There was No Joy in Mudville
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.
Why are ahole rePUKEians in office??? Cuz there are more ahole people voting!
1Democrats in general have a messaging problem. Right or wrong, Republicans have been able to use phrases like “woke” “defund the police” and other slogans against them. This is a messaging problem. Beto allowed too many hot mic moments where they caught him saying things that will bury you in Texas. Sure, all of us WANT to take away everyone’s AR-15. None of us would say that out loud in mixed company.
2Eloquently put by El Jefe, I’ve been raving about the same stuff for years.
I doubt that any of this will sink into hivemind of the Democratic ‘leadership’, it never has before.
Watching the Democrats let the now dominant demographic bloc, Hispanics, slide over to the dark side for years, and many election cycles, has been like viewing a train wreck in slow motion.
Even an extremely Hispanic [75%+] highly stressed Texas county like Uvalde [school massacre, gunz, etc] voted overwhelmingly for Abbott and the Rethugs, by a ~5 to 3 margin.
Abbott didn’t even hardly bother to assist or acknowledge Uvalde until days and weeks after the Robb Elementary shootings. And still they voted overwhelmingly for him and his vile party.
SOB, Uvalde wasn’t even fully desegregated until the 1970s; and there is still a ‘plantation mentality’ amongst the Anglo overclass [as there is in most S TX counties with both Anglo and Hispanic wealthy large landowners].
WTF? The opposition, Democrats, has to be pretty damned bad to lose in that environment.
My own county [twice the pop] went even more Rethug, ~85%, although the Anglo population is double.
None of this should be happening, Hispanics should still be a solid Democratic bloc. But our utterly incompetent Democratic ‘leadership’, from the bottom to, especially, the top of the Texas state and national Party have totally failed at their main purposes.
Look up any Texas office, county, or district election results here [then compare Wiki demos], a slaughterhouse:
https://results.texas-election.com/races
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvalde_County,_Texas
3Whatever happened to the energized minority voting blocs in Texas?
4BTW, my own newly gerrymandered TX-15 District [was in Cuellar’s 28th], a heavily Hispanic district [85%+], was so easily flipped to the Rethuglikans that Greg Abbott made a special and confident effort to hold his victory party in it’s biggest town, McAllen, TX, in the Valley [95%+ Hispanic].
Fortunately, the adjoining and similar ‘fajita’ [almost 300mi long by as narrow as 15mi] 28th and 34th Districts were held by the Democrats, though with smaller margins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_15th_congressional_district
5Great article! You could have deleted the word Texas and substituted Florida. Democrats have not been competitive in Florida since 1994. PJ
6I went to the Texas Democratic convention in Dallas this summer. Total sh**show. The most poorly organized and orchestrated convention of any sort I’ve ever attended (and I’ve been to many). Gilberto Hinojosa couldn’t even manage to get the required business done before the attendees finally left after sitting around doing nothing on the floor for HOURS while he worked his back-room deal to stay in power. He’s less than useless. He’s had ten years already. And we keep losing ground.
I had hoped for change, but sadly we are stuck with the same-old-same-old. I’ve mostly just given up on the Dems here in Texas. I live in Angelina County behind the Pine Curtain in East Texas. Deep red. We don’t even have a functioning County Democratic Party.
Democrats have lost Texas for at least the next two decades. More if we don’t wake up and make some changes and start working at the local level. Houston can’t do it alone.
7BTBTW, I’ve never had my mailbox flooded with so much fancy campaign litterature as it has been by the Republican winner of TX-15, Monica De La Cruz, et al.
An absolute blizzard of giant shiny postcard-style campaign flyers, etc, at least one a day, sometimes two or three, for months. I can’t see how crap like that works, but it apparently does. The content was usually like the scary TV ads, only worse.
The Rethugs really poured the money and effort into this District 15.
Might have got a couple mailings from the Democrat, Michelle Vallejo, and only saw a few TV ads. More Democratic ‘leadership’ incompetence.
[sounds like a real beeotch…]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_De_La_Cruz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_Texas#District_15
8Mark in Lufkin @7, rAmen bro..
I don’t know much about the ‘innards’ of the Democratic Party, but it just ain’t working.
