Eric Holder for president?

Been wanting to do a post about his germinating presidential ambitions since before he came to Houston in June for an "intimate, high-dollar fundraiser".  It's been almost two weeks since he was on Colbert and pseudo-declared, and he's said so again.

Once again I shan't bury the lede: Holder is in a three-way tie for first in my sports book for the 2020 Dem nom, and here's a few reasons why.

1.  Holder should bring back the voters who sat out 2016.

2.  Black Democrats, especially those of a certain vintage, are simply disinclined to support candidates on the left like Bernie Sanders.  They are more religious and more conservative, and older African Americans as we know turn out for Democrats like it was an extension of Sunday morning church service (which 'Souls to the Polls' is, of course).  If you need evidence, see Doug Jones, Alabama.  But this piece from Briahna Joy Gray about the awakening political power of the black female vote, more specifically credited with carrying Jones to victory, is direct and a must-read.  One short excerpt:

Recall that the majority of black women under 35 cast their lot with Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders during the 2016 Democratic primary, and about 26% of black Americans identify as independents. Moreover, young voters of color disproportionately chose to stay home in 2016 rather than vote for Hillary Clinton. 

Extending the premise in the last sentence: millennials, especially in Texas, may be getting louder but still aren't showing up on Election Day (at least in the primaries).

Before these digressions get too far, let's return to Holder.

3.  I can vividly recall being at my precinct convention in the spring of 2008, where there were almost 250 people gathered (when there have been less than 10 at every one before and since) and listened to my black neighbors close to my own age say that while they respected Barack Obama's bid for the nomination, they simply could not support it because they didn't think the country was ready for a black president.  Which was why they were caucusing for Hillary.  (You may recall that Sheila Jackson Lee was also an early Clinton supporter ten years ago.)  Meanwhile, all the young white kids in my precinct were caucusing for Obama, and in Texas Clinton won the primary but Obama won the caucuses, so they wound up splitting the delegates.  Which is part of the reason the Texas two-step no longer exists, but that's also a digression.

The point -- so the logic goes -- is that America is ready for another black president to clean up everything that Trump has fucked up.  Not only that, but Trump, by trying to undo everything Obama did, has made it personal.  He is engendering a "blacklash" to Trump's 2016 "whitelash".

A reasonable enough premise.

To be clear, Holder would not be a Democrat I would vote for under any circumstance.  He could have prosecuted the banker gangsters in the wake of the Great Depression of 2008-09 despite whatever Obama wanted; the USAG has that independent discretion and authority (as Jeff Sessions and Trump are demonstrating).  In his post-Obama life Holder went to work for a tassel-loafered law firm, Covington Burley, whose clients include some of the worst corporations with a few of the biggest legal problems you can think of: Uber, Facebook, the NFL.  Yes, Eric Holder's law firm is actually defending the NFL's owners against Colin Kaepernick's lawsuit alleging their collusion/blackballing him from playing professional football in their league.

Another report has him going way too easy on the opioid manufacturer McKesson while he was the nation's top cop by exploiting his cozy relationship with their top attorney, who had previously worked at ... Covington Burley.

Some people might smell a quid pro quo somewhere in there.

But keep in mind that Democrats in 2020, no matter what happens in three months, are just gonna wanna win, and as Michael J. Fox said in a movie once, they'll crawl across the desert and drink the sand if they think they see an oasis -- even if it's a mirage.  The centrists combined with the black vote might be unstoppable irrespective of scandal, baggage, and misguided Obama nostalgia.  (He and Joe Biden both, for that matter.)  Still, I count at least two more strikes against Holder.

Holder has shown a tendency to play things safe politically. He has called the progressive push to eliminate the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency a “gift to Republicans” and is urging Democrats not to talk about impeachment on the midterm trail.

That last leaves him opposed to one of the very few people willing to spend tens of millions of his own dollars on Democratic infrastructure, Tom Steyer.  Here is the part where I echo Libby Watson at Splinter: Trust no billionaire.

Maybe—and this is just a thought—we shouldn’t have individual billionaires set the agenda for a political party, let alone one that’s supposed to represent working people (but doesn’t). A party run by billionaires, however good their intentions might be, will never do what needs to be done—like ending the existence of billionaires, just as a start.

