The Texas Blue: Featured Articles

Can Wendy Davis Turn Fort Worth Blue?

Curtis Rochelle — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:30:00 -0600

If the 2008 race for Senate District 10 ends up as an underdog success story, it would, in many ways, parallel the life of the Democratic candidate. Wendy Davis overcame tough odds before, as a single teenage parent struggling to support her child. She got through college, graduating at the top of her class at TCU, and went on to Harvard law school before coming back to serve for nearly a decade on the Fort Worth city council. Now she is one of the most anticipated Democratic candidates in Texas, with a 2-to-1 lead in the primary vote count against a Republican incumbent in a conservative county.

Davis’ opponent, State Senator Kim Brimer, has 21 years in the legislature, yet almost half of his constituents don’t know who he is according to a recent Lone Star Project poll. The same poll shows Brimer’s approval rating at 23 percent.

“Kim Brimer is going to have a tough re-election campaign,” said Hector Nieto, communications director for the Texas Democratic Party. “People in the district are ready for change.”

Davis’s campaign hopes that Brimer’s low polling numbers in a year of favorable conditions for Democrats will add up to a win in November.

“You can tell that [Brimer] is running scared,” Nieto said. “You can tell he’s seen the writing on the wall and he’s basically running for his political life.”

Even a strong Democratic candidate will likely face a tough election in Senate District 10. Davis has faced tough odds before. She was raised by a single mother, and started working at age 14, selling newspapers door-to-door. By 19, she was a parent herself, struggling to feed herself and her daughter. She got into the paralegal program at Tarrant County Junior College: “It looked like a good way to raise my income level, but with only having to go to school for two years, in a way that I could do it while I was still working these two jobs and raising my child,” Davis said.

While at TCJC, she earned a scholarship to Texas Christian University. The next few years were grueling, as she balanced studies, work, and motherhood. She graduated at the top of her class, but her ambitions didn’t stop there. After graduating, she was accepted at and attended Harvard Law School.

“It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “But the way I got through it was just every day I would say to myself, ‘you know, you can go 10 years, and wind up at the end of the day with a law degree, or you can go 10 years and not have a law degree,’ and so I pushed myself.”

She went to school for 10 days at a time, then flew back home from Massachusetts to be with her family for 10 days. But her double-life Harvard schedule gave her time to be both a mother and a student without worrying about sacrificing one for the other. At Harvard, she was inspired to civic involvement by her classes and her work as a legal assistant at an AIDS clinic.

After graduating, Davis moved back to Fort Worth to work for a legal firm. She became involved in her community and eventually ran for city council. Her experiences at Harvard had given her a deep respect for the legal system and a desire to help those who struggled as she had.

“It taught me to think about law and everything else, understanding that we as human beings bring forward our life experiences in a way that can have profound impacts,” said Davis. “And I feel like that’s what I’ve tried to do, and honestly what I can’t escape doing in public service.”

Kristi Wiseman, Davis’s former aide on the city council, still looks on her former boss with loyalty and admiration. Now that Davis has moved on, she works for her successor, Councilman Joel Burns.

“Wendy treats everybody with respect, appreciation, and regard,” she said. “She never takes advantage of people, and she never forgets to say please and thanks.”

Although she has many supporters, Davis recently faced a challenge that threatened to take her name off the ballot. On December 31, members of the Fort Worth Professional Firefighters Association filed a challenge against Davis’ eligibility to run. State law prohibits council members from running for the legislature. Davis resigned before filing for candidacy, but local law required her to stay with the city council until her successor was sworn in on January 8. Davis’s prior obligation would make her ineligible for the Senate race.

The Texas Supreme Court and the 2nd Court of Appeals rejected the firefighter’s suit on the grounds that only another candidate can challenge a candidate’s eligibility. Brimer hasn’t spoken up yet, but the assumption of those involved is that he was behind the challenge. Bryan Eppstein, Brimer’s political consultant, also works for the Fort Worth Professional Firefighters Association.

If anything, the scandal seems to have energized Davis’s staff.

“For us, it really rallied the troops,” said Matt Latham, her campaign manager. “There were a lot of people who’ve known Wendy and know what kind of person she is and have known her for a long time that said ‘we know Wendy, we know that she does what’s right, and we’re not going to be fooled by political stunts.’ We got a lot of people signing up to volunteer, and our campaign went on without a hitch regardless of what was going on.”

