28 September 2015

BattleDonkeys

Peggy Fikac got tasked with trying to write something about Battleground Texas that would leave open the possibility that they have a clue. I wouldn't want to get that assignment:

"We were always clear this was going to be very long term. I didn't think about, when we said it, that would mean a lot of heartache every two years," outgoing executive director Jenn Brown said recently over coffee.

A few months before the election those same Yankee Obama consultants were saying:

Without doing anything, Democrats say, they expect to see their vote totals grow slowly over time

With Battleground Texas and its millions, Democrats vote totals went down.

The heartache was on national display when Battleground Texas served as Democrat Wendy Davis' field organization in her longshot effort to beat Republican Greg Abbott for governor and break the GOP's long hold on statewide office.

If you paid any attention to the campaign, there's lots of LOL in that statement. Wendy Davis counted money given to Battledonkeys as part of her fundraising totals, only to disavow them when they did dumb stuff. Plus there's the amusement that many reporters filed pieces (and magazine covers!) acting as if Wendy!'s campaign was anything but longshot.

The group had to speed up its timetable to take on the job, and it wasn't in control of her message.

No independent organization will EVER be in control of the message. With Wendy!, they were about close to having control of the message as possible.

As for speeding up the timetable, they also got to "speed up" their donations.

As it forges ahead, the group last week installed an advisory board including prominent Texas Democrats such as U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of San Antonio and former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk.

Battleground really is Obama's Yankees. Because no Texan would think that the path to victory is highlighting your ties to Obama cronies.

If Battleground Texas were a business, Steve Mostyn would probably already have sued them.

Posted by Evan @ 09/28/15 07:35 AM | Comments (1)        

 


27 September 2015

Annise Parker is not a fiscal conservative

Presumably Annise Parker will attempt to keep feeding at the public trough. If she does so by running for statewide office, I'm sure Parker will call herself a fiscal conservative just like she did when she ran for mayor.

Mayor Annise Parker's administration will not move forward with renovating the Exxon tower at 800 Bell downtown into a new police and courts complex, citing an uncertain financial outlook and a desire not to bind a new mayor with a pricey, decades-long commitment.

Parker had described the project as one of the most important of her tenure, and had hoped a groundbreaking could come as early as the end of the year to replace the city's current aging complex.

...

As of Sept. 14, the city had spent almost $3.2 million on consultants and advisors studying justice complex options.

This is a relatively small point, but moving the police department into the Exxon tower was silly from the start, and it didn't take much genius to realize it:

From the start, however, the estimated annual payments fell roughly between $25 million and $40 million, and it was never precisely clear how the city would cover that payment. . .

So Annise Parker wasted $3,200,000.00 of Houston's money in the hopes that she could push through a boondoggle for her "legacy."

Posted by Evan @ 09/27/15 01:18 PM | Comments (0)        

 


26 September 2015

Minority party chooses the speaker

From a Politico story on Boehner's resignation as speaker:

The reality is that his critics inside his conference would have been hard pressed to ever remove him in this term as speaker. Democrats are reluctant to support any such effort since they don't want Republicans intruding on their own leadership fights in the future.

To those outside of Texas, it's unthinkable that a House minority party would be able to choose the speaker. Yet strangely that is the current equilibrium in the Texas House.

Posted by Evan @ 09/26/15 09:44 PM | Comments (0)        

 


12 September 2015

Crow eating time: Perry first to drop out of the race

I was wrong. Politico's insiders were right. Perry has dropped out of the 2016 campaign.

OK, crow eating out of the way. My initial reaction:

If you go back to the original post, I concluded:

So is Perry going to be the first to drop out? Dropping out comes down to the candidate's psyche -- but rationally, if you're Rick Perry then you stay the course through Iowa. Nothing has changed: may as well give Iowa a shot.

I added the bold and italics now.

As my tweet and prior post indicate, I argue that it is irrational to drop out now. There was never any chance that he was going to do well in the polls at this point. [In fact, I argued in May 2013 that it was "wishful thinking" for Perry to hope of success in 2016 without running for re-election in 2014.] I know it's easy to criticize from the sidelines, but everything up to now should have been expected as part of the campaign plan.

From the very start, his only shot at the nomination in 2016 was to come out of nowhere to win Iowa. Given recent Iowa caucus history, that's not as unreasonable as it sounds. Perry is very good at retail politics and his super PAC has $17 million in the bank -- Santorum won Iowa in 2012 with 24.5% and it might take even less this time.

Why run at all if you're going to quit the game before you even play the only card you've got?

Posted by Evan @ 09/12/15 12:19 AM | Comments (0)        

 


06 September 2015

If I were Rick Perry

[I challenged myself to write a blog post in 8 minutes and edit in 30 seconds. Go!]

If I were Rick Perry:

I think it's pretty obvious.

First of all, let's distinguish between strategies which are designed to get you a niche and those which might win you the nomination. For example, Donald Trump came out as the anti-free trade candidate and immediately occupied a niche that no one else was playing in. He immediately dominated that niche, which due to the divided field was good enough to be "#1."

Focus on difficult paths that might get you to 1600 Pennsylvania, not on easier paths that get you to double digits in the polls.

Second, Trump isn't going to be the nominee. Positioning yourself as the anti-Trump isn't a bad place to be.

Right now, Donald Trump is like Paris Hilton a decade ago. Put her name up as clickbait, and you'd get traffic. Right now in politics, talk Trump, get press coverage.

So go after it. Tear into Trump with the most Trumpian of insults: call him a socialist -- Trump would do it to you. And to use Trump's logic, it's entirely fair: he's had zillions of über-big government proposals over the years. Arguably Trump's record is as far left as Obama's or Hillary Clinton's. [To be fair, neither Obama nor Hillary has ever created a job, whereas at least Trump used his inherited wealth to create jobs]

Counterargument: Both Rick Perry and Rand Paul went after Trump and saw their poll numbers drop.

It's a dumb counterargument.

1. Extremely small sample size. Two brief salvos by different candidates? You can't control for the thousands of other variables. Small sample size arguments are quite popular in politics -- for decades journalists and pundits swore that you couldn't get elected president as a US Senator -- but it seems like a prep school kid from Hawaii with a funny name proved that one quite silly.

2. Find a messaging frame, be consistent, and stick to it. Do more than one speech. When you give a couple speeches and soundbites, you just desperate, so it's not surprising that your poll numbers go down. Plan a communications strategy, then commit to it.

3. Donors don't like Trump. Expose his liberal record and bring down his poll numbers? They like you more. You look presidential.

4. Most actual Republican primary voters have already decided they will never, ever vote for Trump. They're not liberals, after all. So you might carve yourself out a niche as the anti-Trump and immediately benefit.

Posted by Evan @ 09/06/15 04:24 PM | Comments (0)        

 


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