Robert Draper’s fine
article, Game On in the August issue
of Texas Monthly, finishes with the
two most salient points… First: the
Democratic Party is surging from the bottom up…
Second: What the Democrats need is simply a fighter; can’t win with nobody
in the ring.
Leaders of the state
Democratic Party have acted as if there are two major political parties in TX;
there’s not. First and foremost the
party leaders wanted money; I was told, in 2012, to raise between $500,000 and $1,000,000! Don’t know for sure who’s on the ballot; do
all available offices have Democratic candidates? How or what are we going to spend this money
on? Don’t worry, just get more money!
Against the party of: Ayn
Rand, Laffer, Emanuelson, Weyrich, Kristol, a legislator for every Ob Gyn, Mexican
border walls and troops, ballot box access chicanery, etc…
We need good people filling all the slots on the ballot and ads on the,
still neutral, Internet.
As a three time candidate
against incredibly ensconced incumbents, (2012 - Carter; 2010 - Ogden; 2006 - Ogden)
with really large campaign funds and long donor lists, my job wasn’t to win
(although hope springs eternal) it was to find and encourage folks in the
counties, precincts and neighborhoods; give them some one to vote for.
Why?
Because Republicans (the
party of NO!) have repeatedly insulted and offended large blocks (the sum of
whom is a large majority of Texas’
population) of eligible voters while discouraging those same constituents from
using the one power they do have: to register and vote!
Conservative, white people
have effectively controlled political power (for many, many years) in Texas with the innocuous
phrase, “majority rules.” However, the
population of Texas
leads in a national demographic trend: the minority-majority. This
trend is when the total of Americans of: Latin, African, Asian and Indigenous descent
is greater than the percentage of people who identify themselves simply as
White.
The new two step approach of
the NO! (dominated by white, extreme, conservatives) is to: 1. Gerrymander
districts to make elected office safer for Republican incumbents and
candidates; 2. Voter id regulations to make access to the voting booth more
difficult.
Voting restrictions have
been justified as attempts to eliminate voter fraud, even though study after
investigation has found less than an incredibly small fraction of 1% of votes
cast in person are determined to be fraudulent.
The second excuse, when investigations discover that voting access
discrimination affects non-whites most, is that regulations are meant to
discourage those who might vote for a Democrat; that is also illegal.
This election cycle
Democrats, and their money, are not just staying in Texas; they are to be aided and abetted by
the national Democratic Party and ancillary groups’ efforts. The luck of the NO! is waning and they may
soon have to realize just how vulnerable their insistence on a return to the, “good
ole days,” (the 1850s); their prejudice and their own inflexibility has made
them.
Turning TX Blue!!!
