| The Consultantocracy certainly defends its own. Naturally, Mr. Lux defends the very same Martin Frost-oriented clique that has gloriously led Texas Democrats to the loss of and continuing shutout from every single one of the 29 statewide executive and judicial offices in Texas, and by doing so has handed over the people of Texas to the worst iron grip of corporate power without equalizing political check and balance in the history of our state.
Oh yes, the Texas boys who man the Austin outpost of the Beltway Consultantocracy do like to brag about winning a handful of seats in the Texas Legislature each of the last two general elections, of 2006 and 2008. Could it be they do so much bragging about that in order to divert attention away from their total shutout in the real arenas of power occupied by the statewide executive and judicial offices? Some great tradeoff, right? Conceding 2/3 of the branches of government in exchange for small incremental gains in one branch of government, that being the one that meets only for half a year every other year and is the weakest of the three? I don't know about you, dear reader, but I think it would be a blast to have adversaries who are so easily appeased as the Texas acolytes of the Democratic Consultantocracy.
Oh, about those refugees from the office of former Congress member Martin Frost, such as Frost's former chief of staff and political director, and present front man, Matt Angle. This is the man who directed the Martin Frost re-election campaign of 2004, in which the campaign message in the closing critical weeks was that the voters should choose Democrat Frost because he was closer to president George W. Bush and a stronger supporter of Bush's Iraq war than his Republican opponent.
Heck, no wonder Frost and Angle are tooting the horn for Tom Schieffer for the Democratic nomination for Texas Governor in 2010. Schieffer is right up their alley - he supported George W. Bush over Ann Richards for Governor in 1994, Bush for president over Al Gore in 2000, and Bush for president over John Kerry in 2004. Not only that, he reportedly assisted Georgie in exploiting public resources for private gain, taking homes away from middle class Texans through eminent domain in order to make Georgie rich off the Texas Rangers' new public-funded baseball stadium in Arlington. (The interesting phenomenon of Bush Socialism - socialize the costs and privatize the enrichment. Actually I think a fellow named Mussolini first injected the concept into the modern world.)
And Mr. Lux repeats one of the favorite sermons of the Consultantocracy: that the Democratic millennium will arrive in Texas as soon as the great "Hispanic" voter ship comes in. (Very few Texas Americans of Mexican or other Latino descent refer to themselves as "Hispanic". It is a word invented by Republican politicos in the 1970s for the purpose, in their thinking, of a conveniently exploitable political handle.)
First of all, it is incredibly patronizing, very close to benign or not so benign racism, to presume that the Texas Latinos who are not voting would automatically vote for Democrats if they were to decide to vote. In truth, they shouldn't even be thought of as non-voters. They should be thought of as abstainers. To presume that even though they are abstaining they are automatically Democrats is tokenistic and offensive to each of them as individual citizens, in my humble view. Their votes, just like the votes of all individual citizens, need to be earned, not taken for granted. Disclaimer: Though not of Latino descent myself, by happy marriage I am part of a large San Antonio South Side family of Americans of a mixture of Mexican-Tejano-Native American-Spanish descent.
Further, to suggest that the formula for Democratic success in Texas lies simply in waiting for the Latino vote to come in is to also suggest the corollary: that Democratic failure in Texas is the Latino voters' faults for not turning out enough. This implication is highly offensive. When the ballots are counted, every voter's ballot counts the same as every other voter's ballot (especially if they are paper ballots that are counted by hand so that we can see the ballots and be sure each vote is counted as it was intended by the voter), and every voter is just as responsible for the outcome as every other.
But hey, the Consultantocracy doesn't see individual voters as Citizens who are 100% equal part owners of the self-government of our republican democracy, each to be respected as such. Nope, to the Consultantocracy we are each a data byte to be manipulated and exploited like so many sticks of wood in a fireplace. Just maybe, the majority of the citizenry know they are so looked upon by the politicians and their advisors; and just maybe, this explains why the majority of citizens in most elections, or at least a very substantial minority in the occasional high-turnout elections, abstain rather than cast an affirmative vote.
I do not take the time and trouble to type this comment in order to engage in partisan hand-wringing over which side has been winning in political-party sporting contests. Elections in our republican democracy are not basketball games. It is not about which side can put the most points on a political scoreboard. In our national democracy, it is about advancing our society progressively closer, step by step, to realizing the vision of Mr. Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, the stunning vision of universal human rights secured through government by the consent of the governed. The real tragedy of the Democratic Consultantocracy's decades of bypassing Texas is that it permitted the very worst, most malevolent elements of the domestic opponents of the American Revolutionary vision, i.e., the Imperial Bush Family and their entourage, to turn this State into the jumping board for their deadly and traitorous assault on our country's foundations. The continuing tragedy is that the Texas outpost of the Consultantocracy continues to run the Texas Democratic Party as a hollow shell of its former self, which in their view should do anything and everything BUT really and truly stand and fight for the people against the powerful, and indeed in their view should foist avowed promoters of the reign of George W. Bush upon the voters of Texas as Democratic nominees for governor.
At the Texas State Democratic Convention of 2008, for the first time in living memory the Texas Democratic Party prohibited the display of posters, banners, or signs of Democratic candidates on the walls of the convention meeting hall. But it is not that posters were prohibited per se. The main wall of the Convention, behind and above the podium, was covered with posters and banners displaying the names and logos of various large corporations. A dear friend of mine and many others, the late great Jim Mattox, pointed this out to me on the convention floor, remarking sadly that it looked more like a Chamber of Commerce convention than a Democratic convention. Undoubtedly, exclusive use of the walls was promised for the display of corporate banners in exchange for their money. Tragically, this tells it all about the present state of the Democratic Party in Texas.
I submit that most of the blame for this atrophied caricature known as the Texas Democratic Party falls upon the shoulders of Mr. Lux and his Consultantocracy comrades. By "targeting" Texas voters into non-existence in national Democratic campaigns for 28 straight years, they abandoned the Democratic Party of this state, leaving it as easy prey for self-serving exploiters, hustlers, and phonies who no more care about protecting the people of Texas from robber baron government than they do about the man in the moon. And with their obsession for computerized charts and graphs that reduced voting citizenship to data spurts, on the basis of which they decided to snub the 1 of every 12 voters in the country who live in Texas, they abandoned both the people of Texas and ultimately the people of America to assault from within by ruthless enemies of our Constitutional democracy.
President Obama's change agenda is making some progress, but so much more could be done if the Democratic Caucus in the U.S. Congress were more representative of the majority populist progressive mood of the American people today. After all, Republicans in the Congress are merely doing what was to be expected of them in attempting to serve as the opposition party. It is a craven faction of corporate-worshipping Democrats who are keeping more populist versions of environmental legislation and health care reform off the table and blocking passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. Call me a naive fool if you wish, but I continue to believe that reviving the Democratic party, right here in this huge state of Texas that is the most diverse cross-section of America of all the 50 states, into an apparatus that genuinely and passionately stands and fights for the universal egalitarian Rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness and the realization of Government solely and honestly by the Consent of the Governed; not in order to put points on a political scoreboard or to convey patronage but because carrying that fight is the very reason for its existence; would kick-start the continuing American (and Texan) Revolution out of somnolence and into high gear. If the Democratic apparatus is to be equal to the mission intended for it historically, at the very least it owes a vigorous rebirth of populist fighting spirit to the people of Texas and America in compensation for letting the horror of Bush the Younger fall upon the country. In what should be our constant progress as a society toward fulfillment of the inspired vision that was offered to the world on July 4, 1776 (and repeated on March 2, 1836), we do after all have a lot of ground to make up.
David Van Os
San Antonio, Texas |
