Will Hurd (R-TX-23) is retiring to “solve problems at the nexus between technology and national security”, which I guess is wonkspeak for “avoid getting whupped”, since he won his last race by less than 1,000 votes. We’ll probably flip that 71% Latino district.
Looking at the Cook roundup of House ratings, I’m feeling pretty good about holding the House. I see a lot of big name Republicans in tough fights – these guys will spend millions to keep their seats. I also see more open/vacant seats on the Republican side (6) than on the Democratic (1).
I’m taking nothing for granted, but so far so good on the House.
rikyrah
Yep.
Only one by 800 votes last time.
We can pick this district up. Let’s get to work!!
When will there be a funding thermometer be put up for this district?
Yarrow
Gina Ortiz Jones is running again as the Dem candidate for this district. She came pretty close to winning in 2018 and has a really good shot now. Her website.
SFAW
Or we would, if Latinos are allowed to vote in Texas in 2020. But since it’s Texas …
kindness
We could bump up our ActBlue posts. It is time after all.
Scott
Hurd is probably tired of being odd man out in today’s Republican Party. I’m in the district ajacent to his and am saddled with Chip Roy. Would gladly trade. Hurd is a decent, thoughtful, rational traditional conservative Republican that doesn’t exist anymore.
SFAW
Not that it matters, I guess, but I’m wondering how much the Racist-in-Chief’s recent spate of screaming-out-loud racism contributed to Hurd’s decision.
Yarrow
Just a note re: Texas voting, starting in the 2020 election the option to vote straight ticket will no longer be available. Texas has voting for judges and the ballots can be pages long. The easy shortcut is to vote straight party. So Governor Abbott and the Republican legislature took that away.
I think the straight ticket voting option was part of why Dems swept all the judge races in Harris County (the largest county by population in TX)–it’s easy just to vote straight ticket Dem. Going forward voters will have to page through all those pages and pages of candidates and select them individually. I suspect that will hurt Dems, just as the Republicans intended.
@SFAW: Latinos don’t always vote for the Democrat. I keep posting this special election for Texas state Senate that was held in 2018. The Republican upset the Democrat. Link.
Republicans in Texas are working hard to cultivate the Latino vote. They worked very hard in this election and it paid off. Democrats need to work just as hard.
rikyrah
Posted in the morning thread.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: He’s a good candidate. I’ve been posting links to his website in a lot of threads.
Marcopolo
Second to seeing more “contribution” posts. There are quite a few elections, normal & special, occurring between now and the end of the year such as the Virginia state legislative elections. And only about a month from now on September 10 Dan McCready will be on the ballot in the special election for NC-9 (you know, that district where all that absentee ballot tampering went on and a bunch of folks were just indicted for it).
Republicans are dumping millions of dollars into the race. Democrats, not so much.
Here’s his website if you want to throw him some bucks.
Amir Khalid
Is this Will Hurd chap the one that’s Beto’s best Republican friend?
rikyrah
Biden’s front-runner status makes him a target at second debate
Joy Reid reports on the themes and points of contention among the Democratic 2020 presidential candidates at the second night of the Democratic Party’s second primary debate.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Yarrow: Iowa’s R legislature and governor also did away with straight ticket voting. It worries me
rikyrah
Booker takes care to keep criticism of Biden apart from Obama
Senator Cory Booker, 2020 Democratic candidate for president, talks about trying to win the support of African American voters, particularly when so many are backing former Vice President Joe Biden because of his affiliation with President Obama, and the need for Democrats to pick a candidate who can unify the party against Donald Trump.
rikyrah
Obama legacy takes friendly fire in debate attacks on Joe Biden
Karine Jean-Pierre, chief public affairs officer for MoveOn.org, and Adrienne Elrod, former senior advisor to the Hillary Clinton campaign, talk with Joy Reid about how Democratic candidates, in the zeal to attack Joe Biden at the send primary debate, may have given fodder to the Trump campaign with their criticism of the Obama/Biden legacy.
rikyrah
Manhattan D.A. subpoenas Trump Org beyond Barr’s protective reach
Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney, talks about the legal dynamics at play in breaking news that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance has subpoenaed the Trump Organization as part of an investigation into hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, noting that the local jurisdiction is beyond Attorney General Barr’s reach and Trump’s pardon power.
rikyrah
McConnell loses sense of humor over ‘Moscow Mitch” ahead of roast
Joe Sonka, staff writer at Insider Louisville, talks about how Mitch McConnell has lost his sense of humor over criticism that he is blocking election security legislation in deference to Russia, and the likely abuse he’ll face at the upcoming Fancy Farm Picnic in Kentucky, a raucous political event where heckling is part of the tradition.
