December 20, 2015

The man should be canonized.

And I say that as an atheist.

December 19, 2015

One vendor for all campaigns.

I appreciate the fact that merging or comparing databases from more than one vendor would be problematic, but so is the current system.

"It’s a monopoly that’s been created and forced down the throats of all Democrats,” John Phillips, co-founder of the non-partisan political data firm Aristotle, told POLITICO. "Monopolies are notorious for overcharging their customers, screwing their customers. That’s what’s been going on on the Democratic side for quite some time."

Rival vendors like Aristotle have been the most outspoken critics of the current Democratic setup, which gives the nearly 20-year old company NGP VAN sole distribution rights to the party’s valuable voter file. That database includes voting history, address and contact information for registered voters, which both the Clinton and Sanders campaign rent and then supplement with their own collection of information.

Central to the NGP VAN business model is a supposedly secure firewall that keeps any information that one campaign collects away from a rival political player. But that security system was exposed this week, NGP VAN admitted, because of a software error.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/democrats-data-breach-vulnerability-216955

December 18, 2015

I added the message:

"And resign your pot immediately afterwards."

December 4, 2015

I resent these comparisons of Cheney to Vader.

The former Anakin Skywalker served in every single war waged during his lifetime.

December 2, 2015

I've been reading articles and books like this since the late '90's

I hate to point this out, but since I've heard it for almost twenty years without any actual evidence to suggest it's happening, it sounds like the same old fairy tale to me. Remember Ruy Teixeira's book?

http://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Democratic-Majority-John-Judis/dp/0743254783

That was in '04. I've been working in statewide campaigns since 2006. Municipal (Houston) campaigns in the off-numbered years. It was great helping Annise Parker get elected, but the truth is she's a corporate Blue Dog. A fiscal conservative. She laid off city employees rather than raise the water bill or assess a garbage collection fee, both among the lowest in the state.

I'm currently working my precinct trying to get the blue vote out for Sylvester Turner, and it's like pulling hen's teeth. Same thing in the summer of 2014, when I had middle-aged female neighbors tell me that thy weren't going to vote because they didn't see the point. D primary voting history but they weren't going to vote for Wendy Davis.

My (almost inside the Loop) precinct in six years has gone from blue to purple to red, all because the Democrats don't turn out. Sorry to pee on the parade but the Latinos don't look as if they're going to show up in my lifetime to save us (and I'm in my mid 50's).

December 1, 2015

Not just the SCOTUS

Gore could have won his home state of TN, or Clinton's Arkansas, or even WV, which was reliably blue at the time and where Robert Byrd pleaded with him to campaign. But Gore went all in on FL and crapped out.

Jim Hightower says it's 300,000+ registered Florida Democrats who voted for Bush.

Now it gets really ugly for the Gore campaign, for there are two other Florida constituencies that cost them more votes than Nader did. First, Democrats. Yes, Democrats! Nader only drew 24,000 Democrats to his cause, yet 308,000 Democrats voted for Bush. Hello. If Gore had taken even 1 percent of these Democrats from Bush, Nader’s votes wouldn’t have mattered. Second, liberals. Sheesh. Gore lost 191,000 self-described liberals to Bush, compared to less than 34,000 who voted for Nader.

http://www.salon.com/2000/11/28/hightower/

Note the date on that piece: BEFORE the SCOTUS stopped the ballot counting in Florida.

After fifteen years, people here still don't want to admit Al Gore was an epic fail at politics. Decent man, found his voice with climate change, but solely responsible -- alone -- for losing to Bush.