KamalaHQ is hammering Trump’s Medal of Honor comments yesterday at his New Jersey ex-wife burial ground and golf club, so I assume the Harris campaign thinks those remarks are pretty damaging. Trump’s comments also clearly show that attacks on Walz’ military record have zero credibility from the Republican ticket, but I don’t think they were gaining much traction anyway, since they seem to have been replaced by false anguish over Kamala making fun of Walz’ white guy tacos. (Again proving that the sensitivity of the white male to even the slightest of slights can never be overstated.)
Kamala’s comms team is very good, but Harris and Walz are also experiencing a moment where their excitement is feeding the public’s excitement, and the public excitement is feeding back into their excitement and energy. This is where every campaign wants to be, a sweet spot where their momentum seems like it will never end.
Of course, this is rare: a campaign can be doing everything right, yet they’re faced with an uninterested public. Or, the campaign might have a message that would interest the public, but perhaps the candidate can’t deliver it for a number of reasons like age, poor retail political skills, etc. That’s what I thought about when I saw this (from a Fake LBJ account that is written by some history profs at some university in Texas):
I haven’t been paying close attention to Allred’s campaign, but let’s assume that fake LBJ is right: Cruz is weaker than ever, and the Allred campaign is following a pretty worn out playbook. The cause isn’t just money — they’ve raised $37 million to Cruz’ $57 million, and even though the concept of “enough” in political fundraising is hard to gauge, $37 mil is enough to run a decent campaign anywhere. So if it isn’t money, is it candidate? Is it an unreceptive public? Is it that Democrats often run very conservative campaigns in general? I mean, whatever you want to say about Beto, the guy knew how to fight.
I’m wondering about this because the Harris campaign is doing something special and rare. If Democrats are going to win in Texas, or Florida, or some of the other reddish-purple states that always seem to elude our grasp, we need to be able to replicate some of what’s led to this moment for the Harris/Walz campaign.
(Also, as usual, if there are Texans or people who know Texas politics reading this, tell me what I’ve missed about Allredl)
UPDATE: Kamala Harris Live: Raleigh, NC Rally and Economic Proposals
KatKapCC
I hate him so much.
Ivan X
@KatKapCC: How much?
trollhattan
Are we done with “What’s wrong with this guy?” because after eight years I still feel the need to ask what’s wrong with this guy? It’s as though he’s broken and no service nor parts are available.
TBone
They’re cut over the eye. Time to work the eye!
I’m very pleased to see us hitting hard, no longer playing defense!
Mousebumples
Reposting from the AM thread, but I hope Allred (and Walz) try to go on some sports and football media this fall. NFL, college, high school…. All opportunities to speak to normies who may not usually think too deeply about voting.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Cruzes always make people sick. Like an ocean-faring petri dish.
Chet Murthy
@trollhattan: which guy? Lizard Cruz? TCFG? Dimbulb Comer? Gauleiter-wannabee Hawley? So many choices!
TIL that James Woods not only starred in a Giuliani biopic, he also starred in a Roy Cohn biopic. I gotta believe that last one was funded by some nutjob billionaire, and with zero expectation of commercial success. Not “minimal expectation”. Zero.
matt
The vibe of a campaign that gets up every day and fights is just so much nicer than these ‘kitchen table issues’, ‘take the high road’ campaigns. We’re fighting fascists, let’s bust some heads!
Betty Cracker
A Texan commented the other day about Allred’s lackluster campaign. If accurate, it’s a pity for the reasons you mentioned.
I think Rick Scott is vulnerable, but I’m not super-optimistic that Debbie Mucarsel-Powell can knock him off. I hope she can! She’s raised a bunch of money, but he has near-infinite self-funding since he’s a crook.
Scott is underwater on approval ratings. Early polls had DMP within striking distance, but a recent one had Scott up by 10, which is outperforming Trump. (I don’t believe that for a second, BTW.)
DMP’s biggest challenge is people outside of South Florida have no clue who she is. Also, she’s a woman, which is a liability in Florida.
WereBear
Hey! Beto had the charisma thing. Credit where due.
sdhays
Any candidate in Texas who doesn’t start with a deep dive into the Beto campaign is doomed to fail. It seems so obvious, but I guess it’s not.
Sorry that Allred doesn’t want to win. That sucks. I our candidate in Florida is different.
WereBear
@Mousebumples: I think that is brilliant too, because Walz knows something interesting, he’s a teacher, and people will say, this is the Vice President?
He seems like beer material.
KatKapCC
@Ivan X: SO MUCH, THE MOST MUCH.
VFX Lurker
Random thoughts on this:
I follow Propane Jane on Twitter. She’s a Black psychiatrist living in Texas. One point she keeps hammering home over and over is that Texas is not a red state, but a low-voter-turnout state. If more voters showed up, Texas would turn blue.
In 2022, ACLU Texas noted 5 Ways Texas Suppresses the Vote.
Texas used to have a feminist Democratic governor in the 1990’s (Ann Richards). Texas used to be blue. Maybe it can go blue again.
Sean
This is exactly the analysis I gave in a thread the other day about Allred (I am a native Texan). A campaign built for the mid 2000’s democrats. JFC. He’s gonna lose by a lot. I feel validated (although that sucks, I’d rather be wrong).
TBone
Today’s Borowitz 🔥😆
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/study-people-exposed-to-jd-vance
sdhays
@Mousebumples: It sure would be nice to have Allred look at the state of the race and say, “At this rate, I’m guaranteed to lose, and disappointingly. Maybe I need shake things up and go for broke.”
Harris showing some coattails could trigger that kind rethinking (not going to hold my breath, though).
Chet Murthy
@VFX Lurker: Ehh, I dunno about Texas being “Blue” under Ann Richards. I loved Ann Richards, and sure, she was as progressive as she could be, more progressive than Texas for sure. But back then Texas Dems were ….. a mixed bag, lotsa racists in there. I grew up in Texas in the 70s/80s, and I sure wouldn’t describe the state as Blue at any point there.
The last time Texas went for the Dem candidate for President was 1976 for Carter.
All that said, Ann Richards was great! I mean GREAT!
Betty Cracker
Also, I found the Medal of Honor remarks appalling, but Trump says similar horrid shit all the time, and, as noted it never seems to stick in a career-damaging way like it would for anyone else. Maybe the fucker’s teflon is finally flaking off and this will catch on. It really was a breathtakingly cynical and grotesque thing to say, especially in the context of comparing battlefield heroics to a gross fat-cat donor writing yet another big check.
Sean
@Sean:
Mistermix: Here is my comment from one of yesterday’s open threads:
One last point, I get Allred outreach basically every day repping a poll showing him TIED at 41 PERCENT!!111!!!! This is the totality of contact and ads/text outreach here. I can’t find any poll showing that result, from any pollster. It isn’t cited on any of the stuff, so it just looks bogus. Nothing about volunteer efforts, registration, policy, hitting Cruz. Nothing. Just looks like a vanity campaign.
sixthdoctor
Isn’t this just pure Nazi shit? Repulsive.
SatanicPanic
@WereBear: I love Beto and it would be great if he just ran for a House seat.
Baud
Is Ted Cruz doing a lot in the face of Allred’s quiet, or is it that both sides are holding back? If the latter, I can kind of see the thinking in having the underdog who is $20 million behind in funding saving his ammo for the heat of the battle.
Just spitballin’ here.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@KatKapCC: [showing my age] the correct question is [in the voice of Ed McMahon], “how much, Johnny?”
Baud
@Betty Cracker: Agreed. Trump’s rhetoric hasn’t changed when it comes to insulting the military. People just accepted it in order to hate Hillary, and that’s the type of devil’s bargain that’s hard to undo.
matt
@sixthdoctor: it’s suicidal is what it is. those ethnic groups have been promoted to fully fledged white ethnicity in America but they certainly weren’t considered that then. bringing that back up is poison.
sdhays
@Baud: The decision to swim separately from the national ticket doesn’t cost money, but it sure isolates you from any momentum or synergy you might benefit from.
Baud
Fixed.
Baud
@sdhays: Yes, right or wrong, that’s a separate calculation.
KatKapCC
@TBone: A good one :D
MattF
I think what’s special about the Harris campaign is Harris. People perk up and pay attention when she comes to call. It means that the media bros waiting impatiently for the honeymoon to end will be disappointed.
KatKapCC
@sixthdoctor: “Ethnic Enclaves” is my new band name.
