Bad day for Democrats yesterday

-- "CAVED".

“Today’s cave by Senate Democrats -- led by weak-kneed, right-of-center Democrats -- is why people don’t believe the Democratic Party stands for anything,” Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Stephanie Taylor said in a statement. “These weak Democrats hurt the party brand for everyone and make it harder to elect Democrats everywhere in 2018.”

“A lot of Democrats are channeling their inner Marco Rubio today,” tweeted MoveOn Washington Director Ben Wikler, referring to the oft-caving Florida senator. Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, called it a “betrayal.” CREDO labeled Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer “the worst negotiator in Washington -- even worse than Trump.”

Much of the criticism came from within the building, too, especially from the House side. “I do not see how a vague promise from the Senate Majority Leader about a vague policy to be voted on in the future helps the Dreamers or maximizes leverage the Democrats and American people have over the Republicans right now,” Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the most vocal advocate for Dreamers in Congress, said in a statement.

Stace seems more irritated than usual.  There's a little spin that Schumer is playing 3D chess while Yertle McConnell is crowning his checkers.  So maybe it's all a ploy to motivate the base, aka make them frothing mad.  At least we finally get a 538 post that isn't sports-related.

Still feels like I've watched this shitshow before.

-- There might not be many Democrats on the ballot in Dallas County.

The Dallas County Republican Party has sued to get over 120 Democratic candidates off the ballot in one of the state's biggest Democratic strongholds.

Republicans argued in a lawsuit filed Friday that the Democrats' county chair, Carol Donovan, did not sign the candidates' ballot applications before submitting them to the secretary of state's office as required by state law. Instead, someone else put her signature on the applications, the lawsuit alleges.

"Laws have consequences and the law is crystal clear, only the county Chair can sign candidate applications, not others purporting to be the county Chair," Missy Shorey, chairwoman of the Dallas County GOP, said in a statement Monday.

The list of 128 Democrats targeted by the GOP includes candidates for U.S. House down to justice of the peace. Among the incumbents named in the lawsuit are state Sen. Royce West as well as state Reps. Eric Johnson, Victoria Neave and Toni Rose.

At least the courts aren't going to let this lawsuit take the scenic route.  We ought to know something pretty quickly, and odds are long that a judge knocks everybody off the ballot on a technicality.  But stranger things ...

-- The Texas AFL-CIO hosted two gubernatorial candidates on Saturday.  They then endorsed one on Monday.  Not the labor activist who worked with Cesar Chavez, either.

These would be the same two candidates who've already been feted by Evan Smith on his TeeTee Events.  Doncha love it when the media and the bosses pick the nominees for the rest of us?  Seems like Gilberto Hinojosa could just save that money he's spending on the primary election.  But then the consultants, the direct mail houses, and the teevee stations wouldn't get paid.  So this farce has to maintain a semblance of democracy.

One personal bright spot was Bobo O'Jerk getting tubed.

COPE, @TexasAFLCIO's political arm, endorses @LupeValdez for governor. Declines to endorse @BetoORourke for U.S. Senate. My story on the Valdez-@randrewwhite "debate" before COPE members Saturday: https://t.co/97QI4LfgZ2 #txpolitics #tx2018 #txlege pic.twitter.com/HR0WdBskcw

— Bob Garrett (@RobertTGarrett) January 22, 2018

Nevertheless, what gets puffed up must be deflated.  Valdez is already the subject of one account suggesting that she is not ready for prime time.

Last week, Democrat Lupe Valdez told one interviewer — the Texas Tribune’s Evan Smith — that, if elected the state’s next governor, she would not close the door to tax increases if they turn out to be necessary. “We keep the door open to a lot of stuff,” Valdez said. “Come on in.”

Just a few hours later, she told another interviewer — Karina Kling of Spectrum News — that tax hikes are off the table. “No, I would not look at that,” Valdez said. “I’d have to lose a leg before I do that and I certainly don’t want to lose a leg.”

She must’ve seen something scary in between those conversations. Or, more likely, she heard from a herd of handlers.

Others want to de-emphasize the 'vast differences' between her and Andrew White.

