Every time I read something about Texas in this Trump era, I get a stab in my heart, because I grew up there and still have connections. There's no earthly excuse for my native land to be so cussedly, dangerously backward.
I came across this yesterday
The Lincoln Project, an American political action committee formed in 2019, made up of former and current Republicans, issued a statement questioning why their TV ad [blasting Gov. Greg Abbott for his bad handling of COVID], funded for $25,000, did not run on ESPN during the nationally televised Texas vs. Rice college football game. The group said the ad was pulled 10 minutes before it was expected to run, despite ESPN's legal team clearing it beforehand.
The ad was pulled, citing a "university-made" decision. And a spokesman for Abbott told The Dallas Morning News he had nothing to do with the decision. Still, the Lincoln Project asserts that Abbott, a Texas graduate who appoints members of the school’s board of regents, played a part in the ad not running and said it plans to file a public records request to determine that. [USA Today]
So I found the ad:
You might be forgiven for thinking that Gov. Abbott might could maybe be beaten in 2022 by a good, well funded Democrat. You would think that already perhaps, before seeing the Lincoln Project silent condemnation of his criminal ineptness. For Abbott's been a visible and willing advocate for backwardness of a shocking stripe, the curtailing of ballot access and the ending of legal abortion. The abrasive impact on independent voters of these policies perhaps accounts for the University of Texas poll that found Abbott moving underwater for the first time this summer, his approval rating sinking to 41% with 50% disapproving.
O'Rourke's entry would give Democrats a high-profile candidate with a national fundraising network to challenge Republican Gov. Greg Abbott — and give O’Rourke, a former three-term congressman from El Paso and 2020 presidential candidate and voting rights activist, a path to a political comeback.
"Comeback"? O'Rourke lost the Texas Senate race to Ted Cruz in 2018 (O'Rourke got a respectable 48.3% of the vote), and then his presidential bid fizzled in 2020. So less than four years later, yes, we're talking "comeback"? Though it's not as though O'Rourke retired to a monastery. He's been active and out there on voting rights especially and he's lent his name and sweat equity to Democratic candidates for the Texas state legislature. Plus he's a proven, exceptional money magnet. Who else would have a better chance, taking it to Greg Abbott? Abbott pushes many buttons on the negative partisanship consol, and money will flow to any star Democrat willing to challenge him. Beto might have the appeal to pull it off. (Hope springs.)
Senator Sherrod Brown's wife Connie Schultz said she thinks her husband should run against DJT in 2020 “because Sherrod’s onto him. Sherrod is who these voters thought Trump was.”
These voters ... Trump Democrats, workers in fading industrial towns, forgotten citizens longing for someone to carry their torch instead of water for Wall Street.
Sherrod Brown has a much longer history than Twitterman of getting his hands dirty fighting free trade deals that dump on working people. While still a member of the US House in 2005, representing the 13th Congressional District of Ohio, Brown led the fight against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which finally passed by one measly vote despite Sherrod's best efforts. He doesn't mind the label "progressive populist."
He's got intellectual muscle behind his populism (unlike Twitterman). He wrote a book in 2004, Myths of Free Trade, which "provides a front-row seat to the Washington spectacle of corporate lobbying and political intimidation that keeps the free-trade mantra alive as American policy, despite all the evidence of its failure." Brown argued that it was labor activism that built the US middle class, and free trade agreements -- he opposed NAFTA -- have torn the fabric of middle-class prosperity.
Brown has especially criticized free trade with China. In 2011 -- well before Trump started breaking the furniture -- Sherrod co-authored and sponsored a bill that would officially declare China a currency manipulator and require the Department of Commerce to impose countervailing duties on Chinese imports. In January of this year, Brown expressed support for Trump's decision to impose tariffs on washing machine imports.
Brown opposed the 2017 Republican tax bill because it overwhelmingly benefitted the rich and powerful corporations, and he seriously got Senator Orrin Hatch's goat, who also happened to wield the gavel at the time, which gave him the advantage:
Brown was seriously considered for the vice presidential slot by Hillary Clinton in 2016, and there were informed voices urging her to make that choice:
Brown is Bernie [Sanders] without the bombast, a bold progressive voice who understands that the Democratic Party has always stood for the interests of the disenfranchised, disparaged and downtrodden; like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, he can articulate the woes and frustrations of the put-upon middle class, and coherently explain how progressive policies can redress those grievances. The selection of Brown could accomplish two mutually important goals for Clinton: he could appeal to the more rational members of Sanders’s fan club while also attracting support from working-class voters who might respond to populist appeals, but who haven’t swallowed the last drop of Donald Trump’s Kool-Aid.
Populism doesn’t preach hate. Populism preaches hope — hope that all workers will have the opportunity to build better lives for their families....
...populism values work and it respects the people who do it — every last one of them. Our society doesn’t value work the way we once did; Americans work harder and have less to show for it.
If you want to call yourself a populist, you better be ready to stick up for the little guy — whether she punches a time clock or earns tips. Whether she works in a call center or a hospital or on a factory floor. Whether he is a contract worker or a temp.
And you better be willing to be straight with the people you serve. A true populist tells the truth, because she respects people’s intelligence.
Of course we’ve always had cynical politicians. They — and the media that cover them too — often confuse popularity with populism. Populism and popularity may share the same Latin root, but not the same political home. An opportunist politician divides people and kowtows to the powerful. He spreads blame instead of solutions, and lies about bringing back an idyllic past that never was. And he often treats those with less power and privilege with disdain.
