To the elitist defeatists: Get you GONE!

[David Van Os]

On Saturday, August 26, at the Radisson Hotel in Austin, members of the State Democratic Executive Committee (SDEC) attended a private luncheon to which Democratic candidates were not invited. At this luncheon, the members of the SDEC learned that a small group of moneyed lawyers and their consultants are now providing the funding for the Texas Democratic Party’s operations and will do so for the next four years.

At the meeting, the lawyers and their consultants told the SDEC members that 2006 is a “rebuilding” year and that the only races they believe Democrats have a chance to win are a few legislative districts around the state and these few races are what will be emphasized.

I have a response to these ivory-tower elitist lawyers and their over-priced consultants: lead, follow, or get out of the way. Their attitude reflects exactly the kind of Beltway-oriented losers’ thinking that has betrayed over and over again the millions of people who look up to the Democratic Party to stand and fight for them.

I am a Democrat because I believe in the magnificent historical legacy and value system of my party as the Party of the People in American life. I am immensely proud to be a Democrat. But I am not proud of these ivory-tower elitists and their continual selling out of the heritage of my party.

The people of Texas are under attack today from a reign of greed, corruption, and arrogance at the hands of the corporate monopoly robber barons and the crooked politicians who are their water boys. The rich lawyers and ivory tower consultants who are telling Democrats not to try to carry Texas this year are giving the robber barons and their incumbent Republican stooges exactly what they want. In effect, those lawyers and their consultants are doing nothing less than protecting the silk-stocking Republican social clique that runs Texas government today as if it were a private club.

I am proud of and believe in the great heritage of the party of Jefferson, Jackson, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson, the people’s party. I am and shall always remain proud of the Texas Democratic heritage of the likes of Jim Hogg, Sam Rayburn, Jim Allred, Lyndon Johnson and Ralph Yarborough. I am proud to be a Democratic nominee this year with real fighters of heart and conviction like Chris Bell, Barbara Radnofsky, Maria Louisa Alvarado, Fred Head, VaLinda Hathcox, Hank Gilbert, Dale Henry, Judge Bill Moody, and J.R. Molina. But to the fancy-pants wimps and mice that are afraid to stand and fight the robber barons on behalf of the people, get you GONE!

Go find yourselves some little hideaways and snivel away in fear and defeatism on your own time. Go lounge away your time in your lifelong cocktail hours with the smug and haughty journalists who think it’s a big joke that millions of Texans are struggling every day to figure out how to make their paychecks or Social Security checks or farm income stretch to cover $3-a-gallon gasoline, exorbitant prescription drugs, skyrocketing utility bills, outrageous insurance premiums, and all the other attack weapons of the corporate monopoly robber barons.

As for me, I’m going to fight and fight and fight those robber barons and their silk-stocking politician stooges. You pundits and consultants won’t understand this, but we Texans are fighters. If I have to fight you too in order to get at the robber barons and the power-grabbers, I’ll do so. Whomever I have to fight in order to win justice for my fellow Texans I will, and I swear I’ll fight you till hell freezes over, and then fight you on the ice.

David Van Os