Tuesday, May 28, 2019

The Sine Die Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance waves adios to the Texas Legislature until January of 2021 (with any good luck).  Now our lawmakers watch, along with the rest of us, to see which of their hard-worked, hard-argued, hard-fought bills become law -- or not -- by the pen of Greg Abbott.


The Texas Tribune, always with the most comprehensive coverage, has a photo gallery and a list of winners and losers from the 86th session.  The Dallas News' Texas Tracker aggregated their Lege reporting (which subscribers can customize to their interests).

Here's just a sampling of the latest from yesterday and the holiday weekend from those two sources:

Gunsense  and gun-nonsense bills made it through at the deadline.  Criminal justice reform advocates ran into one final roadblock in the Texas Senate, as a watered-down amendment was stripped out at the last minute.

After the fate of (House Bill 2754) was decided, state Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, added a more limited version of the provision as an amendment to Senate Bill 815, which was a fairly uncontroversial bill relating to the preservation of criminal records. The House approved the bill, with Moody’s amendment about Class C misdemeanor arrests, in an 81 to 52 vote. But the Senate didn't approve the change, and Moody's amendment was taken out of the bill in a compromise report proposed by a group of lawmakers from both chambers.

Moody partly blamed the amendment's downfall on the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) -- one of the top police unions in the state -- who he said "stabbed me in the back and waged an outrageous campaign of outright lies and character assassination." He added that "pressure from the top down" in the Senate ultimately killed the bill.

Grits for Breakfast had the early analysis on this clusterf.

The most significant legislation of the session, the bill that reduces property taxes and adequately funds public schools, reached bipartisan consensus (and self-aggrandizement to the point of overkill).

Lawmakers also signed off on the state's two-year, $250-plus billion dollar budget.

The approved $250.7 billion, made up of state taxes and fees, local property tax dollars and federal funds, marks a 16% spending increase over the two-year budget approved by lawmakers in the tight-fisted 2017 legislative session. ... Facing a cautiously optimistic fiscal forecast, lawmakers expect to have an additional $10 billion or so to spend over the next two years, compared with the previous budget cycle. They agreed to allocate $6.5 billion in new state funding for schools and $5.1 billion to buy down Texans’ local property taxes, which state dollars supplement to pay for public education.

Pay raises for teachers -- not the $5000 across-the-board increase Dan Patrick had promised, though -- and a 13th pension check for retired teachers are included.

Texas Freedom Network made note of the fact that 2018's blue wave, and another one looming in 2020, made divisive legislation more difficult to pass.  Better Texas Blog enumerates five good bills that passed, five bad bills that failed, and five missed opportunities.  Environment Texas also scores the Lege's results as mixed.  Texas Vox blogged that lawmakers punted on taking any action with respect to the chemical fires Houston has recently suffered from.  And the Texas Observer's Candice Bernd wrote that despite efforts to soften the penalties for protesting against pipelines, the Lege passed the bill designating them as felony offenses.  (IANAL, but I would not expect these laws to withstand legal/judicial/constitutional muster.)

There was a raft of election law developments that was good news/bad news: SOS David Whitley caught all the blame for the ill-fated voter roll purge and went unconfirmed by the state Senate, thus forcing him to resign.  Many of the worst bills meant to intimidate voters were similarly defeated; SB9's failure was one of Progress Texas' best moments of the session.  But Houston Public Media reported that Harris County remains one of the most difficult places in the United States for people to both register and vote.

“Registration rates in Texas are among the lowest in the United States. Yet voter registration rates in Harris County are far lower, and increasingly so,” said University of Houston researcher Suzanne Pritzker. “If we look between 2010 and 2016, we see that the voter registration gap between Texas and Harris County has been increasing.”

Meanwhile, Texas Public Radio reported on Bexar County's $11 million dollar acquisition of new voting machines that include a paper trail.

Several bloggers opined about the bill that enables the Texas Green Party to be on the 2020 ballot.  David Collins has been tracking its progress; it's now awaiting the governor's signature.  Socratic Gadfly also had some thoughts prior to passage.  Kuff's take is just as elitist as you would expect from a Democratic establishment suck-up, but at least it's not as whiny as it could have been.  And in other third party developments, Ballot Access News says that an Odessa Libertarian Party member has won a seat on the Ector County Hospital Board.

(Gadfly also looked at the latest woes of the Dallas Morning News.)

Stephen Young at the Dallas Observer has the news about CBD oil's legalized usage for certain medical conditions, but most experts agree that the Lege made the barest measurable expansion of cannabis decriminalization.

There's some 2019 and 2020 election news that Texas blogs and news sources had last week.  First: Joe Biden makes a campaign and fundraising appearance in Houston today.  He's running precisely as you'd expect the front-runner would.


Hillary Clinton also spoke at the Harris County Democratic Party's Johnson Rayburn Richards luncheon last Friday, and in what must have created some awkward moments, it was revealed by Justin Miller at the Texas Observer that Tony Buzbee, a Houston mayoral challenger to Sylvester Turner who donated over $500,000 to two of Donald Trump's PACs in 2016, also gave the HCDP $5000 as a "White Pantsuit" sponsor for the JRR fundraiser.