I haven’t looked at Harris/Houston results, but Bexar/San Antonio did vote 58%+ Democratic, maybe the other major cities were similar. But obviously that doesn’t get it done.
And you can count on Abbott punishing the places that didn’t go his way.
“Democrats have lost Texas for at least the next two decades. More if we don’t wake up and make some changes and start working at the local level. Houston can’t do it alone.”
9The Democrats have a messaging problem, but maybe the message is that their neoliberal agenda has failed the majority of Americans. The national party is as much captured by corporate money as their counterparts. When this happens we get policies like endless war and proxy wars, tax cuts for the rich, privatization of social services like education and health care, and trade deals that send manufacturing abroad. Democrats should be running against these ideas, not promulgating them. When is the last time Democrats have sought to cut back on defense spending which accounts for half of all discretionary spending?
Let’s not forget that the standard bearer for the party has a pretty checkered past. As chair of the Senate judiciary committee he did not allow two witnesses to collaborate
Anita Hill’s testimony and allowed the denigration of her character during the hearings, thereby gifting us Clarence
Thomas for life. He was an enthusiastic adherent to Clinton’s “ending welfare as we know it”. He aggressively backed the 1994 crime bill which exploded the prison population, expanding private prisons. He has been an enthusiastic supporter of any military action, including Iraq in 2002. He has been a shill for the banking and credit industry which brought on the 2008 financial crisis. The industry got bailed out by the government while the working stiff was bludgeoned in the aftermath of that crisis.
Yes, people can change and there have been some good policies enacted since he attained office. Did the Democrats campaign on these accomplishments? From what I see, they felt that they could ride reproductive rights as a sole issue in the wake of the SC ruling. Although important, they needed to tackle issues like crime and inflation. Point out that crime rates are highest in states where access to guns is most lax. Crime rates in rural areas are often higher than in cites, but all of the attention is focused on urban crime. Try to explain that the President and Congress cannot reduce inflation. We need more people like Katie Porter explaining this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZXERVafynY
There are some good people in the party, but their voices are muted by the leadership. I don’t know if the party can ever reform and become the party of the people that it purports to be.
10Mark,
I think what is most maddening is how the GOP has campaigned and tied all of these Democratic candidates (including Collier) to how “liberal” Joe Biden is when he is not really liberal at all. If you spend your time trying to appear moderate and be reasonable only to be painted extremist then why be moderate in the first place?
11The two Marks, and about the ‘Democratic Problem’, particularly MESSAGING:
The following is from an article at Daily Kos, and there were a few others like it, this example is just one of many where the Democrats just exhibited their complete messaging incompetence.
Given a similar opportunity, the Republicans would have trumpeted about a topic like this incessantly, until it sank into the public consciousness as a given truth; and yielded yet more victories for them.
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2022/11/1/2132723/-1-fact-every-voter-should-know-about-inflation-but-doesn-t
” “It’s easy to convince people that Biden caused high gas prices because of a common logical fallacy. X happened, then Y happened, therefore X caused Y. Biden took office, then gas prices went up, therefore Biden caused gas prices to go up. That’s the story Republicans are pushing. Add to that the lie that Biden cut domestic oil production, and you’ve got an argument that fools a lot of people.
But there’s an important fact missing from this story that has somehow flown completely under the radar.
A US president actually did cause higher gas prices, and it’s not Joe Biden.
It’s Donald Trump. And not only that, Trump did it ON PURPOSE. In 2020, Trump strong-armed Saudi Arabia to cut oil production because he wanted to increase oil company profits.
-***- “Just spoke to my friend MBS (Crown Prince) of Saudi Arabia, who spoke with President Putin of Russia, & I expect & hope that they will be cutting back approximately 10 Million Barrels, and maybe substantially more which, if it happens, will be GREAT for the oil & gas industry!”
So, once again, Republicans have created a problem and are managing to pin the blame on Democrats. We should not be letting them get away with this. ” ”
But we do, over and over and over …
The issue of “inflation”, cost of living, were the major issues in the elections. Here was a prime example of why it was happening.
12Why the fuck didn’t Joe Biden and the Democrats use this, in every permutation possible, against the trumpian Republican opponents at every opportunity?
Is it sheer incompetence, or plain stupidity, or worse?
