No Texas Two-Step For 2016 Super Tuesday Primary

Seven years after Barack Obama earned the majority of Texas' presidential delegates, despite losing the primary vote count to Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008, the Democratic National Committee put an end to the Texas "two-step" of primary vote and then "caucus" to allocate presidential delegates the Democratic National Convention. The DNC said the Texas two-step "had the potential to confuse voters" for the 2016 primary. Under DNC rules the process must be either all caucus or all polling place votes.

The 2016 "Super Tuesday" Texas primary will allocate the largest slate of delegates up for grabs on that election date for Democratic presidential contenders vying for the party’s nomination. With Bernie Sanders increasingly looking like a primary contender against Hillary Clinton, the DNC did not want repeat of the 2008 delegate allocation controversies caused by the two-step process.

Pledged Texas delegates will be allocated to each 2016 Presidential candidate based solely on the number of ballots cast for each candidate in March 1, 2016 Democratic Primary election. Presidential candidates must receive at least 15% of the vote in a Texas Senatorial District to receive a district delegate and must receive at least 15% statewide to receive at-large delegates. Texas is the big post Iowa and New Hampshire prize on Super Tuesday with Texas Democrats selecting 252 delegates, including 30 pledged super delegates, for largest single delegate count of any state up to and including the other super Tuesday states.

The Democratic National Committee long ago adopted a rule specifying presidential delegates must be allocated based solely on the count of primary ballots cast for each candidate. The Texas two-step has been grandfathered by DNC waiver for every presidential election cycle since the DNC adopted that presidential delegate allocation rule.

At its June 26th meeting in Washington, the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee unanimously rejected the Texas Democratic Party's 2016 primary two-step waiver request. Texas was long the lone remaining state to have continually been granted a waiver to allocate delegates through a two-step primary and precinct convention "caucus" process. Texas Democratic Primary voters WILL NOT return to precinct "caucus" conventions after the polls close on Primary Election Day.  Election Day precinct "caucus" conventions are a thing of the past.

Privatization Ruining Our Education System

Profit-seeking in the banking and health care industries has victimized Americans. Now it’s beginning to happen in education, with our children as the products.

There are good reasons – powerful reasons – to stop the privatization efforts before the winner-take-all free market creates a new vehicle for inequality. At the very least we need the good sense to slow it down while we examine the evidence about charters and vouchers.

Charter Schools Have Not Improved Education

The recently updated CREDO study at Stanford revealed that while charters have made progress since 2009, their performance is about the same as that of public schools. The differences are, in the words of the National Education Policy Center, “so small as to be regarded, without hyperbole, as trivial.” Furthermore, the four-year improvement demonstrated by charters may have been due to the closing of schools that underperformed in the earlier study, and also by a variety of means to discourage the attendance of lower-performing students.

Texas charters had a much lower graduation rate in 2012 than traditional schools.

Read the full story at Salon: 4 ways privatization is ruining our education system

The Democrats' Tunnel Vision

By now even a narcoleptic could recite the GOP's parody of Democrats. The party of "big government." Champions of "class warfare" programmed to "tax and spend" other people's money. An amalgam of interest groups divorced from the national interest. Practitioners of "identity politics" bent only on getting to 51 percent. Enemies of the "job creators." Enablers of listless bureaucrats and their shiftless dependents. Spineless hand-wringers with no respect for our past or faith in our future.

A lot of this is political bilge, a shameless inversion of the GOP's divisive politics and intellectual vacuity. In debate all three Democratic candidates are specific, informed and grounded in a reality largely absent from the Republican contest. But all too often, and particularly on the stump, Democrats themselves can verge on self-parody, purveyors of programs bereft of a larger vision.

According to public opinion expert Peter Hart, the great majority of Americans want a new course after the Obama years, and by two to one believe that America is headed in the wrong direction.  Bilious as it is, Donald Trump's pledge to "make America great again" touches something deeper than just resentment or nostalgia -- a desire for national renewal which, at its best, could inspire a more transcendent politics, transforming widespread angst about our future into a shared and positive mission.

All too often Democrats who speak of pragmatism rather than with vision fail to transcend.

Read the full article published at HuffingtonPost 

The 4th Democratic Debate - January 17 2016

Sunday's Democratic debate, hosted by NBC, was the party's second-most watched this election cycle, with about 10.2 million viewers tuning into the channel, according to the network.

While NBC's ratings beat out the last two Democratic debates it isn't even close to the first Democratic debate hosted by CNN, which brought in 15.3 million viewers. ABC had about 7.8 million viewers and CBS had about 8.5 million viewers opposite the debate on NBC.

The uptick in audience share last night, over the last two DNC debates, could be the result of the last two debates were also held on Saturdays, which typically see lower ratings than Sundays. The third debate on the Saturday before Christmas day on ABC attracted only 6.71 million viewers. The second debate attracted 8.5 million viewers on a mid-November Saturday when two Iowa university football teams matched off. And interest may have increased with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) closing the polling gap with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in early voting states Iowa and New Hampshire, which has resulted in Clinton going on the attack against Sanders by pointing out their differences on health care and gun control. 

The Republican debates have all lacked what the Democratic debates have. This was another substantive debate among the Democrats, devoid of the histrionics, name-calling, and fact-free pronouncements that are pro forma in the Republican presidential debate shows. The Democratic candidates disagree on how to achieve certain policy goals, but they all agree on those big goals. Democrats have a real vision for the country. There isn’t a battle for the direction of the party happening on the Democratic side.

Any of three Democratic candidates would make a better president than any of the dozen Republicans running for the White House. Democrats demonstrated their competence and ability to govern during the NBC debate. Clinton, Sanders, and O’Malley have the policies that are missing on the Republican side. While Republicans fight the culture wars and rage against the nation’s changing demographics, Democrats are speaking to the real problems of ordinary Americans.

Case in point -- When Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were asked if they saw any scenario where ground forces could be used to combat ISIS. Former Sec. Clinton said, “absolutely not.” Sanders blasted Republicans for not learning the lessons of Iraq, and he said that using ground forces to combat ISIS would lead to perpetual war and be a complete disaster. Sanders said that ISIS won’t be destroyed with American troops in perpetual warfare. Martin O’Malley said that he believed that President Obama was doing the right thing. O’Malley said that he appreciates that Democrats don’t use the term boot on the ground.

• Salon: Democratic debate puts GOP clown show to shame: “Makes the Republican debate look like the real kids table”

But that's not to say the fourth Democratic debate was all kumbaya. Clinton and Sanders presented different visions on their approach to governing – big ideas verses pragmatism. While Sanders urged his audience to “think big,” Clinton repeatedly cautioned thinking big is not pragmatic.

• Associated Press: “Their heated rhetoric highlighted the central question fueling the increasingly competitive primary race: Will the Sanders passion beat out the Clinton practicality?”
• ABC’s Rick Klein: The debate re-framed the race as “a battle pitting the party’s head against its heart.

Watch the full debate video:

Fact checkers of the last Democratic Debate found that nearly all of the major claims made by the candidates were actually true.