Early voting begins today in most Texas jurisdictions with municipal runoff elections on June 8.  The Rivard Report highlights the nastiness of the mayoral runoff in San Antonio.  Mark Jones at Rice's Kinder Institute (Urban Edge blog) reminds us that there are less than six months until Houston holds its city elections.

US Rep. Chip Roy single-handedly delayed a $19.1 billion disaster aid funding package, including Harvey relief, that John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump had all approved, drawing universal condemnation.

Texas Standard also reported that Galveston Bay's oyster harvest was halted shortly after the ITC chemical fire caused a benzene spill into the Houston Ship Channel two weeks ago.

Last weekend at Crystal Beach, a Jeep rally got so out of control that even the libertine, libertarian locals were terrified and appalled.  John Nova Lomax at Texas Monthly:

Nobody knows for sure how many Jeeps, lifted trucks, ATVs, side-by-sides, and four-by-fours descended on the Bolivar Peninsula - -a narrow spit of storm-wracked sand between Galveston and Port Arthur -- during last weekend’s chaos. One estimate pegged the number at no fewer than 40,000 vehicles, many with intoxicated drivers zigzagging beaches with no marked lanes or navigating a two-lane highway with lots of construction zones, often with up to a dozen people riding unsecured in the backs of pickups.


Galveston County authorities made at least 100 arrests (most for alcohol-related offenses) as Jeep enthusiasts converged for Go Topless Weekend, an annual car show and campout in Crystal Beach. Of eighteen wrecks in the area, eight were deemed serious. EMS dispatchers were barraged with more than 600 calls for service, and one of the accidents snarled traffic on Highway 87 -- the sole east-west thoroughfare and only way to drive on or off the peninsula --for about six hours. Videos of the weekend’s drunken brawls have been posted to YouTube. A young man emerged from a coma on Monday after his head was run over by a truck from which he’d fallen, and at least a half-dozen injured passengers were evacuated by helicopter to the UTMB hospital in Galveston.


Yet it’s far from just Jeep owners who are to blame for the mayhem. The event coincided with prom weekend for many schools in Deep East Texas, leading to the presence of hordes of young people arriving in jacked-up trucks and zipping around on dirt bikes and four-wheelers. Thanks to a swirl of teenage hormones, copious amounts of alcohol, and the revving of high-powered engines, fights inevitably broke out, and some young women took the event’s invitation to Go Topless literally. The Texas Patriot Network’s MAGA Beach Bash was also taking place nearby, near the town of Port Bolivar, adding to the crowds on the peninsula. On top of it all, a whim of Mother Nature—an abnormally high “bull tide”—forced all this humanity into a narrower and narrower slice of drunken, thrown-together life, hemmed in by saltwater on one side and dunes on the other.


Finally, Pages of Victory has some voting advice for progressives, while Harry Hamid contemplates his reality.
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Sunday, May 26, 2019

Sunday Cover Up Funnies










News item: Boris Johnson is the favorite to succeed British PM Theresa May

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Friday, May 24, 2019

The Weekly Twenty Twenty Update

With a month to go before the first debate, 19 Democrats have qualified at the minimum standards for the two-night contest, including Marianne Williamson but not Michael Bennet, Bill de Blasio, Mike Gravel, Wayne Messam, or Seth Moulton (yet).

Update: And Jay Inslee makes 20.

However ... it's possible that the qualifiers may need to do better than the minimum, and if that's the case we may only see these twelve on the stage.


Note that list leaves off Kirsten Gillibrand, among other high-profilers.  I don't think that will happen, but there might be a tiebreaker for the twentieth spot.

Update:

Democrats getting at least 2 percent support in the polling average will be randomly and evenly split between the two nights, which will each feature 10 candidates, according to the formula obtained by POLITICO. Candidates below that threshold will also be evenly and randomly divided between the two debate lineups.

"The final list of debate participants, after any tie-breaking procedure is executed if necessary,  will be divided into two groups: candidates with a polling average of 2% or above, and those with a polling average below 2%," the rule reads. "Both groups will be randomly divided between Wednesday night (June 26) and Thursday night (June 27), thus ensuring that both groups are represented fairly on each night."

The rule will not keep any two candidates from appearing onstage together. But it will prevent random chance from loading one night with polling leaders and the other night with less well-known presidential candidates. ...

Eight candidates have a polling average at or above 2 percent right now: Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. With the newly announced rule, four would be guaranteed to appear on the first night, and four would be guaranteed to appear on the second night.

Last week I culled out the top six: Biden, Bernie, Warren, and in a tie for fourth, Kamala, Mayor Pete, and Beto.  You can scratch our Texas boy Bob off your scorecard; he rolled out his reboot this past week and promptly faceplanted.

Democratic presidential primary candidate Beto O'Rourke went on CNN for a town hall Tuesday evening in an attempt to breathe some life into his struggling campaign, but all he did was earn the ire of progressives after delivering a less than ambitious answer to a question on Medicare for All.