“There was no reason for him to pull a stunt like that if he wasn’t concerned that Wendy Davis was going to win in November,” Latham said.

Davis shares these suspicions. “…unfortunately I think he asked [the firefighters] to be a surrogate in a way that may not have served their interest as well as they should have,” she said. “I felt frustrated that it appeared as though my opponent was afraid of answering to the voters.”

Kim Brimer’s campaign declined to comment on the Senate District 10 race. Eppstein and the Fort Worth Professional Firefighters Association could not be reached for comment.

With the question of her eligibility settled, the real work of the campaign has started. Patrick Lively, Davis’ communication director, and Matt Latham, her campaign manager, have been friends since childhood, and now both work in politics. They both call the decision to work for Davis an easy one.

“Every cycle I look for a candidate I believe in,” Latham said. “It took me about 10 minutes of talking to her to realize that she was the candidate that I felt like I could work for.”

“It’s great to be working for her because she cares about real solutions. Sometimes you don’t find that in candidates,” Lively said. “They just want to be an officeholder, they want to be a state senator or something, but Wendy, it’s not so much about the title with her as it’s about what she’s gonna be able to do when she’s in Austin.”

The 2006 elections changed Texas politics. Democrats won key victories on the national and state levels. Voters in Dallas replaced Republicans with new Democratic officeholders.

Stephanie Klick, chair of the Republicans of Tarrant County, doesn’t see a Democratic takeover happening.

“Texas is still a red state, and Tarrant County is one of the reddest in the country,” she said.

Democratic officials clearly disagree, and the rest of Texas, and Tarrant County, may go blue in 2008, according to Tarrant County Democratic Party chairman Art Brender.

“I think the political tsunami has hit Tarrant County,” he said.

This year’s primary elections had a high turnout due to the presidential race. All previous Texas polling booth records were shattered, as throngs of voters showed up, many of them new and voting Democratic. The previous state record for primary turnout was in 2000, when 83,656 Republicans turned out for the Presidential primary in Tarrant County. This year, 100,793 Republicans voted in the county, but so did 199,567 Democrats. Statewide, Democratic primary voters outnumbered Republicans two to one.

“The diehard Republicans got out; they were just subsumed by our numbers,” Brender said.

Of Bootstraps: McCain on Health Care

Josh Berthume — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:46:48 -0600

John McCain is talking about health care today, and I take issue with what he purports his position to be.

On the trail, John McCain has trotted out the old GOP saw about how people should make choices and government should not, pulling any relevance away from Obama or Clinton's health care plans and making it sound like the nasty, evil government will make you fill out a thirty page form in triplicate if you want to take an aspirin.

Sen. John McCain on Monday rejected a "big government" takeover of the health care system, saying he wants to empower families to make more medical decisions.
art.mccains.healthcare.ap.jpg

"I've made it very clear that what I want is for families to make decisions about their health care, not government, and that's the fundamental difference between myself and Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton," McCain told reporters in Miami, Florida, referring to the two remaining Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

"They want the government to make the decisions, I want the families to make decisions," he said.

I would respectfully remind the distinguished gentleman from Arizona that right now, American families don't make the decisions. Many families cannot afford health care — they cannot simply decide to afford it. And for those families that can actually afford health insurance, the health insurance companies make all the decisions.

An industry that has run rampant and more or less been allowed to do whatever it pleases forces health care decisions on to families. When a government provides something better (or more affordable, or more accessible, or even more fair) than a corporation will, Republicans call it socialism. When a corporate industry rules your life with an iron fist from atop an ever-ballooning slush fund with no oversight whatsoever, Republicans call that responsible government and a good, competitive market.

What John McCain is presenting is no surprise, and it is no different than what Republicans have been clamoring for all these years, and — prepare for a shock — it is the status quo.

"We have always trusted in ourselves to meet any challenge that required only our ingenuity and industry to surmount," the Arizona Republican said. "Any solution that robs us of that essential sense of ourselves is a cure far worse than the affliction it is meant to treat."

Painted in these tones, McCain makes increased access to health care sound like conscription in the Emperor's Army. What he's arguing in favor of is an America where your life is belittled, you can't afford to see a doctor when you're sick, and by the way, you can't call in sick to your low-paying job because American corporations don't have to run some gravy train where sick people don't have to work. What he's arguing for is the current health care system we have, one that subjugates the good of the American people for the good of the health insurance companies.