Kay
OMG, new heights of horrible. You really have to have no self respect at all to support this person.
Sean
@Baud: He is running around telling everyone he might lose and not to take things for granted. Does that mean he believes that? I don’t know.
trollhattan
@Chet Murthy: Confess didn’t get further than Trump’s…whatever that was about dudes what was shot versus dudes what be healthy and beautiful. He’s broken. Brain no work.
$8 blue check mistermix
@VFX Lurker: Ann Richards was governor before Fox News convinced people that voting for someone with a (D) after their name was voting for something awful. You can trace the loss of Democratic Senate seats in states that are arguable redder than Texas to Fox News, too: Daschle in SD (love him or hate him, he won a lot of tight races), Heidi Heitkamp in ND, Ben Nelson (he quit, and yes, yuck, but he was a D vote). We’re not going to get those seats back in a generation.
Pick almost any seat that an exceptional D could win 20-30 years ago, and the reason they can’t today is Fox.
trollhattan
@sixthdoctor: It was in a movie therefore: policy!
hueyplong
@sixthdoctor: WTF? So Vance says “Vote For Bill the Butcher?”
Hoodie
@sixthdoctor: Vance’s podcast history reminds me of the first night after I moved into the freshman dorm. Some assholes in the room across the hall came in around 2am and proceeded to loudly conduct what seemed like a 2-hr disquisition about their desire to fuck a nun. I’m pretty sure they were drunk and eventually grew up, but JD?
OId Man Shadow
@matt: Hopefully it rings a bell with Italians and Irish that with men like Vance and Trump, your status as “one of us” can be revoked and you’ll find yourself being treated like a minority once again.
kindness
I don’t expect Texas to elect many Democrats, because Texas. You know? What I wish is that their Republican party wasn’t quite so fascist. Talk about ruling the population rather than governing them.
Baud
@MattF: I have never met her, but people I’ve talked to who have say she is a presence.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Sean: Thanks for the perspective. Sorry to hear it.
If there’s a lesson that we could learn here, it might be to demand that Democrats in primaries give us chapter and verse on how they’ll run their campaigns in the general.
Baud
@kindness: One leads to the other. A population unwilling to vote blue will tend toward fascism.
HumboldtBlue
Kay
What did the people at the donor event do? Shouldn’t media ask them? Was it like “yeah! screw those Medal of Honor people – rich people are the real heroes!”
They didn’t walk out when he said this but instead gave him a ton of money?
MCA1
@sixthdoctor: I just want somebody (like Walz in a debate?) to bring up these comments, then stipulate for him, for the sake of argument, that the late 19th century and early 20th century waves of European immigrants led to spikes in crime, then ask him if we’re not better off now as a nation for having integrated all those people into our economy and cultural fabric. When he inevitably says yes, then note that there’s zero evidence of increased crime coming from the current wave of immigrants and ask him what’s the problem, then. I have a feeling he’d walk right into that trap.
Or just ask him if he actually watched that film, because Bill the Butcher wasn’t some Italian guy who just got off a boat.
Leto
@trollhattan: just like the internet says nothing but the truth!
$8 blue check mistermix
@Hoodie:
Did they later join the church?
hueyplong
@HumboldtBlue: Well, to our knowledge he hasn’t yet tried fucking himself to, you know, test the theory that it doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do.
trollhattan
Keep eyes on this one.
Google has been running teevee ads (not credited) extolling keeping journalism free or somesuch. This legislation explains why and I don’t count them out considering their Lyft and Uber buddies passed their “they so are not employees” proposition.
Sean
@VFX Lurker: People have been saying this for 10+ years. Maybe it’s true, but if the elections of the past 10 years can’t make people turn out, what is going to make it so in the future?
Look, we just had a governor’s race ~2 years ago with Abbott (worst human alive outside of Trump or at least in the top 5), against a well funded, determined and aggressive Beto campaign. Abbott won by 10 points. This is after major disasters with energy, electricity shortages, winter storm disasters, hurricane preparedness stuff, migrant busing, border politics awfulness, MAGA culture wars, making it impossible for blue cities to govern themselves or do what their constituents want, attacking and dismantling protections for so many people. People’s lives were directly affected in a major way by Abbott. He won by 10 points. If those things don’t drive people to vote here, what the fuck will? I want to get the fuck out of here, but there are a lot of reasons making that near impossible. I do what I can, people better than me are doing a lot more, but I don’t see the magical turnaround people keep expecting here. This place is red as hell and getting worse, imo.
Justawriter
You have to admit Trump has a gift. How many people can take a comment on antisemitism (admittedly against his obscenely rich donor friend) and turn it into an insult to the most highly respected members of the military? That my friends, is god-level trolling.
ALurkSupreme
@$8 blue check mistermix: What you did there. It was seen.
And enjoyed!
Chet Murthy
@Baud: I saw a news report about Russians in Kursk. The extreme depoliticization there is so severe, they really don’t expect anything of their own state. The phrase that caught me was “they’re inhabitants of a territory, not citizens of a nation”. They’re colonized and Russia is the colonizer. @VFX Lurker: comment about “low-voter-turnout” state reminded me of this, too. We read a lot about how Russia has worked hard to convince its people to stay out of politics completely. A lot like in Texas perhaps ?
Baud
WRT to the more general topic of campaign strategy, galvanizing supporters by being aggressive makes sense for Harris because we are a slight majority nationally and our marginal voters tend to need enthusiasm to come out.
In a place like Texas, where we’re a minority, the risk of revving up our side is that it tends to rev up the other side as well. So how do you excite our side without increasing turnout on the other side? I’m not sure.
This isn’t to defend Allred because I have no facts on which to do so, but I’m not 100% that there is a one-size-fits-all campaign strategy for purple and reddish states.
Leto
If you want to see how simple it is to make us (the military) happy, here you go. Literally this easy.
Geminid
@SatanicPanic: Veronica Escobar won O’Rourke’s El Paso seat in 2018, when he ran for Senate. The two are old political allies so he unlikely to run again while she holds the seat.
Rep. Escobar’s Wikipedia biography tells about how Escobar, O’Rourke, Suzie Bird and another El Paso friend made a plan to wrest control of local politics from entrenched politicians. They succeeded and all went on to win public office. Locals called tbem, “the Progressives.” Escobar was the powerful El Paso County Judge when O’Rourke’s Congressional seat opened up.
Sean
@$8 blue check mistermix:
I wish we had a Paul Wellstone-esque school for Texas Democrats. Beto could teach them how to actually run outreach campaigns. I know he lost too, but the excitement was real and he got the closest in decades. All it takes is one success to really build more statewide. It’s hard to run here. Huge, expensive, vastly different cultures across regions. I get that doesn’t jazz up recruitment. But how is Beto the only person here who actually wanted to campaign for real? I don’t get it.
Baud
@Chet Murthy: I think so. IMHO the most formidable tool for right-wingers is discouragement. To use the trendy vernacular, right-wingers win by imbuing their opponents with bad vibes.
WereBear
@Baud: They want to make us hopeless and apathetic.
Marmot
@Sean:
Same here. And every goddamn day.
Leto
@Baud: maybe look to see what information we can glean from the Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester’s campaigns. Similar situations. Past that, I’m with you. Don’t know.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I have a story that made my day. My clueless sister has made it clear she is fully onboard with Kamala. She chided me for year for liking Obama and trashing republicans all the time. We kind of drifted apart because she refused to vote for Hillary due to “reasons”. Anyway, she voted for Biden and is moving back to NY from Texas. She dropped off something to my MAGA aunt yesterday and said aunt started saying how amazing Cruz and Abbott are and yada yada yada. MAGA aunt and uncle have Fox news on all day. My sister laughed and said, ‘you’ve got to be fucking kidding.” At least my sister knows enough to hate those two. MAGA aunt then asked, “You’re not voting for Kamala are you?” “Hell yeah” my sister replied. My sister then asked my aunt if she she still loved her and my aunt said “no.” My sister told my MAGA aunt that she still loved her and that was that. So the kicker is this. MAGA aunt called my sister the following day to apologize and said she did in fact still love my sister. A-fucking-mazing as far as I am concerned. I don’t think my dad or her 6 siblings have ever apologized for anything. Ever. I hugged my sister after telling the story and within 5 minutes she brought up her Hillary hate out of the blue. I told her I am taking my hug back.