Keith P.
It’s wonkspeak for “tech lobbyist”.
rikyrah
Nearly half of all House Democrats support impeachment inquiry
Joy Reid reports that the number of House Democrats who now support beginning an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump is now at 117, with 118 being the symbolically significant crossing of the line to support by a majority of the House Democratic caucus.
rikyrah
Don’t ever question Black folks’ patriotism:
11 brothers from Alabama, 158 years of US military service
By ADRIAN SAINZ
July 31, 2019
cmorenc
@rikyrah: Should Trump lose in 2020, it will be very interesting to see just how interested and eager New York state authorities will prove to be in actively undertaking to prosecute Trump, and for which misdeeds. If OTOH Trump pulls off re-election, we’re all too fucked for any of that to matter looking forward to 2024, when he’ll be termed-out.
oldster
Part of Hurd’s calculation, as part of every GOP Rep’s calculation, will involve how they are going to explain their vote to impeach or not to impeach.
If that vote is held.
This is another reason that it is important to move forward on impeachment: it holds the GOP reps’ feet to the fire.
And for some of them, those feet are going to get so hot that they will move on from elected office altogether.
Hurd is listening to the growing calls for impeachment. He is seeing the movement gain strength on the Dem side. And his announcement that he will not run again is part of his response.
Hold the vote. Make all the GOP reps show their true (Russian) colors.
Barbara
@rikyrah: A sterling example of what it means to love your country even when it doesn’t love you back. That was how Condaleezza Rice put it in reference to the tradition of African American military service, probably the only thing she ever said that I agree with.
rikyrah
Yesterday, I went to the recital for Peanut’s Summer Dance Camp. I thought back to when I was a girl and had dance recitals, and you can see how things have so fundamentally changed, with regard to beauty, and its standards. When I was a girl, our mothers would have spent the day, taking us to the beauty shop to get our hair permed or pressed, and we ‘ better not’ mess with it. I felt like crying yesterday, watching all those beautiful Black girls, 85-90% had some variation of natural hair. The girls were allowed to have their hair in buns or ponytails. The number of beautiful single Afro-Puffs, to braids made into a bun, or twists up into a bun, or braids/twists pulled back into a ponytail. The standard for beauty has absolutely changed, and I see that as nothing but a positive for Black girls. :)
artem1s
I see a lot of big name Republicans sweating over whether they need to keep Dolt45 away from their districts during their campaigns. :-)
rikyrah
@Barbara:
Actually, Dr. Rice also came up with slavery being America’s Birth Defect -that the fundamental DNA of America is stained because of slavery.
raven
So the young Kennedy woman who died yesterday was the daughter of Paul Michael Hill, “He has been described as a “Northern Irish freedom fighter” who was jailed for 15 years after being wrongfully convicted for several bombings carried out by the Irish Republican Army.” The film “In the Name of the Father” was about the Guildford Four.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gu4LW9WsiQ
Kay
If it turns out Pelosi ran the impeachment pre-process well and needed the lay of the land and a solid House environment to hold the House before proceeding will people credit her?
Is it possible she knows how to run this? Not enough evidence yet, I get that, but a bad result would have been on her so a good or better one should be too, correct?
joel hanes
@rikyrah:
with 118 being the symbolically significant crossing of the line to support by a majority of the House Democratic caucus.
218 needed to pass.
We would want more than that.
So more than a hundred to go.
It’s no wonder Pelosi has not been all “once more into the breach”.
ruemara
@Yarrow: at what? Being anti-abortion and anti-Latino? Look, the reason many Latinos vote Republican is the reason why if you’re progressive, don’t count on getting the Latino vote to swing to you.
@cmorenc: He won’t be termed out. I think the GOP would break any laws to keep him in.