In the speech, McCain pays lip service to the high cost of health care in this country without actually addressing any methods of how to fix that in an unregulated industry and a runaway market. He says these things because he has to. I have no doubt Republicans would like it if health care companies found a way to keep costs down, but that's really more so people would complain less. I am almost willing to bet that if you asked Generic Republican Candidate if he thought health insurance companies should focus less on profits and more on providing access to medical care, the answers would span from hollering about preserving the free market to some nonsense about how they support the right of health insurance companies to have the choice to make health care more affordable, rather than allowing that dirty dirty socialized medicine to rear its ugly head.

"It is hard to pull yourself up by the bootstraps," my grandfather once said, "when you can't afford boots." The empty rhetoric from McCain assumes that ingenuity and industry, a real can-do spirit, can overcome cancer that isn't detected early enough because your health insurance didn't cover a referral for the lab work; that hard work can overcome two generations of Americans who are raised in an environment where you don't go to the doctor unless you break your leg or are bleeding from the eyes; that wanting wellness care is tantamount to being on the dole.

If they were honest, that would be one thing. If McCain said, "Listen, my friends, I believe that corporations should be given every advantage, and I would much rather safeguard insane profit margins for American businesses than actually go to battle for your health, quality of life, and safety," then we could at least take him at his word. When you say that you're defending America's families by rejecting increased access to health care, you're lying.

There are few things about public policy and governing that get me as riled up as commentary coloring what should be a basic process in the most advanced civilization in the world as some sort of creeping Red Plague. That is what you have here, and soon the GOP will run out of voters that haven't been personally affected by the rising health care crisis in the United States. Then maybe their discussions on the subject will reflect reality.

Discovering a Lost Sense of Community in New Greenspace

Chris Bell — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:46:00 -0600

Let’s all try to go to Discovery Green. It’s important.

That may sound a little silly to some; after all, it is just a new downtown park. But it really isn’t just a park; it’s a whole new concept in public space. And it opens at a time when I believe we desperately need to experiment with such a concept.

Located in Houston’s urban core close to the George R. Brown Convention Center, Discovery Green is attempting to provide something for everyone. Among other things, you can go jogging, have a drink, walk your dog, race model boats, use your laptop computer with WiFi access or visit a small branch of the library system.

Some are wondering if folks will really drive their cars or ride the rail to visit downtown green space. I’m hoping they will and not just because $122 million of public and private funding has gone into the project. I think we need this kind of space to change the way in which we interact in this day and age.

In The Power Broker, Robert Caro writes glowingly about Fiorello La Guardia, the former mayor of New York. He says that La Guardia had a “conception of a metropolis whose citizens would pass their daily rounds in surroundings that uplifted the spirit.” He quotes La Guardia as saying, “Too often, life in New York is merely a squalid succession of days; whereas in fact it can be a great living adventure.”

The same can be said of Houston in 2008, and we’re certainly not alone. Many people are beaten down, worn out by being over-connected. With all of the advances in technology, there’s simply no escape anymore. You’d think the ease and availability of communication would bring us closer together but just the opposite seems true. Throw in the bad economy, the war and a few other major worries and pretty soon you’re talking about “a squalid succession of days.”

All of this really hit me the other day when I was in Dallas’s Love Field airport on a Friday afternoon. I remember being there on Fridays back in the ’80s when it was a hopping place. You could look in any direction and see folks having a good time, excited about getting out of town for the weekend. When I looked around the other day, what I mostly saw was misery; a bunch of haggard individuals dragging themselves home. When I shared the observation with a friend, he said, “Yeah, airports are America’s new bus stations.”

Will Discovery Green cure all of this? Of course not. But just as Mayor La Guardia understood that public spaces could lift people up many years ago, Houston Mayor Bill White seems to have a similar, modernized understanding of the same concept. That’s why he spearheaded the effort and is banking on the new park space to revitalize downtown once again.

If students can carve out a little study niche while an elderly couple strolls through the farmers’ market and moms and dads chase after their kids, pretty soon you’re talking about a new sense of community, a new place of interaction, not just a park. We need that.

(Originally published by Examiner Newspaper Group)

A Sweeping Bit of Judicial Activism

N. Alex Winslow — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:54:46 -0600

Recent reports paint an ugly picture of irresponsible behavior by oil and chemical companies in Texas and across the country.

