In England there are signs everywhere to “mind the gap.” If we translate that into English we would discover they are talking about the gap between the platform and the train. Since public transportation really isn’t a thing here in Texas, we can certainly borrow that term and apply it to our politics.

We see two gaps that threaten long-term stability in our country. The first gap is the gap between how many people consider themselves to be moderate, liberal, progressive, or leftist and how many of those politicians actually end up representing us in Congress. Yet, the percentage of total voters registering as Democrats is growing. So, there is a gap between the number of representatives that are Democrats and the number that should be Democrats.

That’s a problem that’s not easily fixed. As we have seen in Texas, the GOP has a stranglehold on the state. Very few particularly like any of the Republicans that occupy state offices and yet they continue to vote for them. This has been a two decade tradition. They have rigged the game to make it easier for them to win. It will take a doubling of efforts to get that turned around and we see the same thing nationwide.

The second gap is one Democrats can address and address immediately. This is the gap between what gets done in Washington, Austin, and any other government center and what people actually think on the issues. Take any issue and you can see clear fault lines of where the public actually is on the issue. You could talk abortion, gun control, health care, public safety, education, or any other issue.

What Americans think on these issues is pretty clear. Overwhelming majorities agree on numerous planks on all of those issues. Yet, we are told America is a center-right country with center-right values. The problem is that this statement has no basis in fact when you actually look at public opinion polling on each of those issues individually. The GOP is on the wrong side of each issue and it isn’t even particularly close.

Democrats collectively make the mistake of getting off message. Either they overshoot these widespread popular opinions by suggesting things beyond what the general public want or they bungle up the messaging with slogans that don’t reflect the will of the people. These things are simple. Let’s keep them simple.

For instance, Americans want background checks on gun sales, don’t want guns in the hands of dangerous criminals, and generally don’t want automatic weapons in anyone’s hands. These are easy things to keep hitting over and over again. Yet, Beto O’Rourke introduced the idea of gun confiscation. That pushed the envelope too far and made him seem extreme. So, stick to background checks, keeping guns away from criminals, and an assault weapons ban. That’s easy messaging that will resonate with the majority.

It’s about simple messaging. When people understand what you are for and they are for the same things they vote for you. When they think you are an extremist or if they don’t understand what you are for they don’t vote for you. It’s really as simple as that. You find out what they like and then keep repeating that you are for that and the other side is against that. You keep repeating that until they understand. You keep repeating it. That is how you close the gap.

As we wail and moan over election results in the Lower 48, I want to direct your attention to Alaska’s single congressional race.

Mary Peltola, the at-large congressman from Alaska has been re-elected to a full 2-year term despite the fact that her two Republican opponents together got more votes than her mere (+ or -) 47% of the popular vote.

I think this is a possible glimpse at our future. Let me explain.

Alaska has adopted a ranked-choice primary system that makes California’s “jungle primary” look like a stroll through the zoo.

In Alaska, candidates are ranked as to preference, and receive votes not only by a earning a voter’s first choice, but also by their 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th choices.

They say that this is experimental, and is a way to negate a tendency toward extremes in typical primary voter choices. The narrative goes that typical primary voters are from the extremes of each party, so successful candidates tend to be from the extremes of the Left and Right. Moderates are often trapped behind the door among the also-rans.

It is this system that gave Alaskans the choice between two Republicans and one Democrat, splitting the Republican vote between TFG-endorsed Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, a candidate whose family legacies include a former congressman, a state Senator and a US Senator.

In short, Alaskans were offered a choice between a Democrat, A MAGA Republican and an establishment Republican.

In the other 49 states, only one of the Republicans on a primary ballot go on to compete in the General.

If it is true that America has evolved from a two-party state to a three-party one, Alaska has given us a view of a possible future where elections show the true cross-section of American politics through “Plurality Rule”.

Either that (and remember, this is Half Empty writing here), or the ranked-choice system will be rapidly dismantled by a still-shocked Alaskan electorate by a 50.9% majority vote.

Last night in Texas was disappointing, but not surprising.  All statewide races were lost by Dems.  100%.  And the spreads were predictable, all double digit losses but for the race for Ag Commissioner.  Susan Hays lost to the worst Ag Commissioner in Texas history by a mere 7 points.

Who to blame?  Leaving out for now the radical gerrymandering in state and US districts, the statewide blame for this kind of loss lay with the Texas Democratic Party and the candidates it produced, period.  Sure, Republican voter suppression, intimidation, and misinformation shaved 2 or 3 points from turnout, but it didn’t shave over 10.  The TDP did in 2022 what the TDP always does, just expected a different result.  In the governor’s race, the polls here were pretty clear and surprisingly close to actual results.  Real Clear Politics averaged Abbott + 10.4, and he won by 11.  A lot of the blame, too, needs to be laid at Beto’s feet.  He had a promising future when he came within 2 points of Cruz for Senate in 2018, but starting to believe his own bullshit, throwing it all away with his disastrous run for president in 2020.  That was stupid.

The lessons here are clear and need to be learned.  First, the TDP needs a serious housecleaning and fumigation.  Old assumptions need to be thrown out the window, especially the longstanding myth that Texas is getting more blue just because demographics are changing.  GOP messaging and ideology plays well with some groups like the Latino community, especially since the Dems have taken them, and African Americans, for granted for decades.  The party always plays to these demographic groups in voting years and then underserves them until the next election.  That’s got to stop.