"I don't believe they are diametrically at odds with each other the way most people think they are," said Fort Worth-based consultant J.D. Angle, a top strategist in former state Sen. Wendy Davis' unsuccessful 2014 campaign for governor.

Or just gloss over that whole women's reproductive freedoms thing.

But (Wendy Davis) added, “When we’re looking at candidates, we want to know that what we’re hearing from them is true to their beliefs and values and not simply articulated as part of a campaign. I would say that about anyone who doesn’t have a proven track record.”

[...]

... Rosemary Hook, a career coach and recruiter who attended a recent Texas Tribune forum featuring White, said that she is “one of those common-sense Democrats — really, conservative Democrats.”

She appeared to embrace White’s ability to be personally pro-life and pro-choice on policy.

“You can be pro-life and pro-choice. We need to stop acting like that’s not an option. It doesn’t have to be one or the other,” she said.

So if you find yourself wanting to stand over there on the far right with Rosemary Hook and Andrew White ... well, looks like the co-front runner is getting his Christian conservative hypocrisy out there early for all those potential Republican voters.

The church where he is an elder may be steadfastly opposed to gay marriage, and considers homosexuality a sin.

But Andrew White, a Houston entrepreneur running for governor as a Democrat, says it will not affect his decisions as governor in any way.

"It's a church-state issue and there is a separation in my mind," White said. "My personal faith is personal to me, but I will not let it interfere with how I govern."

White's church-and-state position surfaced anew after he Tweeted on Thursday: "I'm for marriage equality and everyone deserves to be treated equally under the law."

For years, Republican leaders in Austin have been often criticized for letting their church-going religious beliefs bleed over into their official state policy on various issues.

The facts: White, 45, is an elder at Christ the King Presbyterian Church in Houston, a conservative congregation that is a member of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).

In recent days, he has taken heat from other Democrats for being personally against abortion, though he has said he recognizes that abortion remains legal and that he would not try to change that if elected governor.

According to online policy papers, PCA opposes same-sex marriage and "does not regard it to be in keeping with God's intentions for marriage.

"We hope that the recent Supreme Court ruling does not become the occasion for limiting the religious and free-speech rights of believers and churches who, like others for thousands of years, sincerely believe in traditional marriage," states a church statement from 2015.

"The PCA, like other evangelical, conservative, orthodox, and traditional Christians from many denominations, believes that from creation God ordained the marriage covenant to be a bond only between one man and one woman. That understanding is what the Church has always believed, taught, and confessed. It is based upon the teachings of the Holy Scriptures and is clearly stated in the doctrinal standards of the PCA."

On homosexuality, the PCA holds a hard-line position.

"Given the serious threat that sexual perversion generally, and homosexuality in particular, represents to young people in our society, the congregations of PCA are encouraged to study the Scriptures, to pray for God's mercy and truth to triumph in the lives of people involved or affected by homosexuality" . . . and encourage church leaders "to warn parents of the homosexual agenda being promoted through the agency of government schools."

"God has plainly spoken of homosexuality in his Word, denouncing both the act and the desire as a sin, condemning this perversion as unnatural, a degrading passion, an indecent act, an error, an abomination, and hence worthy of death," a scriptural reference that is excerpted in the PCA's position on the 'homosexual agenda' from 1999.

In contrast, the Texas Democratic Party platform calls for Democrats to "denounce efforts to not comply with the U.S Supreme Court court decisions which guaranteed marriage equality to all couples, (and) to support municipal, state, and federal nondiscrimination laws which protect LGBTQ individuals in all aspects of their lives including housing, employment, adoption, education, commerce, and public accommodation." It also calls for Democrats to "support the factual inclusion of the LGBTQ movement and individuals in history and social studies classes."

White said he sees no divergence between his church's polity and how he would govern if elected governor.

An elder in a church that has denounced gays as "worthy of death" doesn't see any conflict in his alleged support of gay marriage and his church's instruction.

Jeebus Kristofferson, that must be one hell of a mote in his eye.

At this point, you might be thinking it would be best if you join that caucus of Democrats who vote in the GOP primary.  This is not a joke.

