Texas Democratic Leaders Vote To Have No Beliefs

There was some rejoicing among Texas Democrats last week when the Federal Court (composed of two Republican and one Democratic appointees) tossed out the redistricting plan passed by the Republican legislature and redrew the district lines for the upcoming elections. The court had found the Republicans had drawn district lines that were unfair to minorities. Although most of the state's growth in the last ten years was by Hispanics, the new districts failed to create enough new districts that reflected that fact. The much fairer district lines drawn by the court not only created new Hispanic districts, but turned several other districts into toss-up districts that could be won by either party.

But for those of us who had hopes that the Democratic Party would now go out and fight for those districts by offering the voters a real choice -- a choice that was different from the failed policies of the Republicans -- the rejoicing may have been short-lived. It seems like the current leadership of the state Democratic Party is happy with things just as they are.

You have to understand that the current Democratic leadership has been a disaster. They decided for some reason that Texans would not vote for people who espoused progressive values (even though Texas has elected many good progressives in the past), and so they have encouraged conservative "blue dogs" to run on the Democratic ticket. These are people who call themselves Democrats but vote with Republicans to oppose progressive bills and values. This idiotic policy has resulted in the Republicans having not only huge majorities in both houses of the legislature, but also holding every single statewide elective office.


Now anyone with even a few functioning brain cells would be able to see that what they have been doing has been a miserable failure and that something new must be done. The fact is that if people want to vote for someone with Republican beliefs and values they will vote for a real Republican -- not for a Democrat who's basically telling them they believe the same thing, but would somehow be better. Until the people are given a real choice, a better choice, they will keep voting for the Republicans.

But in spite of the crushing defeats the Democrats have been suffering through in Texas for many years now, the state party leaders have still not learned their lesson. They want to continue doing the same old thing, in the futile hope that someday it will result in a different outcome. As the excellent blogger, Juanita Jean, tells us, the State Democratic Executive Committee just met -- and the results were not good.

The SDEC was considering proposals for party support. Now this would have been a good start in showing voters that the Democrats stood for progressive values and the party was going to give them a real choice in November 2012. But that would have required some political vision and backbone, and the majority of the SDEC doesn't seem to have either one. These political cowards defeated anti-death penalty, pro-gay rights, and pro-marijuana legalization proposals. They said they didn't want to saddle their candidates with these progressive proposals (as if offering the voters a real choice would be a bad thing).

They did not support the opposite views of those progressive ideas -- they just wanted to not support them either. In effect, they want to be the party that is devoid of ideas and values (because ideas and values might upset some voters). So now I guess the Texas voters will have a bad choice to make in 2012. They can vote for the party of bad ideas (Republicans) or the party of no ideas (Democrats). Frankly, that doesn't sound like a choice, but a good reason to just stay home (and that's probably just what too many voters will do).

It's time for our state leaders to understand that voters want people with good ideas who are willing to fight for those ideas. They will always vote for a candidate like that over a candidate (or a party) too afraid to stand for something.

It's time to replace our party leaders. If you vote to keep them in power at the next convention, you will be voting for the defeatist status quo.