oath, which is a tenuous proposition on its best day, but then again ... what good does it do him to lie about a procedure that refutes his own premise?

The reality of a more narrowly based Russia-gate assessment was admitted in May by President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan in sworn congressional testimony.

Clapper testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on May 8 that the Russia-hacking claim came from a “special intelligence community assessment” (or ICA) produced by selected analysts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, “a coordinated product from three agencies – CIA, NSA, and the FBI – not all 17 components of the intelligence community,” the former DNI said.

Clapper further acknowledged that the analysts who produced the Jan. 6 assessment on alleged Russian hacking were “hand-picked” from the CIA, FBI and NSA.

Yet, as any intelligence expert will tell you, if you “hand-pick” the analysts, you are really hand-picking the conclusion. For instance, if the analysts were known to be hard-liners on Russia or supporters of Hillary Clinton, they could be expected to deliver the one-sided report that they did.

Maybe it's time to put down the Stolichnaya, Hillbots.

-- It's also been a bad week to be Nancy Pelosi.  Her detractors and her supporters raise reasonable doubts -- and defenses -- of her tenure as a party leader.  This commentary by Michael Tracey of The Young Turks, this piece by Matt Yglecias at Vox, and this one by Kathryn Pearson at MarketWatch all make both sides of the case.

I don't think Pelosi should go; maybe the voters in her district will make the decision for her in next year's primary.  She should come correct on single payer, as that is trending toward the defining issue for the 2018 cycle.  But no change in leadership of Congress seems imminent, and that's a good thing as she contrasts well with Trump's extreme chauvinism, coming into full, stinking bloom like a corpse flower (a development noted beyond his wildly inappropriate remarks about Mika Brzezinski).

But the early calls against the minority leader came mostly from Democrats in the wake of their most recent special Congressional election failure, so it's important to note that the GOP's generational demonization of Democrats -- Pelosi is only the latest foil -- is so effective at this point that even Democrats now buy into it pretty quickly.

-- It also wasn't such a grand week to be Sylvester Turner, in a post forthcoming shortly for more Independence Day reading.

The Weekly Wrangle

With this week's blog post roundup, the Texas Progressive Alliance thinks that a lack of compassion -- "hypoempathy?" -- should be both covered and treated despite being a pre-existing condition.

Off the Kuff introduces the Democratic candidates in SD10 who hope to recapture Wendy Davis' former seat.

In the wake of a fourth consecutive loss for Democrats in Congressional special elections this year, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs assembled some of the pundits who performed Wednesday morning quarterbacking.

SocraticGadfly tells environmentalists to stop buying eXXXon's PR crap about supporting a carbon tax.

Texas Vox reports on the effort to make Austin carbon-free by 2030.

Ted at jobsanger thinks Democrats should stop blaming Nancy Pelosi for their troubles.

The Lewisville Texan Journal has a moving story on the local art contest winner who dramatized and honored victims of some of the nation's mass shootings.

Neil at All People Have Value appreciates all people working to oppose the Bannon/Trump agenda.  APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

And Harold Cook provides the press release that at least 20 members of the Legislature could use about now, in response to Texas Monthly's 'Best' and 'Worst' listing.

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More news and blog posts from around Texas!

The San Antonio Current summarizes the legal case against the anti-sanctuary cities law, SB4, with opening arguments this morning.

Could Travis County's STAR-vote technology be the answer to election hacking?  Isabelle Soto at Burkablog explains.

Greg Abbott appointed two Fort Worth-area legislators to manage the legislation addressing mail-in ballot fraud in the forthcoming special session.  Anna Tinsley at PoliTex has the details.

Dan Quinn at Texas Freedom Network reveals the cesspool of extremism and hate at Dr. Steven Hotze's Conservative Republicans of Texas website.

DBC Green Blog has some of Jill Stein's responses to the recent outpouring of vitriol against her and the Green Party, likely prompted by scrutiny of the Democrats' own failings.

Robert Rivard assesses outgoing San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor.

Michael Li describes the sleeper Texas partisan redistricting claim, though it won't be heard by the appeals court at this time.  And the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has the Associated Press analysis that "nearly four" Texas Congressional districts were won by Republicans because of gerrymandering than otherwise would have been the case.

Better Texas Blog reminds us that the Senate will not make the Trumpcare bill any less mean.

Glissette Santana at the Urban Edge wraps up a week of taking public transit around Houston for the first time.