In response to the BP Texas City tragedy, the federal agency responsible for policing workplace safety has started a review of the safety habits of U.S. refineries. The preliminary results paint a picture of carelessness, including 11 violations at a Port Arthur refinery. Meanwhile, the chemical industry continues to thumb its nose at Mayor Bill White's call to reduce caustic benzene emissions in and around Houston. The backdrop to all of this is Entergy v. Summers, a recent Texas Supreme Court decision allowing oil, chemical and manufacturing interests to escape accountability when they fail to ensure the safety of their work sites.

Hugh Rice Kelly of the self-styled Texans for Lawsuit “Reform” claims that the Entergy decision is an isolated case. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Entergy decision is a far-reaching departure from the public policy established by the legislature time and again. The Court ignored the fact that lawmakers opted to preserve the legal rights of these workers in six consecutive legislative sessions, making clear that shielding plant owners from accountability when they threaten the safety of workers is not the policy of this state. Unfortunately, in a sweeping bit of judicial activism, the Court supplanted the legislature’s clear intent with their own ideological agenda.

This decision has real and serious consequences for the men and women who work at these facilities, as well as those who live in the surrounding communities. Mr. Kelly and his organization fight tooth and nail to block access to the courthouse for individuals, but they applaud the courts when they expand special protections for their oil, chemical, and insurance backers. This is hypocrisy at its worst.

These corporate wrongdoers are using the legal scheme outlined in the Court’s ruling to be labeled as “employers” solely for the purpose of shielding themselves from accountability without taking any of the other traditional responsibilities borne by employers like providing fair wages, decent benefits, unemployment insurance, and overtime. This is a classic case of the Texas Supreme Court letting corporate polluters have their cake and eat it too.

The dangers of protecting these facilities from workplace safety lapses do not stop at the plant’s gate. When they cut corners on workplace safety, communities that surround these are placed in greater danger through increased chances of violent environmental disasters that spew pollution into our air, contaminate our water, and threaten the safety of the entire community.

Under pressure from a bipartisan group of lawmakers, as well as law professors and a host of labor, environmental and public interest groups, the Texas Supreme Court has decided to rehear the Entergy case. This is an opportunity for the Court to reconsider its position, and it should do so. In the meantime, big oil and chemical industries need to clean up their acts by putting public, workplace and environmental safety first.

A Historic Shift

Josh Berthume — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:30:00 -0600

Every story you may have heard about the Texas Democratic Primary focused on the events of the day itself – the massive turnout and overflowing caucus rooms - or the period following the primary, in which results were tabulated, haggled over, checked, and rechecked. But the story you haven't heard is how the immense turnout will affect the general election and, by extension, Texas' political future. The potential for the primary turnout to stretch meaningfully across decades is immense, but those changes will be the result of infrastructural capability and grassroots political organization.

The potential meaning of the turnout is a demand on Democrats statewide. The high turnout and increased interest produced a valuable political commodity: information. This information includes the names and addresses of every primary voter and even more detailed information - phone numbers, email, and presidential candidate preference - of all 1 million people that caucused once the polls closed on March 4.

In addition, the presidential campaigns built primary efforts structured towards capturing the contact information of as many supporters as possible. The campaigns engaged these people, many of whom had never voted in primaries or even general elections before, and trained them to phonebank, blockwalk, and mobilize as precinct captains. The Texas Democratic Party has also been capturing the attention of grassroots veterans and the newly inspired activists, communicating regularly and engaging in training sessions across the state.

This resulted in a corps of volunteers that reached an enormous magnitude in a short time. Once the primary is over and the nominee is decided, these volunteers will be identified and available for mobilization for the general election.

"Ten years ago, a lot of this would have been lost," says Bill Brannon, Field Director for the Democratic National Committee and the Texas Democratic Party, "but these days we have the tools and the technology to handle it. It gives you a greater group to draw on, a hugely expanded voter base. It is a major starting point that increases your ability to raise money and increase organization, but it is a starting point, not a finishing point."

Texas Democratic Party spokesperson Hector Nieto agrees. "Increased turnout will have effects up and down the ballot. All these brand new voters are identified and the TDP will make sure we communicate with them before the November elections."