Your words sting—but only because they are undeniably true.
13Can’t agree more with all of the above. Messaging in the Democratic Party has been weak and mainly worthless, especially this past year leading up to last night. It ain’t just Texas. Last few days I’ve been reading up on the plan in Congress (by the repugnantican house “committee” on the subject which includes most R’s in the house) to slash social security if they take control. It’s no secret but in congressional races around OR/WA you’d think there’s no issue. That’s just one example of issues that should have been exploited by Democrats. It’s infuriating.
14Messaging is a huge problem. Every major network channel on TV showed hateful, lie-filled Republican attack ads. Over and over and over and over. A very occasional Dem ad featuring Beto for Beto and some guy who used to be a Republican for Mike Collier. That was pretty much it. We had ads for Abbott featuring his wife, his niece, his 4th cousin, and an ad from some woman whose husband was on patrol at the border screeching lies about Rochelle Garza. Clearly those ads were effective, especially in light of the Silence of the Dems.
Where was all that money Beto raised being spent? Why were we not inundated with ads for the Dem candidates? I do blame the media for some of it. Seriously, some of those attack ads came one after the other, sometimes the same ones after the other.
TOTALLY AGREE with the disappointment in the primaries at nominating Rochelle Garza instead of Jaworski, who was a much superior candidate.
15Hallelujah- Tina Kotek, running for governor in Oregon against a trumpf repugnantican and a Phil Nike Night “Independent” (??) was just called. Democrats win this one. Another trumpf candidate, Alek Skarlatos lost his house bid in what had been thought to be a close race by 8 points to Andrea Salinas. Expecting the calls in eastern/central/sw OR to become part of Iduho to accelerate. Good riddance as I’ve said before.
16Other races still too close.
I like Juanita Jean’s but Jefe is tiresome and tedious; this is more “but the establishment!!!!” whining from the wings of the party that think their candidates who can’t even win the Dem primary (and thus aren’t very popular) are somehow going to reverse a deep red state: “If only they’d hear our message!”
Yeah, the Dems lost…badly. But the people Jefe wants would have atomized in a general (if they could manage to win a primary). It’s easy to claim what would have happened when you’re sitting on the bench because you couldn’t even get enough people in your own caucus to support you. THIS is the time of intra-party B.S. that encourages the circular firing squad.
17Steve from Beaverton@16, great news!! I voted for Kotek.
What comes to Central Oregon (we live near Bend, in Jefferson county) I personally am not TOO thrilled about perspective to become part of ID 🙂
As for what El Jefe said – I agree with everything, though I’m not Texan and do not know all the local details. Dems should really learn to “read the room”. This time, nationwide, we actually have to thank trump for the fact that “the red wave” did not happen. Next time we might not be so lucky though.
BTW, has anyone been reading comments below some of the articles on Fox News? It’s mind blowing! 99% of commentators say that it’s time to get rid of trump. The tide is really going out for this guy.
18treehugger @15, and the rest,
The Rethuglikan media blitz was incredible, 10-20 Rethug teevee spots for every 1 Dem one; and full of lies and distortions.
My TX-15 District race was just abandoned by the DCCC, etc, candidate Michelle Vallejo was just cut adrift. Went from Cactus Jack solid D forever, to Monica De La Cruz, Rethug…
They did spend heavily in the adjacent 28th [Cuellar] and 34th [González], which resulted in wins; but with noticeably lower vote margins than historically.
All three districts are known as ‘fajita strips’, hundreds of miles long N-S, very narrow E-W, stretching from the Hispanic border to [slightly] more Anglo territory way up north; designed to dilute Hispanic votes, a stratagem rapidly becoming obsolete from all indications.
The S TX Hispanic Rethug conversion may happen by the next election if the Dem jefes don’t get their shit together quick…
https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2022/texas-2022-election-results/
https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2021/texas-redistricting-map/
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/10/10/dccc-democrats-tx-15-texas/
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/9/2134811/-Republican-incumbent-Mayra-Flores-loses-Texas-seat-whines-that-the-red-wave-did-not-happen
19FrauFree- not trying to send you to Idaho. You would know better than I how the Bend area feels about it. I’m sick about what’s happened in Idaho the last decade or so since I grew up there, graduated from college there and have many, many friends still there that are equally disgusted. I hope OR democratic leaders start to address some the concerns of the part of the state that feels ignored. Can’t please them all (nor should we try) but maybe turn the tide some. We survived this election here but by the skin of our teeth.
