So what can Texas Democrats do to save 2018 before it's too late?

I don't think success is going to depend on more people like me holding their noses and voting for Democrats who are busy chasing disillusioned Republican crossovers.  I expect the black vote will be there for the Donks, more so than it was in 2016.  Not in cumulative, this being a midterm, but in percentage and intensity, partly driven by the castigation -- or remorse -- from sitting out the presidential election two years ago, and partly by circumstances of the past few years: #BlackLivesMatter (from Texans Sandra Bland in 2015 to Botham Jean this month), Colin Kaepernick's protest twisted out of context, efforts to end the practice of cash bail gaining steam because of the deaths it is causing, and similar issues of concern to POC.

And this.

19 sisters running for Judge in Harris County, this is where it starts y’all.... VOTE!!!! pic.twitter.com/8LwyYXLl6x

— SCARFACE (@BrotherMob) September 13, 2018

Find them all here.

So that leaves one large, mostly untapped demographic.  The ones Democrats have been waiting on for several election cycles now.

Note this cartoon was first published in 2010.

-- Take this, from Rafael Medina, the Senior Media Coordinate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and posted at Latino Rebels, to heart.

The 50^th anniversary of Hispanic Heritage Month kicked off this week. It is a commemorative month during which the United States celebrates the diversity, heritage, and accomplishments of Hispanic and Latinx Americans.

The Hispanic and Latinx community that I know is vibrant and thriving; through our deeply embedded, rich histories and culture, and through a relentless faith in the American Dream, we keep our nation’s legacy as a beacon of opportunity for all who live. We drive the economy with our entrepreneurial talents, enrich the arts and humanities, and have had a lasting impact in defending the nation’s most cherished ideals, leading the way for social and political progress.

While it’s true that the Trump administration presents an exceptionally challenging moment, we are resilient, and our collective voice is powerful. And what better way to celebrate this great truth than to leverage our tremendous potential to influence policy by registering to vote? In the face of constant attacks, we cannot afford to leave our power on the table.

Donald Trump’s presidency is marked by attitudes and policies that disregard our contributions and dehumanize our communities. This was very clear from the day he announced his presidential bid, immediately characterizing Mexicans as criminals and rapists.

While still on the campaign trail, then-candidate Donald Trump repeatedly belittled congressmen, judges, and journalists of Latino descent. And after losing the popular vote, he falsely accused millions of people of voting illegally against him and even created a voter fraud commission that was later disbanded with nothing to show for it because he had no evidence of this.

All the while, Trump’s statements and policies have only become more inflammatory and racist under his benighted presidency.

Just ten days before the President proclaimed Hispanic Heritage Month last year, his administration announced plans to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative, upending the lives and livelihood of more than 800,000 Dreamers. The Trump administration then decided to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for individuals from El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, resulting in the loss of status for 250,000 immigrants that have been living and working in the U.S. lawfully for approximately 20 years and are parents to more than 246,000 U.S.-born children. And although the administration may be hoping people will forget about its decision to take more than 2,600 children away from their parents at the southern border, today more than 400 children remain separated, including children under the age of 5. And in place of separating children, the administration last week issued a proposed rule that it hopes will allow it to incarcerate children with their parents indefinitely.

And we now know that Donald Trump manipulated the budget process to divert nearly $10 million in hurricane preparedness funds so that he could continue his racist abuse against immigrant families. This came only hours after saying the response to Hurricane María “was an incredible, unsung success,” and after it became public that his administration’s FEMA has approved only 75 out of 2,431 requests for funeral assistance from victims of María. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his contempt for Puerto Ricans by claiming to the American public that María was not a “real catastrophe,” and lobbing rolls of paper towels as if he were shooting baskets, and as if they were sufficient to remedy the lack of real aid for which his administration was directly responsible. Since then, thousands of displaced Puerto Ricans have come to the mainland because of the administration’s criminally neglectful and morally corrupt response to María’s enormous devastation, and nearly 3000 American citizens in Puerto Rico died as a result—a figure that Trump shamefully questioned.

From immigration to Puerto Rico to criminal justice to voting rights, the Trump administration has acted in direct opposition to our shared interests. And while the Trump administration may continue to disregard our livelihood, vilify and dehumanize us, it will never diminish our self-worth. We are bigger and more determined than his callous indifference to our pain and suffering.

It’s time for a change in leadership.

This Hispanic Heritage Month, we will celebrate by reminding each other of all the elected officials who treated us like second-class citizens under Donald Trump’s watch and by making plans to vote only for those who have our best interests in mind.