Kay
@rikyrah:
That’s so nice. I love dance recitals. I love the little ones who go blank and stand there. The complete and utter lack of self consciousness that allows them to stand on a stage and stare at the audience. They think it’s reversed! That they’re watching us! There should be award for that – “was distracted so forgot to dance”.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: I saw a few moments of the Today Show this morning. They had a segment on I think Trump talking about the Dem debates but in it they talked about how the Dem candidates are “tempering their criticism of Obama.” They showed brief clips of Kamala Harris and Cory Booker. Had a tweet from Eric Holder on the screen that said something about how criticizing Obama’s legacy wasn’t good for Dems.
tokyokie
@Yarrow: I live in Texas, and I never vote a straight-party ballot. That’s because Democrats sometimes don’t field a candidate against a Republican in some races. I vote for every Democrat who’s running, and in the races in which no Democrat is running, I’ll vote for the Green Party or La Raza Unida or Libertarian or even the Slightly Silly Party candidate. In the races in which a Republican is running unopposed, I don’t vote.
tokyokie
@rikyrah: Moscow Mitch has a sense of humor? Somehow I doubt it’s much beyond snickering when he sees a poor person suffering.
rp
@joel hanes: I don’t understand this argument. The purpose of holding an impeachment inquiry is to persuade people through the fact gathering process.
ruemara
@rikyrah: Constant self immolating attack mode. It would be great if people running for office didn’t feed the media beast what it wants.
Matt
@Yarrow:
Imma laugh when every person they convinced gets deported. Latino Trumpkins deserve everything they vote for, good and hard.
joel hanes
@rp:
The fact gathering process has been underway for some time.
It has gathered some facts.
It has engendered some subpoenas, which have been illegally ignored, which creates other facts.
Pelosi is a whip-counter, not a spellbinder.
Kay
Can you imagine basing your personal financial decisions on “Fox Business”. Sure- I’ll commit suicide for The Cause!
And the wealth of the people it benefits! Everyone involved gets rich except the suckers in the public. You may as well make a straight donation to the cable hosts and their GOP pols. Skip watching. It’ll save time to make more money to give them.
gwangung
No.
If the majority of voters are against even doing this, there’s a fair amount of heavy lifting that needs to be done.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I went for Peanut, but it was the little ones that gave me life!
They were so absolutely adorable :)
Their enthusiasm was just contagious.
They did dances to Frozen’s ‘ Let It Go’
And ” Old Town Road”
Brought the house down.
Kay
@gwangung:
I just get so tired of everyone on the internet knowing everything. There’s never the slightest doubt or chance of failure in their desired approach because it’s all hypothetical.
The Moar You Know
@Matt: Laugh all you want. I’m a lifelong California citizen and the GOP does not do badly among Latinos here given how uniformly shitty the party is to those of the Hispanic persuasion. If the GOP could just stop blaming them for everything they’d lock up a majority of Latino votes in CA within a decade.
Last I looked the approval rate amongst Hispanics for Trump has been hovering right around 25%. It should be zero. That it isn’t should concern anyone who is relying on Hispanic votes to put Dem candidates over the finish line.
joel hanes
Texas can be flipped!
https://juanitajean.com/texas-i-love-yew-5/
Kay
@rikyrah:
The hair change is interesting. It had to come out of changes in adults because they’re the people doing all this hair-enforcing.
Yarrow
@ruemara: Dems in Texas need to work harder to get Latinos registered and involved in the process. There is a history of Latinos not being voters in Texas (they were explicitly excluded during Jim Crow, which was different from other southern states) so there is less of a history of voting and studies show most people learn to be voters at home. It’s work to bring people into the process of voting and Democrats haven’t done that work well in Texas in the last two or three decades.
@Matt:
So you’re saying every Latino citizen who voted for Trump is going to be deported? Okay….
Baud
@The Moar You Know:
Not even African Americans are at zero. And 25% is within the crazification factor. Just because blacks are extraordinary right now doesn’t mean that every other group is immune from the iron law of the 27%.
Matt McIrvin
@The Moar You Know: A significant fraction of Hispanic Americans look white, identify as white, and can be pulled into white identity politics. I suspect those are the bulk of the Trumpsters. They see undocumented immigrants as people who are giving them a bad name and think, erroneously, that racist Anglo whites aren’t going to turn on them sooner or later.
rp
@Kay: That’s fair, but there’s just as much of a tendency to say “don’t comment on X because you’re just someone on the internet and don’t have all the details.” Should I defer to Chuck Todd and Maggie Haberman because they’re “experts”?