When Nieto says they are 'identified', he is referring to a very specific aspect of the information collected during a primary. When a candidate runs for office, one of the main questions the candidate must answer concerns the voters in the district - are they conservative or liberal, are they Democrats or Republicans? The candidate is charged with figuring out who lives in the district and why they vote the way they do.

A resource that candidate can draw on is the list of primary voters provided by the state and county governments. This list contains information not only on who voted in previous general elections, but also who voted in previous primary elections and which party primary they voted in. This information is organized and made available to activists and organizations all over Texas via the Texas Democratic Party’s Voter Activation Network.

Thus a Democratic candidate can examine primary voter history and determine household targets for persuasive contact (mixed voting histories), voters that the candidate can mobilize on Election Day (consistent Democratic primary voting), or households the candidate may want to avoid entirely (voters that have voted in every Republican primary since Eisenhower).

Democratic organizer Glen Maxey asserts that the cost for electing Democrats has been decreased by the turnout. "Typically, the costs for a Democratic candidate in a general election are informed by the fact that the candidate must identify a huge group of general election voters with no primary history. In the course of an election, a candidate may send four or five pieces of mail to a household that has no primary history."

But the dynamic has shifted thanks to the presidential campaigns. "Now the unidentified pool is manageable enough and the number of volunteers that were trained by presidential campaigns is so large, a candidate can have live human beings in these neighborhoods to identify that smaller pool of voters. And we've never had a pool of volunteers so large," Maxey says. "We have an opportunity to take this sea of precinct convention volunteers and engage them as party volunteers."

In the past, statewide candidates have had to pay volunteers to phonebank and blockwalk once the region’s regular Democratic volunteers were exhausted. Now the pool of volunteers is greatly expanded, potentially cutting down on the field and outreach costs of campaigns.

Democratic candidates and the Texas Democratic Party both stand to benefit from the primary. "When you have turnout of that magnitude, it enhances all your other efforts - fund raising, general election targeting. We have not had a base this good to work from after a primary in many years," says Matt Angle, Democratic strategist and director of the Lone Star Project.

Perception is important. In past election cycles I spoke with people who would regularly tell me that they were "closet Democrats" who feared a backlash from friends, neighbors, and customers if they were openly Democratic. Now they are enthusiastically canvassing their neighborhoods.

"People that may have only been willing to quietly vote for Democrats come November are now willing to go out in public with signs and vote in the primary," said Angle. "The peer re-enforcement in Dallas and Harris Counties and some of these other counties - people seeing other people in their neighborhoods vote Democratic - allowed people to finally articulate why they are Democrats. People in Dallas County were gratified to find out there were other Democrats in their neighborhood."

The Texas Democratic Party and grassroots activists have spent the last several years building the infrastructure that enabled this primary to be a success. The presidential campaigns gained from that infrastructure and have now helped Texas Democrats catch the proverbial lightning in a bottle. The prevalent opinion seems to be that Texas Democrats are prepared to make the most of it, in this election cycle and in the future.

(Originally published by Quorum Report. Reproduced with permission.)

Lil' Lisa Slurry

Luke Metzger — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:01:29 -0600

On Thursday, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission will consider a proposal that would limit the threat the Gulf of Mexico faces from factory fishing. The new rule effects a fish you've probably never heard of, but one that is incredibly important.

Menhaden, also known as "pogie" or "bait", are small fish that play a critical role in protecting the health of the Gulf of Mexico. From filtering pollutants out of the water to serving as food source to dolphins, pelicans and other sea life, menhaden have rightly been called "the most important fish in the sea."

Houston-based Omega Protein is the largest by far of what is now a menhaden industry made up of only two companies. In a process reminiscent of the old Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns sucks up ocean life ("100 per cent recycled animals") to create a multi-purpose industrial chemical called "Lil' Lisa Slurry", Omega catches and "reduces" menhaden into linoleum, soap, paint, and dog food.

And when Omega goes fishing for menhaden, they don't bring just a rod and bait. Their highly industrialized operation involves planes to spot schools of menhaden and giant vacuum ships to suck them out of the Gulf. And too often wildlife like turtles, dolphins and sharks get sucked up right with them. In fact, an estimated one million pounds of ocean wildlife "bycatch" get crushed and killed in this process.

In the Atlantic, the menhaden population has been devastated and a number of states have kicked Omega and its ilk out of their waters. Now Omega is turning its attention to Gulf waters. As a result, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission has proposed limiting the amount of menhaden that can be pulled from Texas waters. Predictably, Omega is fighting back and has hired high powered lobbyists that are bending Governor Perry's ear.