Ksmiami
@sdhays: so and I were early backers of Allreds Congressional campaign. He runs from the fight and doesn’t stand up for Democratic Party policies. Underwhelming all around tbh.
Hoodie
@Justawriter: Trolling is the only purpose I can see to this. Trump deliberately expels vomit like this because he thinks it will get him in the news. You can even see his little lizard brain working away just before he discharges, like at the NABJ conference just before he opined on Harris’ blackness.
jonas
One of my favorite Simpsons bits of all time is when Marge and Homer are in the car listening to “Paul Harvey” (voiced brilliantly, IIRC, by Harry Shearer), who is just wrapping up one of his Rest of the Story profiles with “…and that little boy whom nobody liked grew up to be…Roy Cohn.”
piratedan
with Democratic hopes riding high, maybe we need to be looking elsewhere from candidates that are having issues actually embracing being Democrats.
With Dobbs being a huge driver in turnout (we’ve seen it, lets not deny it) should Harris/Walz make this race a national race, not just a focus on the swing states? Should they spend political capital in places like Des Moines? Dallas/Fort Worth? Orlando? Jackson? Albuquerque? Omaha?
I think voters want to be seen and if local candidates want that juice, should the campaign just give it to them rather than being asked? If Allred is struggling and too proud/scared/unsure then is getting his ass up on the stage and having him feel it something that will inject much needed hope not just to his campaign, but all Dem campaigns? This is also about the entire Dem ticket, are we ever going to feel these vibes again? Isn’t this the time to leave it ALL out there?
If the latest swing state polling is to be trusted (ymmv), then Dems should be trying to be seen EVERYWHERE, hell, Iowa, Montana, Utah, Missouri. As a whole, people have been intimidated by these MAGA weirdos for far too long and perhaps now is the time to allow ourselves to be seen.
Matt McIrvin
@MCA1: And then he’d cite some high-profile case that Fox News claimed was an undocumented immigrant committing a grisly crime. You only need one.
Sean
@Baud:
It’s a good question, I don’t know how or if you thread that needle, but I do know I wish we had statewide candidates here who seemed like they actually wanted to win and told us so by their actions.
A lot of what got me jazzed about Kamala is that she and her comms team came out ready (hungry even) for a damn fight. I don’t know if that will ultimately create the circumstances to win, but I’ll tell you I am fired up because they are saying “we’ve had enough of this shit.” And that’s relatable to me.
hitchhiker
@Mousebumples: Speaking of high school, during the 2008 primary my kid was a senior who would be 18 in time to vote that year. The Obama campaign was all over high schools here in WA, getting kids registered and fired up.
trollhattan
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
Families. What a concept. :-)
SatanicPanic
@Geminid: ah crap I forgot he had a House seat before, thanks for the reminder!
KatKapCC
I don’t always know what it means to fight, but thiccc Godzilla probably does.
trollhattan
@hitchhiker: Mine became 18 in time to vote for Hillary. Okay, not the greatest election to be brought into the process.
California has a process to pre-register @ 17 so you’re automatically registered the day you turn 18. Got her the form and she was on her way.
Now in NC and has registered there for fall. I was pleasantly surprised there weren’t big roadblocks for students from commie states to do so.
Omnes Omnibus
@$8 blue check mistermix: It’s been tested by research.
rikyrah
How did I miss this story from the Olympics? American man brings decoy wallets for pickpockets and winds up electrocuting them 🤣🤣🤣
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP81SaEAL/
SatanicPanic
@KatKapCC: that guy taught me to leave some dirt for the dirt man
Chet Murthy
@piratedan: There seems to be two answer:
We don’t have the luxury of spending resources on places we can’t win, b/c of the EC. If we didn’t have the EC, then Texas would be worth spending resources in. Ah well.
Geminid
@SatanicPanic: That Wikipedia article about Rep. Escobar is an interesting read. I just remembered the 4th “Progressive.” It was attorney Steve Gomez.
MomSense
My favorite part of the press release is “Again”. I think there is already trump fatigue and the Harris Walz campaign is going to emphasize it. They keep planting the best frames through which to view that tangerine tinpot. I love it. It feels like they hired a team of wicked smart zoomers and told them to let it fly. Absolutely stellar messaging.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Leto: seeing this made my day. I have no personal experience of the military and only the barest familiarity [Bemused Senior’s father was a fighter pilot]. This one picture is so apt and warms my heart.
Matt McIrvin
@KatKapCC: thiccc Godzilla is just regular Godzilla. Just not the one who met Matthew Broderick.
Omnes Omnibus
@Leto: I was thinking a 1500 formation and early release for the weekend, but this is better.
Sean
@Chet Murthy:
I’m sad to say this is right. Donate to close house races here, but I absolutely do not want the larger party apparatus wasting time, money and effort here, certainly not KH. If we’re reaching – go for FL or NC, hell even OH seems more possible to me than where I live.
Fake Irishman
@VFX Lurker:
With all due respect, this is not true. Higher turnout tends to help Dems a bit, but 2020 was an incredibly high turnout year for Texas, and we actually went backward a bit from our high water Dem mark in 2018.
Voter suppression is bad, but it’s not this magical talisman that’s keeping Dems out of office.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sean: Don’t write off TX right now, but put it on your “reach goal” list. If we’re nailing everything else down, go for it.
tam1MI
That was before the Dixiecrats fully aligned into the Republican party. (The process started around the late 60s/early 70s, but didn’t become complete until sometime in the 90s.)
Mousebumples
@Sean: I like the idea of targeting more localized House districts where we can try to help flip other stuff on the ballot. But I would defer to someone local on what’s gettable and worth an investment.
Wanderer
It should be noted that tcfg seems unable to understand the meaning of the words freedom and honor.
Another Scott
I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to Allred’s campaign. I donate when I can.
No time to check in detail at the moment, but Juanita Jean’s – The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon used to be my go-to place for Texas Democratic Politics. She doesn’t have a “tag” for Allred, and has very little on Ted Cruz, so maybe she’s not paying much attention to that race.
I don’t know of other Texas Democrats sites that are similar.
My bottom line is – Texas is going to be a heavy lift, until it isn’t. Every senate seat is important. Making sure that Allred has enough to run a good campaign (with “enough” only known in hind-sight) is important.
Dobbs and the SCOTUS abominations should help. Pushing and uniting behind Allred should help. Will it help enough? Dunno. Being pre-disappointed doesn’t help. :-(
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bill Arnold
@trollhattan:
Out of curiosity, what news stories does Google share on their platforms? I use news.google.com, but it doesn’t share much other than headlines with links.
For instance, the top of their US news feed has this, with a link:
retiredeng
Has anyone else received a panhandling mail from “President Donald J Trump” via the RNC in DC looking for donations in August and September? I immediately shredded the entire thing.
rikyrah
This is a level of petty that I can get behind 🤣🤣🤣
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP81SQDQ1/
M31
I wish Texas were closer because Walz going to a couple of high school football games and shooting the shit with coaches and sports media could be a clincher
esp if Trump gets the idea he’s being upstaged (remember the covid reports with Cuomo (*spit*)?) — Trump would go on some shows, made a complete pasty white ass of himself and lose a couple of points
Dangerman
Damn.
How big of a dick do you have to be to go after Medal of Honor recipients? Has anyone asked Trump what he thinks about Mother Teresa as compared to Ivanka?
Unbelievable.
BR
@Marmot:
Such a shame — he seemed like he’s a decent communicator. Better than Cruz for sure. But maybe he doesn’t have it in him, unlike Harris/Walz.
JWR
From the video clip, (at the link), it’s not only the White guy tacos, but Cantaloupes, too! ;)
Chet Murthy
@Sean: this is pretty damning: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/sorry-democrats-texas-isnt-a-secretly-blue-state/
Lyrebird
I have been hoping the same thing!
Allred’s campaign and Beto’s voter outreach group are definitely alive enough to send a lot of fundraising emails…
But to your point, as SOON as the Walz pick was official, I thought about football synergy in football-lovin’ Texas!
FWIW Beto has volunteers going to register people to vote all over the state, and though I don’t live there anymore, I am holding out hope…
JCJ
@$8 blue check mistermix: A lot of people want to have sex with nuns, but it is hard to get into the habit.
Fake Irishman
@Chet Murthy:
Agreed. Ann Richards barely won the 1990race, and even then, you could see the long term trends breaking sharply against Dems in the state. Rick Perry switched parties and won the Ag commisoner race that year, and Dems were all gone from statewide positions by 1998.