So while it's possible Holder cannot withstand scrutiny of his record, stances, and ethical conduct, his fellow dark horses at this too-early stage are also flailing.  Wrecking both sides of her street, Elizabeth Warren outs herself as a capitalist.  Trump cannot wait to go all First Peoples on her, either.

Congressman Joaquin Castro, standing in for his brother, goes mealy-mouthed about ICE.  That's not helping Julian with their base, nor will it help any Latino who actually wants to be president (and not just vice-president) who stands off on this.  There is no raft of law-and-order Democrats -- forget "moderate" Republicans -- waiting to board this ship on a Donkey.

(The "Abolish ICE" political opportunity almost backfired on Democrats in Congress; they let the GOP instantly call their bluff.  But then they turned the tables on Paul Ryan, et.al., so maybe the Donks are not as dumb as they seem.  Republicans are masters at inflaming their base with promises they cannot keep.  So it's important to realize that it goes like this: Democrats outside of Congress should be the ones summoning the meager amount of courage to pass the litmus test; Democratic hopefuls committed to chasing the mythical crossover Republican voter are the ones leaving the chant and the hashtag to the activists.  Julian Castro -- assuming his brother is speaking for him; I can't find the former HUD secretary on the record -- is the wrong one of those.)

Kirsten Gillibrand might have an Al Franken problem.  And not with just George Soros but with women, amazingly enough.  The depth and breadth of these objections shocked me, and are excerpted below.

Many of these donors said that either they were unhappy with Gillibrand or knew plenty of people who were. The 2020 race is still years away, but as donors start to shop around, her comments on Clinton and Franken could be a factor.

“I viewed it as self-serving, as opportunistic ― unforgivable in my view,” said Rosalind Fink, a New York donor. “Since then, I have not purposely attended any fundraiser where she was there. And there is absolutely no way I will support her.”

Fink said she condemned Franken’s behavior, but she believed the Senate should have investigated the allegations thoroughly before forcing him out.

“I think it was a big mistake,” said Irene Finel Honigman, another Clinton donor from New York, adding, “I was not that impressed with her to begin with. I think she certainly had potential, but as for many people, this kind of sealed the deal.”

[...]

Susie Tompkins Buell, a major Democratic Party donor who has championed female politicians, also said she was reconsidering her support for senators who called for Franken to resign.

[...]

Jill Farber Bramson, a Democratic donor and activist in Michigan, said she knew a number of women ― who tended to be older ― who were deeply disappointed when Gillibrand spoke out against Franken.

“They had always really liked Kirsten Gillibrand very much,” she said. “They really respected her. ... They were just devastated that she pushed, they felt, all too hard and all too soon to have him resign.”

(You should read the full HuffPo piece for the context, including the many powerful Democratic female donors who defend Gillibrand.)

At Netroots Nation over in NOLA this weekend, a surge of ballot-stuffing centrists have propelled ... wait for it ... Terry McAuliffe into the lead over Bernie Sanders for their Crowdpac-sponsored straw poll for the 2020 presidential nom.  Kamala Harris is now third, with Joe Biden fourth and Warren fifth.  The rest, including those I've already mentioned above trail far behind.  As Kuffner says, 'it's a data point', but as usual, you can flush it after reading it.

Mark it Sanders, Biden, and Holder as the three front-runners with 2.25 years to go.

Alyson Kennedy for US Senator, Texas

Found someone I can vote for at the top of my November ballot.

“We invite workers and youth to join us knocking on doors in cities, towns and farming areas, discussing how we can rebuild the labor movement and forge the unity that is necessary for us to fight effectively,” said Alyson Kennedy, candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas. “We will join workers’ picket lines, fights to defend abortion rights, actions demanding prosecution of killer cops and protests against deportations, calling for amnesty for undocumented immigrants.”

Kennedy's name will not appear on the Texas ballot; she will be a qualified write-in, according to the statement from the Socialist Workers Party, via The Militant.  Hat tip Ballot Access News.

I would say that the SWP, being Trotskyite in origin and leaning today (though that is contentious internally; click for more) is somewhat to the left of where I find myself these days.  But the views of the candidate and the party are coming closer to mine than the centrist corporate Democrats holding a death grip on the Donkey Party.

Kennedy was the SWP's presidential nominee in 2016.  Here's an interview from then.



