Tag: Beto

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Rep Veronica Escobar Slams Gov Abbott For Creating “Wild West” Environment That Enabled Uvalde Shooting

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Rep Veronica Escobar(D-TX) appeared on MSNBC Reports w/Andrea Mitchell (07/18/22) to discuss the recently released report by the Texas Senate on the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Rep Escobar made a very important point on the show, telling host Andrea Mitchell that the deadly “wild west” environment created by Texas elected officials, beginning with Governor Greg Abbott, is partly to blame for the horrific shooting in Uvalde.

This point is largely missed by the mainstream media when reporting about the mass shooting in Uvalde, but it cannot be restated enough.

Rep Escobar(video at 1:00):“I think the report is important, but I also think we need to zoom out a little bit because the leadership void goes far beyond law enforcement. And what the report did not touch on[are]2 things, (1) the Governor, who is the highest ranking elected official, the chief elected official of the state and (2) the state legislature that makes open carry the law of the land in Texas so that anyone can get access to a gun without any training and really a loosening of gun laws that was historic. It is so important that these reports and that this analysis look at what happened on the ground that day, but we also have to look at the context in Texas, the environment that has been created by Republicans, who want to create a wild west sort of environment  in a state, that has led us to be…one of the most deadliest states for mass shootings.”

Rep Escobar went on to specifically address Gov Abbott’s failures:“He’s been pretty silent. He’s very eager to point the finger at others, really on any situation including Uvalde and he, as the highest-ranking elected official in the state of Texas, I have yet to hear the Governor accept any responsibility, or bring forward any ideas for meaningful change. He is literally someone who has only used his position to make Texas less safe for its citizens and uses our resources for political stunts.”

She went on to add that the political stunt Gov Abbott is pulling at the southern border aka “Operation Lone Star” has siphoned much needed funds away from mental health services and public schools, both of which are still poorly funded in Texas compared to other states.

Bottom line folks, Texas is, and has been a solid red state for quite some time now. It is important however for people who don’t live in the Lone Star state, or keep up with its politics, to know that none of Governor Abbott’s Republican predecessors created the deadly gun violence environment in the state like Gov Abbott and his allies have. Rep Escobar is absolutely spot on, that any meaningful discussion of gun violence in the Lone Star state has to take into account the “wild west” environment created by Gov Abbott and his Texas Republican allies.

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Houstonians Rally For Reproductive Rights With Gubernatorial Candidate Beto O’Rourke

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Dem gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke chatting with a supporter after his speech at the reproductive rights rally in downtown Houston(05/07/22)

Houstonians showed up in large numbers at the Discovery Green park in downtown Houston (05/07/22) for a reproductive rights rally headlined by gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke. The very well attended and high energy rally comes on the heels of the recent bombshell leak of a draft Supreme Court majority opinion which suggests the high court is getting ready to strike down the landmark Roe v Wade decision which made abortion legal. Judging from the energy in the crowd at Discovery Green, one can safely assume that reproductive rights and the future of the Supreme Court generally, will be major issues in the upcoming midterm elections. This message was very clear from Beto O’Rourke and the other high profile Dem leaders in attendance, who included State Senator Carol Alvarado(District 6), Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, and Congresswomen Sheila Jackson Lee and Sylvia Garcia.

Beto said at the rally:“This has been among the toughest weeks for so many people across this state and across this nation, but as I look out at each and every single one of you, there is something extraordinarily beautiful in the way that we have decided to come together. And in these tough times, Texans turn out. They are there for and by one another. It brings out the very best in us…We want our fellow Texans, wherever they are, to whatever party they may belong to, to whomever they pray, however they love, whatever country their families originally came from, to know right now we stand together. We stand with them…For most of us, I’m 49 years old, for my entire life, Roe vs Wade has been the law of the land, I’ve known nothing else. But those who preceded me, those who preceded all of us, they made that happen. That fortunate generation who was fighting for the rights that so many, too many have taken for granted for too long, we now have that same opportunity to fight like just they did, and I want us to remember, whatever we think the odds are right now against us, this is possible, and in fact it has been done before against much greater odds.”