Most important election in Texas is the #Republican March primary, and people who care about business and the economy to get involved now. "Vote in primaries, or watch extremists destroy Texas' economy" #txlege #tcot #Houston #HouNews https://t.co/NfvRoa4AU6 @HoustonChron pic.twitter.com/azuYpbyGMr

— ChrisTomlinson (@cltomlinson) January 19, 2018

I know people who do this.  Their rationale: it's the only way to moderate the Republicans.  (How's that worked out for ya?)  Another rich excuse: it's the only way their vote actually counts.

Would you like one barf bag or two?

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance marched in solidarity with women over the weekend, and stands shoulder to shoulder with them as the second year of the quest for equal rights, decent treatment, and fair consideration is a clear demonstration that they are twice as pissed off as last year.

Here's the lefty blog post and news round-up from last week.

Michael Li interprets the latest SCOTUS action on Texas redistricting.

G. Elliott Morris gives a short course in poll tracking.

Two weeks after Houston native Nathan Neblett became Tarrant County's elections administrator ... he's out, via PoliTex.  Commissioners will address the vacancy in their meeting this week, but don't expect to tap a replacement before the March 6 primary.

DBC Green blog praised a couple of the Democratic candidates who spoke at Our Revolution Gulf Coast's quarterly meeting.

EgbertoWillies.com said that many Democrats seemed to have believed that because Trump is unpopular they would coast to a blue wave.  Those who warned were attacked as pessimists; not reading the data objectively.  The double-digit Democratic generic polling lead has evaporated.  There is work to be done.

The Lion Star videotaped interviews with Gina Ortiz Jones and Judy Canales, two of the Democrats running in TX-23, and the Lewisville Texan Journal covered the debate between Will Fisher and Linsey Fagan, contending to challenge incumbent Republican Michael Burgess in TX-26.  Here's an excerpt:

Probably the most interesting moment of the debate came much later when they were asked about the other side of the 2016 ticket. Both candidates strongly supported Bernie Sanders in a Democratic primary race that has been called into question by Sanders supporters and some party officials. The issue remained contentious among Democrats nationally right up until the general election. (Ed. note: The issue remains contentious; legally so.)

Fisher said he pivoted, vocally supported Clinton and proudly voted for her. Fagan said she cast a write-in ballot for Sanders. She referred to the DNC as a threat to democracy.

“You guys could boo me, I would want to boo myself,” she said. “But I was part of that group that said, ‘I’m done. I’m done with politics. I don’t trust any of these people. These people don’t care about me. They don’t care about my voice. My voice is being superceded by superdelegates, it doesn’t matter anyway.'”

In These Times observes the pathetic reality of Houston being rebuilt post-Harvey on a foundation of immigrant labor ... and theft of their wages.

jobsanger finds merit-based immigration to be a bad idea, hurting workers by depressing wages, thereby helping corporations.

Texas Standard -- linking to the Statesman -- asks if the state ought to be insuring its $7.4 billion (guesstimated worth) of property, rather than self-insuring it as is currently done.

Michael Barajas of the Texas Observer reports on a lawsuit questioning the conduct of Port Arthur police and the staff of a hospital there after a mentally ill patient wound up dead for refusing to take off his underwear.  And in an ongoing examination of the challenges facing rural Texans, Christopher Collins finds that if they want decent health care, they'd be best off self-deporting to New Hampshire.

(click to enlarge)

Texas and other Southern states are home to small-town doctor shortages, skyrocketing rates of preventable disease among rural residents and some of the highest uninsured rates in the nation, according to a new report that places Texas’ rural health care failings in a national context for the first time.

The “report card,” published last month by researchers at Texas Tech University’s F. Marie Hall Institute for Rural and Community Health, examines each state’s rural health care in terms of mortality, quality of life and access to care. Texas was slapped with a grade of “D-” and ranked 36th out of 47 states (New Jersey, Delaware and Rhode Island were not included in the analysis for lack of rural counties). Among other factors, Texas was dinged for high rates of death from heart disease and stroke in rural areas.

Better Texas blog has an update on the Lege's efforts to stabilize the individual health insurance market (better known as the Affordable Care Act).