And Beyond Bones weighs in on the "did T. rex have feathers?" debate.

Sunday Funnies

Houston council joins #SB4 lawsuit on 10-6 vote

The good news -- beyond what's revealed in the headline -- includes the fact that no conservative had the stones to tag it (postponing the vote a week), and that the mayor cast his ballot in favor even though that's typically done (by rule of Roberts) only when there is a tie.  Jack Christie got up and left before the counting, marking him an abstention.

The noes were Greg Travis, Mike Knox, Michael Kubosh, Brenda Stardig, Dave Martin, and Steve Le.  All but Le were easily predictable.  The vote was purely and politically symbolic; the constitutionality of the law will be decided in the courts, and as Sophie Novack at Texas Monthly has shown, this is why the Legislature overreaches (on voter ID, on women's reproductive freedoms, and all the rest): it takes years for the judges to slap them down.

Let's join this topic to another; the pending decision by the Supreme Court of Texas as to the scheduling of Houston's municipal elections this year, or in two years.

As Charles pointed out yesterday, it's getting to be late in the game for city elections to happen in 2017.  What he didn't mention is that should the SCOTX rule on a writ of mandamus filed by Republican attorney and city council gadfly Eric Dick, on behalf of his client PP Bryant, then we may actually get those elections this year.  Or not.

The November 2015 voting cycle in Houston included one ballot result that surprised many: the decision to extend the term limits of city officials from three two-year terms to two four-year terms. The result was so unexpected, it immediately raised controversy, eyebrows, and the question, “Did the voters of the City of Houston actually mean to extend term limits?”

Phillip Paul Bryant filed a lawsuit to invalidate Proposition 2 because he believes the ballot language misled Houston voters. Annise Parker and the City of Houston have a rich history with misleading voters when it comes to ballot language. Indeed in 2015 alone, Texas Supreme Court has found that Annise Parker and the City of Houston have used inappropriate ballot language twice.

On November 3, 2015, registered voters of the City of Houston were asked to vote on several propositions, including a proposition extending term limits (“Proposition 2”). The ballot language for Proposition 2 reads:

• (Relating to Term Limits for City Elective Office) Shall the City Charter of the City of Houston be amended to reduce the number of terms of elective offices to no more than two terms in the same office and limit the length for all terms of elective office to four years, beginning in January 2016; and provide for transition?

The voters of the City of Houston passed Proposition 2 on November 3, 2015.

Phillip Paul Bryant’s attorney argues that the language of Proposition 2 was misleading for several reasons:

• The ballot language suggested that it would “limit” term length instead of extending it from two year terms to four year terms;
• The ballot language read as if it was shortening the total amount of time an elected official could stay in office when it actually extended it from six years to a total of eight or ten years;
• The ballot language omitted a chief feature of the proposition -  it suggested that it shortened the amount of times an elected official can serve to two terms when in fact there were hidden exceptions that unfairly benefited incumbents.

Indeed, Mayor Annise Parker literally said:

• "There may have been some voter confusion out there. I don't know that they realized that they were giving council members more time in office.”

As further evidence that the City of Houston misled voters, the Houston Chronicle reported that the underlying ballot language was obscured:

• “Political scientists were not convinced Tuesday's result was proof of radically shifting attitudes, however. The ballot language did not spell out the effect on incumbents or that the item would loosen the existing restrictions.
• ‘It was ballot confusion or obfuscation,’ Texas Southern University political scientist Michael Adams said. ‘The way it was written, some people may have thought they were voting to limit the terms rather than extend them to two four- year terms.’
• That take made sense to Rice University political scientist Bob Stein, who added, ‘Nobody reads the ballot when they walk in there. They don't have to read it to vote.’” 

In addition, Houston Public Media reported that the ballot language didn’t tell the whole truth:

• “’When we informed voters that the adoption of the two four-year (terms) would take place immediately in 2016 and advantage incumbent council members, support swung the other way and it was a deficit of 17 points against,’ Stein said.
• But that information was not in the ballot language. In fact, it didn’t even mention that it would actually extend term limits.” 

On June 2, 2016, a writ of mandamus was filed with the Texas Supreme Court asking them to invalidate Proposition 2. If you would like clarity as to whether Houston has municipality elections in 2017, please contact the Texas Supreme Court justices and encourage that they rule on the pending writ of mandamus. We are not asking for a specific ruling, we are only asking for a decision to be made so we know whether or not we have City of Houston elections in 2017. 