Having said that, the trends are very much going the other way right now. Texas isn’t a swing state yet, but it’s getting swingy at the margins. Big suburban counties that were going 65 percent for Romney are going for Trump at 51 percent. Several have flipped already. And they are getting bigger. Rural counties, which killed the Dems in the 2010s when they crashed into the GOP are shrinking.
different-church-lady
It’s Texas.
different-church-lady
@sdhays:
Maybe just replace him with someone else at the last minute. That seems to work.
Mart
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Time for the old Al Franken quip: I like Senator Cruz more than most of my Senate colleagues, and I hate Ted Cruz.
different-church-lady
@sixthdoctor: Racist presidential candidate chooses racist as his running mate? Get out!
Leto
@Fake Irishman:
This here; is it the trend that they’re moving away from Republicans, or is it a case of when they select a non-insane candidate they’ll come back to the fold?
SatanicPanic
@different-church-lady: If Harris wins, what are the odds that Republicans actually try this next presidential election?
jowriter
@Kay: This is a person, and his donors are people, to whom service means being served. The orange one serves no one. He rewards those (Miriam Edelson, Gym Jordan, etc.) who serve him, and disrespects those who served our country to the max. We cannot be rid of him soon enough.
different-church-lady
@SatanicPanic: If Trump runs again, zero.
BR
Vance just keeps saying weird things at a pace that can’t be matched. Hot on the heels of the anti-Irish/Italian comments:
rikyrah
They call him the Evil Keith Lee.
But, he is a sweetheart.
Some of the reactions made me 😢😢🥹🥹
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP81Sbs9m/
Fake Irishman
@Baud:
That’s one of the things Beto was able to do in His first run: he was an aggressive “fighter” but he had a non-partisan appeal.
Some folks on this board forget that Wendy Davis was a fighter too ….who lost to Abbott by 20. (That’s not a knock on Davis, who is great, but a reminder that there’s no one way or one magic trick to a winning campaign)
Leto
Harris proposing the government will give first time home buyers a 1 time $25k down payment loan. Part of her housing plan. Also looking to build 3 million new homes/apartments.
VFX Lurker
Fellow jackals, thank you for the good Texas insights upthread.
That is awesome. I like the joy she shows in camera at the end.
Chet Murthy
@Chet Murthy: From my experience Texas Monthly isn’t a right-wing publication: quite to the contrary. The article I linked-to investigates whether Texas really has masses of Dem non-voters, and casts a lot of doubt on that thesis. It has some …. pretty choice words about candidates and their lackluster campaigns too. Lots of details of recent history, G(r)OPers running their own GOTV campaigns with excellent results, etc , etc.
Overall, a pretty solid argument that Texas is just a Red state, not a “voter suppression state”.
wjca
I get a steady stream of mail claiming, on the envelope, to be trom Trump. It goes into recycling, without me opening it to see any details. (Except for the time I could tell there was a prepaid return envelope. That one I loaded up with lots of mass, to run up their costs, and returned.)
trollhattan
@Fake Irishman: Their machinery must be very effective given they could not even boot out their AG for egregious corruption using standard legislative processes. Plus, they really do have their supreme court in their pockets.
Timurid
Texas will be red long after we’re all dead…
Another Scott
@Sean: Made me look… APNews.com (from November 2022):
No time to look at the turnout numbers.
I was surprised seeing a BETO sign here in NoVA years ago in an earlier non-national race. He had a great, national, buzz about him, but that buzz apparently wasn’t what Texas voters wanted. Maybe Allred has a different secret sauce, maybe not.
I ass-u-me that Beto’s 2019 remark “hell yes we’re going to take your AR-15s” hurt him in Texas, even with all the other stuff.
It’s always hard to defeat incumbents.
It’s still early – Democrats still haven’t had their convention yet. But the clock is ticking…
Cheers,
Scott.
brendancalling
@Chet Murthy: the mom of one of best friends was a mover and shaker for Ann Richards. So much so that my friend has a caricature of Ann and her mom dancing together hanging on her wall, signed by Ann to mom, thanking her for all her help.
BritinChicago
@Chet Murthy: Force Multiplier looks like a good source for finding out which races are close enough to be worth donating to:
a40e59_1ea9590112da4c3c970b624fd823ef43.pdf (forcemultiplierus.org)
KatKapCC
@rikyrah: LOVE IT. The appropriate level.
Gravenstone
In short, what good is an award that you can’t lord over people and actively enjoy the prestige of it? And severely wounded or dead people can’t enjoy that pleasure. Fucking clown, this guy.
tam1MI
I keep hoping he’ll pull a Buttigieg and move to a blue or purple state, but, alas for us, he loves the state of his birth too much.
trollhattan
@Another Scott: Whatever Beto’s future, needs to make sure he doesn’t become the Texas Charlie Crist. Nobody wants or needs wasted runs doomed to failure in advance.
Still young, he probably needs a different path to effective public service.
BritinChicago
@rikyrah: I love that! Thanks for linking to it.
JoyceH
Just a quibble, but in the Harris response to Trump, I wish they’d corrected his ignorant naming of the “Congressional” Medal of Honor. I don’t know where that misnaming started but a former president ought to know better. It’s the Medal of Honor, nothing Congressional about it.
danielx
Days since JD Vance has insulted a group of voters: 0
Fake Irishman
Hey everyone, 10-year Texan here.
I just want to push back a bit on some of the Allred drama here. It’s entirely possible he’s picked a bad strategy and/or his campaign is a mess. However, before the pile on gets out of control let’s stipulate a few things:
1. He took down an entrenched GOP incumbent in 2018 in a swing district and held that seat in 2020.
2. He might present a bit more conservatively than we’d like, but he wasn’t part of the Blue Dogs and he never stood in the way of major Biden initiatives like Josh Gottheimer, Henry Cuellar or Mickie Sherrill, let alone Joe Manchin or Krysten Sinema. He also didn’t take gratuitous shots at leadership.
3. There’s not much polling in this race, but there are multiple polls showing him around five points back or a bit closer. He was running several points ahead of Biden. Some others show him back more like 8-10 points, but those tend to be R pollsters)
So let’s hold off the dooming.
I haven’t seen a ton of activity from the Cruz campaign either….
KatKapCC
Tim has a TikTok now! Or, as he says in his first video, TimTok.
JoyceH
@Gravenstone: the Presidential Medal of Freedom took a big prestige hit after Trump’s sullying of it. Ooh, the same award given to Rush Limbaugh, Jim Jordan, and Devin Nunes? Uh… thanks?
BritinChicago
@different-church-lady: If by “again” you mean 2028, I think the chances that he both alive and not obviously demented (I mean obvious even to his supporters) seem to me really small.
peter
@retiredeng: Yes, we got this mailing last week. I was hoping that it included a postage-paid envelope I could fill with several pieces of blank paper, but they even expected me to supply my own stamp. Sad!
trollhattan
Tech bros may have stumbled with promoting JD, but continue notching victories.
Have completely been won over by the notion of giving kids old school flip phones until they’re 18. At present they’re little cash cattle to big tech.
BritinChicago
@Leto: A really bad idea. It will raise prices and do very little to ensure that more homes are built. If proposing it wins votes in swing states, ok, but then maybe it can be quietly killed when the legislation is in committee. I think that having tips be exempt from Federal Income tax is also a bad idea. Don’t get me wrong, I love the ticket, but these proposals are not good. (They’re also really small stuff, compared with what needs to happen—significant increases in tax rates for the rich.)
Fake Irishman
@trollhattan:
Yeah, that Senat vote was hard — I was surprised the House impeached Paxton by as much as they did.
As far as courts, the high level courts here are really bad. But Dems grabbed quite a few appellate benches in 2018. It was our first real taste of power in years.
I think the Dem takeover of Texas might be like the GOP: gradually, then suddenly. One thing that struck me: the GOP gerrymanders after 2010 were designed to grab as many seats as possible. (100 or more in the House of 150 and 21 in the senate of 33.) Their gerrymander after 2020 was designed to protect their majority. Dems will almost certainly retain 62 or more House seats and at least 12 Senate seats.)
everyone here can see where this is going.
If Trump wins, I know we are all terrified for Democracy — a fair fear— but that might be the earthquake that would kick Texas over the edge in 2026.
Beto wasn’t the only one who came close in 2018. Our idiot lieutenant gov, corrupt as Hell AG and rodeo clown AG commissioner all came within five points of losing.
