Posts Tagged ‘2014 Election’

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Battleground Texas Pledges We’ll Be Able To Kick Them Around Some More in 2016

Thursday, November 13th, 2014

Battleground Texas says we’ll have it to kick around in 2016:

The head of Battleground Texas is telling supporters that despite an Election Day-shellacking, the group plans to stay put for the next round of elections in 2016. In a memo posted on the group’s website, executive director Jenn Brown says Battleground Texas is analyzing what went wrong. “I know that the losses last week were tough, and there has been a lot of negativity in the aftermath of the election. But I want you to look forward with me. Because we have work to do,” said Brown.

Funny how pouring tens of millions of dollars into a state, only for Democrats lose even more badly than they did four years ago, might be perceived as “negative.”

Also: “[Wendy] Davis raised money for her campaign field operation and Battleground Texas spent it. According to campaign finance reports, nearly $400,000 went to a Chicago consulting firm, 270 Strategies, headed by Jeremy Bird, who helped create Battleground Texas.”

So no matter how badly Davis did, I guess the campaign was a rousing success for Bird.

That piece also says that Battleground Texas can work with millionaire lawyer Steve Mostyn’s Ready for Hillary super-PAC. I’m having trouble thinking of scenarios where Hillary could win Texas that don’t involve the phases “complete breakdown of civilization” and “widespread cannibalism”…

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Posted in Democrats, Elections, Texas | 1 Comment »

And Here Come the Wendy Davis Campaign Recriminations!

Thursday, November 13th, 2014

You don’t have such a high profile campaign flame-out as Wendy Davis for Governor without either some spectacular mismanagement within the ranks of the campaign, or a truly abysmal performance by the candidate themselves. While Wendy Davis certainly turned in an awful performance, it alone wasn’t the epic meltdown (I’m thinking Edmund Muskie’s tears or Rick Perry’s 2012 brain freeze) needed to derail a campaign all by itself.

No, the Davis campaign offered up a veritably ecology of dysfunction.

When a campaign fails this dramatically, the insider recriminations start popping up on why the disaster wasn’t their fault to keep the debacle from staining their own resumes. And now we have the first example from the Davis campaign.

“Consultants for Democrat Wendy Davis warned her campaign months ago that the Fort Worth senator was headed for a humiliating defeat in the Texas governor’s race unless she adopted a more centrist message and put a stop to staggering internal dysfunction.”

I once saw Staggering Internal Dysfunction open for No Controlling Legal Authority at Lollapalooza…

“The warnings are contained in two internal communications obtained by The Texas Tribune and written at the beginning of the year by longtime Democratic operatives Peter Cari and Maura Dougherty.”

So it would be Cari and Dougherty who want the world to know that “this huge, stinking debacle wasn’t our fault!”

“Addressed to then-Campaign Manager Karin Johanson, the memo warned that the Davis campaign had ‘lurched to the left,’ was failing to communicate a positive message and offered virtually nothing to the swing voters the senator would need to win statewide.”

Karin Johnson would be pushed out of the campaign on June 11. And just because the advice comes from two Democratic campaign operatives trying to save their own bacon doesn’t mean it’s not true.

“The Prism consultants concluded that the campaign was either desperately broken or that the hierarchy had decided to portray Davis not as a Texas moderate but rather a ‘national Democrat, appealing to liberal donors in the mistaken belief that there is a hidden liberal base in Texas that will turn out to vote if they have a liberal candidate to support.'”

Liberals are particularly good at this specific type of self-delusion.

The Davis campaign was always going to have a particularly difficult challenge: how to suck up big-buck donations from the national pro-abortion network while still appearing moderate enough to get elected in Texas. It was probably an impossible one, but the Davis campaign certainly could have done a much better job than they did. Instead they made mistake after mistake and launched a series of dishonest and counterproductive attack ads against Abbott. (In this the Davis 2014 campaign made the same mistake as the Dewhurst 2012 campaign, preferring to run attack ads based on nothing rather than any sort of positive ads whatsoever.)

Davis was the wrong candidate at the wrong time who ran the wrong campaign in the wrong state.

