Welcome!

If you have to be somewhere in Red America, Fort Worth is a perfectly pleasant destination (well, except for the 98 degrees and red-alert smog today. Mmmm, it tasted like Los Angeles on my walk home today).

Actually, I think that open containers were banned a couple years ago down here.  (I recall people complaining about it around the time I showed up for grad school.)

The Democratic Party should concentrate on taking back Texas.

Some local variant of Steve Jarding and Mudcat Saunders should find a local variant of Mark Warner and elect him Governor.

The proper strategy is to go right at the heart of the fucking beast.

Matthew! Let's hang out and go see Dinosaur Valley or something! (Otherwise you're going to end up listening to a lot of conference-ese and not so much learning what's on the ground down here. Then again, maybe that's the point of this sort of thing.) Assuming I can manage transport. Email me!

Er, oh.

The Democratic Party should concentrate on taking back Texas. [...] The proper strategy is to go right at the heart of the fucking beast.

The beast is the Old South/Core Confederacy. The launch platform for the current sociopath in charge is Texas. That said, I completely agree. The D's should try and take back the West.

(West here meaning west of the Mississippi, the traditional definition, and a cultural boundary line. The Old South consists of the former slaveholding states which were not influenced by Hispanic or French culture or Indians in general (On account Jackson kicked out all the Indians), but were primarily influenced by the 'Tidewater aristocracy'. Whereas 'the West' was influenced primarily by poorer whites from all over the East coast and all the influences listed above.)

In essence, rebuild the old post-Civil War Republican coalition, plus the old Southwest.

It can be done. There aren't that many people who need party ID shifts, relative to the congressional seats and electoral votes involved.

But there would be some difficult repositioning involved, which clearly, Democrats do not wish to undertake.

ash

['Guess a 2x4 is required. Or lots of magical good luck.']

Since when are you a Hispanic journalist? Were they bamboozled by your last name or are there non-Hispanic speakers there?

"But there would be some difficult repositioning involved, which clearly, Democrats do not wish to undertake."

The repositioning only has to be taken regionally, at least at first.  Elect a Mark Warner-esque Governor who will refuse to be out-populist-ed,  And once the beast begins to bleed, each succeeding step will be easier.

The ghost of Ralph Yarborough beckons.  Keep the jam on the lower shelf so the little people can reach it.

Every major metro area as tract homes and strip malls in the suburbs.  Fort Worth actually has one of the nicer, more lively downtowns in the Sunbelt.  And the cultural district is just a stone's throw away. 

By the way, a hearty "yee haw!" to the Easterners who have dropped by with their crude stereotypes.  I'm fixin' to give y'all a piece of my mind.  :)

Amen, Mr. Cardinal!

There is rampant Texism out there in the blue states...I am a Texan currently diplaced in Maine (Maine!) and when you say the T-word up here folks just stop and stare. Anyone who's bothered to visit knows it's a swell place.

if Mr. Yglesias has a free afternoon he should swing by the Fort Worth Modern, one of the best contemporary art museums in the country. Yes, they have art in Texas, even the kind that's all funny and don't look like nuthin'.

Let us also recall a whole 39 percent of the state did not vote for Bush in 04...not enough, but more than you might think...  

Probably since some time around when his grandparents immigrated here from Cuba.

Well, if you really want to be effective about taking back Texas you can ignore the Governorship.  As someone who has lived near (but not in) Texas for most of my adult life, I can tell you that the Texas Governor is nearly a bupkis position.

The Governor of Texas holds very little real political power.  He has the power to appoint members of boards and commissions, and then the boards and commissions do their own thing.  He has the power to sign or veto legislation.  And that's about it.  Members of boards and commissions do not serve at the Governor's pleasure, unlike cabinet secretaries in a strong-governor model.

In Texas, the Light Gov actually wields more raw political power than the Gov, because the Light Gov controls the State Senate's agenda.  Also, Texans elect the Light Gov separately from the Governor.  It would be really, really amusing to see Kay Bailey Hutchison be elected Gov and some as-yet-unnamed progressive populist elected Light Gov.

When Dubya started running for President in 1998, my wife was worried about him.  "Wow, he's Governor of Texas!  That's a big state, even if friends don't let friends go south of the Red River ..." (She's an OU alum).  One of Rove's biggest bamboozles was convincing the national electorate that Dubya actually had significant experience governing anything.  He didn't, because being Texas Governor is a lot more akin to being President of Israel than it is to being President of the Newnited States.

So, speaking as an adopted New Mexican, I'm all in favor of making Texas safe for democracy.  But let's attack their governmental structure at its real centers of power.

Dennis

Just for information's sake, Texas has a higher concentration of Mexican Americans than does California. I bleive it's 34% to 32%.

"Well, if you really want to be effective about taking back Texas you can ignore the Governorship.  ...  I can tell you that the Texas Governor is nearly a bupkis position."

I'm aware that Texas has a weak Governor / strong legislature structure.

But I'm talking about taking back Texas politically.  And toward that task, winning a high profile statewide office that would demonstrate a Democratic majority coalition could be very helpful.

Given the fractures going on in the Texas GOP, given the corruption rot personified by DeLay, I smell an opening for a Mark Warner type figure to make inroads into the rural vote.

Maybe most of the Texans and ex-Texans I know are political junkies like me, but most of them are aware that the governorship is largely a ceremonial office.

Are we talking about taking Texas politically in the eyes of Texans, or taking Texas back politically in the eyes of the nation?

Further, are we talking about effectively taking back Texas?  If that's the case, the Lieutenant Governor's seat is the one we want.  DeLay's re-redistricting wouldn't have gone anywhere if a D had been Lt Gov -- it would never have made the Senate's Agenda.

Dennis

FOREIGNID: 9303
FOREIGNPARENTID: 9302
FOREIGNCOMMENTERID: 99
AUTHOR: petey
DATE: 06/17/2005 04:08:05 PM