O'Rourke declined to endorse the popular policy by host Dana Bash as a follow up to a question from the audience on drug prices. Bash asked the former Texas congressman why he supports the Medicare for America plan put forth by Democratic Reps. Rose DeLauro (Conn.) and Jan Schakowsky (Ill.) instead of Medicare for All.

"They don't have time for us to get to the perfect solution," O'Rourke said, referring to audience member Diane Kolmer, whose struggles with the disease multliple sclerosis prompted her to ask about healthcare, and a man O'Rourke claimed to have met named "Joey."


"If we were to start from scratch, maybe we would start with a single payer," added O'Rourke, "but we've got to work with the system that we have here today."

That's a deal-breaker for me, and perhaps for 70% of Americans.  And that was before people tuned out of Beto's town hall in droves.  I don't see where he has any place to go except back home and run for the Senate against Cornyn.

In other online prognosticator rankings, Cillizza/Enten at CNN are, IMO, a little off.


Markos and Nate Silver (scroll down for his tiers) agree with me (I posted ahead of them).  This may not be a good thing, as both are approaching worthlessness in my view.  Despite this, I can't see any reason to adjust my top five.

1. Joe Biden

Though he is finally starting to slip in terms of polling numbers, he maintains a lead.  How large and how solid is still dependent on polling methodology.


Let's do our first check-in with 538.com's round-up.

At a campaign rally in Philadelphia last weekend, Biden defended his bipartisan outlook on governance, pitching his experience of working across the aisle and arguing that it isn’t too late to unite Americans across the political spectrum.

Biden brought in over $2 million through a pair of fundraising events in Miami and Orlando this week, showing a willingness to engage with big-money donors from which much of the Democratic field has shied away.

The former vice president’s campaign took part in a back and forth with North Korea after an opinion piece that was posted on the website of KCNA -- the North Korean news agency -- said Biden was “misbehaving” and criticized him as someone “who likes to stick his nose into other people’s business and is a poor excuse for a politician.”

Biden’s campaign responded, saying that “it’s no surprise North Korea would prefer that Donald Trump remain in the White House.”

The Norks also called Biden "an imbecile bereft of elementary quality as a human being" and a "fool of low IQ".   I was disappointed they did not recycle 'dotard'.  Say this for them: they have a command of the English language for insults that far exceeds our Stable Genius president.

2. Bernie Sanders

The Vermont senator rolled out a comprehensive education plan that would halt federal funding for charter school expansion, set a teacher pay floor at $60,000, and provide universal free lunches, among other investments.

At a South Carolina event announcing the plan, Sanders drew a connection between education reform and social injustice, noting that changes to public education in recent decades have disproportionately affected African Americans and increased school segregation.


Bernie is also attending the Walmart shareholders meeting week after next.

The massive retail chain has been a focus of Sanders' pro-worker push — he even introduced the pointedly titled Stop WALMART Act to Congress last November. Now, the 2020 candidate is arguing that hourly Walmart workers should have a guaranteed seat at the shareholders meeting each year, and he'll make his case right to those shareholders' faces, The Washington Post reports.

Walmart's annual meeting of "a dozen wealthy executives from companies like McDonald's and NBCUniversal" is coming up on June 5 in Bentonville, Arkansas, the Post writes. That's where Sanders will tell shareholders that "if hourly workers at Walmart were well represented on its board, I doubt you would see the CEO of Walmart making over a thousand times more than its average worker," he tells the Post. Walmart pharmacy technician Cat Davis introduced the proposal, which reads that "hourly associates can guide a more fair, inclusive, and equitable corporate ecosystem that bridges differences," and invited Sanders to deliver the message.

He also joined McDonald's workers yesterday by video as the fast food giant held its corporate meeting in Dallas ...


... as did most of the top ten Democratic contenders, some who marched on picket lines in other states, some who Tweeted support.

3. Elizabeth Warren

Warren's (latest issues proposal), a platform aimed at protecting women’s reproductive rights ... would “block states from interfering in the ability of a health care provider to provide medical care, including abortion services,” according to her policy rollout.

The senator had a viral moment when she responded to a Twitter user who asked her for relationship advice. “DM me and let’s figure this out,” Warren replied.

The senator apparently went on to call a number of Twitter users asking for advice. “Guess who’s crying and shaking and just talked to Elizabeth Warren on the phone?!?!?” one user tweeted.

Liz is methodically building support, and her steady polling rise reflects it.

Warren, who had been lagging with just 4 percent in a March Quinnipiac University poll, reached 13 percent in their latest survey, nearly matching Sen. Bernie Sanders at 16 percent with Biden in the lead at 35 percent.

Looking across multiple polls paints a clearer picture of Biden’s lead -- but also the Massachusetts senator’s rise. The former vice president is averaging nearly 40 percent in national primary polls, coming down a bit after a surge upon announcing his own candidacy this month. Sanders has seen his support drop lately while Warren, the rising bronze bar in this Real Clear Politics’ chart of 2020 polling averages over the last several months, has seen a steady uptick.

Link to current RCP shows Biden's lead still shrinking today.