Expect more recriminations of this type to surface in the coming weeks…

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Posted in Democrats, Elections | No Comments »

More Post-Election Tidbits

Monday, November 10th, 2014

A few more bits of 2014 election analysis:

  • Instapundit offers up six bills a Republican congress should pass. Can’t disagree with any of them.
  • How the Obama years have hollowed out the Democratic Party. “The more serious problem for Democrats is the drubbing they’ve taken in the states, the breeding ground for future national talent and for policy experimentation. Republicans have unified control—the governorship and the legislature—in 23 states.”
  • “The core tenets of the blue model as a basic governing philosophy are in much deeper trouble than many of the operatives and thinkers of the Democratic Party are prepared to admit.”
  • Wendy Davis was the face of the Democrat’s “War On Women” narrative, and she got slaughtered like a fat heifer.
  • Indeed, it’s been a rough week for all the Democrat’s “War on Women” mascots.
  • Democrats also got nothing from their incessant attacks on the Koch brothers. I just can’t imagine why their “your billionaires are evil but our billionaires are above reproach” strategy wasn’t a hit with voters…
  • Speaking of which: “There are many reasons to celebrate the Republican party surge in the US mid-term elections but for me they boil down to two words: ‘Tom’ and ‘Steyer.’”
  • And wondering on Twitter why there wasn’t a Tom Steyer Downfall parody, I found out there were two:

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas, video | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for November 7, 2014

    Friday, November 7th, 2014

    A Friday LinkSwarm after a very eventful week…

  • So exactly when was it that the UK became the child rape capital of the Western world? First Rotherham, now Manchester.

  • Government of Burkina Faso falls. Evidently people there thought that 27 years of rule for President Blaise Compaore was more than enough…
  • Russia sends more tanks into Ukraine. Looks like we’ll dealing with the fallout of Obama’s “flexibility” for decades… (Hat tip: Jim Geraghty).
  • The Pakistani version of Axe Cop sounds a whole lot less entertaining than the American version.
  • DSCC head blames Obama for Senate loss.
  • The DSCC decides that they’ll stop pouring money down the rathole that is Mary Landrieu.
  • “Salon Writer Condemns Arithmetic As Racist.” Or how Jonathan Chait ruthlessly used his Mansplaining Male Math Privilege to oppress Jenny Kutner.
  • Because their attacks on Koch were so successful, Democrats double-down on stupid.
  • U.S. hits targets in Syria. Not ISIS, but “the Khorasan group.” For such a reportedly “small” group, we seem to be bombing them a lot…
  • Fatah and Hamas thoughtfully take a break from trying to kill Jews in order to blow each other up.
  • I’m shocked, shocked that there’s abuse and fraud in the “Obamaphone” program.
  • In addition to national and statewide outbreaks of sanity, there was even an outbreak in Austin, where voters defeated a proposal to expand Capitol Metro’s toy trains.

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    Posted in Austin, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Two Dissections of Democrats’ Failure to Turn Texas Blue

    Thursday, November 6th, 2014

    Enjoy these two moderately lengthy dissections of liberal failures to turn Texas blue:

    First, here’s this Jay Root/Texas Tribune piece by way of the Washington Post on why Wendy Davis lost the election. The piece soft-peddles Davis’ incompetence as a campaigner, and fails to mention her comparative unpopularity with Hispanics and the overall failure of the Democratic Party’s “War on Women” campaign strategy, of which Davis was a central piece, but is otherwise reasonably accurate.

    Second, here’s a piece on just how comprehensive Battleground Texas’ failure was. It also goes into down-ballot failures for Battleground Texas that I haven’t had time to look at yet:

    In House District 23, which even Republican Party of Texas Chairman Steve Munisteri had described as “neck-and-neck,” Democrat Susan Criss lost to Republican Wayne Faircloth by nearly 10 points. Rodney Anderson, the Republican candidate, bested Democrat Susan Motley by more than 12 points in House District 105. And incumbent state Rep. Philip Cortez, D-San Antonio, was toppled by Republican Rick Galindo, who lost by nearly 6 points.

    The piece also notes that, for all the money Battleground Texas put into the Wendy Davis campaign, she finished a whopping two points above Democratic Agriculture Commissioner nominee Jim Hogan, who didn’t campaign at all.

    Hat tip: Erick Erickson, who notes “bring down a bunch of liberal yankees who hate the ROTC, traditional values, the Alamo, and Texas itself and you’re setting the stage for disaster.” Also “Battleground Texas claims they are not going away. Thank goodness. They should stick around and serve as a money sink for guys like Tom Steyer lest that money go to other states.”

    Erickson touches on something I want to expand upon, namely the obvious distaste in-state liberal elites show for all manner of Texas traditions. Even when they embrace “moderate” positions on, say, gun control or energy regulation, they give off the reek of patronizing condescension. You always get the impression that these people would rather be living in New York City or San Francisco than anyplace in Texas. No matter how much they proclaim a love of football, cowboy boots or country music, they always give the impression of going through the motions as a sop for those gun-toting redneck freaks of JesusLand. (Bob Bullock was probably the last major Texas Democrat who seemed like he wasn’t faking it, and Ann Richards was the last one who was able to fake it convincingly.) Their real constituents are not Texans, but the left-wing politicians, trial lawyers, national media and urban elites who make up the liberal overclass.

