Matthew Dowd is a political consultant and pundit, once associated with the Democratic Party in Texas, helping Lloyd Benson with his Senate Campaigns there, but who was lured to the Dark side by the 2004 reelection bid of George W. Bush, whom Dowd, much to his later regret, helped to hold the Oval Office. But Dowd is perhaps best known for having a “Road to Damascus moment” during Bush’s second term when, disaffected by the Bush/Cheney prosecution of the war in Iraq, he broke with the completely with Republican Party.
Dowd ran ran for the Democratic nomination for Lt. Governor of Texas last year but was bested in his primary.
My point here being he know something about Texas and its voter and demographics.
And Dowd says stories of Democrats losing ground with Hispanic voters in Texas are just that – stories. Stories made from whole cloth by GOP operatives intending to dishearten Democrats and boost GOP advantage at the polls:
It feels like this is another one of the tropes that gets recycled every two years.
— Glen Cantrell (@SnarkyLibruhl) October 30, 2022
Why yes, yes it does.
Anything to depress the Democratic vote.
— Miss Murray's Mom (@sgh956) October 31, 2022
Yup
Hoping & praying for changes in Texas. From abortion rights, low teacher pay/morale, gun violence, a corrupt AG, high property taxes, foster care failure, lowest insured in the country, inadequate power grid. I can go on but these are a few of the reasons for leadership changes
— Janabg 🌻 (@jgbern19) October 30, 2022
🙏 🙏 🙏
That trend bodes well. Go Beto!@BetoORourke pic.twitter.com/mgyZazZhYK
— Bryan Boyne (@bryanboyne) October 30, 2022
👍
Thank him for me and my (mostly women) family in Texas, I can't help from here. I'd be proud to shake his hand.
— Ella & Daddy (@ellico2020bis) October 30, 2022
🙌
— Britt Nessie (@DemocraticDaisy) October 30, 2022
🤣🤣🤣
No matter what you see or hear, prepare to get those ballots in without fail. pic.twitter.com/IERytRXNLK
— Donna Marie (@DmJ43) October 30, 2022
Yup
Second best news I have heard today. First was Bolsonaro’s loss. Come on, Texas and USA, we can save ourselves from fascism.
— Skip To Mallou (@SkipToMallou) October 31, 2022
👌👌👌
Thanks, Matthew, for providing a little pick me up this morning.
The thing about GOP disinformation is that it is parroted by so many so called reputable News sources.
Good to see some push back.
After doing my morning turn here on PZ to check goings on, I started reading other stuff online. The GOP it seems is engaging in a form of voter suppression via discouragement – putting out a bunch of suspect polls that get included in the averages by respected outlets like 538 that take the aggregate/average of all the polls. This has the effect of creating the appearance of a trend towards the GOP, and again the intent is to make those who’d be voting for Democrats discouraged, to say “what’s the point?” and stay home. Check this out if you don’t believe me – https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/political-expert-tells-media-to-stop-getting-played-by-republican-polling-averages-flooding-the-zone/ar-AA13yMz4?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=b340784cf7134ff281ff8805db5cc691
We have to fight like hell to get the word out that all is in fact NOT lost. That the GOP is gaming the polling system (and how) to discourage our voters. As for 538 and others, the old statistics adage about “garbage in, garbage out’ comes to mind. WTF is wrong with them? They are experts and SHOULD be able to look into the methodology of polls they feed into their models! If a poll isn’t on the level, it shouldn’t be included. And if one of those suspect polls refuses to open their books (so to speak) then their polling results should be excluded from the aggregate models. To me at least that’s simple common sense thinking. I always assumed these people are smarter than I am, but now I’m not so sure. But I’m increasingly sure they are lacking in basic reasoning/common sense thinking both about their ongoing work and the damage their laziness might do.
Perhaps like the overall “profession” of journalism they’ve been hooked on the extra money they make via the attention they get when they “report” on “horse race” stuff instead of just reporting FACTS.
Check out electoral-vote.com; they’ve been my daily go-to for years and years, and they’re also critical of some of 538’s poll selection.
Not to be a contrarian, but sometimes the opposite is true. Look how many voters sat out 2016 because “Hilary had it in the bag.” They may be trying to suppress the vote, but everyone I know is determined to have their say. The thought the rethugs could win is enough to get me off the sofa and out to vote.
The only way Mr. Dowd’s information helps is if those anti-republican Hispanics get out and vote…and vote for democrats. Specifically for Beto although any and every ‘pube voted out of office would be a plus for TX.