I'll putt down a marker here.  After the first debate, and of my top four today -- Biden, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg -- someone(s) will emerge with momentum and someone(s) will lose it.  Uncle Joe could commit a gaffe or show his age; so for that matter could Bernie.  Liz and Mayor Pete could, and should, both shine.  Kamala Harris really needs a breakthrough moment, because Warren is beginning to erode her demographic advantage.  It's still difficult for me to fathom that the race may quickly winnow to three white men and one white woman.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

4. Pete Buttigieg

Buttigieg garnered headlines for his performance in a Fox News town hall last weekend, renewing the debate over whether it is beneficial for Democratic candidates to appear on the news network that is often criticized for its conservative bent.


During his appearance, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, took aim at a pair of the network’s right-wing commentators, arguing that Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham were “not always there in good faith,” pointing specifically to their views on the ongoing immigration policy debate.

After stops in Florida, New York and Washington, D.C., this week, Buttigieg will campaign over the weekend in New Hampshire, with events in Londonderry, Exeter and Keene on Friday and Saturday.

Mayor Pete has loyal fans, much like Bernie's (let's not be calling nobody's a cult, okay?).  I won't ever be one, but at this point and almost no matter what else happens in this race, he will remain a factor.  There is a subculture of weirdo centrists still criticizing going on Fox, which makes even less sense than it did when they were on Bernie's ass about it.

5. Kamala Harris

She's flailing, which makes the CNN third-place rank all the more puzzling.  Their own snapshot gives me no reason to believe them as to why she should be ahead of Warren or Buttigieg.

Just like O'Rourke, the junior senator from California seems intent on rebooting her campaign. Harris has stalled in recent months as her left-leaning campaign has run into a classic clown-car problem: Almost everyone in the race is running left. She now seems to be trying to split the difference between those on the left (Sanders and Warren) and those closer to the center (Biden). Can this "Goldilocks" campaign work? Or is Harris going to just be this year's version of Marco Rubio (i.e. trying to satisfy all and satisfying few)?

Still without policy positions posted to her website, she's free to flip-flop on things.  I don't see this as a winning strategy, but YMMV.

Here's a few links.

-- Who White Democrats Vote For In 2020 Could Be Shaped By Why They Think Clinton Lost

Primary efforts:

-- The Candidates Who Are Going All In On Iowa Or New Hampshire

-- Inside the 2020 Democrats’ survival strategies

Bernie Sanders must win New Hampshire. Julián Castro is letting it all ride on Nevada. South Carolina is essential to Cory Booker’s chances.

The 23 candidates chasing the Democratic presidential nomination are piling up events and plowing resources into the four early-nominating states, telegraphing which states they’re prioritizing and which ones they’re writing off.

^^Your best and deepest dive.

Finally ...

Hundreds of unheralded hopefuls file paperwork every four years to vie for the biggest prize in electoral politics

According to Ballotpedia, a website that tracks the daily entry of FEC records, of the 713 candidates who had filed by (May 3), 241 filed as Democrats, 89 as Republicans, 25 as Libertarians and 14 as Green candidates. A great many others self-identified as nonpartisan, independent, or listed no party affiliation.

[...]

James Peppe of Montgomery, Texas filed in February as a Republican challenger to President Trump. According to the FEC filings, he’s received $5,665 in total campaign receipts, including $2,865 in individual contributions, $2,800 in candidate contributions. The campaign is also the beneficiary of $20,000 worth of loans made by the candidate.

A licensed financial investment advisor, Peppe said on his campaign website that he’s “a regular American, NOT a professional politician or wealthy celebrity.”

A brief stint working on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., shortly after graduating from Yale in 1988, whet his appetite for politics. He ran unsuccessfully in 1992 for a seat in the Minnesota state Senate, retreating after that loss to a business career and steering clear of politics.

But Donald Trump’s election triggered him to get back involved in the political game. As he notes on his website:

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 awoke Peppe’s passion for service with a flood of mixed emotions. On the one hand, he was excited to witness the upending of the political establishment that for so long had promised so much to so many and delivered so little. On the other hand, he was stunned and disappointed to see America invest its hopes in a self-promoting individual of such questionable character as Trump.

In a campaign appearance earlier this month at Keene State College in New Hampshire, Peppe predicted he would shock the world by beating Trump in the GOP primaries, and then deliver a “50-state landslide” in the general election. That’s tall talk for a virtually unknown personality with 591 Twitter followers.

Best of luck to Mr. Peppe.
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Monday, May 20, 2019

The Weekly Wrangle

Welcome to Hell Week.


Here at the beginning of a week in which most bills in the Texas Legislature will die, the big priorities set out at the beginning, in January, are still alive: school finance, property tax reform, school safety and responses to Hurricane Harvey.

Lots of other proposals are fading fast.

As of Friday, just over 5% of the 7,324 bills filed in the House and Senate this session had made it all the way to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk. That tells you a bit about what will happen in the next few days. When this is over, when lawmakers have gaveled out on Memorial Day, that percentage will have jumped considerably. Two years ago, 18% of the filed bills made it to the governor. Four years ago, it was 21%. And in 2013, it was 24.4%.

