Texas is the future

[NewJeffCT]

Ask anyone who was present at Hillary Clinton’s presumptive victory celebration on November 8 and they will tell you of the stunned silence, broken only by sobs, that settled across the vast glass enclosure of the Javits Center in Manhattan. Upstairs, in the suite where the candidate was closeted with her family and associates, the trauma was even more intense. As one attendee later reported to me, it featured the “full range of human emotions: screams, shock, fainting. Bill moved immediately to blame.” The former president, I was told, singled out campaign manager Robby Mook: “ ‘We should have fired that asshole months ago!’ It was awful.”

This funereal atmosphere was replicated wherever Democrats were gathered across the nation — with one instructive exception. In the Heights neighborhood of Houston, hundreds of revelers thronged bars along Studewood Street late into the night. “Any Houston Democrat who was anybody was there,” Doug Miller, a local reporter, told me later. “I looked up at the TV screens on the walls, I could see the whole country turning red, but everyone there seemed happy!”

http://harpers.org/archive/2017/03/texas-is-the-future/1/

[vlyons]

1. Progressives are hard at work in Texas

In districts across the state, Dems and progressives are working hard, organizing, protesting, and contacting elected officials to turn Texas blue. In my little gerrymandered district (TX-05), our Dem club is seeing increased numbers of folks attending the monthly meetings.

turningtexasblue.org

[dalton99a]

2. Great write-up.

[Gothmog]

3. The Texas Organizing Project did an amazing job of turning Harris County blue

[NewJeffCT]

4. Yes, I also noticed

that it was made up of former ACORN members. Is it any coincidence that Democrats have tanked at a state level nationwide since ACORN was defunded in 2009?

[alarimer]

5. Texas has a long progressive tradition.

It only went blood red in the 1990s. LBJ, Sam Rayburn, Jim Hightower, etc.

Time to get back to those roots. The word "maverick" comes from Samuel Maverick, a Texas rancher who did not brand his cattle.