The Commission's proposed rule is a good start and really it should go further. In order to get a better handle on all the bycatch that gets sucked up with the menhaden, the Commission should require the industry to pay for government employees to be on board its ships to monitor the impacts. The Commission also needs to have tough enforcement measures to ensure the rules are being followed.

It's not often that Texas agencies in this era stand up to big corporations with strong environmental protections. So it's refreshing to see Parks and Wildlife do so. They should ignore the lobbyists and stick to their guns.

Iraq: Five Years and Fading

Jon Soltz — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:19:14 -0600

(VoteVets chairman Jon Soltz took part in our veteran's series last year. Today Soltz shares some thoughts on the media and our ongoing wars. Originally published at the Huffington Post, reprinted by permission.)

This marks the five-year anniversary of the war in Iraq. Usually, I'm against the media playing up these kinds of things. After all, the five-year date is no different than the day before in Iraq, or the day after in Iraq. Troops are still under attack, some die, some are wounded every day in Iraq, and no anniversary changes that.

This year, I feel a bit different. Recent studies have shown that the news coverage of the war in Iraq has faded, buried in the back pages of the paper or in C-blocks of shows, if it's covered at all. While John McCain and George Bush talk about being on the path to victory (which is still undefined, by the way), polls show that the American people may be starting to believe it, because the news hasn't taken a look at the situation on the ground, and doesn't tell them anything different. Yet, as I noted a couple of weeks ago, troops on the ground are still reporting that their morale is incredibly low, with just 11 percent saying morale is high or very high.

So, maybe this five-year date will jog the media out of its Iraq-fatigue, and force them to confront what is happening, and report on it.

Maybe they'll can the stories on Eliot Spitzer's prostitute getting offers to pose for Playboy, and start reporting on another woman -- a woman who was awarded the Silver Star for her service in Afghanistan.

Maybe they'll report on an incredible new proposal for responsibly ending the war in Iraq, and refocusing on the real threat to America (al Qaeda in Afghanistan), put together by candidates for Congress, retired military brass, veterans and foreign policy experts. This proposal deserves an hour news program all to itself; it is so chocked full of solid plans that it deserves serious public consideration and debate.

Maybe they'll stop obsessing over preachers who endorse Obama or McCain, or Gerry Ferraro's views on race and politics, and talk about a more important split -- the growing divide among extreme radicals in the Madhi Army, some of whom view Muqtada al-Sadr as too "pro-American." Unlike politicians and preachers, this divide could ultimate unleash an explosion of violence in Iraq.

Maybe I'm hoping for too much. If the media follows their pattern, they'll take a brief pause tomorrow to remember there's a war in Iraq and war in Afghanistan. Then it'll be back to talk of prostitutes and celebrity breakdowns.

For those interested in what's really going on the in the world, though, take a look at the largest community dedicated to discussing the wars and military and veterans' issues, VetVoice.com. Unlike in the traditional media, over there today is no different than tomorrow and the day after tomorrow is no different than the day before.

Letters from the Front

Josh Berthume — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:24:41 -0600

I was in Copley Square in Boston on Election Night in 2004. I stayed up all night and then went to Faneuil Hall to watch John Kerry concede.

I had a steno pad full of notes about everything I thought might be worth chronicling about those two days – interviews with people gathered there in the Back Bay, hurried transcriptions of phone calls from my friend in the room at the DNC, gut feelings, what it was like to be there in the sleet and snow and watch John Edwards bust out his signature thumbs-up from the stage and tell me everything would be okay if I could just wait a little longer. Little did I know just how long the wait would be.

These fours years on, I'm not sure why I never really wrote about that night. I wrote a few things in the aftermath. I marveled at the legislative results. I pondered what went wrong, and what the GOP did right. But what I didn't write about was how that night felt, in my gut and my brain – how it felt to be standing there on those cobblestones for an hour after John Edwards went inside and the snow stopped falling and where, somewhere around 3 a.m., some Bush campaign flunkies showed up and started pasting every available surface with Bush/Cheney 2004 stickers.

It made me ill to watch them affix one to the stone wall of the Trinity Church and giggle at each other. They were not here to get out the vote. They were not here for lit drops or organizing. They were here to gloat, passive-aggressively, with no real function other than to aggravate and demean. Here, literally in John Kerry's backyard, the armies of everything I perceived to be sick and wrong with my government and American politics had come ashore and fired the first shots in what promised to be another four years of constant assault.