But don’t just look at success; that won’t explain the dramatic tension of the next few days. Look instead at the overwhelming failure rate. Only about 1 bill in 5 -- 1 in 4 in a good year -- makes it out of a regular session alive. Everything else (that hasn’t found new life as an amendment to other legislation) meets its final end in the final week -- when procedural deadlines form a bottleneck that most of the stampeding legislation doesn’t survive.

[...]

The Texas Legislature’s Doomsday Calendar -- the dramatic name for the deadlines that stack up at the end of a regular legislative session -- only has a few squares left.

Four of those are red-letter days:

  • Tuesday, May 21, the last day Senate bills can be considered for the first time in the House.
  • Wednesday, May 22, the last day the House can consider Senate bills on a local and consent calendar, which is for uncontested legislation, for the first time.
  • Friday, May 24, the last day the House can decide whether to accept or negotiate Senate changes to bills.
  • Sunday, May 26, the last day the House and Senate can vote on final versions of bills they’ve been negotiating.

The last day -- the 140th -- gets a Latin name, but not a red border. It’s sine die, the last day of the 86th Texas Legislature’s regular session.

Another clock starts then, marking the time between the end of the legislative session and Father’s Day -- June 16 -- the last day Abbott can veto legislation passed by the House and Senate.

Updates:







Ahead:


David Collins and the Texas Tribune have the latest on HB 2504, the bill that would put the Texas Green Party back on the ballot for 2020.  Spoiler (see what I did there?): Its prospects for becoming law are very good.

Many more updates throughout the week, appearing in the Twitter feed, top right column.

Last weekend's developments saw the death of SB9, but everyone remains on high alert for a zombie amendment to living bills.


And sure enough ...


Meanwhile, Progress Texas brings the good, the bad, and the ugly of the bills that remain among the living.  Kuff analyzes the relentless Republican attack on local control this session.

In news away from the Pink Dome ...


U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar warned against elected officials who fuel Islamophobia and pit religious groups against each other at an Iftar dinner Saturday night in Austin, just days after Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller called on Austin Mayor Steve Adler not to attend the event.

Omar, 37, was the keynote speaker at the Annual Austin Citywide Iftar Dinner, a ceremonial meal to break the fast during Ramadan. Adler, who (is Jewish and) has attended each of the previous city-wide Iftars, was the guest of honor.

A Dallas woman who was beaten two weeks ago in a parking lot outside her apartment was found shot to death on Sunday afternoon.  She wasn't just another random killing.


Debbie Nathan at The Intercept writes about the vigilante militia defending an imaginary southern border near El Paso.


Socratic Gadfly, with help from political scientist and author Corey Robin, explains that Trump is not a fascist but rather a schematically predictable variety of president.

The Texas Signal notes Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner's suddenly-easier path to re-election now that Prop B has been declared unconstitutional (by the same district judge that ordered he and the firefighters union into mediation, which failed).

Jim Schutze at the Dallas Observer sees all the power players err, zombie endorserati lining up behind one mayoral candidate.

John Nova Lomax, writing at Texas Monthly, takes note of the Bayou City's aggressive plan to make housing more affordable.

Downwinders at Risk is hosting a fundraiser just prior to after Memorial Day weekend.


Rachel Pearson at the Texas Observer flaunts her sorcery.

Harry Hamid blogs about Folli's recuperation (a metaphor for his own, by all indications).

Dan Solomon, also for TM, freaks out just a little at the prospect of Whataburger being sold.

Lisa Gray at Gray Matters (Houston Chronicle) calls on all Houstonians -- really, all good Texans -- to resist bad tacos.

Beyond Bones wants to tell you about Megalosaurus.

Finally, Jesse Sendejas Jr. of the Houston Press went to ZZ Top's 50th Anniversary Bash and had his top blown.  In the revival -- or perhaps last gasp -- of dinosaur rock legends, Cheap Trick and Bad Company opened the evening.
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Sunday, May 19, 2019

Sunday CSA* Funnies











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Friday, May 17, 2019

The Weekly Twenty Twenty Update


New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is joining the two dozen other Democratic candidates running for president and many of us can only ask, why? Why would another (usually white, often male) politician look at the field of highly qualified Democratic presidential candidates and think: You know what this race needs? One more.

Though each of these candidates surely thinks he or she has something unique to offer, the truth is that with this many people in the race, it’s hard to see what possible way there is to break out of a very crowded race. The recent additions to the packed Democratic field could be better described as ”a bay of milquetoast men running for president,” Lee Banville, a political analyst at the University of Montana, recently told Vox’s Ella Nilsen.

Sure, there are real reasons candidates like Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, or even Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan have entered a campaign that Joe Biden appears to be dominating -- and that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Kamala Harris are duking it out for double-digit polling numbers. After all, Biden’s support could always collapse.

Paradoxically, the more candidates in the race, the more enticing it becomes to join because the number of delegates are awarded proportionally, dramatically lowering the bar for the potential to win.

There certainly is a strong degree of personal vanity too; some of these guys just look in the mirror and say “I’m just born to be in it.”

