Discussion for article #229547
No battle is hopeless.
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For comedic value?
Jon can have his fun.
But the demographic is already in place to flip the state purple at the least.
The hurdle is overcoming the Tom Delay-effected gerrymandering-- and the poll-tax-like Voter ID laws-- to allow those votes to show the will of those who will cast them.
jw1
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Jon is of course completely neglecting the fact that we had a Democratic governor until 1994 and Democratic Lt. Governor until 1998. Not to mention the fact that Texas sent the best liberal president to Washington, LBJ. Texas was blue, not even that long ago. This deep deep red thing is only about 20 years old. And the rapidly growing hispanic population is making us bluer and bluer ever single day.
I agree with Stewart 99% of the time, but he is dead wrong here. Spoken like someone who has never spent any time in Texas, and is completely unfamiliar with the politics here.
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Right. We shouldn’t even try because it’s all hopeless. Everything is hopeless. Like that stupid story “The Little Engine That Could”
Stewart is OK for the most part but the message he is sending here (even though it’s dressed up as humor) is that people should just give up before they start. What an awful sentiment to convey to a large audience.
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While hilarious, Jon is no strategist. Texas is red but will not be forever and Dems need to start early chipping away at the redness.
When Texas shifts blue,its going to be game over of Presidential politics (New York, California and Texas all reliably Democratic? Why even hold the rest of the election?), and damn near it for the GOP in all national politics. So don’t expect it to go quietly into the blue.
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I’m a Houstonian, and I can assure you there is a big chunk of us who are really tired of being a national punchline. Is Wendy Davis going to win this year? Um, no. And frankly she’s run a pretty poor campaign (IMO). But things are moving in a purple direction. And it isn’t just the Hispanic vote (though that’s an important part given how incredibly xenophobic the TX Repubs are) - people under 40, African Americans, Asians (there are a huge number in this state), and even people in the suburbs are sick of the Ted Cruz types.
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Although I knew that Davis winning was an uphill battle, the demographics of Texas, tell us where that state is heading in the not too distant future. The Dem party in Texas was a mess for years, and finally they are getting organized and getting serious about flipping the state within a few years, and those rapidly changing demographics make that quite possible. You can’t change anything if you just throw up your hands and write a state off forever.
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And just 5 days prior to an election.
jw1
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Thanks for that info. People who live in these states are the ones who know best about what is going on. I would suspect that if Governor OOOPS runs for President again, and knowing what a fool he is, that it will only serve to make more people in your state tired of being seen as a joke.
Lived in Texas almost all my near-60 years; voted Democratic since I turned 18.
Jon is right.
Texas was “Democractic” because it was not the party of Lincoln. Same was true for the rest of the south. It was a one-party state, and it still is, except now that party is the GOP.
Texas is gonna flip? When? The state has grown to be the second most populous state in the country, and yet all that influx of new people has not changed the voting patterns at all. Texas is still a one-party state with a very low turnout.
All those “young people” and “Hispanics” who are going to “flip” Texas like a pancake? Nah gonna hoppen. First, gotta get 'em to turn out to vote. First.
Then get 'em to vote for Democrats like Wendy Davis (even if you do think she’s run a bad campaign). Jon is right: Texas has been conservative since it’s been Texas.
I’d love for that to change. I see absolutely no sign that it’s going to. If anything, Texas has become more conservative since a brief flash of “liberalism” in the '70’s (I remember when we had the most effective consumer protection law in the land. It’s been gutted so badly we now have “Tort Reform” that makes it harder to sue doctors for malpractice, among other things. Abbott took advantage of the laws before tort reform to recover $$$ for his injuries, then worked to draw the ladder up after him.) And all those “voters” who are gonna flip us?
They haven’t kept Abbott from having a 20 point lead. And we send Cruz and Gohmert to D.C. Closest we have to a “liberal” in Congress is Lloyd Doggett, and unless you’re from Austin, you’ve probably never heard of the guy.
Watch the clip. Those people Stewart put in it reflect the political sentiments of the majority down here. And most of those people are not even as old as I am.
Not much gonna change anytime soon.
This. Despite my overall frustration with the Davis campaign, there has been a major improvement in the TX Dem Party’s organization this go round.
I never thought that I would see Georgia turning more and more purple either, but that is indeed happening. The problem for these southern red states is not only that the changing demographics are more and more favoring the Dems, but if the Dems can’t be thankful to this President for anything else, then by damn they ought to be very thankful to him for the magnificent ground game his two Presidential campaigns gave them. It has helped defeated Dems in many red states get their butts in gear and actually stop writing their own states off.
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As a Texan I would completely agree that envisioning a “liberal” Texas is pretty far-fetched. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for more Democratic candidates to win statewide offices.
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What the national press misses about Gov Goodhair is that a LOT of Texas Republicans cannot STAND him. My diehard Republican father is still holding a grudge against Perry for not capping property taxes, as he promised in one of his campaigns YEARS ago. So much so that he voted for Bill White in 2010. A lot of folks in Texas think Perry is a huge fake.
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His cardinal sin was embarrassing the crap out of us in the GOP POTUS primaries.
That’s the reason he didn’t run again. Well, that and he overplayed his hand with his “Trans-Texas Corridor.”
Unfortunately, hatred for Perry has not translated into interest in Davis, at least according to the polls.
All one can do now is hope those polls are spectacularly wrong…
Yes! The TTC is a great example of the sort of thing even conservatives in this state dislike Perry for.
This one might be.
TD:
Yes,Yep & Bingo!
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