And another where she speaks about women's reproductive freedoms.  More:

She was among the first wave of women who broke the barriers that coal bosses used to exclude women from underground mining jobs. She has been part of numerous United Mine Workers union battles in the coalfields, from West Virginia to Alabama to Utah. From 2003 to 2006, she was among those in the front ranks of a union-organizing battle at the Co-Op coal mine outside Huntington, Utah. The miners there, a majority (of them) immigrants from Mexico, fought for UMW representation to win safe working conditions, an end to abuse by the bosses, and improved wages.

Kennedy joined the teachers on strike in Oklahoma this spring — part of a wave of battles across the country —  and the July 12 rally in Columbus, Ohio, where more than 10,000 union miners, Teamsters, bakery workers and others rallied to demand that the government fund their pensions.

If you recall, the Texas AFL-CIO hesitated in January to give Bob O'Rourke their endorsement.

Explaining the decision not to make an endorsement in the Senate contest, (AFL-CIO President Rick) Levy also said some members "had significant concerns about the congressman's commitment to fighting for working people and, unfortunately, he wasn't at the convention to address any of those concerns."

  

One of those concerns was likely O'Rourke's support in 2015 for allowing then-President Barack Obama to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement with 11 Pacific Rim countries. It was vocally opposed by labor unions — including the Texas AFL-CIO — who believed it would threaten American jobs. 

Ultimately the union caved, you know, because "not Ted Cruz".  O'Rourke gave one of his typical double-speak explanations for his TPP vote.

O'Rourke stood by his vote to give Obama so-called trade promotion authority, saying the choice was to let the Democratic president negotiate the deal or let it fall to Republican committee chairmen in the House. He noted it did not mean that he supported the trade deal itself, about which he said he still has "some outstanding concerns" regarding its impact on his El Paso-based district.

In other words, he was for it before he was against it.  

Obama's full-court press for TPP failed, but it succeeded in alienating union rank-and-file (because of the bitter aftertaste of Bill Clinton's NAFTA), and labor's resentment can reasonably be implicated as the primary cause of Hillary Clinton's defeat in the three Rust Belt "firewall" states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.  This was no unforeseen upset; in July of 2016, over two years ago, the threat was on high alert.

That's a far bigger deal than Russian meddling on Facebook and Twitter.  It's probably a bigger deal than "misogyny", generalized.  It's probably even a bigger deal than the voter suppression we know about in Wisconsin and in Michigan (Vox's evidence disputes this).  Update: So does Carl Beijer.

(T)he case that Russian intervention was decisive ultimately depends not on anything we can see in the data, but on completely unsubstantiated theories about what's going on inside of the data, buried beneath an massive avalanche of statistical noise, bad polling, underdetermination, and pure fantasy.

It  was -- and is -- most certainly a greater factor than voting for a non-duopoly candidate.

And I like it better than simply undervoting the US Senate race.  I'm looking forward to seeing Ms. Kennedy swing through Houston.

Tuesday Toon: The Centrist Democrat's Dilemma

(Democrat pictured may or may not be Beto O'Rourke.)

The Weekly Wrangle

With less than a hundred days remaining before the November election, the Texas Progressive Alliance's blog posts and related news took note of the temperature rising on statewide candidates and debates -- or lack thereof.

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs watched as Ted Cruz suddenly flinched, probably at his sagging internal polling numbers, and acquiesced to five debates with his surging challenger, Beto O'Rourke.

Socratic Gadfly gives his snarky lowdown on the proposed Cruz-O'Rourke face-offs.

Justin Miller at the Texas Observer sees Democratic lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Mike Collier with a problem: Dan Patrick ain't taking his bait.  The following excerpt reveals the reasons:

Patrick’s unwillingness to debate Collier is the calculation of an incumbent on his heels. Recall that Patrick debated his Democratic opponent, Leticia Van de Putte, in 2014 and even debated then-San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro over immigration policy, just for fun. Now, he has a lot to lose and little to gain from having to defend his anti-trans bathroom crusade on TV for potentially millions to see. With a huge incumbency advantage and an inherently favorable electorate, he has absolutely no incentive to engage with Collier on anything. Property taxes might be soaring around the state, but Patrick’s betting there’s nary a normal Texan who’d directly associate that with his record as lieutenant governor— and he’d prefer to keep it that way, for good reason. Patrick has blamed local officials for rising property taxes, passed toothless relief bills that don’t do anything, all while avoiding the real problem: the GOP’s endless anti-tax fervor has made it so that the state doesn’t have enough money to fund public education and other services.