But maybe the most important reason the field is so damn crowded is that the Democratic Party is still sorting through an identity crisis in the aftermath of 2016. A host of candidates look at recent history and think: The Democratic Party doesn’t really know what it’s looking for, and in this time of chaos, maybe the answer is me.

Today is cut-down day for the Update.  Long shots, pretenders, has-beens, and never-wases are relegated to the grandstands.  Henceforth I'll focus on the top five or ten or so, have a quick blurb on the new shooter(s), and then mention the others outside the Donkey Scramble.

This week candidates also traded barbs over climate change, speculated about which rival would make the best running mate come the general election, and reacted to a controversial anti-abortion bill signed into law in Alabama.

Here we go.

1. Joe Biden

The former vice president responded to a number of attacks this week from rivals both inside and outside his party.

On Monday, Biden defended his son Hunter against Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has made a number of efforts to investigate the work Hunter Biden did for a Ukrainian energy company while his father was focused on making threats against the leaders of the country under the Obama administration. Giuliani had planned to travel to the Ukraine for more information, but cancelled his trip on Saturday.

Facing criticism from New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and ... Washington Governor Jay Inslee (see last week's Update) over his record on climate change after a report in Reuters claimed he was seeking a 'middle ground' solution on the issue, Biden told reporters at a campaign stop in New Hampshire, “I’ve never been middle of the road on the environment. Tell her to check the statements that I made, and look at my record and she’ll find that nobody has been more consistent about taking on the environment and a Green Revolution then I have.”

Biden's past environmental record -- compiled over ten years ago when he was selected Obama's running mate -- has indeed been satisfactory.  It is his recent lurch to the right, seemingly taking the advice of those now around him, that has us concerned.  We'll wait to see what his forthcoming plan entails before rendering judgment.

2. Bernie Sanders

The progressive leader became the latest 2020 hopeful to join the chorus of candidates calling to break up big tech companies like Facebook.

“The answer is yes, of course,” Sanders told Politico. “We have a monopolistic -- an increasingly monopolistic society where you have a handful of very large corporations having much too much power over consumers.”

Sanders is taking a Southern swing this weekend.


3. Elizabeth Warren

The “I’ve-got-a-plan-for-that” candidate continued to step out in front of the 2020 field this week, becoming the first Democrat running for president to denounce appearing on FOX News.

Warren said she wouldn’t go on the network, slamming Fox News as a “hate-for-profit racket.”

“Hate-for-profit works only if there’s profit, so Fox News balances a mix of bigotry, racism, and outright lies with enough legit journalism to make the claim to advertisers that it’s a reputable news outlet,” Warren wrote on Twitter. “It’s all about dragging in ad money -- big ad money.”

Warren’s fiery words follow Sanders making waves last month when be became the first 2020 Democrat to sit for a town hall on Fox News.

The Massachusetts senator also pledged that If elected, she would select a public school teacher to head the Department of Education, taking aim at Trump’s appointed secretary.

“I’ll just be blunt: Betsy DeVos is the worst Secretary of Education we’ve seen,” Warren said.

Warren narrowly lost the Kos straw poll this week, coming in a close second to Bernie.

4 (tie). Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigeig, Beto O'Rourke

All are losing momentum for various non-Biden-related reasons.

(Harris) is attempting to strike a difficult balance between appeasing progressive activists and appealing to more moderate Democrats as her poll numbers fall.

California's former attorney general, Harris has found vocal critics within the progressive community -- particularly among criminal justice activists and public interest attorneys who take issue with much of her 25-year-long prosecutorial record.

[...]

Some of Harris' top aides, including pollsters, have determined that the Democratic voter base doesn't want her to move left, The New York Times reported. They argue Harris should highlight her prosecutorial record and that the effort to please the left is futile while she's competing against progressive stalwarts like (Sanders and Warren).

In a strategic shift, Harris has recently leaned into her criticism of Trump and his administration. A video of her questioning Attorney General William Barr during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee went viral last week. The exchange put Harris' prosecutorial skills on display and strengthened her reputation as a fighter.

During a speech at an NAACP event in Detroit on Sunday, Harris hit Trump multiple times.

"This president isn't trying to make America great," she said. "He's trying to make America hate."

Trump has also recently taken aim at Harris, describing her as "nasty" twice in response to her questioning of Barr. Notably, Trump infamously used that same word in 2016 to describe Hillary Clinton, dubbing her a "nasty woman."

Kamala also punched back at the front-runner.

In a not-so-subtle jab at Biden, Harris on Wednesday slammed recent talk that she would be a great running mate for the former vice president.

“Sure, if people want to speculate about running mates, I encourage that. Because I think Joe Biden would be a great running mate,’ Harris told reporters at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. “As vice president, he’s proven he knows how to do the job, and there are certainly a lot of other candidates that would make for me a very viable and interesting vice president.”

The California senator announced on Tuesday that if she becomes president, she will take executive action to ban imports of all AR-15 style assault weapons.


Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who has not announced a run, polls ahead of Buttigieg with 2 percent among black Palmetto State Democrats, who comprise 61 percent of Democratic voters in the state.

