I didn’t pay very much attention to the Texas Democratic Party Convention in Dallas this past week. But from what I did see it appeared the convention went very well. Via Kuff, Convention Coverage.
I’m not up in Dallas, though several of my blogging colleagues are. So far the reports I’ve heard are positive – lots of energy and excitement. One person even compared it to 2008, which is music to the ear. Obviously, the folks who take the time to go to a party convention aren’t the ones that need to be inspired to go vote, but they are the ones that will be doing a lot of the work to inspire others, so the more enthusiastic they are, the better.
As I said on Friday, the best thing you can do is work to help get the message out and get the voters to the polls. The next best thing you can do is pitch in financially. Democrats have done phenomenally well in grassroots small-dollar fundraising of late, which is both great and necessary since the other guys have a lot more megalomaniac billionaires on their side.
One of the most expected, and glaring, differences between Democrats and the GOP to come out of the convention was the differences in the party platforms. Huge differences on the issues of immigration, LGBT rights, and women’s issues($). It summarizes some of the other differences very well.
Whatever else, the two documents offer a clear sense of where each party’s head is at and the stark ideological differences between
what is now a very liberal Democratic Party and a very conservative Republican Party in Texas.
The Democrats call for investing more in education. The Republicans call for “reducing taxpayer funding to all levels of education institutions.”
Republicans want to repeal Obamacare. Democrats want to keep it and go beyond it to “Medicare for all.”
Republicans want to reverse Roe v. Wade and enact a constitutional amendment protecting the rights of the unborn. Democrats say the decision about an abortion should be left to a woman, her family, her physician, her conscience and her God without political interference.
Republicans want to privatize Social Security. Democrats don’t.
Republicans want to repeal the Voting Rights Act. Democrats want to restore the act’s section that required Texas to get federal approval before making changes in voting laws.
Republicans want to end in-state tuition for what they called “illegal immigrants.” Democrats want to keep it, and e beneficiaries “Texas undocumented students.”
Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte shared the spotlight at the Texas Democratic Party convention on Friday night, promising to change the direction of the state, ripping their Republican opponents and imploring Democrats to break the GOP’s two-decade grip on state government.
Davis attacked her Republican opponent, matching his attacks at the GOP convention in Fort Worth earlier this month, and talked fighting insiders in Austin.
“I’m running because there’s a moderate majority that’s being ignored — commonsense, practical, hardworking Texans whose voices are being drowned out by insiders in Greg Abbott’s party, and it needs to stop,” she said.
Davis spoke about her background, her kids and her grandmother, all as a way of establishing her Texas roots and values.
She talked about what she would do if elected, promising full-day pre-K “for every eligible child,” less testing in public schools, less state interference with teaching, more affordable and accessible college. She also implied she would end property tax exemptions for country clubs as part of property tax reform, and end a sales tax discount for big retailers who pay on time.
She took some swipes at her opponent, too.
“Unlike Greg Abbott, I’m not afraid to share the stage with my party’s nominee for lieutenant governor, my colleague, mi hermana, Leticia Van de Putte,” she said. When the audience hooted, she cautioned them: “Now you guys don’t clap too much or Greg Abbott will sue you.”
The insider slam on Abbott was woven into Davis’ nine pages of prepared remarks. “You see, Mr. Abbott cut his teeth politically as part of the good old boys’ network that’s had their hands on the reins for decades,” she said. “He’s been in their service and their debt since he ran for office, and as a judge and a lawyer, he’s spent his career defending insiders, protecting insiders, stacking the deck for insiders and making hardworking Texans pay the price.”
Davis said Abbott accepts large contributions from payday lenders “and then clears the way for them to charge unlimited interest rates and fees.” She blasted him for taking contributions from law firms that handle bond deals approved by the office of the attorney general, and for saying state law does not require chemical companies to reveal what they are storing in Texas communities.
“He isn’t working for you; he’s just another insider, working for insiders,” she said.
Van de Putte, who spoke immediately before Davis, promised not to back down from the fight against Dan Patrick, her opponent for lieutenant governor. She said she would instead fight to “put Texas first.”