Mousebumples
@Fake Irishman: thanks for this perspective!
cain
Apparently not with the current Democratic party or so I hear on /r/Texas.
cain
@Sean: He’s plugged into the centrist dem network. Or he is a centrist Dem himself. He’s not going to get anywhere if that is his position. We really need to kick these 90s era Dem political strategists out of whatever grifting circuit they are on.
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
You don’t know that. LBJ works in mysterious ways.
Citizen Alan
@WereBear: Not every person who stands up for themselves and takes bold positions is “charismatic,” but NO ONE who refuses to stand up for themselves and take any positions at all is ever considered “charismatic.” The vibe I’m getting from Allred is the same vibe I used to get for Mississippi Dems who would run hopeless campaigns for the sole purpose of getting name recognition because they were shady slip-and-fall attorneys and running for office was a way to get other people to pay for their advertising.
Another Scott
@tam1MI:
I blame Tom DeLay’s 2003 Texas Redistricting and Tom DeLay’s money laundering and the stacked courts in Texas.
YMMV.
Grr…,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
@VFX Lurker: I loved Ann Richards, but I’m also honest to know that the only reason she was was that Clayton Williams was everything we hate about Trump except that he wasn’t a Russian asset and he wasn’t famous. The guy literally made rape jokes while on the campaign trail.
Fake Irishman
@Mousebumples:
No problem. Again, I’m not a political genius (I’m a political scientist, so the opposite, really) but sometimes some foundational facts get lost in the struggle.
Also, I’ve always been appreciative of your pragmatic attitude on here. When we’re all throwing food at each other, you’re always like “hey gang, here’s how you can write post cards”
raven
@Leto: You probably know all this but. . .
BR
@BritinChicago:
The homebuyer tax credit isn’t so different from what already exists — there are already meager first-time homebuyer tax credits on the books — just bigger. I think the home construction stuff is separate from this tax credit.
As for the no tax on tips thing — I think that was totally campaign strategy: the Nevada unions were worried that their rank and file liked Trump’s proposal (even though Trump means Ted Cruz’s bill which is garbage), so Harris neutralized it to make it easier for the unions to sell it to their membership.
raven
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: fuck him
cain
@$8 blue check mistermix:
Fox and white men’s delicate feelings. Fox validates them. The entire anti-govt hate is in itself an expression of racism brought down from the South.
We talked about breaking up corporations in another thread, but we also need to do something about right wing news. They shouldn’t get access to the White House briefing room. The problem is that the other networks stick up for them and then they play victim. But media reform needs to be a thing.
Queen of Lurkers
@Sean: Echoing what you and others have said, Allred is running a milquetoast campaign. In the ‘burbs where I live, not far from where he does, I have seen absolutely zero signs that he is even running. Yes, Texas is tough, but if a Democrat wants to win statewide, they have to run up the numbers in the suburbs, especially taking advantage of the changing demographics of the prosperous suburbs. I don’t see Allred doing *anything.* I’ve seen one boring ad on the local evening news. He’s going to lose by a lot.
Geminid
@Leto: When Virginia voting roll data came out a couple months after Youngkin beat McAulliffe, some analysts saw evidence that Republicans who had stayed home for the Presidential election the year before came out for Youngkin in 2021. I could believe it because Trimp never seemed to have much juice in this state, even among Republicans. Youngkin’s more their style.
It seems to me that moderately conservative Independents are a group likely to swing back to Republican candidates once Trump is off the scene.
Fake Irishman
Also, everyone,
that LBJ account is an amazing follow. They have a great reading list they recommend about Texas politics and history (in a thread from 2022 or 2023 which I can’t find, alas) I’m working my way through a few books on the list and it is amazingly good, if heavily academic.
Mousebumples
@Fake Irishman: awww, thanks.
I figure we should just do the work vs fight with each other. And postcards work for me, though I love hearing about @MomSense or @Omnes canvassing, or @Nelle doing her local relational organizing, or @H.E.Wolf with the data entry work.
I love our vibes, and I hope we win. But let’s put in the work and hopefully run up the score.
I’d love to flip some reach states, but I’d be happy with keeping the Senate and getting Jeffries the Speakership (along with President Harris)!
Sean
@Chet Murthy:
100% correct. I’m not going to tell people we need to give up, because we don’t, but at least a shred of realism is needed to understand the scope of the battle here. We need real candidates and real resources and even then it’s the heaviest of lifts. I cannot emphasize enough how horrific reelecting Abbott by 10 points is. People here are moving towards that, not away. The uninformed liberal/progressive bubble online is starting to expect a Kamala win in Texas because people tell them we can just juice turnout. Yeesh, no. We are so far from that. We need a Ben Wikler type to rebuild our state party. We’re simply not capable of winning statewide right now.
Mousebumples
Not clicking through because FTFNYT, but FYI.
cain
@Sean:
You have to only win one statewide office. The office of Secretary of State. You just need to be able to have fair elections without state govt fucking with registrations and various other things.
Texas pulls a lot of stunts to get you to note vote by putting all kinds of things in their path. The rural areas don’t have much of a problem they focus their shit on the big 4 cities in Texas.
Geminid
@trollhattan: Charlie Crist flipped a House seat in 2016 so he did not exactly keep running and losing.
MomSense
@Baud:
I have a photo of one of my best friends with her in Iowa in 2019. My friend was the SEIU Union Rep in Iowa at their big teaching hospital so she was always a must get for all the dem candidates. She loves Harris. Said she is warm and smart and just makes you feel good to be around her.
She got really close with the Obamas to the point they would stop at her place between events and take naps and eat meals.
She hated Edwards. Long before the scandal broke she told me she thought he had a wandering midsection. I love her to pieces. When you’ve been a mental health nurse for decades you know a thing or two about people.
Another Scott
@Chet Murthy: I’ll try to look at the TM piece later – thanks for the pointer.
My bias is – The GQP wouldn’t gerrymander the hell out of the place if they thought they could continue to win races fair and square. That tells me that their inherent strength is low. Their majority is brittle. And they know it.
Whether it begins to crumble in 2024 or 2028 or 2032, who knows. But I think just throwing up our hands and saying “Texas! It’s blood red! It’s hopeless!” is a very bad strategy. We need to invest there, and support our candidates there, to create the future we want.
Similarly with Florida and other big prizes.
We won’t get good people to take the risk and endure the pain of running for office if we don’t do the work to support people on Team D.
Cheers,
Scott.
Sean
@trollhattan:
I don’t expect him to run for statewide office here again. He has done a very admirable job of building outreach and registration efforts. He’s moved more into advocacy and doing good work with a lower profile.
Doug R
@Betty Cracker:
It’s good in that it deflates whatever bs they cooked up about walz’s service.
BritinChicago
@BR: Yes, I understand the case for putting forward the ‘no tax on tips’ idea, and it may well be good electioneering. I just think it’s bad policy (though I assume the Harris version would be written to make sure that high-earners could not find ways of taking advantage of it, which I’ve heard might happen—surprise, surprise!—under a TFG version).
Yarrow
Relevant to the thread. Link.
BR
@BritinChicago:
Yeah, her policy people are already on it — they told the press yesterday that her version wouldn’t allow lawyers, bankers, or others like them to reclassify income as tips (unlike the Ted Cruz bill).
Fake Irishman
@Leto:
It’s a trend over time. Pick out a big suburban county (Colin, Denton, Fort Bend, Hays, Williamson, Brazoria, even Montgomery if you squint) go to its Wikipedia page and look at the politics part — you can see the shift right in presidential elections from the 1960s on, then watch it start drifting back after 2004. There are peaks and valleys, but the trend lines are clear.
I collected a bunch of statewide data in 2013 and popped it in an excel spreadsheet. There were three major trends in Texas statewide elections between 1992 and 2012
1. the five big urban counties were drifting left slowly and steadily. Dem+
2. The suburban counties were heavily GOP and growing rapidly (GOP+)
3. The rural counties were crashed from Dem to GOP (GOP+)
What has changed from 2004 to present is that the suburban counties are bleeding GOP support while growing and the rural counties are starting to lose population.
Doug R
@Baud:
The problem is our side doesn’t/can’t vote.
I wouldn’t worry too much about winding up the other side, stuff like what Harris Walz are doing at the top of the thread helps to discourage them.
KatKapCC
@Mousebumples: Buh-bye.