Despite his rapid rise in the crowded Democratic primary field, Buttigieg recently came under scrutiny over the revelation that he had used the phrase “all lives matter” during a controversy involving the South Bend Police Department. Activists have said the phrase minimizes hardships faced specifically by African Americans.

Turn out the lights, the Pride Party's over.

Beto reboots.

...(S)ince his mid-March campaign launch, the buzz surrounding the former congressman has evaporated. Competing in a massive field of Democratic White House hopefuls, O'Rourke has sagged in the polls. He's made few promises that resonated or produced headline-grabbing moments, instead driving around the country meeting with voters at mostly small events.

In a tacit recognition that this approach isn't working, O'Rourke is planning to try again, taking a hands-on role in staging a "reintroduction" ahead of next month's premier Democratic presidential debate. As he finalizes his plans, O'Rourke has entered an intentional "quiet period" to build out campaign infrastructure, according to an adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the campaign's strategy.

That will end soon.

O'Rourke plans to step up his national media appearances after skipping most of that kind of exposure in recent months. He is scheduled to appear on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show" on Monday night and ABC's "The View" the next day.

Yet another CNN town hall next week as well.  And more of these, I guess.


This ain't it, Chief.

I can't bring myself to do Cory Booker, or Amy Klobuchar, or Kirsten Gillibrand, or whomever you may feel rounds out your personal top ten.  Maybe next week.

Click his name at the top for Bullock (it's hilarious).  Here's de Blasio.

In recent history, no other potential presidential candidate has had a more humiliating run of press coverage before even announcing their decision to run than the New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio.

“Is Bill de Blasio trying to escape New York City by running for president?” asked New York-based Observer. “De Blasio PAC spends $30m on ads urging candidate not to embarrass self by running,” wrote the Onion, not entirely unbelievably. New York magazine aggregated a listicle of everyone who has told the mayor he shouldn’t run. Among them: old advisers, “self-described friends”, recent advisers, his own wife.

It’s hard to overemphasize the lack of enthusiasm De Blasio will be starting off with as he enters the race. In a Quinnipiac poll last month, 76% of New Yorkers agreed that their mayor should not run for president. This included 70% of black voters, who usually make up De Blasio’s strongest base of support. As the Washington Post’s Philip Bump pointed out, De Blasio was a standout in another poll, this time of national Democratic primary voters, for being the candidate with the highest unfavorability ratings. He was also the only candidate with net unfavorability, with more respondents having an unfavorable than favorable view of him. The Quinnipiac poll even showed that one-third of Democrats in De Blasio’s home city -- what ought to be his main bulwark of support -- disapprove of his job performance.

Screamingly funny.  Couple more items.

-- Socialist Action announces their 2020 ticket: Jeff Mackler and Heather Bradford.

-- What do John Hickenlooper, Steve Bullock, and Beto O'Rourke all have in common (besides their mushy centrist politics)?

These men still haven’t seemed to figure out that the future of America and the livelihoods of working people and families should take precedent over their own personal dreams and ambitions of one day occupying the White House. Even if one of these long-shot candidates did end up somehow winning the Democratic nomination and the presidency, they would be unable to pass any meaningful legislation with a Republican-controlled Senate. It isn’t too late; all three could get over their egos, drop out of the presidential race, and announce campaigns for Senate.

Sema Hernandez gets it.  She got it two years ago.  Just vote for her instead.  If you're in Austin tomorrow, go by and see her.


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Monday, May 13, 2019

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is saying sine die in the mirror as it brings you this week's lefty blog post and news round-up.


(news item: Rep. Jonathan Stickland calls vaccines 'sorcery')

Stephen Young, Dallas Observer:

There's a little more than two weeks left in Texas' regular legislative session. Dozens of bills will pass the Texas House and Senate and make their way to Gov. Greg Abbott's desk between now and May 27. But thanks to an annual Texas House deadline, hundreds more died as Thursday night faded into Friday morning. No bills that haven't received an initial sign-off will move any further in the House, but the Legislature's business is far from wrapped up.

Here's what you should be watching as the Legislature hits the homestretch:

Young lists his priorities as marijuana reform, abortion rights, school financing, a state income tax, and a drivers responsibility program along with red light cameras.  Go read his deep dive into the bills that your representatives and senators will be approving or denying in the coming days.

In related Lege reporting, the Dallas News indicates that the state's Senate and House leaders are essentially starting over from zero on the teachers' pay raise and other tax bill details.  The Fort Worth Star-Telegram covered the DFW area's annual Marijuana March, while Jonathan Tilove at the Statesman says that the Texas House hates those red light cameras even more than they hate Stickland.  And the Texas Freedom Network calls out the state's Health and Human Services Commission for the hypocrisy of tomorrow's "Pink Day" while systematically destroying women's health services in tandem with the extremist right wing.

Now HHS wants everyone to wear pink to show their support for women’s health. Well, yes, let’s all wear pink. But we would prefer having state HHS officials (and the elected officials who appoint them) who actually seem to care more about promoting women’s health than anti-abortion politics.