When she ran for student council president in junior high, she said, she was told she could not run because she was a girl.
“Well I did, and I won,” she said.
She said that lesson remains relevant now. “I need to run, not just because I am a girl, but because I want the responsibility. Because I know what needs to get done. And I know I’m the right person for the job.”
“I ain’t in it for the show,” she said. “I ain’t no pushover. I ain’t no East Coast liberal. I ain’t no West Coast Democrat. This grandma’s name is Leticia San Miguel Van de Putte from the barrio, and I am a Tejana.”
She spent a large portion of her address criticizing Patrick’s Senate voting record — sometimes, she noted, he was voting alone — against investments in roads and water as well as in favor of more than $5 billion in cuts to public schools in 2011.
“Patrick offers a vision of Texas with less opportunity than the generations that came before us,” Van de Putte said. “He would be the first politician to leave Texas with less for our children.”
It’s evident that the case has been made very well for the need for change in Texas. Now what’s needed is the work to be done to register new voters and get them to the polls in November. And that appears to be happening as well.
At its workshop Saturday, Battleground Texas trained delegates how to persuade undecided voters using techniques and approaches honed in President Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential race.
“These messages were actually tested, not just something that somebody thought sounds good,” said Laura Derrick, Battleground’s special projects manager who helped Obama win Ohio. “They did focus groups. They did message testing.”
For example, volunteers are encouraged to use the term “hard working” instead of “middle class,” which suggests economic division among some voters. The Battleground model developed for Texas found that voters respond particularly to someone who will “fight for them” and oppose Abbott if they see him as “an insider” — both phrases that Davis repeatedly used in her speech to the convention
“We didn’t have this before in Texas — now we do,” Derrick said.
Jeremy Bird, a founder of Battleground Texas whose Chicago-based consulting firm also works for Ready for Hillary, said part of the task of building a sustainable voter base is dealing with barriers against voting, especially among Hispanics who don’t vote in numbers reflecting their population.
“When you look at voting history in Texas and you look at the cultural barriers of several cycles of low voter turnout, we have to break that down,” Bird said. “We have to give people a clear articulation of why their vote matters and the difference between the two parties.
Rojas, the Dallas delegate, said he’s impressed with Battleground Texas’ focus on building a structure to win elections.
“They’re not saying, ‘Well, we’re definitely going to win this time.’ We’re building for 2016,” he said. “Every team we build for Battleground right now is for November, but also for the future.”
Zac Petkanas, a spokesman for the Davis campaign, says there’s no conflict between those focused on winning this year and those engaged in building for the future.
“The way to build infrastructure in 2016 and 2018 is to win in 2014,” he said. “Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t have the credibility of someone running for dog catcher.”
I think that last point is particularly poignant. Slater tries to make the fact that because Texas Democrats now have many more people involved with registering, identifying and mobilizing voters, that’s somehow a bad thing. I’m not buying that at all, this is all good news.
There might be a moment’s angry pleasure in pledging your vote to “none of the above.” There’s not much joy, though, in feeling abandoned.
And nobody feels it more keenly right now than so-called moderate Republicans, who have been shoved clean out of the GOP tent by the pure-D looniness of the ascendant uber-right.
Well, it’s not a surprise. The internecine war within the Republican ranks has been predicted for a while now.
Some people, of course, might profess not to care about Republican politics. If they care about the society they live in, they should.
Anti-government extremists aren’t just bellowing on the radio anymore: They are being elected to govern. What their brand of government is going to look like, I cannot really say, but I have a kind of jittery feeling about it.
This sentiment is coming to you not only from hectoring media robots (me), but from Republicans who say they have been disenfranchised without much warning. These include business-oriented fiscal conservatives, social libertarians who favor personal responsibility and privacy, even some of the early tea party adherents who embraced the goals of smaller government and a lower tax burden.
I’ve been fielding comments and messages from these folks for a while now. A year or so ago, it was Republican women alarmed at restrictions on reproductive rights and privacy. Now, with the right-wing race to crazy in full stampede, I hear from respected veteran legislators ousted in primary upsets by opportunistic ideologues. Or people who understand religious liberty is not limited to one theological flavor. Or people who support gun rights, but who also grasp that unlimited firepower for everybody, everywhere, the more the better, is not a sane policy.