Meanwhile, the TSTA Blog is not surprised by the lite gov's intransigence on making schools safer.

Both Patrick and Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller were urged to stop ignoring their challengers and debate them by the Houston Chronicle's editorial board, but the Dallas News has a more pragmatic view of the likelihood of downballot debates (tldr; slim and none, and Slim just left town).  TXAG Ken Paxton has been notably duplicitous about squaring off with Justin Nelson.



Progrexas borrows the story from the TexTrib about Dem ag commish candidate Kim Olson's tribulations while serving in Iraq.

The Los Angeles Times reported on the allegations against Olson in 2006, and she discusses the episode at length in her memoir, “Iraq and Back.” But until the Austin American-Statesman published a story about the investigation earlier this month, the ignominious end to Olson’s military career had not figured in the race for agriculture commissioner.

(The AAS piece is the long read, and highly recommended.)

Every single post from last week at Grits for Breakfast also comes with a 'recommended reading' checkmark, but highlighted for the Wrangle is this take in Scott Henson's weekly roundup about the $7 million legal fight AG Paxton has waged to prevent air conditioning TDCJ facilities for the oldest and most ill of the state's incarcerated.

Ty Clevenger at Lawflog notes that some members of the Texas federal judiciary seem to be involved in a #MeToo moment.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is investigating three San Antonio bankruptcy judges in response to allegations that they covered up sexual misconduct by the former court clerk and permitted retaliation against a whistleblower, according to records provided by a former employee.

Durrel Douglas at Houston Justice tells us about #ProjectOrange, which has as its goal to register a thousand people to vote who are behind bars.

Jonathan Tilove at First Reading sees the ongoing litigation against Alex Jones as an existential moment for fake news. 

Cary Clack at the Texas Observer implores Greg Abbott to do the right thing and remove that dishonest Confederate plaque from the Capitol.

Harvey Kronberg's Quorum Report has news about the TRS vote last week.

The board of the Texas Retirement System has reduced its assumed rate of return on its investments, adding another $1.7 billion liability to its pension fund.

The vote, an outcome of the pension fund’s most recent five-year experience study, lowers the rate of investment returns from 8 percent to a more realistic 7.25 percent, which mirrors recent economic outlooks. The decision, which has been discussed for a number of months, was no surprise to either teacher groups or the Texas Retired Teachers Association.

“The burden is now on the Texas legislature to step up and provide the necessary funding ... and give educators peace of mind that they will not face cuts in their pensions.”

Neil at You Must Act Right Now took part in a protest at the home of an owner of the location of the proposed baby jail in Houston.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston borrows a talking point from the GOP and condemns the use of the word "socialist".  (He's old; he doesn't get the new kids on the Democratic bloc.)

Hopkins County cattle rancher Karl Ebel is an East Texas Taoist philosopher preaching the gospel of preservation in Greensource DFW's latest installment of 'People and Prairies'.

The Texas Living Waters Project frets about the decline of the alligator gar.

The repeated spraying of both public visitors and winged migrants of a Hill Country refuge spotlights the dangers of uncareful pesticide usage, writes Monica Maeckle at the Rivard Report.

Chip Wells at Beyond Bones begins a series about lost or forgotten Houston sports history, starting with the baseball stadium that would not die (not the Astrodome, but close).

The Smithsonian has a fascinating reveal: according to recent artifact discoveries, there were people living in Texas pre-Clovis period.

Archaeologists have been hunting for signs of the first inhabitants of the Americas at an area known as the Gault Site outside Killeen, Texas, ever since anthropologists discovered signs of early human occupation there in 1929. However, due to poor management of the land, looting, and even a commercial pay-to-dig operation, over the years, many of the upper layers have become irreparably damaged.

Then, in 1999, the University of Texas at Austin leased the land and began academic excavations. Digging deeper, archaeologists found 2.6 million artifacts at the site, including many from the Clovis culture, once believed to be the first people to settle North America. But the latest discoveries to be unearthed at Gault are arguably the most exciting to date: unknown projectile points, which push back human occupation of the area at least 2,500 years before the Clovis civilization, reports Kevin Wheeler at the Texas Standard.

And Harry Hamid reveals more about his origins.