Chet Murthy
@Another Scott:
Two thoughts:
if the only reason “good people” in Texas are going to work to reclaim their rights and their democracy, is b/c we fund them, then that doesn’t say much about them, does it?
As a Californian, as long as there are more likely targets elsewhere, it’s malpractice to send my money to Texas: what matters is retaining the Presidency foremost, and after that the Senate and House. Everything else is tertiary.
I grew up there. I sent a ton of money there in previous cycles. But (like I said) moving Texas from 1% to 49% doesn’t do a bit of good for preserving our Republic. And I have to be selfish about that: if our Republic goes, then California will go
ETA: Let’s imagine another timeline, where Dems win the trifecta securely, and with big margins. Then it would make massive sense to send $$ to Texas, send volunteers, etc, etc. B/c our Republic wouldn’t be literally at risk. I’d be doing it, in that timeline.
narya
I heard an interview w/ Alred several years ago as he was first contemplating getting into politics and I was moderately impressed by him, so I’m bummed that his campaign doesn’t seem to be going anywhere ATM. I actually think that Cruz is vulnerable precisely because he’s so despised–still a heavy lift, yes, but not completely impossible. Then again, what do I know?
trollhattan
@Sean: Sounds like a needed and appropriate role for him. Good!
BR
Sort of OT: does anyone find the speed people speak to be too slow, especially in politics? I can’t handle how slowly talking heads speak, and usually Harris as well. I watch everything online at 1.75x these days because otherwise my brain is screaming “get to the point please”.
I hope for folks in swing states Harris’s speaking pace is good, because I don’t have the patience for it even though I like most of her speeches these days (when sped up).
Paul in KY
@Ivan X: Infinity + 1
Chet Murthy
@BR: i have felt that way about podcasts too. I think they speak slowly because they know that many people just can’t keep up. It is the way it is.
Sean
@cain:
I really don’t believe voter suppression is our only hurdle to winning. I think it’s much deeper than that and a dem SOS (an office we’re not going to win without a sea change that results in other statewide wins) isn’t going to solve all our problems.
Anyway, I’ll leave it there. Don’t want to bang the depression drum and bring anyone else down. It’s hard living here.
Misterpuff
@Betty Cracker: Comparing the Medal of Honor to any civilian award is a mug’s game.
But Trump makes it worse because he turned that award from recognition of Cultural Achievement to a payoff for rich donors and political supporters: Adelson’s bad enough but he gave one to Rush Limbaugh.
Disqualifying!
Fake Irishman
@Chet Murthy:
One bit of pushback: moving Texas from 1 to 49 percent doesn’t help us statewide, but it does flip many house seats, get us close in the state ledge, put us in position that we only need one non-insane GOPer on the state board of ed instead of three and own all the big state appellate courts and run many more counties. That’s pretty useful for stopping a lot of bad stuff at both the state and federal levels.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan:
Broken? No. He’s a walking pile of shit – and has been since at least the 70’s.
Paul in KY
@VFX Lurker: I think Texas was Red when Ann won it. Sorta like Gov. Beshear winning up here in the KY.
gvg
@Kay: He said this kind of shit from the beginning. They were there already knowing it. It wasn’t a surprise.
It’s rather concerning that a large enough % of our population which talks about respecting vets, really thinks of them as chumps or something not real to be used as a weapon against liberals when convenient because we take things so seriously. They are liars. Just like the loudest ones are lying about being Christian. (Although I think some don’t know they are lying)
The evidence was always there though. Look at all the cuts to veteran’s funding come from Republicans over the years compared to democrats. Look at what they do, not just what they say. I am speaking generally to people, not specifically to you, because I think BJ people know this, but it annoys me that the general population doesn’t.
Yarrow
I heard a small bit of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s funeral, which was at a church in the Houston area. The part I heard was when someone, maybe Hakeem Jeffries, was introducing the Texas members of the Congressional Black Caucus who were in attendance. He would say someone’s name, the audience would applaud, then he’d say the next name, applause, etc. The applause for Colin Allred was distinctly tepid compared to the applause for all the others. I was a bit shocked. I thought people might applaud because he’s running for Senate. Nope. Doesn’t seem like a good sign for his campaign in Texas.
japa21
@Misterpuff: But remember, Limbaugh was “healthy and beautiful”.
trollhattan
@BR: If listening to a youtuber demo a recipe or review a car then yeah, they can’t speak fast enough.
Anybody doing public address needs pace, pauses for effect and response, accommodation to the environment including acoustics, the PA system, crowd size and the like. Motormouths are not good public speakers.
Harris’s courtroom time has surely molded her speaking habits today.
All my $0.02.
Chet Murthy
@Fake Irishman: If the Republic is already safe, it’s a great idea. But if it’s a choice between that, and preserving the Republic, then the latter should win every time.
Something else: to those who think that somehow if TCFG wins in 2024, it’ll finally push people off their butts to go vote, and there’ll be a democratic backlash in 2026, I would recommend reading William Sheridan Allen’s _The Nazi Seizure of Power_. He describes how the Nazis basically shut down all resistance to their rule, including at the local level. A TCFG win will empower the worst elements of society and push anybody of good will into a defensive crouch, b/c this time around, he’s going to weaponize the entire Federal government to his cause.
SatanicPanic
@japa21: that reminds me… Rush Limbaugh is dead.
Always makes me happy to remember that
mrmoshpotato
@SatanicPanic:
Needed to be added.
Chet Murthy
@gvg:
In the 1980s, when flag-burning was the outrage du jour, I remember reading a column that argued that you could recognize the decline of a democraticy polity, by the extent to which things that used to be symbols of deep democratic institutions, became valued in and of themselves, and not as symbols of those institutions. The example given was the flag, as opposed to the vote, civil rights, etc. The latter was denigrated, and in its place, the former was valorized. It was a sleight-of-hand. And I think this “rah rah the troops” while shafting them every way to Sunday, is another great example of the same.
Ocotillo
Allred’s campaign (if that’s what it’s called) has been turrible.
He started off trying to introduce himself in TV commercials running the same one for weeks, real weak sauce one about when he was kid with his mom at the grocery store they were holding their breath that the check didn’t bounce because money was tight. That quickly became background noise and was ran for about a month too long.
Now he is hitting Cruz about the border. The commercial is a bit better but it is getting stale.
I can’t say he has traveled the state campaigning any so the odious Cruz will likely swamp him in November.
Oh, I did see an interview with him and he is really ducking tying himself to Kamala.
Jim Appleton
@Kay:
I know folks who support him and the issue appears to be self awareness more than respect. And, you’re correct.
azlib
I actually met Ann in the early 90s at my political consultants office. She was both elegant and funny aat the same time.
cmorenc
@MCA1: If Waltz took that tack (no evidence that current immigrants > rates of crime committing, esp violent ones) – Vance will lie has ass off and snarl: “yes there is” and run off a quick medley of 3 or 4 incidents of immigrant violent crime and claim they are representative of some study he will pull out of his ass purporting to show higher rates. And people with any susceptibility to vote Trumpy are going to believe vance.
Ken
I used to have that problem, but then I cut back to four liters of Jolt a day, and now I’m OK with 1.5x.
Leto
@trollhattan: remember how they used to give out cigarettes in schools? Same thing. Start’em young, hook’em early.
Omnes Omnibus
@BR: You want everyone to talk like a wise cracking New Yorker in an early ‘30s talkie?
Leto
@raven: haha, I didn’t know that! That’s cool as hell! That bottle absolutely salvaged some of those MREs.
Ocotillo
And another thing about Texas and Cruz being unpopular. I don’t think that hurts him as attorney general Paxton was reelected easily in ’22.
JaySinWA
@Leto: Who is going to fix the settings on their parents and grandparents phones if we don’t get them started young?
It’s almost like people don’t want kids learning life skills by working in mines or operating hazardous equipment
ETA I don’t remember anyone giving out cigarettes at K-12 schools when I grew up, several decades ago. I think I might have seen one once close by a mom and pop corner store.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: Cary Grant in His Girl Friday!!!
cain
I think though it is still worth for the Harris-Walz campaign to do at least one or two visits there and at least see if we can slip some house seats. The more house seats. If we can flip the senate it’s worth taking the time to at least give the local races a good boost.
Texas has both one of the largest Black and Indian populations in the country. That demographics are young voters as well. You still need to do investment in these large population centers.
Large crowds in Texas will motivate change I think. Worth a shot.
cain
Kamala should come over – let’s see what he does. If he doesn’t show up – it should end his political career.