It is our legacy of perseverance in the face of adversity, of fighting and securing success for our families and communities in the future, that we celebrate this and every Hispanic Heritage Month. And that legacy will live on.

That’s why, this cycle, we are seeing an unprecedented number of Latinos running for office. But this is not enough. If we do not register to vote, we will never be able to hold the Trump administration accountable.

National Voter Registration Day is September 25, and it’s the perfect opportunity to demand leaders who recognize our tremendous contributions to this nation. Our community deserves leaders who are firmly committed to supporting and fighting for policies that open doors for us to realize all our talents and succeed, treat us with respect and dignity, and carry on our legacy to build a brighter future.

Together, we will overcome the constant threats from Donald Trump and his allies.

Pa’lante.

It's true that Harris County's Latin@ turnout almost tripled over 2014 (based on surnames, which is a tenuous proposition; absent better measurements, the best we have), but that does not appear to be enough to crest the blue wave.  Democrats need RGV Latinxs in the worst way, and it's also true that there are unregistered Latinx voters in every corner of the state.  Texas is officially dead last in voter turnout and any path to victory starts with getting more people of every age and color and gender registered to vote.

So here's some unsolicited advice for all you people working hard to get your Democrats elected from a former Democratic precinct chair (in three different southwest Harris County precincts), the 2006 statewide coordinator for the David Van Os for Attorney General campaign, a former election judge on the Harris County Ballot Board, a volunteer on too many campaigns to remember and a financial contributor to even more, but since 2014 a gradually greater disillusioned Democrat, to the point of being a Harris Green Party member and supporter.  Take it for it's worth to you.

-- Note Stace's resentment as a clue and act on it; Latin@s are going to have to be begged to vote for Democrats.  So if you're a candidate, or working for a campaign, or just a precinct chair trying to turn out your neighborhood's vote, and up to the deadline to register to vote in the November election -- October 9, thirty days before Election Day -- start begging.  Statewide candidates and campaigns should take all the money they have and run ads on Spanish language media, beginning if possible with the Beto-Cruz debate this Friday night on Telemundo, TeleXitos, or any of the other the Spanish-language media outlets across the state broadcasting it (courtesy Mike McGuff).  The same goes for Lupe Valdez's debate with Greg Abbott on September 28th.  If all that can be afforded is a few radio spots in the RGV, then do that.

In the Houston media market, Telemundo was the highest-rated television station in the last reporting period among adults from sign-on to sign-off (somewhat on the strength of World Cup coverage) regardless of language spoken.  I have little doubt that the same is true of the local Spanish language broadcaster in every single MSA across the state.

-- Mobilize ground troops to register voters.  This event is a must for every campaign, statewide and local, in Houston.  HCDP has a million things you can attend this weekend, but if you're smart about it you'll go where the mostly non-voters are and not where your friends are going.  There'll be time to chat and brunch in about seven weeks.  Leave it all on the field or cry about it in November.

Get voter registrars in Fiesta stores, the local mercados, Catholic churches, the East End in Houston (and typically other Texas cities as well), the barrios in cities large and small, up and down Texas.  Hook up with another Latinx candidate -- or anybody who speaks Spanish, but a brown face is recommended -- and knock on doors.  NO phone calls, please.  A desire for worn out shoes and calloused knuckles are what's needed.

Once the registration deadline has passed, then it's all hands on deck for GOTV.  For the next 2.5 weeks, the electorate must be expanded.

It's now or never.

Some cold hard reality for Texas Dems

Tough day yesterday, with the Q poll showing the Zodiac Killer ahead of Beto by nine points, and then the stunning-not-so-stunning loss by Pete Gallego in the special election to replace convicted felon Carlos Uresti in west Texas.

SD-19's geographics are a close match to CD-23's, so this portends ominously for Gina Ortiz Jones against Will Hurd in 49 days.  She's the one wearing black on Gallego's left (foreground), at last night's wake victory party concession speech.

Lots of bragging by Team Pachyderm about the win.  It sets up the Texas Senate nicely in 2019 for a two-thirds majority to ram through their usual agenda of large piles of extremist elephant shit.  Texas Dems got outmaneuvered on the special election cycle (that's how Abbott rolls; he'll do it again to TX-6 as soon as Sylvia Garcia wakes up and submits her resignation in a way he feels is acceptable), and then were outspent and outhustled.