20I’m also pleased another trumpf candidate, Joe Kent, lost in SW WA. I agree, trumpf is basically done- maybe the prosecutions and lawsuits can move forward.
CJ@17 – So, Dems have lost every single statewide since the 1994 election when Bullock, Mauro, Morales, and Sharp each won reelection for the last time. NINETEEN NINETY FOUR. One more time, NINETEEN NINETY FOUR. No other Dem has come close, and generally have lost by double digits. That’s not a “messaging” problem. That’s incompetence and corruption at the top of the TDP. Don’t like the opinion? Don’t read it. Don’t have any better ideas? You might sit this one out, since YOUR candidates are losers.
21You are 100% correct afa Dh and i are concerned. He started volunteering at age 14. He was the county precinct coordinator in the 1st time a dem lost the governor’s race campaign. I remember telling all those high dollar lawyers they’d better be paying attention to talk radio. They thought I was nuts. Then we spent a day introducing the candidate for congress his new area. Clueless is the most polite thing I could say. They did open an office behind a shopping center where it could not be found. It’s been downhill from there on. We gave up on state and national Democratic party when John Hill lost by 1 vote per Texas precinct. But were encourage by Howard Dean. Obama didn’t use him. I’ll say it out loud Texas was Mexico until Moses and Stephen screwed Spain and Mexico. Mexicans on the border don’t like all those folks from Central and South America moving in. The Republicans are very good at using that bias to get votes. WE all need to be learning about and watching the Council for National Policy. And we needed to start 30 years ago. The JBS is in charge these days.
22Alan @4 says: “Whatever happened to the energized minority voting blocs in Texas?”.
Alan, perhaps you missed it, but we Anglos are now a Texas “minority voting bloc”, since Hispanics are now in the majority of the population.
The Rethugs have been planning for this for decades…while the Dems have snoozed.
And of course the Anglo Republicans are always energized about everyfuckingthing, and play to win all the marbles all the time.
Some of us Anglo Democrats do too, but not near enough of us.
Unlike many Democrats, who often only get fired up enough to actually try to win when some ‘charismatic’ hOtdOg comes along, or some shiny topic-du-jour tickles their distracted fancies. The rest of the time we get regularly slaughtered.
Still, voter turnout appears to have been subpar this election, despite all the noise and the criticality of this particular election.
23No ‘charismatic’ in sight, ‘abortion’ just didn’t have enough heft in Texas…down the tubes again.
Messaging?
How do you message this?
Almost 21% of voters in Tennessee did not approve of a measure to ban slavery in the state. In 2022:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/slavery-banned-tennessee-constitutional-amendment-inmate-punishment/
24Steve from Beaverton@20 – totally agree: “I hope OR democratic leaders start to address some the concerns of the part of the state that feels ignored.”
25And yes, Bend, OR is very much blue. (I actually live in the red area between blue Bend and blue Portland.) Many of my R neighbours who are actually good people, hard working, community orientated, big hearted, voted 2x for trump just for the very reason – they feel ignored. Our new governor has some work to do!
El Jefe @21, Sandridge @3+, et al,
It’s official, we live in a political shithole state, and it’s getting shittier..
https://results.texas-election.com/races
Post-election Texas takeaway: singing the red state blues, by Robert Rivard:
https://sanantonioreport.org/post-election-texas-takeaway-singing-the-red-state-blues-rivard-column/
Uvalde County, Texas voted for Greg Abbott by over 20 points:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/9/2134923/-Uvalde-County-Texas-voted-for-Greg-Abbott-by-over-20-points
“…We have a long journey ahead if we are going to make Texas a purple state. Rural Texas is already a problem for Democrats, but many Texas suburbs are also a tough nut to crack. …”
26@El Jefe:
I don’t normally read your stuff El Jefe, I skip it. (I can see now why I shouldn’t bother commenting either)
And I love your reductionist take on the history of the state. Sure, let’s just skip the rise of the religious neo-conservative right…*in texas*, the effect of Citizens United and Trumpism and a bunch of other stuff. It’s clearly the party’s fault. (Eyeroll). By the way, you know you can try to get involved in the party, right?.
