More Texas Democratic progressives file for 2018

A continuation of the list begun last Wednesday.  Let's take them from 'best' to 'meh' (subject to further reveal on their part).

For Comptroller: Tim Mahoney.

From the bio on his website:

This is what the Austin Chronicle had to say about me on August 21, 2017: “He’s a Jim Hightower protégé who’s been a fixture for decades in Travis County Democratic politics and last year sued Austin Community College [ACC] (where he was once a trustee) after the administration barred Students 4 Bernie from running voter registration events and distributing political literature on campus.”

From my 6 years on the ACC Board, I can tell you that the negativity of the leading Republicans can be beaten. That power can be restored to people, but we need to focus on building local interactive relationships. Groups like Our Revolution, Left Up To Us, and the Democratic Socialists can provide the organizational mechanisms to lead the way. But building that interactive model requires all local groups to understand that building geographic relationships across the whole state is the only way that we can build the momentum to make the change that needs to be done.

[...] I was one of the chief notaries during the Texas Bernie Sanders presidential campaign petition drive, so I know something about a statewide race. We are running this campaign so we can win for Texas, and I would ask for your active support.

This is my kind of Democrat.

For Harris County Judge: Lina Hidalgo.

I'll be voting for the woman who goes to bat for immigrants and the incarcerated every single day over the corporate executive from out of state.  (I will say that her competitor is* was doing a great job cracking on Ed Emmett, though.)

*Update: Mike Nichols is out.


For TX-2: Silky Malik.

Jef Rouner of Free Press Houston (you might recall he was one of last year's Daily Jackasses) interviewed Malik recently, and honestly it reads as if he would really like to get a date with the candidate.  An apparently well-funded support base aside -- she had a campaign manager on board before Ted Poe resigned -- Malik is saying all the right (left) things.  I excerpted the following in this morning's Wrangle; it's worth repeating.

So how do you plan on turning this district blue?

There are two ways a person running for this seat can play it. The first is running a Republican-like campaign, play it close to the center. Maybe you’ll pull 20 percent of the Republican vote. Then you’re at a 50-50 toss-up. I’m definitely not that sort of person or candidate.

What we want to do is look at the largest group of voters, non-voters, and activate them. If nothing else, even if I don’t win but I get more people to give a crap about what’s going on, that’s a huge victory. It’s idealistic, but it’s very important. I think people are tired of these milquetoast candidates and why Democrats can’t win these freakin’ seats. They play it too close to the center. We’re not close to the center. We have no interest in being close to the center.

If I heard every single Democrat say that (and live it), I could consider being a Democrat again.

These next two profiles are strongly conditional to a greater fleshing-out of their stands on the issues, which I find a little thin as of this posting.

-- For Land Commissioner: Miguel Suazo.

From the Chron:

Miguel Suazo, an Austin-based energy-sector attorney who worked as an aide to former U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico, said he will announce Friday that he is challenging Republican incumbent George P. Bush. Bush.

Suazo, 36, is the managing partner of Suazo Legal Group, a practice with locations in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado.

"I am running for Land Commissioner because I am qualified for the office and eager to bring new leadership to Texas," Suazo in a statement declaring his candidacy. "I represent small and large companies and also regular folks who need a job done. I know business and I know people ... I'm self-made, nothing's been handed to me. I intend to bring that approach to the General Land Office."

Suazo, a proponent of blockchain technology, said he may be the first candidate in Texas to launch his campaign using proceeds from Bitcoin investments.

"I am prepared to contribute money that I have earned by saving and investing, not that I got from some trust fund, and earn the rest through the grassroots support of the people of Texas by addressing issues important to Texans," he said in he statement.

More on blockchain here if you need it (and you will, sooner than later).  Blockchain and Bitcoin are symbiotic, but blockchain has many commercial uses beyond its value to the crypto-currency from which it was birthed. There's been a lot of news lately about Bitcoin as it has gone to the moon and back to Earth again in speculative worth recently; here's two articles, one somewhat positive, the other negative, that will help you understand what's up with that.

Suazo's website isn't live, he has Tweeted six times to 45 followers, his Facebook page has the Chron article and a little more, so that's what I linked to above.  This is a little weak for an endorsement.  Further, I'm not convinced that either blockchain or Bitcoin (or their disciples like Suazo) are all that progressive, but it's the future wave, and in order for the two technologies to serve the common people, they need advocates on the left.  Like Suazo.  Hopefully.

Anybody but Pee Bush (or Jerry Patterson) is the real objective here.  Those two goons will have a spirited primary refighting the Alamo siege or trying to get furthest right or whatever they do.

