Turning TX Blue!!!

Robert Draper’s fine article, Game On in the August issue of Texas Monthly, finishes with the two most salient points…  First: the Democratic Party is surging from the bottom up…  Second: What the Democrats need is simply a fighter; can’t win with nobody in the ring.

Leaders of the state Democratic Party have acted as if there are two major political parties in TX; there’s not.  First and foremost the party leaders wanted money; I was told, in 2012, to raise between $500,000 and $1,000,000!  Don’t know for sure who’s on the ballot; do all available offices have Democratic candidates?  How or what are we going to spend this money on?  Don’t worry, just get more money! 

Against the party of: Ayn Rand, Laffer, Emanuelson, Weyrich, Kristol, a legislator for every Ob Gyn, Mexican border walls and troops, ballot box access chicanery,  etc…   We need good people filling all the slots on the ballot and ads on the, still neutral, Internet.

As a three time candidate against incredibly ensconced incumbents, (2012 - Carter; 2010 - Ogden; 2006 - Ogden) with really large campaign funds and long donor lists, my job wasn’t to win (although hope springs eternal) it was to find and encourage folks in the counties, precincts and neighborhoods; give them some one to vote for.

Why?

Because Republicans (the party of NO!) have repeatedly insulted and offended large blocks (the sum of whom is a large majority of Texas’ population) of eligible voters while discouraging those same constituents from using the one power they do have: to register and vote!

Conservative, white people have effectively controlled political power (for many, many years) in Texas with the innocuous phrase, “majority rules.”  However, the population of Texas leads in a national demographic trend: the minority-majority.  This trend is when the total of Americans of: Latin, African, Asian and Indigenous descent is greater than the percentage of people who identify themselves simply as White. 

The new two step approach of the NO! (dominated by white, extreme, conservatives) is to: 1. Gerrymander districts to make elected office safer for Republican incumbents and candidates; 2. Voter id regulations to make access to the voting booth more difficult. 

Voting restrictions have been justified as attempts to eliminate voter fraud, even though study after investigation has found less than an incredibly small fraction of 1% of votes cast in person are determined to be fraudulent.  The second excuse, when investigations discover that voting access discrimination affects non-whites most, is that regulations are meant to discourage those who might vote for a Democrat; that is also illegal.

This election cycle Democrats, and their money, are not just staying in Texas; they are to be aided and abetted by the national Democratic Party and ancillary groups’ efforts.  The luck of the NO! is waning and they may soon have to realize just how vulnerable their insistence on a return to the, “good ole days,” (the 1850s); their prejudice and their own inflexibility has made them.

Turning TX Blue!!!