FFS: This isn’t AOC’s district in New York. It’s an uphill climb and we’re not going to a state full of ultra-lefty heroes in our state legislature or national congress any time soon. We. just. don’t. have. the votes.
And you keep banging that drum about the TDP and it’s *misleading*. Anybody can run for office, and if you win the primary you win their support (however tepid; although, based on comments here and elsewhere, you don’t really want their support, cause they’re incompetent, “moderate”, right-wing shills or some such nonsense). Either way, with your wing of the party, it’s always the party’s fault and the quality of “their” candidates, but never the fault when *your* candidates can’t get over the very achievabloe threshold of getting the nom b/c people just don’t want to vote for them. (oh, right, I mean “collusion” on the party of “the party” to keep your brilliant candidates from running for…reasons)
As I said, keep shouting from the sidelines about how you’d win if only people would, you know, vote for you. It’s very helpful.
27First, we can’t blame the loss of statewide races on gerrymandering. Those offices are on popular vote state-wide, not voting districts.
Second, TX GQP successfully implements slur campaigns where they hang a label on Democrats and make it stick through constant, consistent use. They do it because IT WORKS. Dems here appear to be afraid to do the same even when the opportunity is staring them right in the damn face, e.g.
– Greg ‘Bloody Hands’ Abbott can’t keep schools safe, but CAN make you pay higher school taxes.
– Ken ‘On The Run’ Paxton, the atty general who spends more time fleeing the law than enforcing it.
Third, campaign where it does some good. If your point is about safe schools, have people on your team outside the schools handing campaign lit out to parents waiting in line to pick up their kids. If your point is about higher costs of electricity, send mailers out so they arrive the same day as electric bills. Make your point about property taxes the day the bills go out. This ain’t that hard, folks….
Fourth, there need to be effective commercials and screw all the politeness.
Voice over: Over xxx number of deaths were tied to Greg Abbott’s power grid failures.
Voice over: # number of school shootings and over # of children and teachers dead, all under Greg Abbott’s watch.
Voice Over: Greg Abbott – he didn’t care about you when it froze. Greg Abbott – he didn’t care about your children. Greg Abbott – he doesn’t care about law enforcement. Now it’s your turn to not care. Defeat Greg Abbott and vote for Beto O’Rourke, a man who DOES care.
28Apparently this system didn’t like my use of some punctuation marks so 4th point should read:
“Fourth, there need to be effective commercials and screw all the politeness.
** video panning across a graveyard, with each gravestone having Abbott’s face** [On second thought, this might be a treated as a threat; maybe just use an Abbott campaign sticker]
Voice over: Over xxx number of deaths were tied to Greg Abbott’s power grid failures.
** video panning over a graveyard with small graves; names are blurred but ages are shown**
Voice over: # number of school shootings and over # of children and teachers dead, all under Greg Abbott’s watch.
** video showing NRA and energy donations to Abbott **
Voice Over: Greg Abbott – he didn’t care about you when it froze. Greg Abbott – he didn’t care about your children. Greg Abbott – he doesn’t care about law enforcement. We know what he does care about.
Now it’s YOUR turn to not care. Defeat Greg Abbott and vote for Beto O’Rourke, a man who DOES care.”
2927 It was kinda embarrassing when Dan Patrick filed the first time. He knew his radio program would by gone during the election season. So he had his BFF file for the same post on the Democratic ticket. When th e issue of Patrick continuing while he was a candidate, he responded “let’s let the Democratic candidate decide. The Texas Democratic Party had no clue who their candidate was. IMO that should had been a time of reflection.
30As I’ve commented before, a large part of Oregon (geographically) want to secede from Oregon and join super right Iduho. The attached shows the area that voted to do so this election. Kind of a NW Texas. Several other counties have yet to vote but several that are surrounded by the red counties are likely to do it next election. A lot has to happen to make that happen including congress approving it, but who knows.
https://www.rawstory.com/greater-idaho-oregon-secessionists/
31Unlike you, I love Beto. But obviously, he needs to step aside now.
32