A couple of weeks back, I got a fresh flurry of laments from the Lost Tribe of Moderate Republicans, appalled by a Texas GOP platform that endorsed discredited, homophobic “reparation therapy” that’s supposed to turn gay people straight.
This wasn’t necessarily the line-in-the-sand issue for most of the people I heard from, but more evidence of an abrupt takeover of the party by extremists who seem opposed to everybody and everything.
[...]
“The party which I once believed stood for opportunity for all left me,” one man wrote.
A retired gentleman told me he is contemplating voting — with distaste — for Democrats for the first time in his life. Says another: “Am I going to have to go to the dark side this November in order to make my distaste for the party known?”
But, as much as blue-state operatives might welcome this prospect, other conservatives say they can’t make that leap. They are left, they say, with no candidate, no party, nobody to vote for — and nobody to represent their philosophy.
Whether these former Republicans vote for Democrats (much preferred), or don’t vote at all, that’s a win for Democrats. The more former reliable GOP voters change their voting habits the better things will get for Democrats.
What all of this shows is that things are already changing. Whether Wendy Davis will win in November is still up in the air, but she’s saying all the right things.
“We’re going to have the resources that we need, and we are going to be competitive not only on television, but I can assure you this — there’s no way he can match us on the ground. We’ve already got 18,000 people volunteering on the ground for us in this campaign, and it’s only June,” Davis said. “And as we get closer and closer to the election, I expect that that number will increase dramatically.”
While trailing in the polls, Davis repeated what her campaign has said – that traditional polls aren’t reaching the people who normally wouldn’t vote but whom she is working to motivate.
“We are reaching out to so many people who have stayed home in gubernatorial election years,” she said. “I see them fired up, I see them enthusiastic and most importantly, I see belief. And in these elections, belief is half the battle.”
Things are shaping up better then they have in some time for Texas Democrats in 2014.
WCNews at Eye on Williamson points our that there is more than enough money to pay for what Texas needs. What’s lacking is the political will, Surplus of Neglect.
Texpatriate will not publish a convention recap before the roundup is sent out, because WordPress has decided to corrupt 2500 words of meticulously researched and compiled Horwitz’s opinions. Hopefully, he’ll get to it by Sunday. In the meantime, we would like to know which blogging software we can use that is not completely worthless.
Todo Texas ponders the short term future of San Antonio as it navigates through some big changes.
Texas Clean Air Matters calls out PUC Chair Donna Nelson for her opposition to federal renewable energy tax credits.
Glasstire alerts us to a series of billboards that will be coming to I-10 that feature quotes from Gertrude Stein, because if there’s one thing our highways could use a little more of, it’s Gertrude Stein quotes.
The Observer notes that like most bullies, Michael Quinn Sullivan is a lot more talk than action.
Unfair Park assures us that karma does in fact exist.
Beyond Bones does a little CSI: Cretaceous Era to discover who figured out that some dinosaurs had feathers.
Our state government in Texas has been shirking it’s responsibility since the Texas GOP seized control of all branches of government. They’ve neglected funding some of the most vital areas, public and higher education, infrastructure (roads, bridges, water), and health care just to name a few. Because of the GOP’s neglect, the money that could have been used to pay for those needs, have instead been hoarded and instead created surpluses. And now the GOP wanst to give that money to their wealthy corporate and business donors.
Leading state Republicans and some of their most vocal backers have turned up the volume in demanding tax cuts, as lawmakers anticipate a surplus about seven months before they return to Austin.
Sen. Dan Patrick, the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, has urged cuts in property and business taxes.
Attorney General Greg Abbott, the Republican hopeful for governor, has said small businesses need relief from what he calls a very unfair state franchise tax. The Texas Public Policy Foundation, which advocates less state spending, wants a two-year, half-penny reduction in the state’s 6.25-cent sales tax.