The same holds ...

For Harris County Commissioner: Sammy Casados.

Update: Casados also exited the race just before filing deadline, but there's a handful of others still in.  In a future post I'll screen them for progressive bonafides (or lack thereof).

They don't have to be very much left to be well to the left of former Harris sheriff Adrian Garcia.  There was never much on either Casados' website or Facebook page that told you where he stood on the issues, but he would have been hard-pressed to show up on the right of Garcia or the incumbent, Republican Jack Morman.

Garcia is not now, nor has ever been, anybody's definition of progressive.  As county sheriff he was an enthusiastic enforcer of 287(g), the directive that enabled state and local law enforcement agencies to act as front-line soldiers in the War on Immigrants.  When Garcia resigned to run for Houston mayor in 2015 and was eventually replaced by Ed Gonzalez in 2016, the new sheriff abandoned the practice, but without any noticeable change in how it was enforced.  Since Trump became president, 287(g) has been weaponized throughout the state of Texas.

Garcia also lost to Congressvarmint Gene Green last year in what turned out to be the portly neoliberal's last re-election campaign.  At publication time, Garcia's website does not load.

I'll watch Suazo and Casados pretty closely to see if he demonstrates himself to be the kind of Democrat I can or cannot ultimately vote for in March.  Today, as a block to whichever Roypublican emerges from the GOP primary, Suazo fits the bill, and like Hidalgo should motivate Latin@ turnout throughout Harris County and Texas.  That is critical to statewide Blue prospects next year.  I'm going to say it louder for those in the back: 2018 is a no-excuses year for Latino voter turnout.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance wonders if Donald Trump has ever heard of Krampus as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff gave multiple candidate filing updates, and DBC Green Blog covered the 'looms' of the filing deadline today.

Socratic Gadfly offered his take on Trump, with egging on from top Democrats, naming Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

The actual progressive Texas Democratic candidates -- as well as the ones pretending to be -- are in PDiddie at Brains and Eggs' latest post.

Egberto Willies covered Indivisible Houston's tax protests and net neutrality protests.

Neil at All People Have Value said even if the external world is in disorder, we can still move up and up and up. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

As Texas Leftist slowly makes an effort to get back in the saddle for 2018, he's thankful for the incredible work of all of his blogging colleagues. Before we leap into next year's political hopefuls, it's worth noting that a former Texas elected official made a big move this week. Get ready to see and hear more from Former Houston Mayor Annise Parker in 2018.

Dos Centavos is looking forward to the 2018 Democratic primary, and jobsanger has a bar graph that shows a record number of women are running for Congress in 2018.

Texas Vox suggests to Greg Abbott that Texas' part of  the Volkswagen lawsuit settlement funds -- $289 million -- be dedicated to purchasing electric vehicles for the state fleet and creating green jobs.

And the Lewisville Texan Journal passes along the details of the Texas Smooth Groove Holiday Concert, to be held there on December 22.

================== 

Amid calls for resignations, Texas Standard reports that the Texas Legislature approaches its day of reckoning over the alarming and widespread allegations of rampant sexual misconduct by lawmakers.

A raft of TPPP-bred anti-environmentalists are seizing power in the Trump administration, writes Naveena Sadasivam at the Texas Observer.

The Rivard Report has the story of Mona Patel, who sought San Antonio community services as an amputee and, finding none, built a support network for all of the Alamo City's physically-disabled.

Houston Public Media reports that John Cornyn's bipartisan-supported gun safety bill (which strengthens federal background checks) has become endangered by getting linked to the NRA-favored concealed-carry reciprocity bill.

Chuck Smith at Equality Texas breaks down the Colorado bake shop/same sex marriage case that was argued at SCOTUS.

Free Press Houston's Jef Rouner has an interview with Silky Malik, one of the Democrats running in TX-2 (to replace Ted Poe).  Excerpt:

There are two ways a person running for this seat can play it. The first is running a Republican-like campaign, play it close to the center. Maybe you’ll pull 20 percent of the Republican vote. Then you’re at a 50-50 toss-up. I’m definitely not that sort of person or candidate. 
 
What we want to do is look at the largest group of voters, non-voters, and activate them. If nothing else, even if I don’t win but I get more people to give a crap about what’s going on, that’s a huge victory. It’s idealistic, but it’s very important. I think people are tired of these milquetoast candidates and why Democrats can’t win these freakin’ seats. They play it too close to the center. We’re not close to the center. We have no interest in being close to the center.

