Time to apply the lessons learned: The New American Majority must be awakened in Texas

[kwvining]

Last edited Thu Nov 8, 2012, 01:33 PM - Edit history (1)

If you are:

A women
LGBT
A liberal white
A Hispanic
An African American
Any other minority

than the election showed all of us that we are The New American Majority. I sit here today, in League City, and look at the three congressional districts that come together here, Culberson's, Pete Olsen's, and who ever the new fascist is that beat Nick Lampson. In those three congressional districts reside millions of the people I have listed above. And who are they represented by? The Old White Angry White Guy Party, and these Old Angry White Guys. On election day, when I had a complaint about some of the poll shenanigans I ran into, I couldn't even find an actual phone number for the Galveston Democratic Party, or the Bay Area New Democrats. There is something truly wrong with Democratic Party efforts in this area if you can't even find a phone number to call to see if you can get some help driving voters from one location where the local yahoos are telling the black folks that the 'voting machines are broken right now' or the election judge just laughs at you when you complain about the guy with the Tea Party tea shirt loitering around the voter check in tables like he thinks he's some sort of cop or something. What is wrong with us?: We have been defeated for too long. We have been inactive for too long. WE HAVE BEEN COWARDS FOR TOO LONG. How can we better get the message to these people, that if they only voted, if they only realized where their best interests truly lie, that instead of being represented by these anti-women, anti-Hispanic mouth foamers who spend most of their time talking to the public on far right AM talk radio shows, that we could get rid of these cave men and instead put in representatives who will advovate the things THEY truly care about, instead of this entire region being ruled and over-ruled by right wing "I got mine, screw you" kooks? WHAT CAN WE DO BETTER ? ! WE ARE THE MAJORITY HERE! Our biggest problem: we don't seem to know it!

[codjh9]

1. Yes, yes, yes... I'm an ex-Texan, and I would love nothing more than for it to go Blue again

(it was last Blue for Carter, I think, which seems impossible to believe from today's perspective).

[kwvining]

2. How can we reach them?

Texas City and Galveston Island: Thousands of black folks. Pasadena, La Porte and Deer Park: thousands of Latinos. All these cities, and Clear Lake City too: thousands of single women, struggling to get a better education and maybe even trying to raise a family on their own. The huge apartment communities in West Houston and Katy, the lower income mobile home parks in Pearland and League City, the working folks everywhere, all the students in all the universities from here to College Station, in all of these places, all of these people, and who represents all of these districts and what is ultimately millions of people who are members of this New Majority that is trying to give birth to itself in this state? Three stalwarts from the Glenn Beck Wing of the GOP. Olsen, a Tea Party fanatic who was willing to wreck the country's economy during the phony "debt ceiling" crisis, Culberson who helped George Bush talk us into a phony war, and they waltz into re-election like they were going to the prom! And in the one open seat, we run a lousy campaign with the same guy we always run who loses most of the time. While we DO NOTHING to organize the New American Majority. In this entire area, a third of Texas, one population group, suburban conservative whites, are the ONLY PEOPLE REPRESENTED! WHY!!??? Why are we not getting our message out to the New Majority that supporting us, and actually voting is the only way we are going to get the things this group wants. We live in one of the richest states in the US. We need free college and trade school to the two year level for all so we can build a new society that can compete in the 21st Century world, and instead, we have a governmental system set up by politicians that get their political ideals from AM Radio Kooks that is stripping away even elementary education! We need more support for single working mothers, we need to end the intrusion of the In Your Pants Fascists and their vaginal probes into the sex lives of women, we need a path to citizenship and a special immigration status for the undocumented, honest hard working Hispanic people who the right wing screams at on the local AM stations like it was Hitler screaming at the Jews, we need the rich, and in Texas the rich here are the coddled uber-rich, to actually help the rest of us pay for the education of children in this state, we need to give simple human rights to the LGBT community, things all of these people want and would support, and the New Majority in this state doesn't even seem to know it exists! We know now by the ass kicking Obama just gave to the GOP, what we need to do: the same thing Obama did. Get out there, organize that Majority. Talk to them. REACH THEM. We are simply not doing it in my part of Texas. If it can be done in Virginia and Florida, it can be done here. WHY AREN'T WE?

[efhmc]

3. We are not winning in this county but we are a presence and all because one man

got us together. We have a 70% right wing majority and a newspaper run by a rightwinger but we have meetings and raise money and work for candidates and are not going anywhere until we have changed things. Who is your county chair? Is there a Democratic Women's association, young Democrats' group? Find a precinct chair who has access to VAN. Get a list of names and have a picnic at a local park or get someone to host a pot luck or other event. It really only takes one person. You will be delighted and surprised to find like thinking people. Obama gives me hope that we can make the changes we so need in our state. Good luck!

