(Open for discussion. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
For the past decade, Texas Democratic statewide judicial races have generally been the bellwether contests which have been the closest races (in 2008 it was Sam Houston for Texas Supreme Court, in 2006 it was Bill Moody for Texas Supreme Court, in 2004 it was J.R. Molina for Court of Criminal Appeals, in 2000 it was Bill Vance for Court of Criminal Appeals, and in 2002 Margaret Mirabal for Texas Supreme Court was the second best performing Democrat).
The only exception to this rule has been John Sharp's run for Lieutenant Governor in 2002, where he performed slightly better than Margaret Mirabal; here are the results of the 4 top-performing statewide Democrats from 2002:
Lieutenant Governor 2002
51.77% (2,341,875 votes) - David Dewhurst
46.03% (2,082,281 votes) - John Sharp
(2.20% for third parties)
Supreme Court (Place 4) 2002
54.09% (2,331,140 votes) - Steven Wayne Smith
45.90% (1,978,081 votes) - Margaret Mirabal
Senator 2002
55.29% (2,496,243 votes) - John Cornyn
43.32% (1,955,758 votes) - Ron Kirk
(1.49% for third parties)
Supreme Court (Place 3) 2002
56.76% (2,442,111 votes) - Wallace B. Jefferson
43.23% (1,860,251 votes) - William E. Moody
Compare the 2002 results to the most recent 2008 performance of Sam Houston and Bill Moody's 2006 performance in the most recent non-presidential election cycle and J.R. Molina's top-Democrat performance in 2004:
Supreme Court (Place 7) 2008
50.99% (3,926,015 votes) - Dale Wainwright
45.78% (3,525,158 votes) - Sam Houston
(3.21% for the Libertarian)
Supreme Court (Place 2) 2006
51.04% (2,135,612 votes) - Don Willett
44.88% (1,877,909 votes) - William E. "Bill" Moody
(4.06% for the Libertarian)
Court of Criminal Appeals (Place 6) 2004
57.85% (3,990,315 votes) - Michael E. Keasler
42.14% (2,906,720 votes) - J.R. Molina
Comparing the performance of Mirabel and Moody in 2002, Molina in 2004, Moody in 2006, and Houston in 2008, we can confirm that we have generally improved our competitiveness by 4% or 5% since 2002 when Sharp last ran, and that trend does not seem to have plateaued, and by weighing presidential-cycle results against non-presidential-cycle results against the general trend toward increased competitiveness, we perform better in non-presidential election cycles.
Since Sharp lost by only a little more than 5% in 2002, the continually improving competitiveness of statewide Democrats since 2002 may be good news for Sharp's chances to breakthrough as the first statewide Democrat elected in more than a decade.
Still, the safer bets for a Democratic breakthrough in 2010 are likely to be the candidates for Texas Supreme Court or Court of Criminal Appeals.
This year, Texas Supreme Court candidate Sam Houston was the top statewide Democrat and, even though he lost by 5%, he won over 3.5 million votes. Both Obama and Houston broke the 3.5 million vote barrier, and no Democrat in Texas history has ever even come close to that mark before Obama and Houston both surpassed it this week.
Compare this year to 2006, when the top-performing statewide Democratic candidate was Texas Supreme Court candidate Bill Moody (whose son was just elected to the Texas Legislature!). Judge Moody lost by 6% (and came nowhere near the 3.5 million voter mark given that 2006 was a non-presidential election year). The fact that Houston narrowed the margin from 2006 to 2008 is especially remarkable because the margins for Texas Democrats are historically much worse during presidential election years.
Going back to 2004, the last presidential election year, the top-performing statewide Democratic candidate was Court of Criminal Appeals candidate J.R. Molina who lost by over 15% (and he didn't break the 3 million vote threshold).
In 2002, Texas Supreme Court candidate Margaret Mirabal and Lieutenant Governor John Sharp were the only two statewide Democrats who got over 45% of the vote, and the both lost their non-presidential-election-year races by bigger margins than Sam Houston lost in the most recent presidential election year.
If you want to go all the way back to the next most recent presidential election year, which was 2000, the top-performing statewide Democratic candidate was Court of Criminal Appeals candidate Bill Vance who lost by almost 13%.
(A perspective on last night. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
Sarah Palin has had her 15 minutes in the media spotlight.
Palin's post-convention introduction to the voters went as poorly as possible. Literally, if Palin had done any worse over the past three weeks, people would feel too much sympathy for her (and she might have been replaced with Romney or Ridge or some other candidate who would have been much more formidable), but she did just badly enough so that everyone now knows she's an idiot and an extremist but not so badly that she generated a William-Hung-style "so bad she's great" rebound of sympathy.
Last night, Palin was merely awful, which is a step up from her performance with Charlie Gibson and a huge improvement over Palin's disastrous performance with Katy Couric. The insistence on giving over-rehearsed talking points instead of answering the questions asked was awful. The blind embrace of Dick Cheney's unconstitutional power-grubbing model for the vice presidency was awful. The callousness toward Biden was awful. The shout out was awful. The "white flag" attack and its inherent adoption of the endlessness of the war was awful. The "drill, baby, drill" scolding was awful. The winking and eye rolling was awful.
Last night, some people hoped Palin would fail dramatically.
I did not.