Contact Barrister Dick and he'll explain how to ask the Court to rule, and while you're there, order one of his Sixties-era T-shirts.

With respect once more to yesterday's vote on SB4: Turner didn't have to give Council a say.  He could have just exercised his authority, like mayors in all the other Texas metros (save Cowtown) did two weeks ago, as the regular legislative session ended and the bill outlawing sanctuary cities was signed into law by Greg Abbott.  Let's give Sly the benefit of the doubt and presume he was playing three-dimensional chess with those who would be running whenever elections are held, giving some bold Democrat somewhere ammunition to use against dem dat voted against joining the SB4 lawsuit.  In other words, against the conservatives who aim to replace Stardig and Christie, and also the conservatives seeking to replace the Democrats who voted 'aye' yesterday, all of whom are term-limited off Council: Jerry Davis, Ellen Cohen, Mike Laster, and Larry Green.  (Only Cohen's and Laster's seats appear so much as mildly vulnerable in this scenario, from my POV.)

So we wait now for the first hearing on the SB4 lawsuit, a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of the law filed by the city of El Cenizo and to be heard by US Judge Orlando Garcia on Monday morning, June 26.  (More on the legal maneuvering from Gus Bova at the Observer.)  We'll watch how that matriculates through the courts, eventually up to the Fifth Circuit and perhaps the SCOTUS, while we also play a parlor game about who might file and where if the SCOTX rules favorably on holding Houston city council elections this year.

Seems boring as hell, so perhaps it will get a little more exciting as it plays out.

Wednesday Morning Quarterbacking

-- Democrats are now 0-4 in special election bids.

Democrats tried an inoffensive moderate message in Georgia. They ran a banjo-strumming populist in Montana. They called in the cavalry in South Carolina and tried to catch their foe sleeping through a long-shot in Kansas.

None of it worked.

In the special elections for House seats vacated by Republicans who wound up in President Donald Trump's Cabinet, Democrats went 0-for-4.

What follows there is the predictable gloating from Republicans and excuse-making from people like Kos.  Think Progress offers more of that 'better luck next time' for the Donkeys.

Some of us have lived through this before.  And some of us are so old that we can remember when a Blue Dog managed to win a special election in a deep red suburban Congressional district.  Does the name 'Nick Lampson' ring a bell?

-- "Most expensive race in House history cost $60 million — but there’s little evidence minds were changed".

For months, the district has been flooded with every kind of campaign advocacy imaginable: phone calls, mailers, television commercials, lawn signs and ads showing up on every online platform you can think of. Most households have been receiving multiple phone calls every day and multiple home visits from canvassers every week, and everyone has been exposed to more advertising than they can ever remember seeing. I counted 31 pieces of campaign related mail in just one week. Some residents are even getting campaign texts on their cell phones.

This is because of the astonishing amount of money spent on the race. A typical competitive House race sees a total of about US$5 million spent, and the previous record for the most expensive House race ever was $20 million. During the Georgia 6th special election, the two candidates together spent about $33 million, and outside groups added about another $27 million on top of that. That nearly $60 million total represents almost $100 for every man, woman and child who lives in the district. It is the most expensive U.S. House race in the country’s history.

What’s interesting is what all this money and activity did, and didn’t do.

-- Original: "Most expensive race in House history turns out nearly 58 percent of Georgia district’s voters".  (Interesting for those who don't click on links how the different headlines create an instant bias, isn't it?)

Democrats have some reason to be optimistic.

In the special election that took place in South Carolina’s 5th District on the same day as Georgia’s, Republican Ralph Norman received 51.1 percent of the vote in a district where Trump got 57.3 percent just five months earlier.

In April, Kansas Republican Ron Estes received 52.5 percent of the vote in a district where Trump got 60.4 percent.

In May, Montana Republican Greg Gianforte got 49.9 percent where Trump had won 56 percent.

And in a New York state legislative district where Trump won 60 percent of the vote, a republican candidate polled only 42 percent last month.

On the other hand, the Georgia 6th special election bucks that trend. The 10 Republicans collectively beat Trump’s district vote share of 48.3 percent by two points in the first round of voting, and Handel beat it by four points in the runoff.