.@texasdemocrats statement on their loss of #SD19 starts w/ hard truth. Statewide Rs showed up; @GregAbbott_TX w/ a score of paid staffers, @DanPatrick w/ campaign in-kind donations, @JohnCornyn & @tedcruz w/ support. $$$ & staff frm statewide D candidates just couldn’t compete. pic.twitter.com/yBsgbJDGoo

— Phil Prazan (@PhilPrazan) September 19, 2018

Gallego is a three-time loser and his political career is mercifully over, but hang this loss around the necks of Gilberto Hinojosa and Glen Maxey, who quite obviously didn't see it coming and/or didn't do nearly enough to stop it.  Oh, and maybe Bexar Democrats could stop fighting with each other long enough to mobilize turnout and win an election.  That's probably too much to ask for as well.

As for Beto ...

Quinnipiac polled likelies, which is a better barometer than 'registered', so this nine-point deficit is blacker than the usual dark cloud.  A week ago, however, Joshua Blank and Jim Henson at the Texas Politics Project -- they're the guys at UT that also do the Texas Tribune's polling -- busted Beto's axles with these numbers.

A series of recent articles focused on Republican concerns over Senator Ted Cruz's reelection chances has Democrats beaming, and national reporters falling all over themselves to get in front of the possible defeat of Cruz in deep red Texas. The attraction of the storyline for editors and reporters is obvious enough, and poll numbers showing low single-digit leads for Cruz provide a ready rationale for ever more breathless speculation on Beto O'Rourke's chances of pulling off an upset. But a look at recent election outcomes and some simple back-of-the-envelope math highlight just how unlikely an O'Rourke victory is in Texas.

While "unlikely" doesn't mean impossible – this is where we usually insert something about a "non-zero probabability" – the magnitude of the change in the patterns evident in recent Texas elections would have to be historic. If we consider recent midterm elections since 2010, the average Republican vote total has been 2,798,519 votes, which we can round to 2.8 million for simplicity. The average Democratic vote total in those races has been 1,846,459, which we can round up to 1.9 million (again, for simplicity). This means that Democrats, on average, have to make up approximately 900,000 votes to get in the range of a tie in Texas. What would this take? (The table below also includes presidential results from 2016, just to provide context, though those results are not factored into these averages).

Go look at the table at the link.  The bold emphasis next is mine.

A good starting point is one of the underlying assumption of many assessments of O'Rourke's chances: the potential migration of votes from the expected GOP vote either to O'Rourke or to the Texas army of the non-voting. The most recently released poll, as of this writing, showed 15 percent of likely Republican voters saying that they'll cast a vote for O'Rourke. According to a few different analytic approaches using University of Texas / Texas Tribune polling data of registered voters, as well as Texas Lyceum data of registered and likely voters, the size of the poll of potential Republican cross-over voters is probably closer to 6 percent. This estimate is drawn from current polling, which almost certainly reflects a different underlying population than the likely electorate once general election voting begins, so the size and magnitude of the shift in this data may or may not emerge in actual voting. But assuming just for the sake of this exercise that O'Rourke has or will convince 15 percent of Republican voters to cast a vote for him (which would be quite impressive), we can subtract those votes from the average Republican vote total and add them to the average Democratic vote total, resulting in 420,000 votes shifting to the O'Rourke column. This would cut his likely deficit to 480,000 votes.* While this 15 percent estimate seems high given the context (and divergence of) the polling data, it tests the outer limits for one of the clear concerns of Republicans in Texas and elsewhere: the possibility of either a lack of enthusiasm or outright discontent leading to an increase in Republican non-voting among usually reliable midterm voters.

In addition to discontent with Cruz amongst Republicans, O'Rourke would also have to turn out Democrats at significantly higher rates than normal. So let's assume, again for the sake of argument, that Democratic turnout increases by 20 percent, which would add another 380,000 votes to O'Rourke's total. Even under this optimistic scenario, combined with the outer-bound estimate of Republican defections, this surge in turnout would only result in a decrease in the overall expected gap between O'Rourke and Cruz to 100,000 votes – a little more than 3.5 percent under our rough turnout assumption – still in Cruz's favor.

This simple, back-of-the-envelope calculation using incredibly optimistic expectations (if you're a Democrat) about the electorate shows why, when experts are asked about O'Rourke's chances at toppling Cruz, they are so cautious in feeding the hype. Even under extremely rosy circumstances, O'Rourke needs BOTH a momentous shift in voter sentiment, AND a momentous shift in Democratic turnout: possible, but still not probable.

Given the trend lines revealed last night, some anecdotal evidence like this from RG Ratcliffe at Texas Monthly, and our election in Texas may be over before the voting begins.  (Aside to Frances at Crooks and Liars: No, this is not how Beto will win Texas.  GOP crossovers are not enough.  He needs engorged voter turnout, most of it from Latinxs, and he is probably not going to get it.)

