| A version of this diary was cross posted at Daily Kos.
Out here in the lonely boondocks of the gerrymandered 32nd Congressional district, no one does polls, so I have no hard data to back up my optimism about Eric Roberson's chances for winning, but today, I saw yet another hopeful sign that things are going our way--the Dallas Morning News' endorsement of incumbent Pete Sessions.
Their praise of Sessions is almost "dog whistle" politics against him. Follow me over the jump, and let's take a look at what they said, and how this is a win for us... |
| Republicans hate the bailout.
Democrats hated the first bailout, which was basically to give Henry Paulson a no-strings-attached blank check.
I don't understand the bailout. Higher math makes my head hurt, which is the feeling of most "regular" Americans out there. We're tired of congress just handing out money to everybody but us (hey, if I'm part owner of AIG, where's my health care plan?). Everybody, on both sides of the aisle, want something else. We want a change in Congress, and we want representatives who talk to us and explain stuff in plain language, instead of rushing in to a town hall meeting, going off on some partisan rant, then making a mad dash for the parking lot when the meeting's over.
Dallas Morning News loves the bailout, which is pissing off their conservative readership. While people like me think of the Dallas Morning News as a "right wing rag," hardcore Republicans think it's "liberal." Now, because of their support for the bailout, they think it's downright "socialist."
Today, in their endorsement of Pete Sessions they started right off with a nod to his support for the bailout package: Considering the distaste many conservatives had for the recent financial rescue plan passed by Congress, it's admirable that Rep. Pete Sessions grasped the seriousness of the problem, bucked pressure from many of his allies and voted for the $700 billion package. (Now, Eric Roberson is not opposed to the bailout, either, but he has a way of explaining it that makes sense to me. The way he explains it is that it could be an investment if we do things right. We could make our money back by selling the "good parts" at a profit. At the same time, we're looking into the "bad parts," and make sure it never happens again by enforcing existing regulations, making bailout recipients pay back their "spa" money, and prosecute anybody who broke the law. I listened to Eric talk about how the bailout should work at one of his town hall meetings, and it was actually kind of entertaining. He talked about higher math, and I didn't need to take an aspirin afterward. That's the kind of person I want in Congress).
Another thing that will turn off the hardliners is this paragraph: Mr. Sessions has shown other signs of moving from hard-liner toward the political center. He endorsed Rudy Giuliani for the Republican presidential nomination, for example. And he now says he wants to press ahead soon with immigration reform, including a guest-worker program and legalization provisions Back in 2006, the hardest of the hard line Republicans didn't like Sessions because he only voted with Bush 95% of the time instead of 100%. When those people are reminded that he endorsed Giuliani, I'll just bet they won't cast a vote for Pete Sessions.
As I said at the beginning of this diary, we're hopelessly gerrymandered over here, and it's not good enough to get out our Democratic vote, we need to convince some moderate Republicans to either vote for change--even if it's just in this one race--or to not vote at all in this race.
In 2004, Pete Sessions beat Martin Frost 54-44, and against Will Pryor in 2006, Sessions actually picked up a couple of percentage points. (See TX-32 statistics). A poll conducted by the Roberson campaign over the summer showed Sessions leading by 9 percentage points (See Burnt Orange Report's link), but a lot's changed since the summer! We could be closer to winning than we think.
If you'd like to help the residents of TX-32 send a sane person to Congress, drop a few bucks into Eric Roberson's donation jar. |