Better Texas Blog explains how the Republican tax cut bill threatens local and state public services.

The Bloggess is once again spearheading a grassroots effort to help people in need for the holidays.

Zachery Taylor sees the corporate media assisting (and profiting) from the fraud of televangelism.

Pages of Victory links to Dissident Voice regarding the shake-up and shake-down of China, Saudi Arabia, and the US to explain why he cannot support our country's ensconced-politician class.

Mean Green Cougar Red tries to wrap his mind around flat earthers.

The Houston Communist Party links to the joint statement from the Communist Party of Israel and Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality), which strongly condemns Trump's decision on Jerusalem.

And Harry Hamid thanks one of her blogging muses as a requiem, and acknowledges some of her favorite blogs.

Sunday Soulless Funnies

The latest existential moment for the Democratic Party

Al Franken's resignation "in the coming weeks" created it.  A measure of folks whom I still read for some temperature-taking of Team Donkey seem awfully distressed, irritated, and depressed as the 'et tu, Brute' scene unfolded over the past 48 hours.

The immediate aftermath, with some catchup linkage, was summarized at Brad's yesterday.

The stunning announcement by the popular and dogged comedian-turned-Senator comes after fellow Democrats this week called for him to step down in the wake of several allegations of sexual misconduct said to have occurred before he became a U.S. Senator. Franken, who has been a champion for women's rights during his time in the Senate, maintains he either doesn't recall the incidents at all or remembers them quite differently than reported. He has described the most recent charge leveled against him this week by an unnamed victim, said to have been a Congressional staffer in 2006, as "preposterous". Nonetheless, while expressing confidence he would have been cleared by the Senate Ethics Committee of any wrongdoing, he says he will now step aside before that probe was even able to begin in earnest.

We share excerpts of Franken's remarks on the floor today, which include, as he notes, "some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate [in Alabama] with the full support of his [Republican] party."

You might remember the post I wrote a few weeks ago where I stated that Franken should not step down, but that was blogged before incidents with other women beyond Leeann Tweeden came to light, and also before Tweeden's apparent collusion with conservative raconteur Roger Stone.  There seems to be some consensus that Franken was railroaded, and it's hard not to agree with aspects of that.  But that still doesn't condone his behavior in this new age we're living in, recognized by TIME magazine as the "fastest-moving social change (they've) seen in decades".

And everything's bigger in Texas, you know.  Separate post later on that.

Democrats being unwilling or unable to fight back is a conclusion I reached sometime in 2006.  The sad part -- and I've written this sentence here previously -- is that even the least-informed voter can sense when a politician isn't standing up for themselves against a Republican bully.  And once they understand that a politician who won't fight back for him/herself is a politician who won't be fighting for them ... it's over.  The terrorists, aka the GOP, have already won.

To the moment:

So did Democrats fall for another right-wing trap in pushing Franken out? It wouldn't be the first time. We discuss several such traps -- including one that MSNBC seems to have fallen for this week regarding progressive radio host Sam Seder, before wisely changing course two days later -- with longtime progressive writer and blogger Gaius Publius, who wrote earlier this week about Democrats falling, yet again, into the Republicans' "deficit trap" regarding federal spending on military and social programs. We debate why and whether Democrats fall into these right-wing traps or if they willingly choose to walk into them for some reason.

"Why is it that Democrats seem to be one foot in the Republican camp and afraid to be too much in opposition, and one foot in the Democratic camp and not so fully pro-democratic values as we'd like them to be?", Publius observes as we discuss Franken, the 'deficit trap' and more. "I would argue that it's not fear. We're not dealing with cowards here. We're dealing with people who are, in some sense, compromised by their own values. Their own values are putting them in this position where they can't please anybody."

You might want to dive deeper into that, so listen to the podcast.  The general consensus -- that I could ascertain from the many things I read and watched yesterday -- was that elected Democrats, particularly those calculating they might benefit from ousting Franken, simply aren't fighting the right battle.  At least not the one that diehard Democratic voters believe represents their values.

If ditching Franken to appeal to the female vote -- that should be read as 'the white suburban women vote' -- then that is probably a losing battle.

