(Here's an excellent diary from one of our regular readers -- and a Bastrop precinct chair. I'll also let everyone know, in case you haven't, that you can join the Facebook group "Draft Leticia Van de Putte for Governor" if you want to show your support. - promoted by Phillip Martin)
(Fair disclosure: I am a partisan hack, precinct chair, yellowdog and all-around liberal tool from Bastrop County...)
Que es esto? Phillip's recent post floating Sen. Leticia Van de Putte as a gubernatorial possibility made me pause in uffish thought for awhile today. While I'd pondered her as a statewide before, it never really occurred to me to put her at the top of the list, but the post made me dig a little deeper and do some cipherin' (as my grandfather used to say).
My first thought was, damn that's a great media piece in the SA Current to start things off. Somebody in her camp has their act together - all the way down to the photos, which make her look tall and commanding and serious (as opposed to short and matronly), without sacrificing her femininity. I like where this is going, PR-wise, if nothing else.
Then I thought some more, going down my mental list of vital candidate criteria and what a Democrat needs to knock off the jackals who currently control the machinery of our state gubmint...
I couldn't come up with a single weakness in her profile. Unless of course it's just not mathematically possible to elect a Latina as Texas Governor yet. My cursory reading of the numbers suggest that it's not out of the realm of possibility, given a combination of circumstances next year, but perhaps someone else can work over the numbers more closely and see what they yield. For the moment, I'm in love with the idea of this woman leading our cabal into the breach in 2010...and here's a few reasons why - (after the jump, if there is one around here...)
Some postings I have offered on Blogs the last several days have engendered intense discussion and debate. Some of the discussion and debate has concerned how best to judge the credibility of candidates and campaigns.
The best answer to the question is one that hardly any of the comments touched upon. That is, the people themselves, acting democratically through the ballot box, are always the best judge. The people themselves acting through the ballot box are in fact the only legitimate judge. We all do still believe in democracy, don't we?
Many of you received my friend Barbara Radnofsky's Internet newsletter describing the meeting that took place on January 21 between the Texas Democratic Party Chair and some of his staff and advisors, and five of the 2006 statewide candidates, including myself.
With all due respect to my honorable colleague Barbara, her newsletter did not objectively or accurately describe the meeting. To be fair, her description may be subjectively sincere. But it conveys an inaccurate picture.
Every general election cycle, small groups of Insiders secretly handpick which Democratic Nominees who won the Democratic Primaries are worthy of Texas Democratic Party support and which aren't. This practice, euphemistically called "targeting", is profoundly disrespectful to all the Democratic Primary voters who selected the Nominees in the Democratic Primaries. It is the ugliest little secret in Texas politics. If the mass of ordinary-citizen Texas Democrats knew about it they would not put up with it for a moment. They would probably march on Austin and tear the Party office down.