Socratic Gadfly has some thoughts on the nuances of universal healthcare, Medicare for All, co-pays, and the positions on all of those of Beto O'Rourke and Tom Wakely.

Stuart Williams urges Texas Democrats to compete in rural areas.

Neil at All People Have Value shared a picture from the weekly John Cornyn Houston office protest, held each Tuesday at 11:30 am to 1 pm, at 5300 Memorial Drive.

And Harry Hamid has been ill long enough as to be hallucinating.

Sunday Checkup Funnies

Scattershooting shitholes

-- A Houston man fell into a sewer last October when a manhole cover near US 59 was left uncovered.  He shattered his ankle, went undiscovered for nine days, ate bugs and snakes to survive ... and the hell he's living hasn't ended yet.

“I have nightmares,” Courtney told Free Press Houston in an interview this week about the personal injury lawsuit he’s planning. “I get close to any kind of hole and I start freaking out. I have panic attacks. Since October I haven’t even sat on the toilet once to take a shit. I do it in the shower. I don’t even want to touch my own ass any more. I don’t want to touch shit anymore; I was down in a shit hole.”

There's a Trump joke in there somewhere, but I don't want to look for it.

-- "Shithole countries" is essentially the official Republican party line on immigration now.  Everybody but them already knew that it always has been; they've just been forced to be out about it because Trump, you know, 'speaks his mind'.

If you’re arguing against race-conscious, pro-minority hiring or college admissions in the United States today, your main rhetorical weapons are quotas, set-asides, and merit. Your goal, politically, is to be perceived as advocating nondiscrimination. Your pitch is that we should treat people as individuals, not as members of racial or ethnic groups. The worst thing you can say is that, behind all the talk about quotas, set-asides, and merit, what you’re really interested in is helping white people.

Trump made the mistake of saying that part out loud in the Oval Office on Jan. 11. Republicans have spent years transplanting the careful language of quotas, set-asides, and merit to immigration. They said their goal was to get more productive immigrants, not whiter ones. In a flash, Trump blew up all of that. He blurted out an ethnic calculus behind the rhetoric. And his party is still trying to clean up the damage by obfuscating what he said and twisting his words to conform to the party’s race-neutral rhetoric.

[...]

That’s why Trump’s allies are ... recasting his outburst in the familiar tactical language of the affirmative action debate. The Democratic approach to immigration, (Sen. Tom) Cotton told (CBS News' John) Dickerson, is “to create more quotas, more set-asides for other countries.” (DHS Secretary Kirstjen) Nielsen, when asked what Trump had said in the Jan. 12 meeting about immigration from Africa, offered the same spin: “What I heard him saying was that he’d like to move away from a country-based quota system to a merit-based system.” Trump’s concern isn’t really about Africa or Europe, the argument goes. It’s about fairness.

There are two problems with this argument. One is that the immigration system isn’t unfair to Europeans. Every month, the Diversity Visa Lottery allocates more visas to Europeans, on a per capita basis, than to Africans. When you factor in the discrepancy in applications—Africans are more likely to apply than Europeans—a European applicant is much more likely to get in. More broadly, among the entire population of foreign-born U.S. residents, those accepted from sub-Saharan Africa are more likely to have or obtain some college education, and almost as likely to have or obtain a four-year degree, as those accepted from Europe or Canada. Immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa are substantially more likely to participate in the U.S. labor force than immigrants from Europe or native-born Americans—perhaps in part because, on average, they’re younger.

The second problem is that behind the rhetoric of merit, there’s a cesspool of prejudice. What irks many whites about immigration and affirmative action isn’t quotas or set-asides, which were widely accepted when they favored whites. It’s suspicion that quotas and set-asides now favor nonwhites. That’s what Trump expressed last summer, when he complained in an Oval Office meeting that Haitians coming to the United States “all have AIDS” and that people coming from Nigeria would never “go back to their huts.” Last week, he exposed it again. The hole full of filth isn’t in Africa or Haiti. It’s in the president’s head. And his friends are trying to cover it up.

Yeah, conservatives are bigots.  Whoodathunk?