Progress Texas has a special report on the continuing battle over voting rights.  It centers on #SB9, which as Andrew Turner at the Quorum Report previews, is set for Wednesday.

Just as Texas retreats from a voting rights fight in federal court in San Antonio over the way embattled Secretary of State David Whitley handled the rollout of a botched voter purge, Senate Bill 9 by Sen. Bryan Hughes, R- Mineola, has the potential to inflame the situation if it gains any traction in the House during the closing weeks of the session.

The bill would increase the criminal penalty of forging a ballot from a Class A misdemeanor to a state jail felony, something that voting rights groups say would have a negative impact on turnout.

Sanford Nowlin at the Current has more.

"This legislation magnifies the voter suppression tactics that (Texas politicians) have been pursuing for the last couple of years," said Zenén Jaimes Pérez, advocacy director for the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Somewhat related: Charlie Kuffner warns that the end of the TXSOS voter purge lawsuit is not the end of that business.

The Texas Observer and ProgTex have also been on the story about local control at the Lege.  For the Observer, Justin Miller:

More than 30 Confederate monuments were taken down in Texas between 2015 and 2018, according to a Southern Poverty Law Center report. This has sparked an intense backlash from Anglo conservatives who see the removal of these monuments as an erasure of their Antebellum heritage. Activist groups pumped out robocalls and radio ads calling on Texas Republicans to keep the monuments in place.

State lawmakers responded this session by proposing controversial legislation -- Senate Bill 1663 and House Bill 3948 -- to strip local governments of their authority to take down historical monuments, statues or portraits, or even rename schools, parks, streets and other public property.

And for Progress Texas, Glenn Smith.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler was right when he observed recently that the Republican-led state government “has declared war against” Texas cities.

The state is trying to take self-government away from cities, counties and school districts. It is a war on local government. It is also a war on democracy.

From limiting local government’s ability to meet its financial needs, to pre-empting local worker protections and public health and safety ordinances, the state is saying local voices don’t matter.

Why, you ask? Consider this: Eighty-five percent of Texas residents and 80 percent of Americans live in urban areas. A glance at any state or national map of election results shows disproportionate Republican support in rural areas.

Cities in Texas and elsewhere are increasingly diverse, tolerant, progressive, and focused on actually addressing issues that matter. That’s probably why, in Texas and elsewhere, they are increasingly under Democratic control.

Environment Texas provides us with another ecological legislative update.  Arya Sundarum at the Texas Tribune reports on the House bill that could have prevented future arrests like Sandra Bland's but multiple attempts to pass it failed.  Eric Trayson at the Houston Chronicle explains why one statehouse bill (stopped by a Democratic point of order last week) was a mortal threat to trans people like himself.  Better Texas Blog is concerned about Medicaid managed care protections.  And Scott Braddock sees a crackup coming in Texas Republican tax orthodoxy.

To wrap up the Wrangle's aggregation of Lege developments this week, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs blogged about the Greens' new hope of achieving ballot access in 2020 via a bill passed late Friday night.  David Collins followed up with more details, and Alyson Goldenstein at the Houston Chronicle also has an account.

Wesson Gaige, co-chair of the Green Party of Texas, was cautiously optimistic about the bill’s passage on Friday knowing that it still needs Senate approval.

If it does pass, Gaige said “we will be running Green candidates who uphold planet over profit, people over profit and peace over profit.”

[...]

“It’s a mixed bill from a third-party standpoint,” said Wes Benedict, former executive director for the Libertarian Party of Texas.

While the lower threshold would help Libertarian and Green Party candidates stay on the ballot, Benedict said the fee requirement will hurt the parties. He said the filing fee helps pay for primary elections, in which third party candidates generally don’t participate because of the high barrier to entry.

The Libertarian Party would likely challenge that fee in court should the bill pass, he added.

As Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez prepare to join the Sunrise Movement in Washington to rally for the Green New Deal ...


... SocraticGadfly continues his Greens vs. Democrats on the Green New Deal series with Part 4 about ag tech and its role in addressing climate change.

The Texas Living Waters Project uses the Austin Central Library to showcase the value of rainwater capture, condensate reuse and reclaimed water.

In the wake of severe flooding throughout southeast Texas last week, both Save Buffalo Bayou and Nick Powell at the Chronicle wrote about the Houston area's potential third reservoir likely having little effect in the northwest part of Harris County.


After tens of thousands of homes flooded in the watersheds of Cypress Creek and the Addicks and Barker reservoirs during Harvey in 2017, regional planners revived an idea originally conceived nearly 80 years ago by the Army Corps of Engineers: a third reservoir to supplement the capacity of Addicks and Barker in the event of a major flood.

But the study by Rice University’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education, and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center revealed the difficulties in attempting to eliminate flooding in the Cypress Creek watershed, which covers over 300 square miles in northwest Harris County and features over 250 miles of open streams.

[...]

The study also concluded that the remaining undeveloped land in the Cypress Creek area should be protected against development, specifically the Katy Prairie west of Houston, where vegetation and wetlands provide flood protection.

Last, a downtown Austin barbecue joint that only does pig caught the attention of Texas Monthly's Daniel Vaughn.

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