However, while Texas’ economy shows continued strength, fiscal experts say there is no chance the state will be so flush that lawmakers can slash school property taxes and make more progress toward adequately funding roads and water reservoirs.
Texas and its local governments rely so heavily on property and sales taxes that it’s hard to hammer a noticeable dent in them, experts said. So unless you own a business, you’re unlikely to feel any tax relief from the Legislature, the experts say.[Emphasis added]
The point that everyone needs to understand is that there is more than enough money in Texas to pay for the needs of Texans. There is not the political will, on either side, to pursue it with the vigor needed. Which is why, at least in the near future, the surplus of neglect – political as well as fiscal – will continue.
This should not surprise anyone. The central goal of the modern day Republican Party/tea party is to get elected and destroy the government from the inside. They want to make sure that the people no longer feel they can turn to their government for help or any sort of constructive solution.
The private consortium behind the project owes more than $1 billion and lacks the funding to pay off an upcoming debt payment due on June 30, according to the report. The report adds that the company has “depleted all but $3.3 million of available liquidity reserves.”
Most research examining growing income inequality in the United States has focused on economic causes, for seemingly obvious reasons.
But a new study suggests that a different cause – the politically induced decline in the strength of worker unions – may play a much more pivotal role than previously understood.
In fact, the role that union decline has played in growing income inequality may actually be larger than many of the favorite explanations offered by economists, such as the education gap in the United States.
Among their contributions to income equality: unions reduce pay differences within companies and use their influence to lobby on behalf of the working and middle classes, the researchers say. “The effect that unions used to have on protecting the incomes of middle class and working Americans has been underestimated,” said David Jacobs, co-author of the study and professor of sociology at The Ohio State University.
Jacobs conducted the study with Lindsey Myers, a doctoral student in sociology at Ohio State.Their results appear online in the journal American Sociological Review and are scheduled to appear in the August print edition.
[...]
They concluded that unions likely would have lost members in the 1980s even if there had been presidents supportive of their cause, but the losses would have been less severe.
“After the Reagan turning point, unions no longer had the influence to help contain the acceleration in inequality,” Jacobs said.
How did unions help control inequality?
According to Jacobs, other research has shown that firms with unionized employees have diminished differences in pay – such that the gap in the earnings of the highest-paid worker and the lowest-paid workers was reduced in firms organized by unions.
“Unions were also the most effective political advocates forv the less affluent before Congress, the president and other elected officials,”Jacobs said. “They ended up helping less prosperous families even if they weren’t union members.”
What this shows is that the exponential rise in CEO pay coincides with the decrease in unions in the US.
The Texas Progressive Alliance thinks it’s the Republican Party of Texas’ platform writers that need some therapy as it brings you this week’s roundup.
Almost as rare as Haley’s Comet, both houses of Congress actually did some WORK this week, overwhelmingly passing legislation to help our Veterans get better healthcare. But as Texas Leftist shares, helping our nation’s heroes is simply a bridge too far for some over at Fox News.
The latest poll taken of the Texas electorate for the 2014 elections is what it is, just as Texas voters are what they have been for at least twenty years. All it demonstrates is that everybody’s work is still cut out for them. But PDiddie at Brains and Eggs cautions everyone not to buy into the “It is inexorable” conservative spin of those numbers.
And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.
Fascist Dyke Motors tells her story of observing the opposition to the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance as it was being passed by City Council.
Scott Braddock reports on negative reactions to the Republican Party platform from Latino GOPers.
LGBTQ Insider laments the harsh homophobia of that same platform.
In the Loop reads deeper into the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange.
Nancy Sims ponders the future of the RPT platform.
Grits wonders why we restrict the use of asset forfeiture funds to drug treatment only.
Susan Duty provides some helpful tips to straight people on how to avoid being converted to homosexuality.
Lone Star Q identifies the “ex-gay” man behind the “reparative therapy” plank in the RPT platform.
And finally, the TPA bids a fond and hopefully temporary farewell to In The Pink Texas, whose use of Sleepless in Seattle as a political metaphor remains a classic of the genre.
