My question is whether and when rank and file Texas voters who have been longstanding members of the Republican Party will feel emboldened enough to break free of this extreme, tyrannical Republican cabal which is betraying them? I have been around this state and its local politics long enough to have consorted with a whole, whole lot of Republicans. They know the difference between right and wrong. And censuring politicians who try to represent and help their constituents is just flat wrong.
I was "radicalized" by having my County Commissioner look us Democrats in the eye and tell us they were going to redistrict Tarrant County to box Democrats out of power just because they could. Will rural and other Republicans have that same epiphany when they realize their party is boxing them out of power just because it can?
So, just to recap, the Republicans censured Jared Patterson because he tried to recruit someone to primary another Republican member. In other words, the Republican Party does not want Texans to have a choice between more than one candidate, and in a district with no Democratic candidate running, that means that the sole Republican candidate on the ballot will be elected. Van Deavere was censured because he voted against school vouchers. He said "it's unfortunate that seven people are going to dictate who gets to be on the ballot for thousands of voters." Meanwhile, Trump is supposedly watching the SREC proceedings and relaying his commands. I guess we knew that Texas was no longer a democracy, but it has evidently become Trump's litte kingdom, personally ruled by him.
As a person who spent a lot of time in Austin being the person who had to listen to hours and hours of hearings, you have my deepest respect and sympathy for the job you are doing with Lone Star Left. Please do self-care and don't burn out on us.
Oh, my take away from Patterson was it was because no one liked him. One SREC member even said, “We can’t just censure him because he’s an asshole.” That was toward the end of part three of the debate video.
They led with vouchers against VanDeaver and Phelan but ultimately made it about how he didn’t get Trump’s endorsement because he didn’t vote on vouchers. If he would have gotten Trump’s endorsement, I think it would have been a non issue.
So it seems that Trump is personally running the Republican Party of Texas, and by default, the State of Texas. After the twin fiascos of Trump demanding redistricting, then deploying the State Guard to Illinois, it's now confirmed that Abbott is his little bitch. Everything Trump does these days is crazy, because his brain is demented, but the redistricting thing....they are going to lose some of those new districts.
WTF?! Middle school level of seriousness. I can see Patterson dodging the voucher vote in Frisco ISD because it would have been like shooting himself in the head, politically speaking.
After processing this episode with the censure of five Republicans by the SREC, I realized that the fundamental message being sent to Texas Republican legislators is that they serve at the discretion of the RPoT, and that service is dependent on conforming with party positions. They are expected to NOT represent the interests of their constituents, if those interests conflict with party positions, based on the presumption that holding their seats is out of the hands of voters. This message is particularly clear in the case of Van Deavere, who was censured for voting against school vouchers, presumably to protect funding for rural schools in his district. The Republican Party of Texas has become merely an arm of the national Republican Party, MAGA branch, and is being controlled by the White House. This should scare the hell out of Texans, because it means we, the voters, have fully lost control of our state government.
Oh, we’ve long lost control of it. And the thing about VanDeaver is he spent his entire career in education, in rural education, then retired and became a legislator and has always been a pro education Republican.
It's a powerful weapon to use against them with voters. Progressive, liberal, conservative, libertarian, none of that matters anymore if your state government is in the hands of a self-enriching, authoritarian regime controlled by oil billionaires and transplanted religious extremists, who want to eliminate public schools, and erase civil rights for women and blacks. Political party affiation in Texas has become a quaint artifact of a bygone era in which Texans actually ran their own state. (Bob Bullock must be spinning in his grave.} So much for Texas independence and pride; Texans are on the frontline of servitude to a corrupt federal government, using our State Guard to terrorize civilians in another state, and boldly removing constitutent representation as a duty for Republicans in the legislature.
No, the modern R party is a bunch of gutless, dumb hacks. The TDP is going to have to build a coalition, so in their arrogance, the R make it easy for Dem candidates to unite voters by not representing their consituents, at the same time they have a lock on power. It gives me more hope that Talarico and others can break through to a wide coalition of voters, across party lines.