-- Regarding #TX07 developments:  Stace confirms for me that I've got the right candidates in mind for my next Congress person.  From the debate last week, and their positions on the government shutdown over immigration obstinance by the GOP...

• Fletcher: Work across the aisle, no shut down. (Because that has worked so well, huh?)
• Alex T – No Shutdown, we need reform. (Y los DREAMers, que?)
• Laura Moser:  Yes! Fight! (I liked her ánimo)
• Sanchez:  Yes on shutdown. (Good)
• Joshua:  Tough decision because of gov’t employees affected, but yes! (Good way to preface it)
• Cargas:  No Shutdown, “we are better than Republicans” (The fight makes you better than Republicans)
• Westin:  Yes. (Good)

I'll keep them ranked Moser and Westin in a first place tie, followed by Sanchez and Butler neck and neck for third. The rest, for me, are out of the running for my March 6 vote.

-- Read this insightful analysis of the Fifth Circuit's new judges, Don Willett and James Ho, the remaining vacancies on the appellate bench and the federal district courts within the circuit, and the possible appointees from David Lat at Above the Law.  Warning: it's heavier on the conservative cheerleading than you may be able to tolerate.  Know your enemies.  Excerpt:

Even after the Ho and Willett confirmations, there are still three current and future vacancies on the Fifth Circuit: the seats of Judges Edith Brown Clement (Louisiana), W. Eugene Davis (Louisiana), and E. Grady Jolly (Mississippi). For Davis’s seat, the nominee is Kyle Duncan, and for Clement’s seat, the nominee is Chief Judge Kurt Engelhardt. I predict that both Duncan and Engelhardt, deemed “well qualified” by the ABA, will be confirmed.

Kyle Duncan, currently in private practice at his own firm, previously served as general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and as Louisiana’s first solicitor general. His work on such controversial matters as Hobby Lobby and Gloucester County School Board v. G.G. (aka the Gavin Grimm case) made him friends among conservatives, who strongly support his nomination, and enemies among liberals, who strongly oppose it. But Duncan got voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on a party-line vote, and I expect him to win confirmation along similar lines. (His most serious obstacle was actually his home-state senator, John Kennedy — a Republican, but miffed over how little the White House consulted with him — but Senator Kennedy came around after Duncan’s hearing, pretty much ensuring eventual confirmation.)

Chief Judge Kurt Engelhardt should be an even easier sell. He has ample judicial experience — a judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana since 2001, chief judge since 2015 — and he did well at his hearing. As Carl Tobias, University of Richmond law professor and longtime analyst of the judiciary, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “I thought that the judge did well in answering a number of difficult questions, especially from Democrats.” There’s no reason for any Republicans to defect from supporting his nomination, either in committee or on the Senate floor.

That count of three current and future vacancies on the Fifth Circuit, based on the tallies on the U.S. Courts website, does not include the Texas-based seat of Judge Edward Prado, since that’s still subject to his confirmation as ambassador to Argentina. But I predict that the moderate and well-regarded jurist will be confirmed to the post (despite his lack of diplomatic experience; many ambassadorships go to non-career diplomats, often friends or fundraisers of the president, and Judge Prado has great credentials when measured against the typical non-career diplomat). If that happens, look for his seat to be filled by one of the two runners-up in the Texas Fifth Circuit sweepstakes, Judge Reed O’Connor (N.D. Tex.) or Andy Oldham, recently promoted to serve as general counsel to Governor Greg Abbott.

Oldham's star is rising fast in Republican judiciary circles.

(There was a little game of musical chairs down in Texas: Governor Abbott’s former GC, Jimmy Blacklock, got appointed to Judge Willett’s former seat on the Texas Supreme Court, making way for Oldham to take over as general counsel. This is a modified version of a game plan I suggested last May during the Fifth Circuit deadlock: appoint Willett ahead of Oldham, despite Oldham’s similarly superb credentials, because that would allow Oldham — still quite young by judicial-nominee standards, as a 2005 Harvard Law School graduate — to take Willett’s SCOTX seat and get more experience.)

2018 needs to derail this train.