The latest Texas Tribune poll for statewide races shows a static race at this point. There are still a considerable amount of “registered voters” identifying as undecided in the statewide races. Kuff has great analysis of the poll.
I’m not going to spend much time on this. For one thing, the UT/Trib pollsters haven’t earned my trust back since their debacle in the primaries. Yes, I know, a general election is different, but still. I don’t plan to put any faith in their results until I see how they fare in this election. I’ll track these and put them on the sidebar like all others that I see, but they’re just another set of numbers until they prove they’re more than that.
Beyond that, I have two complaints about the UT/Trib polls that have yet to be acknowledged, much less addressed. For one, Henson and Shaw have a bizarre tendency to ignore their own past data in their discussions of the poll du jour. How can you claim that Greg Abbott is killing it among Anglo voters when your own data shows that he’s not doing as well as either Mitt Romney or Rick Perry? It’s like each result exists in a vacuum, and it gets fit into whatever the narrative for that election happens to be. You’ve got all this data – use it, for crying out loud.
Two, they really need to explain their turnout assumptions and why they think the electorate will look like it does. This is especially the case given the not-really-random nature of their own polls, but it’s true for any pollster out there, including reputable firms and various haplesshacks: What do you think the 2014 electorate will look like, and why? If your polls are based on the assumption that 2014 will resemble 2010, well, it’s not surprising that you’d show Abbott with a double-digit lead. Maybe that will turn out to be a correct assumption, but don’t just make it without explaining why you’re making it. Everybody knows that Democrats, both nationally and in Texas, are working to change the turnout model for this year, and hopefully for non-Presidential years going forward. What I don’t know – what I don’t think anybody knows right now – is how successful they may be. Pollsters need to make a guess about that, and they need to explain the guess they make. Otherwise, they’re just polling the last election. That’s often a sound strategy – it’s what I recommended they consider doing for polling primaries – but it’s not the be-all and end-all, especially when you know there are other factors in play. Tell me what you think the electorate will look like, and why. I don’t think I’m asking for too much here.
There’s been some really off the mark polling in recent elections. As Kuff reminds us above, the Tribune’s primary polls this year were horrible. Not to mention what we just saw with Eric Cantor’s race in Virgina.
What this looks like is more of the same, this race is pretty static right now. Both parties and their candidates have their base of support but none seem to be particularly appealing, at this point, to the so-called undecided voters. That’s the issue the Democrats in Texas have to figure out, is what will appeal to them. And they can’t assume that all the undecided voters are disaffected Republicans or middle voters. What an undecided voter cares about, is a big mystery. See this article from 2004, Decision Makers, which shows very well that there’s no rhyme or reason to how undecided voters decide.
Polling is educated guessing. Why Nate Silver does so well in the Presidential race, in particular, is because there are so many data points. And what were seeing here is the exact opposite. This is just one data point. To get a more accurate picture we need several more data points. There’s no doubt that the GOP candidates are likely ahead and the Democrats are trailing. But by how much is anybody’s guess right now.
The campaigns are heading into a summer lull, although much is going on behind the scenes, and they will return in earnest after Labor Day. What’s left to be seen is how will the Democratic candidates try to make undecided voters, and more importantly non-voting Texans, see that the troubles in our state are the cause of the party currently in power. And what will they offer as an alternative.
What’s needed are candidates that can make undecided voters and non-voting Texas see the Texas GOP as extreme and frightening. Once that’s done they will see the Democrats as the only alternative that can bring back order. In order to be the hero, there has to be a villain.
The base of the Texas Republican Party really dislikes the Republican Speaker of the Texas House Joe Straus. At least that’s what they would like you to believe. Their “straw poll” said that 92% of them want Straus gone, (can’t tell what the turnout was though). I hope they’re able to oust Straus, nothing I’d like to see more then a complete wing nut takeover of Texas. Straus would be the only elected official in Texas that could conceivably attempt to hold them back if no Democrats are elected statewide in 2014.
