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September 24, 2004

Good News, Weird News

By Byron LaMasters

Via Panhandle Truth Squad:

I just got scolded by David Van Os.

It was at a fundraiser at the River Briggs Ranch for the Democratic nominee for the Texas Supreme Court. Mr. Van Os was making the rounds through the chili line, and when he got to us, I mentioned the crowd, which was larger than anyone could remember at a Democratic event in Amarillo, Texas. "We're going to turn Texas purple," I foolishly babbled. That's when David Van Os scolded me.

He pointed at me repeatedly with his index finger, while pointing out that Republican turnout has been twice that of Democratic turnout in the past several elections. "They have to get twice their people to vote to beat us," he said.

Don't sell us short, don't buy into the notion that maybe if we work hard we can come close to beating Republicans in a few elections. Texas, like everywhere else populated by normal human beings, is a blue state, David Van Os proudly shouted.


As much as I'd like to believe David Van Os - well, Texas is just not a Blue state. At least not in 2004. Kerry will not win Texas. It's one thing to try and fire up the base, but it's quite another to live in fantasyland (to steal a line from Kerry's recent stump speech). The only way we turn Texas blue is by working our butts off, registering and turning out every voter in every cycle that we can. It means contesting more races with quality candidates and funding them. It means having a cordinated message where Texans of all races, backgrounds and regions can be proud to call themselves a Democrat. And on that note, here's the good news. The Texas Democratic Party is alive in Amarillo:


And, yeah, that crowd was fantastic. Democrats are coming out like no one ever believed we could. Even Will Rogers would have to admit that we're lining up together this year, when it matters most.

Yep.

A huge crowd for a state Supreme Court nominee at an isolated ranch we had to drove over miles of dirt road to get to? Even Texas a blue state? George Bush was the best thing that ever happened to our party.


Everything sounds great until the last sentence there. The Bush mystic is the reason Texas Democrats are in such bad shape. Had George W. Bush never arrived on the scene of Texas politics, Democrats wouldn't have been shut out of the statewides in his 1998 landslide reelection, which means Democrats wouldn't have gotten screwed in the 2001 legislative redistricting, which means the most recent redistricting never would have happened, but I digress.


Posted by Byron LaMasters at September 24, 2004 12:55 PM | TrackBack


Comments

The price you pay for wrong thinking. Believe it or not the same thing is happening all over our country. Your party is not building itself, you're aborting future Democrats every day. We Republicans are out producing you, 2.11 for every 1.46 of you'al.

Tell me. Sen. Kerry tells us that Iraq is the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place. We need to pull our children out. How can we get other countries to send there children in when Kerry is stating its not worth doing? You expect the smart French to be dumb enough to send their children to the wrong war? The Germans? The Russians?

Oh i can see your thoughts now; we were dumb enough to do this so they might be just as dumb.

Looking in that rear view mirror, having trouble making you out way back there.

Posted by: peter at September 24, 2004 02:20 PM

Well, gee, I don't consider it "beating the Republicans," if you know, we actually have to agree with the Republicans on everything in order to win.

Posted by: Jim D at September 25, 2004 06:41 PM

Tongue-in-cheek, dude. Dubya also wasn't the best thing that happened to my nephew who had to spend an unfortunate year of his life in Iraq. But, looking at it from a Panhandlian perspective, the Demo party is more alive up here than since Bush was an inept baseball team owner. We've banded together to defeat a common enemy. And apparently we're more organized than we've been since before Will Rogers was a Democrat.

Posted by: SPACEDARK at September 27, 2004 06:55 PM
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