It sure would be a lot easier for Democrats to gain power if some/enough Republicans would cross over and vote for us. There used to be this story that when Pretty Boy Floyd (not sure if he's the right 30's gangster, but let's just go with it) was asked why he robbed banks, he said "because that's where the money is".
When purists ask why we would try to reach Republicans, my response is because that's where the votes are. So, yeah, I want Democrats who are in the right kind of race with the ability to unite without sacrificing any Democratic principles to reach out for those votes.
This requires a candidate who knows how to thread the needle of espousing universal values, including not throwing trans people under the bus, that all can agree on without becoming a "Republican Lite". Talarico seems to fit the bill.
Also, can someone clue me in on how to get hooked up on listening to this podcast. I can't seem to figure it out. It doesn't appear on my Youtube podcasts.
I sincerely wished you didnt write this article because it reminds me of how much excessively cruel the republicans are and it just makes me feel sick in the inside. How on earth do you reconcile with these people. Can they even be reasoned with?
Only if they leave the cult, I've seen a lot of videos on TikTok from ex-Maga and people who deeply regret it, talking about how they left and what they thought when they were in it. But as long as they are still under the mind's eye, there's no hope for them. We have to outvote them, outorganize them, and eventually squeeze them out. Lucky for us, the average Republican is like 68 years old, so it'll be a lot different in about another decade.
Aging MAGA is a big reason for the extreme and desperate measures the national Republican Party is taking. They know they're out of time to convince people legitimately to support them, so they've decided to just take power illegitimately. I'm thinking of the notorious speech by Peter Thiel talking about how he realized that they are a minority and will never get what they want by winning elections. (Since when did an actual Nazi have a say in Amerian electoral politics! Thiel should be stripped of citizenship for treason, deported, and his assets and companies nationalized.)
Its not just that. These people need an immense shock in their life. Some event they triggers their delusion and make them realize what they are doing is wrong. This happened to a fair amount of Jan 6 rioters who broke the kool aid and refused pardons. They have to have that shock
Whatever it takes. Eventually, they have to come out of it, or they'll be one of those old, miserable people who die alone, with tinfoil on their heads.
Thank you Michelle for this as it always gives me hope, when in our own SDEC old school power is still fighting the progressive change.
I would like to note, since this is personal for you and me, our own SDEC Committeeman was in Mansfield last night spreading misinformation and lies about the “dire” straights of the TDP and all the wrongs that our chair has brought.
He couldn’t however, be bothered to show up on Wednesday night in Irving in his own back yard (also in the district) where Dem candidates Danny Minton for CD 6 and Amy Salas for SD 22 talked about why they are running and how they are building infrastructure and talking to folks across their districts. He couldn’t be bothered to listen to Reps Chris Turner and Terry Meza, whose house districts are both in CD 6, answer questions about real issues facing our communities. He couldn’t be bothered to come and hear what me and Ellis County Vice Chair Rob Shelton have done the past year to make coalitions, bring in precinct chairs, and highlight the incredible fast growing group of democrats in Ellis and Johnson counties.
Nope he couldn’t be bothered to show up and look the Texas Democratic Party Chairman in the eye. Cause we had over 90 people in Irving on Wednesday. We signed up 3 new precinct chairs, recruited volunteers to knock on doors in Farmers Branch and Tarrant County for the special elections coming up or to write post cards for the special election in Houston. No, he couldn’t be bothered. Maybe if he had shown up he would have heard that CD 6 is done with his doom and gloom and personal vendetta against our TDP chair. We are done with him voting against the interests of the 850,000 constituents of CD 6.
Rob Shelton officially launched his campaign for SDEC CD 6 on Wednesday.
I launched my campaign for SDEC CD 6 in Ellis County two weeks ago. My campaign is under the new maps, if the old maps stay in place, I will pledge my votes to our current committee woman who is a rock star but is gerrymandered out of the new district.