Did all that caysh the DCCC and MoveOn and the rest of the Democratic establishment pour into southwest Atlanta motivate Republicans (in an R+21 district) as well as Democrats to vote?  Did they -- in what would be a stunning verdict against them and their strategy and tactics -- deliver a narrow victory for Karen Handel?  The SC outcome tells the tale (and so does No More Mister Nice Blog):

Here was Dave Wasserman of FiveThirtyEight not long before the race was called, on the site's live blog of today's two House special elections:

It’s ... legitimately possible that South Carolina’s result could wind up closer than Georgia’s, which would be astounding.

Here was Wasserman about an half hour before that:

If [Democrat Archie] Parnell loses South Carolina by 4 or 5 points, lots of Democratic activists will point fingers at the party’s hierarchy for not getting more involved.... But it’s possible that Parnell is doing well tonight because he wasn’t hyped, not despite it.

Parnell has also been declared a loser of his race -- but he lost by only 3.2 points in a deep-red district. Right now, Ossoff is trailing Republican Karen Handel by 5.2 points in a district that's also solidly red, but where Hillary Clinton made it a squeaker last November.

To be clear, NMMNB blames the media.  Specifically the conservative media, which is certainly at the root of the problem for Democrats, but sadly not something they can overcome in the next 18 months with a certain generation of voters inculcated on Rush Limbaugh.

If Democrats actually did better in the race that didn't get national attention, I worry that it means Democrats struggle to overcome the relentless, 24/7/365 demonization of their party in the right-wing media, which is basically the mainstream media in much of white America. The South Carolina race was ignored by the rest of the country, which means that allegedly nasty nationwide Democrats were never a factor.

-- Josh Marshall has thoughts.  They're more cautiously optimistic for Team Blue's chances of taking back the House in 2018, but echo much of what's been said above.

-- Playing a different blame game, Matthew Sheffield at Salon points toward the GOP's late tactic in GA-6 in suggesting Ossoff's loss might in part be on Nancy Pelosi.

Thankfully, nobody that I can find has publicly accused the Russians for hacking the election.  Update: But others besides Brad Friedman and Greg Palast have picked up the hacked voting machines angle.

-- David Atkins at Washington Monthly thinks Dems should abandon the Romney Caucus and go back after the Obama voters who voted for Trump.  With aggressively populist and progressive politics and candidates.

In July of 2016, Senator Chuck Schumer made a statement that will go down as one of the greatest political miscalculations in modern history: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

This strategy undergirded every decision of the doomed Clinton campaign, from ignoring the white working class in her Rust Belt firewall, to chasing suburban Republican women in Missouri and the South. It is a strategy that establishment Democratic operatives continue to pursue to this day.

That same strategy may well have cost Democrats a House seat in last night’s special elections, where Democrat Jon Ossoff underperformed expectations in a loss in Georgia’s 6th district, while the more ideologically aggressive Democrat Archie Parnell dramatically overperformed expectations in a loss in South Carolina’s 5th.

The two districts in play last night that could not have better mirrored the dilemma facing Democrats over whether to pursue Trump-averse Republican suburban voters, or working class whites and Obama-Trump switchers. Georgia’s 6th District is full of the former: a traditionally heavy Republican district, it veered away from Donald Trump because its residents are less attuned to Trump’s economic populism and—it was believed—his appeals to bigotry. These are the very voters Clinton and Schumer salivated over, and the national Democratic Party pushed very hard for the seat, spending upwards of $5 million.

South Carolina’s 5th district is much more rural and hardscrabble, and was much more favorable to Trump. Establishment Democrats mostly ignored the race, spending no money there.

In GA-06, Jon Ossoff ran a deliberately anti-ideological campaign. Centrist think tank Third Way bragged that Ossoff used a “centrist message aimed at attracting disillusioned Republican voters.” South Carolina’s Parnell, despite his Goldman Sachs background, ran a much more hard-charging campaign of Democratic values.

[...]

The lesson of the special elections around the country is clear: Democratic House candidates can dramatically outperform Clinton in deep red rural areas by running ideological, populist campaigns rooted in progressive areas. Poorer working class voters who pulled the lever for Trump can be swayed back to the left in surprisingly large numbers—perhaps not enough to win in places like Kansas, Montana and South Carolina, but certainly in other more welcoming climes. Nor is there a need to subvert Democratic principles of social justice in order to accomplish this: none of the Democrats who overperformed Clinton’s numbers in these districts curried favor with bigots in order to accomplish it.

Don't look for most Congressional Democratic candidates running in 2018 to get it.  It would be great if some Green candidates would take this ball and run with it, but in Texas they have to get back on the ballot first.