Chet Murthy
@cain: Flipping House seats in TX is useless unless Harris wins the Presidency. You’re assuming that that’s in-the-bag.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: Anyone in that movie.
BR
@Omnes Omnibus:
I just want to know whether normies find Harris’s speaking boring at the pace she speaks at or not. (And really speaking most politicians these days.)
Fake Irishman
@Chet Murthy:
I am well-versed in the literature of how democracies die and are born.
Let’s just be careful about setting up false choices though. Politics goes far beyond the electoral college.
West of the Rockies
Little wonder Diaper Don doesn’t grok Medal of Honor. Honor means nothing to him.
mrmoshpotato
@Omnes Omnibus: We’re bustin’ outta here, ya see! Naw!
The I Want Song
Based on all the donation email begs I keep getting from the Allred campaign, I have to say he comes off like the Sarah Gideon of Amy McGraths. Wish it didn’t feel that way, but…
E.
@BR: I haven’t listened to an audiobook at less than 1.35 since I learned how to do it.
cain
@Chet Murthy: I’m not assuming that. I’m saying use the momentum you have and make an investment. It’s not going to hurt them and might produce an unexpected good result. After all, isn’t that Kamala’s story?
JaySinWA
@Ken: The speech speed is all over the map with people’s recordings. I have to slow some down to 0.75 occasionally (especially if there isn’t a CC option) and speed some up to 1.25 or 1.50 to keep some of them moving. Panel discussions are really a problem with that. I wish there was an auto speed function for listening. Or better yet a transcript.
That reminds me, I need to look into Vibe https://blog.lon.tv/2024/08/11/vibe-is-a-free-cross-platform-transcription-app/
Along with Google’s Live Transcribe and Microsoft Word’s Transcription options
karen marie
@trollhattan: I don’t understand where you get the idea that experience as a prosecutor made Harris a good speaker. I’ve been transcribing criminal trials for 40 years and I can tell you that most are complete fucking morons who struggle with coherence. Guilty verdicts are mostly achieved in spite of shitty prosecutors.
Ivan X
@Chet Murthy: but he was in Videodrome. I have to look the other way.
Michael Moriarty is another rwnj but I love the guy.
Ivan X
@KatKapCC: This is the correct answer.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Still doing the important, thankless, work. It may not pay off soon, but it needs to be done because it’s the only path that will work.
Kinda like US politics. ;-)
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
danielx
@sixthdoctor:
He is the gift that keeps on giving.
trollhattan
@karen marie:
I’m saying it was foundational in molding her speaking habits and manners. I have no earthy idea how she presented in court.
mrmoshpotato
@Another Scott: Sounds like actual governing.
Ivan X
I don’t understand why everyone here dislikes Ted Cruz so much.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Words in general mean nothing to Trump. In my view Frankfurt’s famous On Bullshit doesn’t do it justice.
What Trump says at any given moment is only directed at giving him some immediate advantage. Consistency is irrelevant, even what his audience understands is mostly irrelevant. Trump’s only criterion is whether what he says benefits him. [ETA He mostly gets it right going on feelings alone. He is an expert at reading the room when surrounded by his supporters. On rare occasions he blows it.]
Other MJS
@JoyceH: Don’t forget Ed Meese and Orin Hatch.
mrmoshpotato
@Ivan X: Seriously?
John Oliver on Shithead Ted
Omnes Omnibus
@BR: Most people, when learning public speaking, are told that when you are nervous you tend to speak too quickly. As a result, you should speak at a speed that sound too slow to you and it will probably sound normal.
Also are you talking about the conversational speed or her pacing when giving a speech? When giving a speech in a large space, pacing is often slower to make sure everyone hears every word before you move on. Otherwise, you can have a “Blessed are the cheesmakers” situation.
Ivan X
@mrmoshpotato: sometimes, when I drink, I like to troll Balloon Juice.
BR
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think it’s both / all for me. I mean when I watch MSNBC I also watch at 1.75x. I think maybe my brain is just broken.
karen marie
@trollhattan:
If you do not know how she presented in court, how can you say it was foundational?
KatKapCC
@Ivan X: Let’s hope you never take up heroin.
jonas
What he’s learned ever since the Access Hollywood tape is that while anything he says is going to be an applause line for *someone* in his base — white nationalists, evangelicals, incel misogynists, whoever — no matter how insane or offensive, nothing he says will ever come back to haunt him, either. So win-win. The press is completely incapable of making any outrageous thing he says stick. Even now apparently shitting on Medal of Honor recipients.
Gosh, I wonder why. This is literally the headline about it over on CNN.com: “Trump remark an ‘unnecessary blunder’ says strategist.”
JFC just shoot me.
Cheez Whiz
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: “That wouldn’t stop Lyndon!” – JFK, in Bubba Ho-Tep
Omnes Omnibus
@karen marie: Two things: Lots of prosecutors win because they plead out the cases that they can’t win. And soaring oratory doesn’t win cases. Preparation does. The fact that a lawyer may not be a great public speaker does not mean they are a shitty lawyer.
Geminid
@Fake Irishman: Yes, Colin Allred did not stand in the way of Joe Biden’s major initiatives. But Blue Dogs Mickie Sherrill, Josh Gottheimer and Henry Cuellar voted for them as well.
Eolirin
@Geminid: Depends on who replaces him. And if the replacement makes the hard right turn out less, but gets the moderates back, they maybe still can’t put a winning coalition together.
That’s the tension they’ve got. I think it’s going to blow them up in Michigan and Arizona for a long time. Other places I’m less sure about.
rikyrah
@Ocotillo:
Once again…
He should ask Beasley and Mandela Barnes how running away from the head of the Democratic Party worked out for them😒😒
Geminid
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Trump was sucking up to Miriam Adelson when he made that appalling statement. He wants her money.
Personally, I think anyone who cares about Israel had better not rely on the fickle and self-interested Donald Trump. He is a chaos agent, and the last thing that region needs is a chaos agent in the White House.
Baud
@Geminid:
Agree, but people lose their minds when faced with a Dem that doesn’t 100% agree with them.
trollhattan
@karen marie: You’re not going to make me introduce chronology?
RevRick
@Another Scott: I don’t give to candidates who are campaigning against Republicans Democrats love to hate. To me it’s just flushing money down the toilet. After hearing that Texas is not a red state, but a voter suppression state for the umpteenth time and still getting the same results, I think that claim rings hollow. Texas has a huge Evangelical population and they vote Republican. It’s a red state.
I’m giving a ton of money to the five most vulnerable Democratic Senators, and especially Brown and Tester. And, of course, the Harris/Walz campaign, because a rising tide lifts Democratic boats.
Kay
@Another Scott:
It’s just that they’ve been trying this exact same approach since January. They announce that it’s all but a done deal as if that will make it so. I could see trying this once or twice but this is the 7th or 8th time.
It isn’t true. I mean, bluffing is okay in negotiations but not over and over and over when your bluff is called every time. It reaches the point where they’re actively misleading the US public.
beckya57
@VFX Lurker: not unless they’re forced to change their voting restrictions. Adam Serwer’s Atlantic article brilliantly laid out the byzantine process of registering there. Designed to weed out non-whites and younger/less well off people. Their electorate is much redder than the population.
Kay
@Another Scott:
If you;re an American and you follow this, the Biden Administration told you in May that Israel made a proposal and it was up to Hamas to agree. That wasn’t true. If it had been Israel’s proposal Israel would have agreed to it – Israel never did.
So now we get that we’re not getting the “Israeli” proposal (that wasn’t Israel’s) but instead a “bridging” agreement crafted by the United States. Why would I believe this? They’ve told me nonsense for 4 months. This could be closer to the truth, I guess, but it’s just as likely it’s as much fiction as “the Israeli proposal” was.
beckya57
@RevRick: I think TX is impossible to fully assess, because the suppression is so extensive. I completely agree about not throwing money at doomed campaigns. I did plenty of that in 2020. I’m focusing on giving to the boots on the ground groups that BJ is supporting.
karen marie
@Omnes Omnibus: You clearly have not spent time in a criminal courtroom. You also haven’t explained how you know something is true despite admitting you don’t know whether Harris came with a talent for speaking or learned it.
eemom
@jonas:
It’s not that they’re incapable. It is that they don’t fucking WANT to. They cover up the outrage and insanity with bullshit milquetoast headlines like the one you quoted, because what the greedy, lazy fuckers do want is trump back in the WH so they can coast through 4 more years of 24/7 effortless sensationalism. Death sentence to democracy, the country and the world be damned.