The Russians hacking the election (sic), aka 21st century McCarthyism, is firing up again like a Los Angeles brushfire.  And there's more blaming of the media for Clinton's loss a year ago.  Digby goes there, citing the Columbia Journalism Review's research.  If you like, I'll save you some time: Yes, her emails.  Reinforcing a narrative Clinton failed to adequately address and was unable to overcome.  Digby's fail is an inability to acknowledge that is not the media's job to lift one candidate over the other (or tear one down more than another).  They may very well do this, but that's in the eye of the beholder; more inference than implication.  The media reported plenty on Trump's pussy-grabbing but it did not sway his voters, not even the Christians.  To suggest heavier reporting of the Access Hollywood tape would have changed enough votes for Clinton to have carried the three Midwestern states she lost is ludicrous.  To assert that some inequality of reporting influenced the outcome of the 2016 election -- similar to blaming Russian bots on Facebook, for example -- is something I find not just false but irresponsible.

Reasonable, rational people -- I realize it's a stretch to call GOP voters that -- are simply not going to conclude what she has.  They don't use the same reasons or rationales.  That's not how it works in this brave new world any more, and Steve M. at NMMNB clarifies.

There isn't a "commonly accepted" moral high ground, because "commonly accepted" would have to include Republicans, whose only morality is "Just win, baby." I'll grant that. But if we look at the results of the 2016 presidential election and conclude that morality doesn't matter anymore because a con man and confessed sexual predator won the presidency, remember that voters did make a moral judgment in that election -- it's just that many of them concluded that Hillary Clinton was the less moral candidate.

[...]

Democrats have to do the right thing -- and they have to fight like hell to demand fair treatment in the press, as well as adequate treatment of Republican misdeeds. You want to imitate Republican tactics? Then work the refs the way Republicans do. Don't abandon common decency the way they do.

You really should click over and read everything I didn't excerpt.

Society is broken when you have one political party who would rather elect a pedophile to the US Senate than a Democrat.  "Moral values" don't exist when voters think the media is lying about the abuse of power and privilege that translates to dozens of instances of sexual misconduct of the kind that surround the president of the United States.  And if you believe in an old man who lives in the clouds will redeem you of whatever sins you are guilty of by simply asking him to do so ... then you are part of our society's criminal dysfunction, and will never be part of the solution until you can disavow yourself of that quaint, ignorant notion.  If you're too afraid to understand this truth, then you really should get out of politics.  It's going to be necessary in one of the first skirmishes of this fight to leave the grandest illusion to the most massive hypocrites (again, the Republicans, for those having trouble keeping up).  Rationales like 'My God is better than yours', as with the political calculus behind Trump's Jerusalem move in the face of global condemnation, or accepting a percentage of North Korean deaths as collateral damage in a nuclear war that results in a democracy for that country simply isn't cutting it.

None of that is what an actual Jesus -- and not a pretend son of God -- would do, and that really shouldn't have to be said or pointed out to anyone with a functioning brain stem.

Sorry if it offends your sensibilities.  If you can't buy it -- and if you still want a Democratic party (I'm ambivalent; I want a better tool to fight back but it's the only one in the box at the moment) -- then you'd better buy this.

... (Democrats) have to focus on the pattern Lithwick describes and communicate the clear message that the Republican Party is the problem. The GOP's legislation is extreme, its contempt for democratic norms is dangerous, and it lacks all morals. (Democrats) need to make that point, persistently. There is a high ground -- but voters need to be reminded again and again that Republicans individually and collectively occupy the lowest possible ground.

If you still want your metaphors religious, then it's time to acknowledge that Democrats have been successfully demonized by actual demons.  Satan has been assisting the GOP whip their asses in Texas for a generation.  God isn't helping rescue the Democrats because apparently they're not helping themselves.

In short, the Donks have an enormous amount of fighting back to do.  Now -- and anywhere -- would be as good a time and place as any to start.  Despite all those wins across the country just a month ago, I still have doubts as to whether they have it in them, but I'm willing to be wrong about that.

Update: "Sacrificing Al Franken in order to capture the moral high ground is not a strategy":

Happy now? With an alleged serial sexual abuser in the White House, and an alleged serial pedophile about to take a seat in the Senate from Alabama, the Democratic Party has driven from office a man whose big offense appears to be occasional groping. But worry not, we’re told, by the scolds. Now that the Democrats have the High Ground, they won’t have to worry about “what-aboutism” going into the 2018 elections. Democrats can use the issue of sexual harassment to bludgeon their Republican opponents. The only problem being, as long as I’ve been covering the Democrats — going on 50 years now — they never had a clue what to do with the high ground once they gained it. Not even once. And being able to shame Republicans assumes Republicans are capable of shame, and there is scant evidence of that. Nor is there even a scintilla of evidence that voters would respond to Democratic bleating from the alleged “high ground.” Any doubts? Check the polls in Alabama.