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Texas Statewide Race Oddities

    Wednesday, November 5th, 2014

    With all the votes in, we can start analyzing some of odder aspects of the Texas statewide race results.

    For those watching the race, it’s no surprise that (discounting 2006’s strange four-way race) Wendy Davis was the worst-performing Democratic gubernatorial candidate this century. The surprising thing is that, as bad as she was, Davis was the Democrat’s best statewide candidate this year. Her 38.9% was the highest statewide vote percentage by any Texas Democrat in 2014. Leticia Van de Putte’s 38.7% was the second highest. Otherwise statewide Democratic candidates ranged from a low of 34.3% for invisible Senate candidate David Alameel to a high of 38% for Attorney General candidate Sam Houston.

    Possible explanations:

  • Perhaps Wendy Davis’ antics didn’t cause people to switch so much as it caused Democrats to stay home entirely.
  • Perhaps in lower-pofile races people felt free to vote for third party candidates.
  • Perhaps there is indeed a staunchly “pro-abortion Republican” segment of the Texas electorate, but evidence suggests that, if so, it ranges from 0.5% to 1% of the total…

    • And those who said Abbott would outpoll Dan Patrick were right…but only by 1.2%.

    Abbott took ten counties that Bill White won in 2010: Harris, Bexar, Brooks, Culberson, Falls, Foard, Kleberg, La Salle, Reeves and Trinity. Harris (Houston) and Bexar (San Antonio) are the 800-pound gorillas on that list. In 2012, Ted Cruz won Harris by 2% (while Romney was edged there by a thousand votes) while losing Bexar by 4%. For a while Democrats were able to stay competitive statewide by racking up big margins in those urban counties even while they were losing rural and suburban counties. If Republicans can now win those counties outright, it may be a long, long time before a Democrat can win statewide again.

    Two statewide Republican candidates got more votes than Abbott’s 2,790,227: Senator John Cornyn and Land Commissioner-elect George P. Bush. The rest of the country may suffer from Bush-fatigue (though I imagine that it’s now dwarfed by Obama-fatigue), but you’d be hard-pressed to find signs of it in Texas…

    Since Democrats failed to contest three statewide court races, both the Libertarian and Green parties reached the minimum 5% threshold to maintain ballot access in 2016.

    Shockingly, David Weigel actually brings the wood when discussing Battleground Texas:

    “These are the greatest geniuses of data in the f**king world and they can’t figure out that less people voted?” asked Carney. “Every publicly pronounced goal of Battleground, every one, has been an abject failure.”

    (snip)

    Davis only out-performed the 2010 ticket in her home base of Tarrant County (Ft. Worth).

    Oh, and it got worse. Abbott’s campaign said throughout the campaign that it would poach Latino voters, especially in the Rio Grande valley. A quick look at a Texas map might tell you that Abbott failed. Not quite true. Perry had lost Hidalgo County (McAllen) by 34 points; Abbott kept the margin down to 28 points. Perry had lost Webb County by 53 points; Abbott lost it by 39. In exit polling, Perry ended up pulling only 38 percent of the Latino vote. Abbott won 44 percent of it, about what was expected in a Texas Tribune poll that Davis allies tried to debunk. Abbott actually won Latino men, 50-49 over Davis. The Democratic wane and Republican outreach helped oust Rep. Pete Gallego, elected in 2012 in a district that sprawled across most of the border. He won 96,477 votes that year; he won only 55,436 this year, allowing black Republican Will Hurd to win, despite being out-fundraised 2-1.

    Weigel may be a partisan, but at least he can read a spreadsheet…

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Midday Post-Election Roundup

    Wednesday, November 5th, 2014

    A few quick post-election links:

