I’ve been in Austin since Saturday afternoon campaigning for Obama in whatever way possible–I’ll give a full report of my activities soon, but the bottom line is that it involves riding on the interstate in the bed of a pickup truck.
It also involves getting some drinks with KT of Burnt Orange Report and our own Brian, who went to school around these parts.
Fun times. I’m very fond of Austin, and am looking forward to coming back for Netroots Nation.
More to come, but another busy day awaits tomorrow.
I don’t watch much in the way of TV ads when I’m at home. My replayTV cuts those out of my life. I occasionally go searching political ads out on YouTube or catch them on websites, but I’m definitely a bit hard to reach with regular TV ads. But here in Texas, even with a TiVo, I can’t avoid them. That’s because pretty much every ad is for some political candidate or another.
Obama definitely has more of them, but Clinton definitely has a strong presence on the air. To the right you’ve got SEIU’s 527 pro-Obama ad. To the left you’ve got one of Clinton’s ads that she’s running here in Texas. It seems to be a slightly modified version of an Ohio ad, with less union shoutouts and more Texas flags. And Hillary’s Latino song seems to be everywhere too, and, wow, that catches in your mind pretty quickly.
I suppose I really couldn’t say if the presidential candidates advertised a whole lot more in Texas than in California, but I think what makes it so much more noticeable are all the other campaigns at the same time. You have the primary for the Senate campaign, where Rick Noriega is running against a perennial candidate and some random Republican-turned-Democrat. By the by, Noriega was at yKos last year, where I had a chance to meet him. He was quite an interesting, and impressive man. But far more visible are all the ads for the state House and judgeships. Man, there must be hundreds of ads for all the different state court judgeships. It must be like Christmas in March for the ad sales folks.
And then there are the signs, oh, the signs. At well-trafficked corners you have dozens of massive signs competing for your attention. Like for Dawnna Dukes, the Democrat who votes for Republican Speakers of the House every single time, yet keeps getting reelected in a heavily Democratic district. The reason I bring up Dukes, well check out the ad over the flip where her real Democratic challenger name drops the presidential candidates.
And I could go on for much, much longer with all these ads. As I said, they are pretty much every ad on TV here in Texas these days. I’m not sure what Bud Light is going to do to make Texans consider drinking that stuff with the ad time all taken up.
Clinton has a big town hall airing live on Fox Sports (interesting choice) and at HillaryClinton.com on Monday night. I’m going to try to get a ticket for that, should be an interesting event, even if only for the crowd interaction.
Before I get to the debate, I’d like to send my condolences to the family of the motorcycle officer killed in a traffic accident en route to a campaign event in Dallas.
The debate itself was quite the lovefest that we saw here in California at the Kodak theater. (You can watch the debate at cnn.com or through the numerous clips the two campaigns have posted on youtube.) There were a few jabs in there (“that’s change you can xerox“), but I don’t think anything was landed. The crowd booed the Xerox jab, and Clinton really didn’t come off too well.
Where Clinton did come off well was when she emphasized party unity and the fact that she could, in fact, lose the race. She does humble really well, and after an outright cocky presidency for the last seven+ years, perhaps Americans are craving a bit of humbleness in their next leader.
The Texas polls are now within the margin of error. An ABCNews poll released yesterday has a Clinton 48-47 lead, and Ralph Brodie at IVR polls has Clinton at 50-45 using a new (untested) turnout model. Doing the Texas two-step will require turnout at both the election and the precinct caucuses. Delegate count will likely be very, very close due to the proportionality and that most of the state Senate districts are even delegates. Obama might be able to pick up some delegates in the delegate rich districts of Austin, Dallas, and Houston, but many of the Latino districts in South Texas are 4-delegates. And these 4 delegate districts require the 62% threshold to break the tie. It’s tough to imagine many of those districts doing anything but 2-2.
More over the flip
Yesterday I was contacted by the Obama campaign to volunteer in Texas. I’ll probably do some work on the campaign, but, of course, I’ll do my best to cover any events in the Austin area for both Clinton and Obama. I must say, I’m pretty excited to head to Texas for the first election that I can remember that had an effect on the presidency.
Representative Chet Edwards wasn’t supposed to carry that title anymore. He was supposed to be redistricted out of his seat by the Delay redistricting measures. The problem? He beats all comers. His seat is about R+20, yet he keeps winning elections in his Waco, TX based district.
I bring this up because I’ll be heading to Texas next week, so I thought I should bring up some of the information about the race before I get there. Rep. Edwards endorsed Obama at the semi-famous Waco suspension bridge. (Not that I’d knock Waco or anything, but it’s about 1/10th the size of the GG bridge) From his speech:
“As the father of two young sons, I care deeply about the future of our nation, and that is why I am endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for president of the United States,” Edwards said. “I believe Sen. Obama can bring about real change in Washington – change that will make a positive difference for average working Americans struggling to keep up with the high costs of health care, gasoline and education.”…
“As someone who has spent most of my adult life fighting for veterans and for military troops and their families, I am convinced that Sen. Obama will be a champion for better health care, housing and quality of life for those who have sacrificed so much for the American family,” Edwards said. “He knows that standing up for our troops, our veterans and their families is the right thing to do – for them and for our nation’s security.”(Waco Trib 2/18/08)
UPDATE (Bob): There’s a new CNN poll inside the margin of error. Following a Town Hall in San Antonio tomorrow afternoon, Obama will be traveling to Houston’s Toyota Center (capacity: 19,300) for his Wisconsin night speech with George Lopez. Early voting begins tomorrow.
Representative Chet Edwards wasn’t supposed to carry that title anymore. He was supposed to be redistricted out of his seat by the Delay redistricting measures. The problem? He beats all comers. His seat is about R+20, yet he keeps winning elections in his Waco, TX based district.