There’s no other way to interpret Beto’s remarks other than a call for Texans of goodwill to unite against efforts by Republicans at the federal level and their state counterparts(Gov Abbott’s regime), to peel back their constitutional rights. This could end up being the winning message because it could attract a sizable chunk of the independent vote.

Bottom line folks, historical trends favor Republicans to do very well against Democrats this Fall(party out of power). Reasonable people will agree however, that the leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion has given Democrats nationwide, a much needed jolt. Will this jolt be enough to upend historical trends and hand Democrats a surprise victory in November? Only time will tell. Given the high energy at Discovery Green Park however, the potential certainly exists for Democrats to “come from behind” and pull off a surprise win in the elections this Fall.

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Why Not Run For The U.S. Senate In 2020?

With many Democrats gunning for the White House in 2020 (the current count at 20+), the question that is increasingly popping up among grassroots Democrats is why some of these excellent candidates are not running for the U.S. Senate instead?

Every week we get stories from the mainstream media about how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is refusing to bring bills passed by House Democrats to a vote in the U.S. Senate. One would think, given these dire circumstances that Democrats would focus heavily on recapturing the U.S. Senate in addition to the White House in 2020. Strangely however, all the talk is about who is running for President, even though as mean as this sounds, some of these potentially excellent Senate candidates have zero chance of securing the Dem presidential nomination.

Yours Truly recently raised this very point on Twitter and the reaction was almost unanimous that some of these Democrats currently gunning for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, should focus instead on taking over the U.S. Senate.

In a recent post, Yours Truly laid out the 22 GOP Senators up for reelection in 2020 and the fact that everything remaining constant, Dems will need to flip at least 3 seats to recapture the U.S. Senate. Senators Susan Collins (Maine), Cory Gardner (Colorado) and by some estimates John Cornyn (Texas) are GOP Senators most pundits think could lose to a Dem opponent in 2020. Why for example shouldn’t John Hickenlooper, who by all accounts is struggling in his presidential campaign, go after Cory Gardner’s Senate seat instead?

The same question applies to Texans Beto O’Rourke and Julian Castro re John Cornyn’s Senate seat, and Montana Governor Steve Bullock re Senator Steve Daines’ seat. Bottom line folks, as the Dem presidential contest chugs along, it would be helpful if the mainstream media, especially the cable TV punditry class starts asking some of the long shot candidates, why they should not be gunning for the U.S. Senate instead? Better yet, this would be an excellent question for the debate moderators at the next Dem debate in Detroit slated for the end of July

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Beto O’Rourke Leading The 2020 Dem Presidential Sweepstakes

Beto O’Rourke

As was expected, the Dem presidential nomination fight began in earnest the day after the November 2018 elections with several Democrats either outrightly declaring their intention to run for president in 2020 or strongly hinting at that.

Several months prior to the November 2018 elections, Yours Truly began running the popular #Dem2020Poll to gauge who grassroots Democrats favored as their presidential nominee in 2020. The results of the #Dem2020Poll initially showed Senator Kamala Harris(D-CA) and Rep Joe Kennedy III as the top contenders for the 2020 Dem presidential nomination with more people favoring a Harris/Kennedy ticket.

However in May 2018, following speculation that former Vice President Joe Biden was considering a presidential run, he immediately shot to the top of the #Dem2020Poll with most people preferring a Biden/Harris ticket.

In September 2018 Sen Kamala Harris shot back to the top of the Dem 2020 presidential sweepstakes due to the Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings.

Well it appears everything has changed after the November 2018 elections and grassroots Democrats now overwhelmingly want Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke to either head the 2020 presidential ticket or be someone’s running mate.