It was like a metaphor for George Bush's presidency come to life, given tangible form and sent to torment those of us who had stuck around. H.P. Lovecraft said that “...we shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight,” and truly, here it was, borne of the black womb of hate, Agents of the Dark, Sounding The Spare Notes Of The Song That Will Rend The Earth.

***

Of course, my perception of these young Republicans is a construction. No matter how much I might like to think so, it is highly unlikely that these young men spawned from the loins of demons, or were attempting, by petty political vandalism, to raise the dead or end the world. I remember them as far more ghoulish than they could have possibly been because they struck a cruel blow in an open wound on an election night I knew was lost before it was over. I defined them as some sort of evil agents because they were essentially and basically alien to me in their joy over the re-election of one George W. Bush.

This type of construction, this projection of sinister evil on regular people, is not strictly the purview of Democrats versus Republicans.

In 2008, more people are identifying as Democrats, and each one has built that identity through a hugely complicated and personal process. Along every line you can imagine – region, race, income, gender – there are divides in the Democratic Party, and those divides are again byproducts of identity, of the version of the ideal Democrat we have drawn for ourselves and that we aspire to be.

There is tension between old Democrats and young Democrats, a generational divide that seems to break over the party's two presidential candidates. Likewise, there is tension between veteran Democrats and new Democrats who are arriving later at the party. My version of What A Democrat Is is different from yours. It cannot be anything other than different because we are built differently, with a vast variance of experiences and lessons that have forged us not only into the political animals we have or have not become, but explicitly into the people we are.

There are no universal truths about political identity, about how you feel about certain issues or candidates, other than the inexorable fact that everyone comes to that moment of decision and dedication differently.

***

That being said, I want to arrive at the point of this exercise: while at your caucus or in canvassing your neighborhood or at your most recent county meeting, you may have constructed the supporters of whichever candidate you aren't pulling for as somehow being less than you. “How can they support Candidate X,” you may ask, “when Candidate X has/lacks Quality Y?” You may have followed that thought up with a “That's stupid/infuriating/pitiable.”

Well, fine. While the primary race is on, if that is how you want to think, fine. But do me a favor. Think about your own personal moments staring down Republican ghouls. Think about The Other Side in that context, and understand that whoever wins this race will have a bigger stage to play on with stakes that are unimaginably high. Do not believe for a second that just because things look bad for the GOP, they will roll over and die like rats in a tunnel. They will not, and the fight for November will draw more blood than you can ever expect to see in the primary, no matter how dirty it gets.

Come the general election, your swords can't be beaten into plowshares and you can't go home. There is no room at the inn for people who can't recognize what has to be done when the fat is in the fire. If you are among the people who say you'll pack it in and stay home (or, damn your eyes, that you will vote for McCain) if your candidate doesn't win – well, in my opinion, you don't deserve either incredible Democratic candidate. You don't deserve to be in politics. You only deserve to have politics happen to you.

Everything we know about Democratic politics, or at least everything we think we know about Democratic politics, is a construction. And for whatever reason, you have reached the place you are in relation to Democratic politics because of your construction – your unique experiences and interactions. But at some point you have to get beyond the identity you have built for Self and Other and understand that there are more things under Heaven than what you have personally seen and done and felt. My construction of Bush's Sticker Team was as horrific, charred agents of some monolithic evil. I was wrong, just as you are wrong if your construction of Democratic politics this year means that you won't let go of the nomination battle when that battle is over and it is time to move on to the real war.

Texas “Two Step” Invites All Voters To “Join the Party”

Boyd Richie — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:04:54 -0700

Throughout the 2008 Texas primary process, several writers and even an editorial board have suggested contacting the Texas Democratic Party headquarters to ask for a “simplified” delegate selection plan. We welcome calls and letters, but starting with our precinct convention on the evening of March 4th, every Democratic primary voter has a more direct opportunity to help their favorite presidential candidate and have a say about our delegate selection plan at the same time. Although our system may not yield a final delegate count “winner” on Tuesday, it does give over 7,000 state convention delegates a real voice in determining our party rules as well as deciding how our presidential candidates will divide 67 national delegates.