Why yes, my loathing of the media is at a fever pitch these days….why do you ask?
karen marie
@trollhattan: You continue to make no sense. Correlation does not imply causation.
Kay
@Another Scott:
I guess I’m wondering at what point does announcing these “done deals” in order to pressure Netanyahu (indirectly) by swaying the Israeli public (who want the hostages released) bleed over into “misleading the US public”? I think we;ve passed that point, myself.
karen marie
@Kay: Netanyahu has zero incentive to agree to anything before November.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@karen marie:
Why is this a hill you want to die on?
Kay
@karen marie:
It seems they could find some way to pressure Netanyahu that doesn’t involve gaslighting the US public. Is this their single tool in the toolbox? The bluff where they announce a deal is imminent? They have absolutely no other way to pressure this guy?
Mr. Bemused Senior
Well there you go. 😁
Kay
Aaaand…bluff called. Again. I think that’s nine times.
Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده
@RamAbdu
Breaking: A statement from Netanyahu’s office indirectly rejects the U.S. proposal for a ceasefire, which was submitted this morning.
Omnes Omnibus
@karen marie: You are wrong about my being in a criminal courtroom. Also, I have said exactly fuck all about Harris’s speaking abilities and where she developed them.
Another Scott
@Kay: I’d suggest reading the tweets again.
They don’t say there’s a “done deal”.
They’re saying they’re mediating and encouraging the parties to seize the moment and consider the bridging proposal to get an agreement.
WhiteHouse.gov has a little more.
Nothing’s going to happen on a ceasefire unless the US keeps pushing – nobody else is going to do it anywhere near as effectively as even the US has done.
(Nothing may happen until after November 6, but if so that’s the parties’ choice, not the US’s.)
Cheers,
Scott.
SatanicPanic
Cornball West isn’t going to be on the MI ballot. So that’s one Jill Stein we don’t need to worry about there.
UncleEbeneezer
@Another Scott: Shaiel Ben-Ephraim has a good reminder:
KatKapCC
@UncleEbeneezer: Nice to see at least one person remembers that Hamas exists, that they have also rejected multiple ceasefire offers. I mean, “We will commit October 7th over and over again” and also “No we will not release the hostages, including the literal babies” should make people look askance at them, but for some reason, it’s only the Israeli government that gets tut-tutted for the lack of a ceasefire. Interesting.
karen marie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Because it’s fucking annoying.
karen marie
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, really?
This is your original comment that I responded to.
Another Scott
@UncleEbeneezer: Yup.
There’s no agreement until there’s an agreement. Everything before then is posturing.
I’m reminded of the Camp David summit. Carter was shuttling between the sides and managed to get them to come to an agreement when most thought it was hopeless.
TimesofIsrael.com:
True? Maybe! Maybe not!
We aren’t there.
Biden’s people, and the Egyptians and the Qataris, are pushing for an agreement. Talking up the progress is part of the process to encourage them to get it done.
We’ll see.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@karen marie: That wasn’t me. That was a different commenter.
Another Scott
@karen marie: (That was trollhattan.) ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Villago Delenda Est
@SatanicPanic: Beto gave up his House seat to run against Rafael.
Villago Delenda Est
@karen marie: Which is why OHJB should approach him with tire iron in hand.
karen marie
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, excuse me. You didn’t say it, you were just the one busy defending it.
karen marie
@Another Scott: Yeah, my bad. Omnes jumped in to defend it so vigorously, I didn’t notice they were a different person.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Geminid
@Another Scott: I wonder if people take Qatar and Egypt seriously as players in this matter. Americans tend to look down their noses at Arab countries. This is a common mistake that could be attributed to “Orientalism,” which is just a fancy word for racism.
Subsole
@Sean:
I think you hit on part of it.
They made it so the cities cannot govern themselves. Basically, they did what they always do: broke it, then used the noise machine to blame the Democrats. They are actively throttling the only nice places to live, while plundering us to keep their fuckwit “onlee troo Murrikan” districts afloat.
Since we don’t have a media willing to call them out on this bullshit, they get away with it. Which eventually puts us in the “both sides same, why bother” doom spiral that so many people find so goddamn fashionable these days.
I’m living in a major city, and I haven’t seen jack shit from Allred. I’m hesitant to donate any energy at this point because I’m honestly wondering if the guy is actually running, or if it’s just some sort of money-laundering deal.
Shit is beyond frustrating.
I’ve lived here over 40 years. We have boundless potential, a vibrant culture, plenty of resources and the skill base to capitalize on them, everything we need to be the equal of any other state. (I will grant you Cali has better beaches. But we got better barbecue. So, y’know. Fair trade.)
@Sean: Also, too. Beto was the only politician that visited us out in the oilpatch in the decade plus I lived there. That meant something, you better believe…
And yeah, I sometimes think one victory might be enough to at least break us out of the stupor. Just remind people we can win. And maybe we’ll start doing it again.
Subsole
@Leto:
I dunno how much you can carry over from those campaigns. Texas is vast. To win here, you have to corral a lot of different groups at a scale that I just don’t see up in, say, Montana.
Subsole
@Fake Irishman:
This is also a very good point.
Having democratic judges and officials in your county can be a life or death issue, here. Because the state level government hates your guts.
I sometimes think that’s why some deep-blue states and high level Dems seemed so blase about the GOP’s trajectory over the last decade. They never lived under a government that actively hates you based solely on your zip code.
Also want to second the notion that if/when Texas goes blue, it’s going to be because the suburbs have finally gotten sick of Greg Abbot’s shit. I don’t know if I will live to see the day, but by god I’m gonna hold on as long as I can in hope.
Soprano2
@retiredeng: Yes, I got one addressed to me! Most of the mail like that is addressed to my mother, that’s why I noticed it. Thought it was strange.
Another Scott
TexasDemocrats.org has a decent page of recent news beating up on Cruz. Here’s hoping that it’s doing some good.
Cheers,
Scott.
way2blue
I’m *guessing* that Trump considers the Presidential metal to be a bigger deal than the Congressional one because (drum roll)—He as president—bestows it. He cannot comprehend the existence of war heros. Any mention only reminds him of his lame dodge.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
It’s not so much that he’s broken, although it’s very true, it’s that he was never, ever reasonably put together in the first place. There is a reason I call him shitforbrains and that is that the entire assembly is broken and that the service and parts do not exist to fix that total POS. And never have, not in 78 yrs.
Geminid
@Subsole: Montana certainly is different in scale from Texas. Reapportionment just gave Montana a second U.S. Representative, while Texas gained its 38th.
Geminid
@Another Scott: Israeli journalist Noga Tarnopolsky posted this a few hours ago:
Someone then posted another of the poll’s findings which showed that 44% of Netanyahu’s own supporters favored the deal and 21% said they opposed it.
I haven’t tracked down the poll; Tarnopolsky just showed an Israeli TV presenter standing in front of a display showing the results.
Rekster
@Ksmiami: I live in Texas and agree with some other posters, Beto ran a near perfect campaign. I attended a couple of his “rallies” and the mood was quite amazing. I sent money, actually did some voter outreach and was devastated when he lost, though I’ve lived here for over 30 years so I know what it’s like. I just don’t know what Allred is doing. I still wonder why he just gave up a completely safe seat in the House to run this piddling nothing of a campaign.
The main issue is the Texas Democratic Party is useless. No leadership, money or organization.
206inKY
Couldn’t agree more on Allred. It’s like McGrath in KY a few years ago, hand-picked by Schumer to run an early-2010s low-energy campaign pitched more to outside donors. I still think we could have knocked out McConnell with Matt Jones, author of Mitch, Please!, if he hadn’t been shanked before the primary (losing his popular sports radio show after complaints from both Mitch and McGrath).
Jones’s wikipedia page notes exactly the sort of national party playbook that Allred must have gotten:
At least now we’ve got Andy for 2026. He knows how to work for votes, block by block.
But man I wish Beto had inched over the finish line. He came so close. Wendy Davis had a real shot too. Statewide races in Texas can’t be gerrymandered will be a true game-changer once we show it’s possible. Texas is a lot less red than KY, but a lot harder in terms of money and scale. Beto was damn near perfect and I still watch the Running with Beto documentary sometimes.