Burnt Orange Report

yea, kos has no right to go on the offensive since he himself took money from frost

byron, i don't think anyone is saying that martin is a bad democrat or a DINO or anything like that (if they are they are distorting the facts). in fact i made that real clear when i posted about martin's voting record a couple weeks back.

that being said, no way in hell do i want him leading the dnc. you are holding up all these dallas wins as proof that martin helped downticket dems, and that's not born out by the facts. your comparison here is not quite valid because you are looking at dallas county as a whole.

the fact is that dallas county almost went blue, as we all know. but a fair analysis would look at the numbers in martin's district. valdez lost 14K votes in martin's district. also, straight ticket dem votes increased by leaps and bounds *outside* of frost's district but within dallas county. why is this? because most of the local dems ran as a group and encouraged their voters to pull a straight ticket. and turnout was so high in large part due to the immense number of grassroots volunteers who took to the streets of dallas county for weeks to canvass on behalf of dems.

martin ran a wholly selfish race that focused on him retaining his seat. he *did* put what were essentially pro-bush ads on the air, and we got them over here in tarrant county as well. those ads hurt us in tarrant county, but that's a whole nother comment.

i'm probably not making much sense right now, as i've been in bed with a fever all day. needless to say i respect your opinion but think your analysis is a bit off. i'll elaborate later on when i'm feeling better.

I have to respectfully disagree with anna. Frost did help Dallas Democrats. You can argue that Lupez lost the 32nd by 14k, but still shaving off 10% on a 65% Republican district is impressive. It wasn't mentioned much back then but former state Senator David Cain did the same type thing against Bob Deuell. He took about 6-7% off of a 60% GOP district in a low turnout year for Democrats 2002.

What does Tarrant have to do with anything? It's a GOP stronghold because Dems have a problem in the mid cities, not to mention the new Plano areas (Colleyville, Southlake, Grapevine). Arlington's getting better. State Rep. Toby Goodman should be beaten by 2010.

Anna -- I hope you have recovered from your illness. I just got over being sick. It was no fun.

Back to Martin Frost, I am happy to see you are not labeling him a DINO. That is what KOS seems to be doing. If Frost is a DINO, we might as well write off much of Red America indefinitely. I am not necessarily in favor of Frost, but most definitely am not in favor of Dean. Moreover, I don't like the tactics that the Kossacks and some Dean supporters are using.

Now, I don't see that you voiced your opinion on who should head the DNC. However, I would venture an opinion that if the DNC had been headed by somebody like Dean or his ilk, things would have been even bleaker in areas of Texas in/around Martin Frost's district. Former Congressman Frost tried to bring Reagan-Bush Democrats back into the fold. He failed, but made a valiant effort.

Somebody in one of the threads, I believe, stated that if Frost became DNC chairman, his ads in the last campaign would come back to haunt him. That may be so. That might be a reason to oppose Frost. However, I can guarantee that many of the statements that Dean has made over the last two years would come back to haunt both him and the Party if he becomes DNC chairman.