Guess we'll wait for Kuff to lengthily excerpt something tomorrow the Houston Chronicle published this morning on both these topics.  This is all he's good for today on the SD-19 result, though he expressed confidence yesterday morning about the outcome, which looks laughable in hindsight.  In the meantime, Gilbert Garcia for the SAEN breaks down how Flores won.

He's also mocked out the latest NYT poll result for TX-23 -- Hurd 51, Ortiz Jones 43 -- which likewise appears almost ridiculous now in the morning after the SD-19 debacle.  Maybe it's a good thing he has nothing to say yet about the Q poll.

(Lately I'm just embarrassed for that guy and his blog.)

Texas Democrats need to use these two items as a serious wake-up call for November.  Can they get their act together and salvage some wins before the GOP breaks the Blue Wave completely here?

Not looking too hot this morning.

Update: Shortly after this was posted, a Reuters/Ipsos poll was released showing Beto with a two-point lead over Cruz among likely voters.  Somebody has to be an outlier; maybe both.  An 11-point swing between two typically highly-regarded pollsters, taken back-to-back, is patently absurd.  This is the sort of thing that makes me question the validity of polling science altogether.  Look for heavy spin -- translation: fundraising emails in your inbox.  FWIW, Reuters has Greg Abbott leading Lupe Valdez 50-41, matching his smallest lead to date.  So this is either grand news for Team Donkey (only English speakers were polled) or there's some false hope being generated.  I report, you decide.

The Texas Dems I'll be voting for

The National Rifle Association has endorsed the state's top law enforcement official, who because of his felony indictments cannot own any guns himself.  Ken Paxton is the nuttiest of gun nuts anyway, declaring after the shooting at the church in Sutherland Springs that if more parishioners had been packing, fewer of 'em would have been sent to Heaven early.

Ken Paxton -- and 19 other GOP state AGs -- are asking the federal courts to end the pre-existing conditions acceptability requirement for Obamacare.  Ken Paxton's ultimate goal is to kill Obamacare altogether, and he is actually succeeding in doing so piecemeal.

Obamacare is on Paxton's list of ten things he despises (so are debates).  Paxton, with his lazy eye and slow drawl, is a caricature of a Texas Christian conservative gone badder than any cartoon villain: corrupt, venal, stupid, and built to stay that way.

Justin Nelson, his Democratic opponent, is by contrast solid and well-qualified and has done the hard work of getting publicity without a lot to show for it (although what he has earned has been very favorable).  I could pick a couple of nits over the use of 'access' to health care' on his website, maybe his clerking for Justice O'Connor back in the day, but those are minor enough for me to let slide.

We need Paxton removed, and we can't count on the Texas courts to do it for us.

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State Comptroller Glenn Hegar hasn't written any steamy novels or left state websites unsecured for hackers to run wild and free like his predecessor Susan Combs, but I'm still voting for Joi Chevalier in the statewide race that has gotten the least attention of any this cycle.  This puts me in agreement with Ted at jobsanger, which is a rare thing.

Democratic Land Commissioner challenger Miguel Suazo just secured the endorsement of Jerry Patterson, the former GOP LC who gave up the job four years ago to run in the scrum of the LG primary.  Incumbent George Pee Bush has alienated more conservatives than just Patterson with his screwball Alamo business despite winning the March primary over "Hogleg".  (Chris Elam, mentioned in the TM link, used to blog from Sugar Land under the title 'Safety for Dummies', which he scrubbed off the Web long ago.  A devoted Tom DeLay acolyte back in the day, it seems as if Elam's mentors have all let him down.  Somebody should ask him where his support goes these days, if one can't tell from where he's drawing a paycheck.)

Suazo has made hay with Bush also fumbling Harvey relief, but the young Democrat has an "all of the above" energy strategy which doesn't particularly suit me.  It would be awfully difficult for a Texas land commissioner to stand against the fossil fuel companies and expect to get elected.  He favors wind and solar and renewables, so I'll swallow hard and click the box beside his name.

Roman McAllen is running against incumbent Republican Christi Craddick, daughter of former Texas House Speaker Tom, for Railroad Commissioner.

A governing body for the state's oil and gas interests -- shockingly, fewer 5% of Texans even know that much about it -- where cronyism and corruption is the rule, McAllen stands out for his blunt talk about the truths associated with the Railroad Commission.  He's been endorsed by the Sierra Club and Our Revolution ETX.  Let's see if we can get just one vote out of three on the TXRRC that isn't bought and paid for by O&G.

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One more, separate post.