Ross Ramsey’s latest is an attempt this election cycle to show some in the Texas GOP may actually have a conscience. That Texas Rush may be too much for some in the Texas GOP, Analysis: Will Some Split Votes? Some Think So. That’s still pretty squeamish to me and I think most in the GOP will cave and end up voting for Texas Rush in the end, just like doormat David Dewhurst.
The ultimate question is, will the Texas GOP scare off enough voters in 2014 for Democrats to win? That’s unlikely. I’m sure for some in the GOP Patrick will be a little too extreme and they will instead vote for a Democrat or skip a race. Doubtful it will be enough to swing an election. But every little bit helps. There’s no getting around the fact that Democrats will need a flood of new voters to turn the tide in November.
I have to admit I paid very little attention to the Texas GOP convention in Forth Worth. But what little I have seen or heard since it was over two things stand out. One is that the Texas GOP is now owned by Ted Cruz and Dan Patrick. The other is that they’ve made some changes to their platform, particularly around the issues of immigration and LGBT, Backs to the Future?.
The “Texas Solution,” the much-touted effort from the Republican Party of Texas to move toward acceptance of some kind of immigration reform, is dead. The measure, which was written into the party platform in 2012 and called for an expanded guest worker program, had been watered down in the convention’s drafting process—but it was replaced wholesale on the convention floor by hard-line immigration language that spells the end, for now, of one of the state party’s highest-profile dalliances with reform.
The new language emphasizes cracking down on immigration, calls for the end of in-state tuition as well as a raft of other measures, and waters down the guest worker provisions into almost total insignificance. “Once the borders are verifiably secure,” the plank reads, “and E-Verify system use is fully enforced, [the party calls for] creation of a visa classification for non-specialty industries which have determined actual and persistent labor shortages.”
The Republican Party now has, effectively, the immigration platform it had in 2010, the peak tea party year. It’s a remarkable reversal for several reasons. The Texas Solution’s inclusion in the party platform in 2012 was highly contentious among delegates at the time, but it was just as highly touted by party elders who wanted to show the GOP was evolving on an issue central to the future of a state with an increasing number of Hispanic voters—and a continuing need for a steady supply of labor.
[...]
Consider also that it’s 2014. The new Republican Party of Texas platform endorses what’s known as “reparative therapy,” the practice of training LGBT people to “convert” to heterosexuality. The platform committees dropped some archaic anti-gay language, but added a provision recognizing the “the value of counseling which offers reparative therapy and treatment to patients who are seeking escape from the homosexual lifestyle.”
Delegates who objected to the language wrote amendments attempting to alter it, but they never got a chance to introduce them on the floor. Debate over the platform was ended after five hours, and pro-gay Republicans were out of luck.
“I want every Republican elected. I’m here today trying to get Republicans elected,” said Rudy Oeftering, a vice president of the Texas Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group that had been banned from having a booth at the convention’s trade shows. But he admonished reporters on the convention floor to keep focus on the plank, even if the state party didn’t feel like talking about it.
“Every reporter should be asking every Republican candidate if they believe in reparative therapy. If they believe that homosexuality is a choice,” he said. “If you’re going to put language like this in the platform to drive away voters, then every Republican candidate should be accountable for what’s in the platform. The platform itself says that every candidate needs to take a position on this.”
That the GOP’s base, which continues to lurch further and further to the right, made this decision on it’s platform shouldn’t surprise anyone. This is, more a less, what happens every two years. The GOP in Texas goes more extreme with their platform and they continue to win BIG in Texas. So why in the world would they even think of dialing this back? It should be easy to see where I’m going with this.
The only way they will change their platform is if they start losing BIG. Otherwise it’s only likely to get more extreme two years from now. Until the Texans who are affected the most by this extreme platform that neglects the needs of poor, working and middle class Texans decide it’s time for a change, this will continue.
Letters from Texas pens a moving obituary to Annie’s List Executive Director Grace Garcia, who was tragically killed in an automobile accident last week.
CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme sees Texas republicans go full on hate for gays and Latinos. We see who you really are.
Appalled by the attacks on POW Bowe Bergdahl’s father, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs barely noticed there was a Republican state convention going on. Has anyone asked Chris Busby about the “cure the gays” platform plank?