Together we are running as slate for a new kind of leadership in CD 6 that brings our gerrymandered district together. Because we know who our voters are. The precinct chairs. And right now we don’t have very many, so like a true campaign, you recruit, persuade and find your voters. We are not waiting around for the courts. We know our county conventions are just months away and we know the TDP convention is in Corpus Christi in June and our chair is on the ballot. This time, CD 6 will have 2 votes for Kendall. Not just one.
I saw a video of Bernie in W. VA where he's won primaries, and has close ties to Mingo County, working poor coal miners. A kid asked him, "How do we get the Democratic Party in West VA to start representing the working class again?" Bernie asked the kid his name, then said "You are going to lead the charge to take back the party", and all the older people around him started patting his back and cheering. It suddenly snapped in place for me that the National Democratic Party hasn't been stupid, or lazy, or careless, or too timid, or overly policy-oriented, or too intellectual, or bad communicators, or any of the other excuses for their failures to hold the line against an authoritarian takeover. It has been an engineered failure, a gutting of the people's party, by the same people who took over the Republican Party. An inside sabotage job. It happened everywhere, not just Texas, and it seems like some of the saboteurs are still on the ground in Texas, trying to keep the Dem Party flat on its back. Fuck them!
some D congressman somewhere say he holds town halls across his district line cause the R won't
or like oberman points out.....D...quit going on the shows responding to irrelevant questions and hold press conferences Sunday morning in places ravaged by MAGA
or the most extreme un-radical thing of all time: some one from Tarrant County Dems write a Letter to the Editor
My question is whether and when rank and file Texas voters who have been longstanding members of the Republican Party will feel emboldened enough to break free of this extreme, tyrannical Republican cabal which is betraying them? I have been around this state and its local politics long enough to have consorted with a whole, whole lot of Republicans. They know the difference between right and wrong. And censuring politicians who try to represent and help their constituents is just flat wrong.
I was "radicalized" by having my County Commissioner look us Democrats in the eye and tell us they were going to redistrict Tarrant County to box Democrats out of power just because they could. Will rural and other Republicans have that same epiphany when they realize their party is boxing them out of power just because it can?
Inquiring minds want to know.
So, just to recap, the Republicans censured Jared Patterson because he tried to recruit someone to primary another Republican member. In other words, the Republican Party does not want Texans to have a choice between more than one candidate, and in a district with no Democratic candidate running, that means that the sole Republican candidate on the ballot will be elected. Van Deavere was censured because he voted against school vouchers. He said "it's unfortunate that seven people are going to dictate who gets to be on the ballot for thousands of voters." Meanwhile, Trump is supposedly watching the SREC proceedings and relaying his commands. I guess we knew that Texas was no longer a democracy, but it has evidently become Trump's litte kingdom, personally ruled by him.
In a nutshell, but it was six hours long. 😭
As a person who spent a lot of time in Austin being the person who had to listen to hours and hours of hearings, you have my deepest respect and sympathy for the job you are doing with Lone Star Left. Please do self-care and don't burn out on us.
I got this summary from Texas Scorecard. I'm hoping that you would let us know if that summary was incorrect, since you listened to the whole thing.
Oh, my take away from Patterson was it was because no one liked him. One SREC member even said, “We can’t just censure him because he’s an asshole.” That was toward the end of part three of the debate video.
They led with vouchers against VanDeaver and Phelan but ultimately made it about how he didn’t get Trump’s endorsement because he didn’t vote on vouchers. If he would have gotten Trump’s endorsement, I think it would have been a non issue.
So it seems that Trump is personally running the Republican Party of Texas, and by default, the State of Texas. After the twin fiascos of Trump demanding redistricting, then deploying the State Guard to Illinois, it's now confirmed that Abbott is his little bitch. Everything Trump does these days is crazy, because his brain is demented, but the redistricting thing....they are going to lose some of those new districts.
100% Dan Patrick ran his reelection campaign in Texas and look how Abbott kissed up to him over the maps.