[kwvining]

4. We need to have specific, achievable goals, starting with the local state rep races

I think where we are missing it is at the state rep and Senate level. The reason that the Southeast Texas Area US House districts, an area composed of millions of people who are the natural constituencies of the Democratic Party, is represented by Angry Old White Men, is because we are not fighting the real reason we are losing these races: the utterly racist gerrymandering of these districts by the Texas House. We concentrate on trying to elect candidates to the US House, when the real fact is, it's a waste of time and money because Jim Crow already rigged the game back in the Texas House who set up these districts in the first place. In other words, these people deliberately denied us the representation to hundreds of thousands of minorities, students, women and all the rest of the people who want to live in the 21st Century instead of the 19th. This is a clear violation of the US Constitution, which guarantees all citizens a "republican (small r) form of government".

We are not guaranteed that here in Texas, we are denied it here, and we are not the only place, but we are probably the worst. Read the Huff this morning, and you find out that the Democrats actually got more votes for their US House representatives than the GOP did, and yet, we have less seats, in other words, democracy itself was defeated by these scheming game riggers by their gerrymandering shenanigans. How do you defeat it? First thing is, the electorate has to know it is going on. We need to let the people of this area know, especially young single women and Hispanics, that they live under a Single Party White Male Oligarchy Dictatorship in a massively rigged game that doesn't have to be that way if they just turn out in the off year elections. That's how Jim Crow works in this state, state and county elections are always held on odd ball days and in off years so the "in the know" crowd can beat the majorities. How did Obama defeat these kinds of tactics? Email lists, social media, forum websites and discussion blogs, and local community organizing. It's going to take some work. I am extremely disappointed at the technological level that the Galveston Country Democratic Party and the Bay Area New Democrats are operating from, they need to get their websites into the 21st Century. Our majority is out there, if we can reach them. We need to protest the denial of democracy to huge groups by this gerrymandering, we need to file legal actions, we need to run candidates, we need to make lots of noise and get more people to SHOW UP at the local races. Most of these races are decided by a few percentage points of the total electorate because no one shows up. And that is because of US, the Democratic activist community doing the wrong things.

[DhhD]

5. The Republicans are already, "On it", with another Bush.

On ABC Channel 8, noon news, there was a story about the young Bush getting his papers to the State office so he could seek elected office. Bush was introduced as a man of Mexican decent.

Actually he was born in Mexico of a mother of Colombian descent married to Floridian, Jeb Bush. The parents are divorced now.

I think that we have some wonderful Hispanic democratic politicans with real platform principles of the Democratic Party that we need to be pushing RIGHT NOW. And continue to MOVE FORWARD.

Republicans are on a privatization platform and we know that ideology does not build the Middle Class out and bring the poor upward. Upward mobility begins for the middle class with a healthy public school. Let us not forget about the No Child Left Behind bait and switch elementary language program using IDEA money started in the 1990s. About 65% of Texas ninth graders could not pass the End of Course Writing and Read Exams, at the end of the last school year 2011-12. So little has changed for our children as the Conservatives and TEA have been in control since the 1990s.

R-Ted Cruz had an advertisement that he ran in the last week before the election that his Father fled to Texas from Cuba. My understanding is that the family fled to Canada. I was hoping to see a rebuttal for this on a Democratic Ad.

I think that it is very important that the voting record of Ted Cruz be made very public during the next two years. People in our state will be able to see the difference in the platform and principles between the Democratics and the Republicans. We must not let it be perceived that all is well with Cruz voting against the Obama Administration and Democratics in Congress. WATCH and REPORT on both Cruz's and Cornyn's obstructionist voting records, will be necessary as to hold on to and add on to the Democratic base, just like the Republicans are already building in Texas, using young Bush, Cruz, Cornyn and other TEA Party Fractions-TEAPF, to keep and add to their Conservative base.

[malokvale77]

6. It would help if we had actual candidates.

The Democratic Party has let too many of these races go unopposed. So many people in my district hate Jeb Hensarling, but he always wins by default, because he runs unopposed. I have high hopes for Hinojosa, but we could sure use some help from the DNC.

As for local and state offices, Dallas County went blue a while back. Which brings me to the freaking gerrymandering. I live in the city of Dallas, why is my representative decided by the rural teabaggers of far east Texas?

[kwvining]

7. It all starts at the State Rep level

This is where we are missing it - Texas House elections. Even tho even their districts are heavily gerry mandered as well, they have one terrible weakness that we can exploit - the elections for these offices generally are decided by a mere one or two percent of the voters in odd-ball day elections. It is they who re-district Texas. The more state reps we can elect, the better chance we can have of up-ending the Jim Crow Power Structure from the bottom up. It is also the perfect environment for "community organizing" style politics - if we can just get a concentrated electorate to the polls in a low-turnout election, we win. Jim Crow has known this for a long time, that's why they set it up this way. We need to connect somehow to set up an Obama-style Internet operation to connect and organize the oppressed communities of Texas, who simply do not know their own power, and get them into the voting booth. We have the same potential majority here that Obama showed us is the New American Majority, they are just not organized in any way at all into contact groups we can message to via email and social networks. That is where we need real help from, if anyone has any contacts inside the Obama organization or knows of a website we can congregate at for the specific purpose of organizing these communities, or know of any people involved in these efforts who are further along, please post them!