What I find so absurd about the whole “Hispanics going for the GOP” line is how so many of these very people forget that the GOP has been using THEM as scapegoats. The GOP, especially under Trump, has been specifically demeaning Mexicans (the absolutely largest group of Hispanics living in Texas) for the last 6 years. Sure, you’ll get the odd Mexican-American GOPer elected to office and that single achievement puts the whole “Hispanics going for the GOP” line back to the forefront but you NEVER see that particular Mexican-American explain why he (or she) is so eager to back the Party that is so ready to throw his (or her) entire ethnic group under the bus as the current face of “all that’s wrong” with America. And why is there no explanation? The “liberal media” never asks the question in the first place. Right-wing media just takes the Hispanic person for granted as some “natural” event but never actually talks to the person as to why he or she decided to support the GOP and conservative causes in the first place.
If you read another of my comments on this article you’ll know I don’t buy into the “Hispanics are making a major shift to the GOP” narrative. Having siad that, the fact is that the GOP has in fact made inroads. Including in TX. It’s a complicated voting bloc which given how large it is shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. FL for example has a Cuban (or perhaps more accurately Cuban heritage) population that has always been staunchly conservative. You also have families that have been here for generations who are removed from the countries of their ancestors, and even if the first family members came here outside the rules and got amnesty from the Reagan administration in the 1980s are possessed of a “those” people “should wait their turn” mentality. And then there’s the issue of abortion. Most Hispanics are Catholic, and as you know many, both documented and not work hard and for low wages. Their enclaves are served by old-school priests who get “dumped” in such places because of their hard-line views on social issues and you’d better believe these priests teach their parishoners that abortion is evil, homosexuality is a mortal sin etc. And they help these people vote! There are large swaths of such communities along the border and in a state as large as Texas it makes a difference. Even those with citizenship or at least green cards have priests teaching them that voting for a Democrats puts their very soul at risk. And for those who can vote it’s not hard (for me at least) to understand why, despite all the shit conservatives heap upon them and other Hispanics if they vote they vote Republican.
I believe we have ignored this for far too long. As a result we’ve paid a price electorally. It’s a problem that won’t be easily fixed but simply doing “conservatives/Republicans have policies that are bad for you, even when delivered in Spanish simply isn’t enough. Like Evangelicals they will do what their “man of faith” tells them to do. Getting them to think for themselves and see the greater evil to humanity conservatives represent is damned tough, and will take a very long time. And some very local specific work and messaging.
I live in south Florida and personally know people BORN in Cuba who were able to come here in the 80’s b/c they had a relative that sought asylum here. These same people insist Biden is a communist and anything negative said about Trump is ‘bias’. (They are also vehement that people NOT be allowed to seek asylum..the whole GOP ‘me first’ party. ‘I’ve got mine, fuck the rest of you.’) It floors me that anyone, particularly someone who has had experience with actual communism would think Biden is even remotely ‘socialist’ let alone communist. One person in particular stopped watching Fox News after the election b/c Fox was ‘biased’ with their short lived ‘Trump attempted a coup b/c he lost the election’ talk. We can blame Fox News, priests etc (and there is truth in placing fault there) but like many cultures, respect isn’t ‘earned’ like it is in many areas of the US. Respect is given to 1) men 2) men older than you. So the women and young men defer to older men in their family and community. Always. They’ll believe what they’re told b/c part of the culture is derferring to those older men. As an example I know some millennials that see Trump for who he is but even risking voting against what their family says (despite being aware their family can’t & wont know how they vote) is too big a risk. Democrats seem to be so terrible at messaging. So terrible in fact that I’ve started thinking it’s deliberate. That fundraising against authoritarianism is doing so well that they won’t stop it for fear the fundraising will dry up. Like someone else here commented,’they can’t be more stupid than me, can they?’
There are enough Repubs preaching from enough pulpits that we need to get the IRS to take the tax-exempt status away from some of these mega-churches. They don’t seem to give a shit and I don’t know how we get that point across. While poll-greeting Saturday I offered a voter a slate of Democratic candidates and he said, “No thank you, I’m a conservative Christian”. I smiled and said, I’m a Christian too, what does that have to do with it? As he walked toward the door, two other women working out there cheered me on lol! “Best comeback I’ve heard all day!” Hey, I was just telling the truth, these people trying to blow up the wall between church and state are getting on my nerves!
my wife and I voted in Texas this weekend.