WTF?! Middle school level of seriousness. I can see Patterson dodging the voucher vote in Frisco ISD because it would have been like shooting himself in the head, politically speaking.
Thank you for always keeping us up and educating us to what is going on in Texas
After processing this episode with the censure of five Republicans by the SREC, I realized that the fundamental message being sent to Texas Republican legislators is that they serve at the discretion of the RPoT, and that service is dependent on conforming with party positions. They are expected to NOT represent the interests of their constituents, if those interests conflict with party positions, based on the presumption that holding their seats is out of the hands of voters. This message is particularly clear in the case of Van Deavere, who was censured for voting against school vouchers, presumably to protect funding for rural schools in his district. The Republican Party of Texas has become merely an arm of the national Republican Party, MAGA branch, and is being controlled by the White House. This should scare the hell out of Texans, because it means we, the voters, have fully lost control of our state government.
Oh, we’ve long lost control of it. And the thing about VanDeaver is he spent his entire career in education, in rural education, then retired and became a legislator and has always been a pro education Republican.
It's a powerful weapon to use against them with voters. Progressive, liberal, conservative, libertarian, none of that matters anymore if your state government is in the hands of a self-enriching, authoritarian regime controlled by oil billionaires and transplanted religious extremists, who want to eliminate public schools, and erase civil rights for women and blacks. Political party affiation in Texas has become a quaint artifact of a bygone era in which Texans actually ran their own state. (Bob Bullock must be spinning in his grave.} So much for Texas independence and pride; Texans are on the frontline of servitude to a corrupt federal government, using our State Guard to terrorize civilians in another state, and boldly removing constitutent representation as a duty for Republicans in the legislature.
The Republicans don’t care, they’re brainwashed. Most of them are living in hovel, struggling to find their next meal, and voting to own the libs. 🙄
No, the modern R party is a bunch of gutless, dumb hacks. The TDP is going to have to build a coalition, so in their arrogance, the R make it easy for Dem candidates to unite voters by not representing their consituents, at the same time they have a lock on power. It gives me more hope that Talarico and others can break through to a wide coalition of voters, across party lines.
It sure would be a lot easier for Democrats to gain power if some/enough Republicans would cross over and vote for us. There used to be this story that when Pretty Boy Floyd (not sure if he's the right 30's gangster, but let's just go with it) was asked why he robbed banks, he said "because that's where the money is".
When purists ask why we would try to reach Republicans, my response is because that's where the votes are. So, yeah, I want Democrats who are in the right kind of race with the ability to unite without sacrificing any Democratic principles to reach out for those votes.
This requires a candidate who knows how to thread the needle of espousing universal values, including not throwing trans people under the bus, that all can agree on without becoming a "Republican Lite". Talarico seems to fit the bill.
I think it would be easier to turn non-voters into actual voters.
Also, can someone clue me in on how to get hooked up on listening to this podcast. I can't seem to figure it out. It doesn't appear on my Youtube podcasts.
It’ll come, same as any newsletter.
Let’s get Mercedes Chandler to our Texas Dem candidates !https://substack.com/@campcallout/note/c-165426685?r=iws9y&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
I sincerely wished you didnt write this article because it reminds me of how much excessively cruel the republicans are and it just makes me feel sick in the inside. How on earth do you reconcile with these people. Can they even be reasoned with?
Only if they leave the cult, I've seen a lot of videos on TikTok from ex-Maga and people who deeply regret it, talking about how they left and what they thought when they were in it. But as long as they are still under the mind's eye, there's no hope for them. We have to outvote them, outorganize them, and eventually squeeze them out. Lucky for us, the average Republican is like 68 years old, so it'll be a lot different in about another decade.
Aging MAGA is a big reason for the extreme and desperate measures the national Republican Party is taking. They know they're out of time to convince people legitimately to support them, so they've decided to just take power illegitimately. I'm thinking of the notorious speech by Peter Thiel talking about how he realized that they are a minority and will never get what they want by winning elections. (Since when did an actual Nazi have a say in Amerian electoral politics! Thiel should be stripped of citizenship for treason, deported, and his assets and companies nationalized.)