The Texas plan is nothing new. The current party leadership inherited the plan, which has been virtually the same since the 1988 election, when three Presidential campaigns worked to get voters to the polls and then to their precinct conventions that evening. And there’s no reason to believe the Clinton or Obama campaigns should be “confused” by the process. Some of Senator Clinton’s major Texas supporters are party leaders who helped design the plan, and in 1992 and 1996, President Clinton ran under the same system. Likewise, Senator Obama has Texas advisers who have been involved in the same process in several Presidential elections.

I understand the frustration caused by a system that isn’t tailored to meet media deadlines, but it’s a system that gives greater voice to grassroots Democrats and requires the presidential campaigns to invest in organizational efforts that build the party instead of spending all their resources on television. And that’s exactly what those who drafted this plan intended when it was put in place in 1988.

Prior to 1988, all Texas delegates were determined by a convention or “caucus” process, the same way Iowa and 14 other states still select their delegates. There had been a Texas Presidential primary that was just a “beauty contest” because it didn’t affect delegate allocation. The current hybrid system was put in place by reformers who wanted to institute a primary to open up the process to greater public participation, and our primary voters will allocate 126 delegates on Tuesday. But they also wanted to maintain a caucus system to encourage those voters to get involved and have a say in running our Party.

The campaigns for the primary elections often feature a blitz of rallies, direct mail and advertisements, and after election day the campaigns leave for the next state. This year, we expect tens of thousands of new Democratic voters who have been attracted by two outstanding presidential candidates to participate in our precinct and county conventions for the first time. It’s a process that brings Democrats together, face to face, to practice democracy in their communities. And there’s no better way to change our political system and make our elected leaders more responsive to the everyday concerns of voters.

Tuesday evening, our precinct conventions offer an open invitation to millions of Texans to help us build an organization that can elect candidates who will deliver real change and build a better future. We also welcome those who want to change our delegate selection process, and our system affords reformers the ability to change the process the same way the architects of the current plan did years ago. Like them, I understand that our Party needs the passion, commitment and fresh ideas generated by an exciting campaign, and we welcome all of you to "come join the Party."

Record Early Voting Turnout Numbers

George Nassar — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:30:29 -0700

Turnout numbers for early voting are eclipsing past primary voting turnouts in Texas. I think everyone was pretty pumped up about seeing states like Iowa double their turnout numbers this year over 2004, and we were all hoping for the same thing to happen in Texas. But few were expecting the numbers to be this high.

Through the second day of early voting in 2004, we have seen Democratic turnout be from over 70% higher to fourteen times higher in the biggest Texas counties. No, that's not a typo. Democratic cumulative turnout so far increased from 326 voters in 2004 to 4,695 this year, for a just over 1440% increase, in Collin County. No, that's not a typo either. Plano Democrats are turning out in droves so far for early voting.

For those interested in how the Lampson race will turn out, you'll be happy to know that Fort Bend can actually beat that percentage. Democratic turnout is over 15 times greater than 2004 numbers. My backyard of Denton County has seen an 11-fold increase.

Think the big cities may not be as dramatic? Well, hold on to your seats. Harris County has seen a sevenfold increase in early voter turnout to date, as has Tarrant, and Dallas nearly a tenfold increase. Bexar County got over a fivefold bump, beating Travis County's "meager" 440% increase.

Let's put this in another perspective. Harris County's Democratic primary turnout to date has been 19,578 voters. Their Republican primary turnout has been 8,654 voters. Tarrant Democrats have doubled up on their Republican counterparts in turnout, and Dallas Democrats nearly tripled.

In fact, looking at the top counties by population, you'd have to go down to Montgomery County to find a place where Republican turnout is beating Democratic turnout. Yes, including Collin. Yes, including Fort Bend. Yes, including Williamson. All of them have Democrats leading in primary turnout.

Why is this important? It's not like primary votes count in general elections, right?

I'm sure few readers of the Blue will be thinking that, but let's address it anyway. Not only are primary voting numbers indicative of the excitement and dedication of the electorate for a particular party, but every one of those primary voters are going to be people that we can contact out of the state party's voter file and that we can focus our Get Out The Vote efforts come the general election. You can be sure that when we're getting fifteen times the turnout in areas, many of those voters are newly energized Democrats whose names we didn't have previously, but who are eager to turn around the country and elect Democrats. The way things have been going, November's looking like it will be a very exciting month for Democrats.