At this juncture it is also important to address the Bernie Sanders issue. Yours Truly has deliberately left him out in previous #Dem2020Polls because he is not a registered Democrat. This issue has caused a lot of controversy and division among grassroots Dems so for the sake of party cohesion, Bernie Sanders now features in all the polls. Beyond the party cohesion argument, reasonable people will agree that a #Dem2020Poll without Bernie Sanders is not realistic/credible because like him or not, he has a lot of support among registered Democrats.

Bottom line 2020 is still very far away and a lot of twists and turns are bound to take place. As Trump himself regularly says, “We’ll see what happens.”


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Its Officially “Operation Defeat John Cornyn” In Texas

U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX)

After Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s heart-breaking loss to incumbent GOP Senator Ted Cruz, many Texas Democrats are left wondering what to do with the groundswell political energy generated by the highly inspiring Beto campaign. Many including Yours Truly are yet to accept Ted Cruz’s “win” given the troubling reports that the eSlate voting machines switched some Beto votes to Ted Cruz. There has been no follow up on this story by the mainstream media or #TeamBeto as to exactly how many votes were switched by the eSlate machines meaning we are stuck with Senator Ted Cruz for the next six years.


The good news however is that Texas Democrats have a fresh opportunity to avenge Beto’s heart-breaking loss to Ted Cruz. The other U.S. Senator from Texas, John Cornyn is up for re-election in 2020 meaning Texas Democrats have a perfect opportunity to take out all their frustrations over Beto’s loss on him. Sen Cornyn is also Mitch McConnell’s right hand man in the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate which should provide added impetus for Texas Dems to vote him out in 2020. Simply put, its officially “Operation Defeat John Cornyn” in Texas.

Also good news for Texas Democrats is that the Harris County Clerk(Houston area) is now a Democrat and she has already promised to phase out the problematic eSlate machines before 2020. There is also tremendous momentum in Dallas, Austin and San Antonio regions that vote heavily Democratic to come up with more reliable voting machines before the 2020 elections.

Bottom line, it appears we have lost the fight over Ted Cruz’s seat. We should therefore start focusing our energy on the upcoming 2020 fight against Senator John Cornyn and make sure we flip that senate seat blue. It will be very interesting to see which Texas Democrat steps up to the plate to take on Senator John Cornyn in 2020. Will it be Beto 2.0, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher(TX-07), former NFL linebacker Colin Alred(TX-32), or….? Folks there are a lot of quality Dems to go up against Senator Cornyn in 2020. We must flip Cornyn’s senate seat blue!

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How Many Beto Votes Switched To Ted Cruz?

The November elections have come and gone and as expected, they have left in their wake enough political punditry themes to go around. One theme that seems to tower above the rest however, is this quiet acknowledgement by both Democrats and Republicans that there are serious problems with our electronic voting infrastructure that need immediate attention.


This bipartisan reckoning is largely attributed to the bombshell news out of Texas that the eSlate voting machines used in Harris County and many other Texas metroplexes were somehow switching votes meant for Democrat Beto O’Rourke to GOP’s Ted Cruz on straight Democratic party votes.

As is if this was not enough, a stunning video later surfaced on Twitter showing an electronic voting machine in Indiana doing exactly what had been reported in Texas—switching Democratic party votes to GOP.

Needless to say this bombshell video about Indiana vote-switching coupled with the previous news from Texas led to serious concerns from the voting public that electronic machines may have been rigged. This is especially due to the fact that both in Texas and Indiana, it was the Dem votes that were switching to GOP and not the other way around

Somehow in spite of all these concerns from voters regarding the vote-switching issue, the Texas media appears to have shockingly accepted without any reservations this narrative contained in a Texas Secretary of State’s Advisory that said because there were “fewer than 20 reported cases” of vote-switching, this was a non-issue and that anybody questioning the magnitude and scope of the vote-switching was spreading “misinformation”. The Director of Communications for the Texas Secretary of State, Sam Taylor has repeated this narrative in interviews with various sections of the Texas Media essentially arguing that if vote-switching was a big problem, there would be much more reported cases.

