This week Texas Monthly announced its 2022 Bum Steer Awards and the ones you expected were winners.  The only question was who was going to be the Top Bum Steer.  You won’t be surprised that it is none other the National Embarrassment of Texas, Greg Abbott.  The magazine ripped him a new one with these choice quotes:

“From the beginning, Abbott was attuned to the 4 percent of Texans who decide Republican primary elections and that group’s many peculiar priorities.”

“This has been a hard year for everyone, and no governor in the U.S. has had it easy. (“At least we don’t have Andrew Cuomo,” Texans could say.) But every step of the way, Abbott has made it harder for nearly everyone, rendering life more difficult, the death tolls higher, and the experience of being a Texan more demoralizing.”

About the blackout: “Who was the responsible party? Two days into the crisis, Abbott took the time to appear on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show and blame renewable energy—a field in which Texas has been a leader, thanks in large part to his Republican predecessors—even though the blackout was caused mostly by problems with the distribution of natural gas.”

About COVID-19: “And Abbott’s handling of the situation was comically erratic. He ordered a lockdown and then, under pressure from his right, crusaded to free Texans imprisoned by his lockdown.”

“But Abbott had other priorities. With his approval, the Legislature passed voter suppression legislation that rivaled the worst in the country as well as a law placing bounties on the heads of those who help others get abortions.”

And finally, “Over the course of 2021, Texans learned that Greg Abbott was not so colorless after all—somewhere along the line, he learned to be ruthless. ”

The article is a must read.  Close runners up were Ted Cruz for obvious reasons, and 25 Texans who participated in Trump’s effort to overthrow the US government and steal the presidency from Joe Biden.

After 26 years of single party rule where the GOP has controlled the governor’s mansion, both state houses, and virtually all the courts including the Texas Supreme Court, our state has become a cesspool of corruption, weirdos, felons, and fascists.  I have little hope that much will change as long as the federal government and courts are tolerant and complicit with Texas’ post-democracy fascist regime.

Every year, Texas Monthly publishes their Bum Steer Awards, naming the worst of the worst statewide.  It’s not a list anyone wants to make, much be Bum Steer of the Year.  Past winners include an ugly cast of characters like Dick Cheney, Rick Perry, Jerry Jones, and none other than 3 time winner Tom DeLay.  Ugh.

The 2021 Bum Steer Awards came out last night and the Bum Steer of the Year? None other than our own Texas Democratic Party; management of the Salon agrees.  Worse, they beat out COVID-19 and Ken Paxton for Worst Honors.  In granting the award, Texas Monthly had some choice words like these:

“Since 1992, their fortunes have been in decline, and since 2002 they’ve been kept at arm’s length from control of both the Texas House and the Texas Senate, as well as from the Governor’s Mansion and any other statewide office. The party has a long history of launching failed comeback attempts, but all of them have either failed disastrously or come up short in a way that seems designed to demolish morale and crush hopes.”

The TDP is a textbook example of insanity – for 30 years, they’ve done the same thing over and over, with the same consultants, same party officials, and same pecking order. The results in each cycle have been predictably disastrous.  There was a bright spot in 2018 when Beto came close to taking out Cruz, and it was so close it felt like a win to Texas Dems.  It was still a loss, though, but the TDP didn’t take it to that way.  Magical thinking once again set in, and here we went for 2020.  Beto even got WAY out in front of himself, thinking that an also ran for Senate qualified him to run for President.  THAT was stupid.

Democratic politics in Texas is a lot like golf…you hack your way from water to rough to bunker, but then on the 16th hole, you hit that beautiful lofted draw that lands the ball softly right in the center of the green.  Then you 4 putt the hole for a double bogey. On 17, you hit it in the water again, and on 18 you lose your ball out of bounds.  BUT, that beautiful shot on 16 keeps you coming back time after time.

In 2020, the TDP kept going for that great shot, but because of the euphoria over Trump’s waning influence in Texas, they got over confident, believed the polls, and then couldn’t get the ball off the tee.  Dems have believed for decades that turnout is everything, fantasizing that new voters will automatically vote for them; but that certainly didn’t work this year.  The Biden campaign didn’t spend as much time or money here that they should have, and the state party didn’t stick to fundamentals, especially in South Texas.  South Texas is one of those areas where politics are extremely local and it requires a lot of contact and money to get the turnout and then to get those turning out to vote for Dems.  With the elimination of straight ticket voting it requires even more contact not less.

Dems here assumed that Trump was such an idiot that people would do the right thing and automatically vote against him and other Republicans.  But it didn’t happen that way.  Sure, way more people turned out, and many voted for Biden, but down ticket they stuck to the familiar.  On top of the bumbling and overconfidence, the TDP swatted away all opinions that disagreed with the statewide lack of focus and scattergun approach.

The result was predictable to anyone who was objective.  The TDP lost 8 out of 9 targeted state house races that were winnable, lost the Senate race, lost a House seat, and got pummeled in the Railroad Commission race despite $2.6 million cash injection from Bloomberg.  They gained one seat in the state Senate but none in the state House.  What this means is that, once again, the GOP will control redistricting AGAIN, and will continue their radical gerrymandering started by DeLay in 2002.

Once again, the TDP did what the TDP always does – pour money into the pockets of the same losing consultants, with the same losing strategies, lost focus, and shot way too high without playing the ground game that the GOP has down so well.  And they got rewarded for all that bungling by getting slaughtered at the ballot box and now slaughtered by Texas Monthly.

It was well deserved.