Its not just that. These people need an immense shock in their life. Some event they triggers their delusion and make them realize what they are doing is wrong. This happened to a fair amount of Jan 6 rioters who broke the kool aid and refused pardons. They have to have that shock
Whatever it takes. Eventually, they have to come out of it, or they'll be one of those old, miserable people who die alone, with tinfoil on their heads.
Thank you Michelle for this as it always gives me hope, when in our own SDEC old school power is still fighting the progressive change.
I would like to note, since this is personal for you and me, our own SDEC Committeeman was in Mansfield last night spreading misinformation and lies about the “dire” straights of the TDP and all the wrongs that our chair has brought.
He couldn’t however, be bothered to show up on Wednesday night in Irving in his own back yard (also in the district) where Dem candidates Danny Minton for CD 6 and Amy Salas for SD 22 talked about why they are running and how they are building infrastructure and talking to folks across their districts. He couldn’t be bothered to listen to Reps Chris Turner and Terry Meza, whose house districts are both in CD 6, answer questions about real issues facing our communities. He couldn’t be bothered to come and hear what me and Ellis County Vice Chair Rob Shelton have done the past year to make coalitions, bring in precinct chairs, and highlight the incredible fast growing group of democrats in Ellis and Johnson counties.
Nope he couldn’t be bothered to show up and look the Texas Democratic Party Chairman in the eye. Cause we had over 90 people in Irving on Wednesday. We signed up 3 new precinct chairs, recruited volunteers to knock on doors in Farmers Branch and Tarrant County for the special elections coming up or to write post cards for the special election in Houston. No, he couldn’t be bothered. Maybe if he had shown up he would have heard that CD 6 is done with his doom and gloom and personal vendetta against our TDP chair. We are done with him voting against the interests of the 850,000 constituents of CD 6.
Rob Shelton officially launched his campaign for SDEC CD 6 on Wednesday.
I launched my campaign for SDEC CD 6 in Ellis County two weeks ago. My campaign is under the new maps, if the old maps stay in place, I will pledge my votes to our current committee woman who is a rock star but is gerrymandered out of the new district.
Together we are running as slate for a new kind of leadership in CD 6 that brings our gerrymandered district together. Because we know who our voters are. The precinct chairs. And right now we don’t have very many, so like a true campaign, you recruit, persuade and find your voters. We are not waiting around for the courts. We know our county conventions are just months away and we know the TDP convention is in Corpus Christi in June and our chair is on the ballot. This time, CD 6 will have 2 votes for Kendall. Not just one.
Good. That SDEC guy was a dud, he got under my skin at the last convention. Good bye to him.
DINO is more like it.
I saw a video of Bernie in W. VA where he's won primaries, and has close ties to Mingo County, working poor coal miners. A kid asked him, "How do we get the Democratic Party in West VA to start representing the working class again?" Bernie asked the kid his name, then said "You are going to lead the charge to take back the party", and all the older people around him started patting his back and cheering. It suddenly snapped in place for me that the National Democratic Party hasn't been stupid, or lazy, or careless, or too timid, or overly policy-oriented, or too intellectual, or bad communicators, or any of the other excuses for their failures to hold the line against an authoritarian takeover. It has been an engineered failure, a gutting of the people's party, by the same people who took over the Republican Party. An inside sabotage job. It happened everywhere, not just Texas, and it seems like some of the saboteurs are still on the ground in Texas, trying to keep the Dem Party flat on its back. Fuck them!
un-radical as all get out
some D congressman somewhere say he holds town halls across his district line cause the R won't
or like oberman points out.....D...quit going on the shows responding to irrelevant questions and hold press conferences Sunday morning in places ravaged by MAGA
or the most extreme un-radical thing of all time: some one from Tarrant County Dems write a Letter to the Editor