(Won't pause here to note that Sherrod Brown values work while our president values golfing and sitting on his big butt watching Fox News and tweeting other peoples' opinions.)
Sherrod Brown has a long history of elective office: eight years in the Ohio House of Reps (and the youngest member elected to that body), eight years as Ohio Secretary of State, 14 years in the US House of Reps, and now recently reelected to his third term in the US Senate. That long string of public offices means lots of individual votes and actions that will be mined for negative details that can be used against him, and he'll be called "a career politician," you can bet!
I think he's got grit, and I don't see him blowing in the wind. Beto O'Rourke's got grit too, but I worry that his recent starring role as Ted Cruz's nemesis may have inflated his ego past his capacity to listen to sage advice. Dunno. We'll find out soon.
NYTimes gives Beto O'Rourke of Texas the star treatment this morning. If he runs for president, as many expect he will, he'll seriously scramble a whole bunch of fat eggs that are already in other candidates' baskets.
He's a star, no doubt. We liked his chances against Ted Cruz and followed his campaign all year. The fact that he lost -- narrowly -- doesn't seem to have slowed down the presidential boomlet around him, but the Times assesses his other liabilities:
Mr. O’Rourke would surely have vulnerabilities in a primary, including an absence of signature policy feats or a centerpiece issue to date. In his Senate race, he was often disinclined to go negative, frustrating some Democrats who believe he wasted a chance to defeat Mr. Cruz, and he struggled at times in some traditional formats like televised debates. He is, by admission and design, not the political brawler some Democrats might crave against a president they loathe. And his candidacy would not be history-making like Mr. Obama’s nor many of his likely peers’ in the field, in an election when many activists may want a female or nonwhite nominee.
Yes, white male, when there are several alternatives to that demographic who are considering a run, including Kamala Harris. Not a political brawler might be the bigger problem.
So one of 2018's rock stars, Beto O'Rourke, has pulled even to Ted Cruz in polling for the Texas Senate race. Pulled even. He had proposed six debates to Ted Cruz, and Cruz countered with five and demanded the first one be this coming Friday at a place of Cruz's choosing and with a moderator of Cruz's choosing, and Beto said, "Whoa, Big Boy," and refused to jump to Cruz's tune:
O’Rourke said Monday that Cruz’s campaign has “attempted to dictate” different aspects of the debate schedule, such as the time, the moderators and which subjects the candidates could speak about.
“We’re working through those differences, and we’re trying to introduce more of a collaborative style to the negotiations than he [Cruz] may be used to,” O’Rourke said .... “And so we’re confident that out of that, we’re going to come to something good.”
That took balls.
So what did those miffed boys over in Cruz-land do? They dug up an old photo of Beto when he was
Beto O'Rourke, rock star. He's on the left in goatee and ponytail
in college and in a punk rock band, and they tweeted it out with the sarcastic suggestion that Beto couldn't debate this Friday because of a previous engagement [wink wink], because they thought that photo would embarrass him and hurt him with Texas Marlboro men.
We all should be interested in the US Senate race in Texas, where Democratic Congressman Beto O'Rourke is running what is called "a long shot" race against incumbent acid-wash Ted Cruz. Some polling shows O'Rourke already just single digits behind Cruz. O'Rourke is exactly the kind of young and dynamic Democratic insurgent who may be making miracles happen this year. (WataugaWatch has noticed him before.)
O'Rourke is currently in his third term as a US Congressman from the Texas 16th House District, representing El Paso -- one of the few solidly Democratic districts in Texas -- and his vacated seat is attracting its own bevy of Democratic primary candidates. The Texas primary will be March 6.
Veronica Escobar
The front-runner Democrat to replace O'Rourke -- Veronica Escobar, the former El Paso County chief executive officer -- would become the first Latina member of Congress in the Lone Star State’s 172 year history. She filed her federal paperwork to run back last August, so she's been in this campaign for months already. O'Rourke has endorsed her.
Escobar said she "was driven to run for Congress out of concern for the impact decisions made under President Donald Trump are having on El Paso, Texas' largest border city. There's a 'very dark cloud over our nation right now,' she said."
Escobar's chief rival in the Democratic primary appears to be Dori Fenenbock, the former El Paso school board president. It's more of the "Trump effect" -- so many high-quality female candidates looking to make a difference. Make that so many high-quality female and male candidates, as a matter of fact.
Escobar got the backing of Emily's List last October.
Yes. Yes he could, especially if he is Beto O'Rourke.
O'Rourke will probably end up in a Democratic primary, but he's been energizing Texas voters since he announced 10 months ago and he's probably way ahead in any primary race.
If he ends up facing Ted Cruz in November, better watch out.
J.W. Williamson was the founding editor in 1972 of the Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review, which he edited until July of 2000. He has taught college classes in Appalachian history, cultural politics, and literature, and he has lectured widely on the pop-culture history of "Appalachia" in the American consciousness. His books include Interviewing Appalachia, Southern Mountaineers in Silent Films, and Hillbillyland: What the Mountains Did to the Movies and What the Movies Did to the Mountains. He has won the Thomas Wolfe Award given by the Western North Carolina Historical Society, the Laurel Leaves Award given by the Appalachian Consortium, a special Weatherford Award given by Berea College, and the Cratis Williams-James Brown Award given by the Appalachian Studies Association.
The views expressed on WataugaWatch are solely those of J.W. Williamson or individual contributors and are not necessarily shared nor endorsed by the Watauga County Democratic Party nor by any other adults of sound mind in this or any other universe.