  • Here’s a really solid Washington Post insider piece on how Republicans won, and Democrats lost, the election. “From the outset of the campaign, Republicans had a simple plan: Don’t make mistakes, and make it all about Obama, Obama, Obama.” That piece is also notable for David Krone, Reid’s chief of staff, going on record at how Obama screwed them. “The disagreements underscored a long-held contention on Capitol Hill that Obama’s political operation functioned purely for the president’s benefit and not for his party’s.” Read the whole thing.
  • The supposedly ascendant Obama coalition is intermittent and unstable.
  • “Tuesday’s voting was a wave alright—a very anti-Democratic wave.” Among the myths exploded: It wouldn’t be about Obama or ObamaCare, and women or their ground game would save Democrats.
  • Mickey Kaus notes that almost all Democrats who supported illegal alien amnesty lost.
  • “28 senators who voted for Obamacare and won’t be part of new Senate.”
  • “The actual truth is that Obama simply doesn’t do his job, because he is lazy, and he refuses to do the non-glamorous, non-“fun” parts of his job such as compromising, horsetrading, or working out the details, because he is a committed die-hard ideologue who also suffers from an intense Messianic complex in which he can only be the conquering hero.”
  • Nate Silver: The polls were indeed biased: in favor of Democrats.
  • Who do you think liberals will hate more, Mia Love or Carl DiMaio?
  • Sandra Fluke lost as well.

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    Posted in Border Control, Democrats, Elections, ObamaCare, Republicans | 1 Comment »

    Brief Blurbs on a Brilliant Bloodbath

    Wednesday, November 5th, 2014

    Democrats didn’t just lose last night, they got slaughtered up and down the ballot:

  • Republicans took control of the Senate, flipping seven Senate seats in North Carolina, West Virginia, Arkansas, South Dakota, Colorado, Montana, Iowa, giving them 52 and control of the Senate. There’s a good chance that will be 54 after runoffs in Louisiana and Alaska.
  • Republicans added at least 12 House seats to their majority, a margin that is likely to grow as late seats finish counting.
  • Republicans picked up at least three governorships.
  • Republicans continued to make massive gains at the state legislative level. “The Republican wave that swept over the states left Democrats at their weakest point in state legislatures since the 1920s.”
  • Here in Texas, not only did Republicans win all statewide races (again), but Abbott beat Wendy Davis not only worse than Rick Perry beat Bill White in 2010, but worse than Perry beat Tony Sanchez in 2002: Sanchez came in at 39.96% of the vote; right now Wendy Davis is at 38.9%. Davis even lost white women by a 2-1 ratio. Battleground Texas bragged about how they were going to turn Texas blue; instead, it got still redder.

    • More later.

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | 2 Comments »

    Liveblogging Election Night 2014

    Tuesday, November 4th, 2014

    Davis is currently at 38.1%. Just for the record, I called Wendy Davis dropping below Tony Sanchez’s 39.96% back in September.

    Back

    In local election news, Williamson County Republicans Tony Dale and Larry Gonzalez both won decisively over their Dem challengers.

    OK, I’m heading home. This isn’t a Republican landslide, it’s a Republican tidal wave. Enjoy it now. Tomorrow the hard work begins.

    Congratulations to Greg Abbott on being elected governor of Texas!

    News media now saying Ernst wins and Republicans take control of the senate.

    Republican Joni Ernst takes lead in Iowa.

    A very solid victory speech, with lots of family thanked.

    Wendy Davis called Abbott to congratulate him.

    Nope, family members first. Daughter Cecelia Audrey Abbott.

    Lights went down and they’re about to introduce Abbott.

    Fox just called Kansas Senate race for Republican Roberts.

    Wendy Davis didn’t even win Texas women.

    Right now Wendy Davis is running behind Tony Sanchez’s 39.97% in 2002. $38%.

    Ran into Sen. John Cornyn on my way to the bathroom. Congratulated him. Now he’s being interviewed 3 feet away from me.

    Wisconsin Governor’s race called for Republican Scott Walker.

    Governor Perry speaking after a huge round of applause.

    Whoa!

    Not a shock, but someone calling it this early is.

    Abbott spokesman saying they crushed Democrats AND BattleGround Texas. “Helping them waste their money, the way Democrats always do.”

    Calling West Virginia Senate race for for Republican Capito. Not a surprise, but that’s a flip from D to R.

    Republican Rounds projected to win SD Sen. No surprise.

    Republican Ed Gillispie beating Warner in VA; not final, but if true that would indicate a truly epic Republican wave.

    GOP Sen pickups: Cotton beats Pryor in Arkansas,

    OK, now I’m in on Twitter, but on another browser…

    Hi there! I’m blogging from the Greg Abbott Victory Party at the ACL theater. Can’t seem to get Twitter to take my password, so this may just be LiveBlog rather than LiveTweet.

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    Posted in Elections | No Comments »

    Go Vote!

    Tuesday, November 4th, 2014

    Williamson County voting information.

    Travis County polling locations.

    I hope to live tweet/live blog election results tonight.

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    Posted in Austin, Elections, Texas | No Comments »

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