There are a million instances of fans saying “hey, signing this pitcher to a $300 million contract is a terrible idea,” and others saying “the team knows what its doing and you shouldn’t criticize.” If the contract ends up being a disaster, was it a lucky guess, or did the fans have some insight?
If this ends up working out, I’ll give Pelosi plenty of credit, but I still think she should have moved more quickly.
L85NJGT
They’re running a redux of 2018, with the orange man saying offensive things to drive dipshit turnout, which did ok for them in older, whiter states. The focus is maximizing MoscowMitch’s shot at keeping a one or two seat majority, and the rest of the party can pound sand.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yesterday I was told that my people were stupid because of the likes of Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal, Pai, Seema Verma etc. Even when more than 70% of “my people” voted for HRC and Obama before her.
Steeplejack (phone)
@rikyrah:
That’s great! My brother’s adopted daughter has pretty “textured” hair (family joke), and she and her main stylist. my BIL, put it up all sorts of ways.
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack (phone): How did your surgery go?
Kay
@rp:
I see that. That it’s a push/pull and I’m really not enforcing loyalty to her. But there’s always a disclaimer, which is the nature of the thing because it’s always the road not taken- so “too late” or “too early” or “not the right way”. All I’m asking is that there be a recognition that basing an outcome on a set of counterfactuals is an opinion and it’s endlessly elastic, so Pelosi’s actions can change and there can be a new counterfactual- what would have happened. There’s no end to that. IF “sooner” THEN “success” cannot happen, because “sooner” is past, so in a very real way we will never know. That doesn’t mean we can’t speculate but it does mean it’s speculation.
rp
@Kay: agreed
(oh, and because it’s the internet, SHUT UP DUMB A**!!11!1)
Kay
It’s also not true that Democrats on the debate stage must either attack one another or Obama to make their position clear. They can state their position. Anyone who is plugged in enough to listen at this stage will get that it’s an implied criticism. They’re not doing this out of “honesty” – they’re doing it because they want to ding their opponent, Joe Biden, and get an advantage. Which is fine! That’s their choice. But please don’t blow smoke up my ass and tell me a bunch of experienced talented pols don’t know how to advance a position without comparing it critically to Obamas. Yes, they do and we know this become some of them are doing it.
The Moar You Know
@schrodingers_cat: Wow.
People vote GOP because they see that as being in their best interests. They need to be shown why it isn’t. Patronizing bullshit like two of the comments above yours don’t help.
rp
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah — I thought that was a BS comment.
FelonyGovt
I think the “attacks on Obama” during the debates were the direct results of the BS questions the moderators posed, which were intended to create a fight.
ruemara
@The Moar You Know: As a friend of mine with more reach into the CA Latino & Indigenous community has said to me, they are very, very racist. Against blacks & against fellow Latinos. He’s not surprised, more disenchanted because as much as his Indigenous friends struggle with issues, they really balk at supporting Dems and his Latinx (ok Mexican heritage) friends say amazingly bigoted things about refugees. Very red, very anti-abortion and not a group we fully comprehend how catholicism and model minority status affect their votes. Not sure how that will change since Gods & Guns are big parts of their cultures too. To clarify, at least most Indigenous voters are clear on which side improves conditions, but it ain’t exactly due to affection for all under the tent.
I find intra-minority racism disturbing.
chopper
@rp:
it was a complete horseshit comment. what’s next, black folk are ‘stupid’ because of ben fucking carson and diamond and fucking silk?
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: If your people are stupid how dumb must white people be? The mind reels.
The Moar You Know
@ruemara: Your friend is correct. Especially about the racism against black folks. I have seen that my entire life and it is stunning, they don’t fuck around and express themselves in ways that my relatives in Alabama would hesitate to do.
And then there is the whole caste thing, sangre puro versus mestizo versus los indios. The Mexicans treat the Guatemalans coming through their country as subhumans, which is bad enough, and the anti-Guatemalan/Mayan thing has been a huge problem in Quintana Roo since they finally became federalized in 74. I don’t pretend to understand it all but the darker/more Indian blood you’ve got, the lower you are on the Hispanic totem pole. And that has direct, major consequences both in Mexican society and here in the US.
Gravenstone
@The Moar You Know:
it’s the same old song and dance of self delusion, ” but he’s not talking about ME”.