This narrative by the Texas Secretary of State that vote-switching is not an issue because there were “fewer than 20 reported cases” is by all objective standards, a highly unsatisfactory answer because it does not address the elephant in the room question as to how many people using eSlate machines voted straight Democratic Party, but for whatever reason did not catch/overlooked the switch and ended up voting for Ted Cruz by mistake?

In Harris County for example where eSlates were used, Beto O’Rourke beat Ted Cruz 58 to 41.3% securing 698,580 votes to Cruz’s 498,175. This represents a total of 1,196,755 votes cast in the U.S. Senate race in Harris County. The question the media should be asking the Texas Secretary of State is how many of these 1,196,755 voters voted straight Democratic party but somehow are reflected as having voted for Ted Cruz? In other words is there a way to go back and verify that people who voted straight Democratic party did not vote for Cruz by mistake? If the answer to that is yes, then the process should be repeated in all counties that used eSlates. Then and only then can the Secretary of State say definitively that vote-switching was not an issue.

If on the other hand there is no way to go back and verify that straight Democratic party voters did not mistakenly vote for Cruz, which is the most likely scenario, then with all due respect to the Texas Secretary of State, there is simply no way he can credibly conclude that vote-switching was not an issue in the U.S. Senate race and Texans have every right to suspect otherwise without being accused of spreading “misinformation”.

Bottom line, the Texas media needs to confront the Texas Secretary of State with the million dollar question; “How many people using eSlate machines voted straight Democratic party but somehow are reflected as having voted for Ted Cruz?” Our good friend Ariella Baker-Archer perfectly summed it, saying two years from now we don’t want to look back and say “we should have checked.”

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Dem Harris County Clerk Should Push For Paper Ballots In 2020

Harris County Clerk elect Diane Trautman(D)

As Yours Truly has repeatedly stated, the humongous Harris County Texas(Houston and suburbs), with some 2 million registered voters is crucial to any Democrat winning statewide. The problem for Democrats has been that GOP election officials have stuffed unverifiable voting machines like eSlates in Harris County and other big Texas counties which overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. As long as Harris County and other big Texas counties continue using these paperless and unverifiable voting machines like eSlates, there will always be questions about the legitimacy of election results, especially Ted Cruz’s narrow “win” over Democrat Beto O’Rourke.

The very good news is that a Democrat Diane Trautman will be taking over as Harris County Clerk meaning she will be in charge of election machines in Harris County. This is huge for Democrats in 2020 because with Trautman as the Harris County election boss, there’s a very good chance we may see paper ballots in 2020, something election integrity advocates like Jennifer Cohn have long advocated for. Given her very encouraging campaign pledge, we have every reason to believe that Diane Trautman will work with Jennifer Cohn and others to restore the public’s confidence in our election systems.




Bottom line, although there is general disaffection among Texas Dems over the Beto O’Rourke “loss”, the reality is that Dems won big in the crucial Harris County which should serve as a springboard for further gains in 2020.

More importantly with Diane Trautman as the elections boss in Harris County, there is a very good chance we may see paper ballots in 2020, taking away the GOP’s key weapon in Texas elections—voting machine cheating!!. As for GOP using voting machines to cheat, you don’t have to take Yours Truly’s word for it, just check out the latest evidence below.

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GOP’s Preexisting Conditions Lies

In case you missed it, there was a great Rachel Maddow segment recently where she exposed how Republicans including Sen Ted Cruz, after finding out how polls (including by Fox News) consistently show that healthcare is the top issue heading into this November’s elections, are now drastically twisting their records on healthcare.According to Maddow, voters not only consider healthcare their most important issue, but support Obamacare’s preexisting conditions rules by a whopping 75%. The full Maddow segment is available here but relevant clip is below.