I wanted Palin to fail conventionally (which she did).
If Palin had failed dramatically it would have (1) extended her 15 minutes in the spotlight, (2) fed the rubberneck public's curiosity in her fascinatingly awful can't-look-away train-wreck of a campaign which is actually boosting attendance at McCain rallies (if -- and only if -- he appears jointly with the train-wrecker), and (3) potentially given rise to sympathy for her.
Instead, Palin failed conventionally -- almost boringly -- and so now the spotlight can re-focus back on Obama vs. McCain, which is a fight we know we win.
Finally, as a feminist, I'm slightly pleased that it is now more likely that the reason for McCain's ultimate failure will be because he is an epic hypocrite and a right-wing stooge and less likely to be due to the fact that the first woman plucked from obscurity to fill out a Republican presidential ticket turned out to be an extremist and a moron. Palin's status as an extremist and a moron will now be more of a side note in the book of McCain's failure and not a whole chapter. I'm slightly glad for that.
Once Upon A Time, in a Deeply Republican Administration, the man in charge of the Republican Party had almost everything in place.
He had no energy policy, but he had a plan that would make the oil and gas companies very happy.
He had no plan to expand access to health care, but he had a plan to make the pharmaceutical companies very happy.
He had no plan to bring our troops home any time soon, but he had a plan to rebuild the damage in Iraq, and Halliburton was very, very happy.
But there was one thing which made the man in charge of the Republican Party feel his job was incomplete. The man could not help but notice that he was much less popular with women voters than men, and this made the Republicans sad.
Governor's water breaks in Texas, gives birth in Alaska
Despite being very, very pregnant, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was in Grapevine Thursday for a forum held by the Republican Governor's Association.
We were kind of preoccupied by our own governor's announcement that he plans to run for re-election, so we missed the other big news of the conference.
From Alaskan NBC affiliate KTUU:
Just yesterday, Palin was in Texas at a forum on energy with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and executives from four other states.
The governor's water broke during the energy conference but she stayed and gave a 30-minute speech before boarding an Alaska Airlines plane home to deliver the baby.
Palin gave birth to Trig Paxson Van Palin Friday at 6:30 a.m.
No word on why Palin was so determined to make sure young Trig wasn't born a Texan.
"It doesn't take a lot of talent to get shot down."
That's not Gen. Wes Clark's supposedly controversial comment about the lack of any real tie between McCain's military record and qualification for public office.
That's McCain's own comment about his own experience.
Compare McCain's own comment ("It doesn't take a lot of talent to get shot down") to the supposedly controversial exchange between Gen. Clark and Bob Schieffer:
SCHIEFFER: Barack Obama has not ... ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down. I mean...
CLARK: Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.
How is Clark's comment different than McCain's own comment? How is the uproar anything other than a purely manufactured controversy?
Another key observation from Chairman Dean: "In Texas this year, more people voted in the Democratic primary than voted in the 2004 general election on the Democratic side in the state."
Anyone who follows Texas politics (and who isn't a paid political consultant) knows that the Republican assault on Texas consumers' rights has been an assault on the sanctity of the Texas citizens' service on juries. Phil Hardberger, a good Democrat elected to mayor of San Antonio and Chief Justice of the San Antonio Court of Appeals, documented this problem in his award winning legal analysis "Juries under Siege." University of Texas law professor David Anderson also discussed this corruption of the judicial system in his recent article "Judicial Tort Reform in Texas". The Texas Observer also recently documented this problem in its report on "The Worst Judges in Texas".
This is the election that must wake a slumbering giant hidden within the Texas electorate; now is the time when our campaigns should be identifying and registering new voters.
Fundraising strength is the best early indicator of candidates' intention and potential. A Senate incumbent who collects next to no money is sure to find himself on retirement watch lists. A challenger candidate who over performs expectation will get more attention from both the national party and the media; one who disappoints financially is in danger of falling off the list of top-tier contests.
...
LOSERS
National Republican Congressional Committee: We know that NRCC Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) has made debt retirement his main priority since taking over at the campaign committee but the organization ended June with just $2 million in the bank -- one-tenth of what the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had on hand. House Republicans' fundraising will improve but they have dug themselves a huge hole six months into the 2008 cycle. If Republicans continue to lag Democrats this badly, it will be difficult for them to do much more than protect their endangered incumbents from a financial onslaught by the DCCC.
Tom Latham/Denny Rehberg/Richard Baker: The real loser here may well be the National Republican Senatorial Committee who had mentioned all three of these Republican House members as potential 2008 Senate candidates. None raised more than $200,000 between April 1 and June 30 and all three trail their would-be Democratic opponents badly in cash on hand. Add it all up and what do you get? Three men not running for Senate in 2008.
John Cornyn: Cornyn's massive fundraising haul -- $2.1 million raised, $5.4 million on hand -- doesn't seem the sort of showing to put him in the loser category. What lands him a spot here is attorney Mikal Watts' (D) willingness to spend his own money on a campaign. Watts gave himself $3.8 million in the last quarter and raised another $1.1 million, ending June with $4.9 million on hand. Watts has said that if he wins the Democratic primary, he will spend an additional $6.2 million of his own money. Cornyn is still an overwhelming favorite but Watts' deep pockets make this a far more involved race than most people would have guessed a few months ago.