I know this is hard to hear, but the GOP in Texas has outplayed, outworked, and out strategized Dems for years, and the asymmetric performance at the polls is the result.  Starting in the 1960s, Repubs went after school boards, precincts, city councils, and county offices.  Over this time they’ve built a huge base with a bench a mile deep.  The Dems have done the opposite; the Dems are every person for themselves until election season, and then try to build a strategy around a standard bearer who elbows their way in, be that for president or governor. (See Barack Obama, 2004 to 2008.)  They then vehemently resist change, leaving petrified party leadership in place for decades, stiff arming all new comers and those with opposing opinions.  Doing this discourages younger leaders because there’s no opportunity for leadership roles and stultifies policy.  What you get then are losers like Beto and Mike Collier.  In Beto’s case, you can’t build a statewide strategy on a standard bearer who acts like a teenager and says stupid shit in public.  Lastly, and this is not just a Texas problem, is that the Democratic party needs to stop counting noses.  I’ve been to meetings where the majority of the time is spent doing math to make sure every possible demographic is in the room before the meeting can start.  I’m not saying the party needs to be less inclusive; I’m saying the time for inclusivity is at the beginning, not at the end. There needs to be an obsessive focus on inclusion of demographic groups at the micro local level, not only at state conventions and statewide campaigns.  Being inclusive at the start would negate the necessity of nose counting at the end.

The textbook example of party failure in 2022 is not Beto, it’s Rochelle Garza.  Dems overwhelmingly chose Garza and rejected a very experienced and well known attorney, Joe Jaworski.  Let’s be frank – Ken Paxton is a deeply flawed, dishonest, embarrassing, and weak AG.  He was ripe to be picked off.  The Dems snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by overwhelmingly nominating a less experienced, less well known candidate who didn’t have a prayer of beating Paxton; her nomination was a vote for diversity, not for a win.  Another example was Lupe Valdez in 2018.  Dems overwhelmingly chose her as the standard bearer over Andrew White, son of former governor Mark White.  Valdez ran a terrible campaign, had low name recognition, and then lost to Abbott by over 13 points.

Before you say it, I am actually all about diversity and inclusion.  But diversity and inclusion doesn’t get you a goddam thing unless you WIN.  Not winning has a lot worse negative consequences than winning every time.  The TDP (and all Dems) can actually do more than one thing at a time.  They need to be strategic, not just inclusive, because what the Dems are doing, and have been doing for decades, is a loser.  I know this opinion, just like the one I hold about Hillary, will piss a lot of you off, and I accept that.  But until the Texas Democratic Party and Dems in general start operating strategically they’ll keep doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result.  And we all know what that’s called.  Until they start working strategically, there will be no joy in Mudville.

Oh, and Beto?  I love ‘ya, bro, but please go back to El Paso. Run for mayor or even the House again. Do some maturing.  You’ll have another chance at some point, but you need some years of growing up.

“We all know that Democrats are evil.” — Anonymous Facebook poster

The poster above wasn’t really anonymous, but I didn’t want to besmirch her good name by posting this for everyone to see. We often post on friends walls and simply assume everyone that reads it thinks like we do. Beyond the more global implications that we will get to in a minute, I had to grapple with the fact that someone was calling me evil.

Language is a precise thing. I’ve been trying to teach my daughter that ever since she was little. We correct her grammar. We correct her spelling. More than anything, we correct the syntax that she uses when making statements and asking questions. Words matter. One can’t help but have a tiny bit of introspection when something like this happens. Am I writing off thousands of people as evil myself?

The midterm election results are still flowing in. We probably won’t know the exact breakdown for a few days, but it seems that we have more or less maintained the status quo. There might be an isolated senator here or a representative there, but the numbers should roughly shake out about the same. Of course, how anyone interprets that is clearly up to them.

In fact, the battle in Georgia is prominently on my mind. It pits Raphael Warnock against Hershel Walker. One of those is a minister that most people say is a good man even if they disagree with his stances on the issues. He is thoughtful, intelligent, and caring. His opponent is none of those things. Maybe Mr. Walker was intelligent at one time. Maybe his brain was irreparably damaged from years of concussions on the football field.

Even the most hardened of Democrats, liberals, or leftists have to feel sorry for Walker. He was clearly used for his fame and name recognition in spite of the fact that no one could claim he has any business being near the Senate. That race is almost even as I write this. I’m not sure which way it will go and that thought is absolutely frightening. It means that nearly 50 percent of the voting public either think substantially like the woman above or don’t think at all.

Either way, we have to acknowledge eventually that we are electing people. Our democratic system isn’t built to elect ideologies. It was built to elect people. Maybe in some places you could pull the lever for red or blue and simply trust the party to appoint the right people accordingly. We don’t live in one of those places.

Perhaps, we have been far too eager to defeat an ideology and have allowed ourselves to vote for bad people because we see the other side as the enemy. I also know this is an gross simplification of the problem and steers us into “both sides” territory. Perhaps that is part of the problem altogether. Perhaps one side is doing this far more often than the other. At this point, I have to admit that I am biased and therefore not completely capable of arbitrating this point.

These are all fair criticisms and all points of view are welcome. The point is that someone like Hershel Walker shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near Washington. He never should have gotten this far in the first place. An election is a decision between two or more people. As citizens we need to elect the best among us. If we want the best possible government then we can do nothing less.

We saw the crack in the dam of invincibility a few days ago when the RNC confirmed they’ll stop paying TFG’s legal bills after he declares for the presidency.  Today, total waste of oxygen, Mick Mulvaney (who is inexplicably now a CBS News “analyst”) said that “[TFG] is the only Republican who can lose in 2024.”  Granted, he told that truth only after telling the whopper that election denial is a “both sides do it” problem, with the caveat that in order to come to that conclusion, you have to ignore January 6th.  LOL.

Mulvaney is a clown, liar, and partisan hack who most certainly has no place taking up time on national television; but he is a measuring stick for the Red Tide, and when he goes against TFG (and he’s been moving there for a time) that tide is clearly going out for him.

Cancun Ted decided it would be a good idea to be in the Astros victory parade today.  The response was heartwarming.