Stunned by the revelation that American voters do not care about president Trump’s numerous conspiracy theories including the latest “migrant caravan”, Republicans are now shockingly saying that they have supported preexisting conditions all along. Think about that folks–Sen Ted Cruz is on record as having said that his opposition to Obamacare’s preexisting conditions requirements is that they are unconstitutional. In addition to that, some of the Republicans now professing their support for preexisting conditions are currently listed as plaintiffs in a lawsuit attacking preexisting conditions.


For the record, Republicans nationwide have now switched their records on preexisting conditions as we approach the November elections. Yours Truly however wants grassroots Democrats to focus their attention on these key 4 GOP candidates for U.S. Senate because these are seats that are crucial to Dems taking over the Senate from Republican control. Grassroots Democrats need to spread the word and call out Ted Cruz(TX), Martha McSally(AZ), Dean Heller(NV) and Kevin Kramer(ND) for their blatant lies about supporting preexisting conditions.

Bottom line this great Maddow segment proves once again that even though the mainstream gives Trump’s conspiracy theories way too much attention, American voters are not buying into Trump’s lies. There are many theories that have been advanced as to why a Democratic “blue wave” is coming this November. This revelation by Maddow that American voters are not concerned about the “caravans” or whatever else Republicans are preoccupied with, but instead are worried about the key Dem issue of healthcare, is the strongest indicator yet of a Dem “blue wave”.

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Desperate Ted Cruz Campaign Resorts To Mail Fraud


In a recent post Yours Truly made the argument that given the stolen user information Ted Cruz’s campaign obtained from Cambridge Analytica, plus the fact that the campaign potentially received money funneled through the NRA by Russia, Ted Cruz was literally running an illegal campaign.


Well turns out we have yet another illegal conduct to add on to the Cruz campaign’s rap sheet and that is mail fraud.

It appears the desperate Cruz campaign has resorted to scaring Texas seniors into sending them donations. The campaign is apparently sending Texas seniors a letter that purports to be a court summons. Scared Texas seniors fearing this is a court document requiring them to make the payment then send the money to the Cruz campaign–an out and out scam.


Bottom line the Ted Cruz campaign is already engaged in borderline illegal conduct given the Cambridge Analytica and NRA scandals. It is about time the Beto camp and the mainstream media took the Cruz campaign to task about its borderline illegal tactics.

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Ted Cruz Wants “Amoral”, “Pathological Liar” Trump To Campaign For Him


A must-watch video from MSNBC’s Last Word w/Lawrence O’Donnell show is the best argument yet for not voting for Cruz. The video captures snippets of Cruz and Trump viciously throwing personal attacks at each other during the height of the 2016 Republican presidential nomination contest.

The full MSNBC’s Last Word segment is available here but the relevant clip is below

Unlike many traditional campaigns where candidates spar with each other over policy differences, the Cruz v Trump contest was clearly a fight between two people who genuinely hated each other and went out of their way to express in public their real loathing for each other.

Cruz for example said about Trump:

“This man[Trump] is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth .”

“The man is utterly amoral, morality does not exist for him.”

“We are liable to wake up one morning and Donald if he were President, would have nuked Denmark.”

Now Ted Cruz, desperate not to lose his senate seat to Dem challenger Beto O’Rourke, is calling on the “utterly amoral”, Denmark-nuking, “pathological liar” Trump to come campaign for him in Texas. Don’t forget Trump also said some disparaging things about Ted Cruz’s wife and father.


How can any Texas voter ever trust that Ted Cruz is a principled leader capable of drawing a line in the sand to protect the interests of Texans in the U.S. senate? If Ted Cruz is not man enough to stand up for his own wife and father, how can we trust him to stand up for the Lone Star State? Seriously folks, if you resort to begging someone you sincerely believe is an “utterly amoral”, ” pathological liar” who also insulted your wife and father to campaign for you, you have no principles and certainly don’t belong in the U.S. Senate.

Bottom line Texans deserves a strong principled leader to represent the state in the U.S. Senate. The choice is very clear–Beto O’Rourke!!

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