Cruz defeated his 2018 challenger by two points. According to polling, that spread should have been closer to 10 points. Cruz has not only moved further to the right since then, but his behavior during the freeze of 2021 and the hurricane that hit Houston in July have substantially eroded his support in the state.
It’s also interesting to me that a Hispanic immigrant is so vocally opposed to immigration. Perhaps someone needs to point this cognitive dissonance out to Rafael? 🤔
What pissed me off back in '18 was that during early voting, many people reported that if they voted straight-ticket Democrat, their ballots would switch the Senator vote to Cruz. After a week, the SoS declared that they'd fixed the issue, but he did not allow impacted voters to cure their ballots. I'm 100% convinced that that was the sole reason he defeated Beto.
Sounds like Republican voter fraud to me, you'll should of been able to correct this. Why is it that when voter fraud come up its always the repthugs doing it and whining about the Democrats dishonesty must be pure projection learned from Der leader. The orange Pendejo.
First of all, he is from Cuba and is, ipse facto, a privileged immigrant! Secondly, the phenomenon of recent immigrants being opposed to immigration is more widespread than many think. In England, we had an expression, “I’m alright, Jack!” with the following unspoken expression, “screw the rest of you!”.
I was involved as an expert in condemnation cases for the border fence construction near Nogales Arizona. As part of my analyses I talked with many Latino property owners—males—and several Latino—male-border guard officers. Overall, they seemed to despise attempted immigrants at the border. They were obdurate to these people’s suffering and had deep rationalizations for their beliefs.
Opinions, opinions, opinions. How humans wrap their arms around their opinions and make them their identities.
His father is from Cuba, unfortunately his mother is American, he was born in Canada in the province of Alberta (a northern version of Texas) *shudder*So because his mother is from the states, it made him eligible to apply for status here. Which he did, I don't think we could oust him. And yes conservative cultures are quite crappy towards other more unfortunate immigrants. They fit right in with our republican party whose motto is : "I got mine f*ck you."
We have several excremental immigrants in our country: Peter Theil, Elon Musk, Rafael Edward Cruz, Rupert Murdoch, just to name a few of the worst. Not the hard working immigrants they are blaming and want to deport.
Being a retired chef 👩🍳 I have worked with many immigrants over 40 years never had a problem with. Goals are not dissimler from anyone else in this country, want to work hard and take care of family, lofty Goals huh! tRump is insane and projecting that all immigrants are criminals and rapist or murderers, is ridiculous, eating pets in Ohio? When he said that his cult should of collapsed and we must never forget that crap and never let tRump/Vance forget it or live it down.
Don't get me wrong here -- AFAIC, Cruz is made of the same stuff you have to scrape off the bottom of your shoe after an unfortunate misstep.
But let's get the facts right. Ted Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, to a Cuban father and an American mother, thereby having dual Canada/US citizenship. He renounced his Canadian citizenship some ten years ago.
Still, he's not a native Texan, so his call to keep Texas Texas rings a little hollow to my seventh-generation ears. I figure that since my great-great-great-great-grandfather was a registered voter in the Republic of Texas, that my liberal beliefs are, by definition, what a "real" Texan thinks.
Thank you. Also, his father was the crucible holding Senator Cruz’s brain that was mashed with a pestle so that elements of bigotry and elitism could be mixed in.
Rafael also accused his last opponent, a white man who went by the Hispanic nickname of Beto because he grew up in Hispanic majority El Paso, of denying his heritage. Look in the mirror, "Ted."
Fantastic article! Thanks for inspiring Texans to #LoseCruz and employ Colin Allred as the next US Senator for Texas. VOTE BLUE TEXAS! VOTE ALLRED for US Senate!
PS: There is a still photo, not video, following your comment, "You can see him getting called out on his non-answers and avoidance of the question by the moderators around the 3:20 mark and the 5:10 mark:" I point this out because the video clips from last night's debate are so damning of Cruz and speak very highly of Allred's ability to handle himself verbally and intellectually, in the heat of debate moments, they need to be seen and shared widely.
Beto just missed beating him. When I lived there, I frequently watched his live streams of his car tour. They were awesome. He ran a great campaign but I think Allred has a little more general appeal than Beto did. Republicans in Texas did a good job convincing gun owners that Beto was going to try to enact draconian gun laws.
Cruz is gross and disgusting. Allred comes across sort of the same way Walz does... an everyday guy with confidence and empathy.
I hope Kamala spends a day or two out in Texas. There is a ton of hard core blue urban area in Texas, and if she and Allred could just peel off a little bit of red in each red county (there are by my count approximately 37 billion sparsely populated red counties in Texas), she could pull off a miracle victory and make this an early election night.
Such a cynic! :-) But yeah, probably. She didn’t write the Citizens United decision, so she’s gotta play the game. Hopefully, under her guidance, we can get it overturned through legislation after her landslide victory.
You'll never convince me that Beto didn't beat him. There was the Cambridge Analytica nonsense that Cruz was in deep with and then there were the straight ticket votes that switched from Beto to Cruz. With a Republican SoS and such a small margin of "victory", I smell cheating.
Getting humbled and ridiculed in debates rarely result in an incumbent's loss in a coming election...sure, it may be great for the challenger's fund-raising, but doesn't change the basic calculus of a race: party registration wins the day usually, and that's the Dems cross to bear in Tejas.
You sure sound like you’re voting for Ted Cruz. You most likely haven’t been blockwalking for Democrats every day the way I have for the past month. Ted Cruz is hated in Texas - and that changes the “calculus”.
The women of Texas will never forget that Ted Cruz is responsible for voting in favor of putting three extremist right wingers with conflicts of interest on the US Supreme Court that then overturned Roe v. Wade. Texas women are not forgetting that Ted Cruz is among the men responsible for forcing 26,000 raped Texas women to give birth to their rapist's child.
Since Cruz won't renounce, or even discuss, his refusal to grant a raped woman an abortion, I'll again speculate as to why: Is Ted Cruz an incestuous rapist who is using his legislative position to make his criminal rapes, "legal"? What is Cruz hiding that he insists raped women cannot get abortions, even when the rapist is blood-related (incest) to the victim and the child to be produced is a product of such incest? What sort of a monster denies a woman raped through incest, an abortion?
The most obvious conclusion: Ted Cruz is an incestuous rapist who attempting to make his heinous crimes "legal", using the exact same tactics his guru, Trump, taught him: deny, lie, obfuscate, project and accuse your opponent of your crimes, and destroy democracy through destruction of women's bodily autonomy, among other methods.
Dumb of you to assume the commenter is voting for Cruz. Thank you, nonetheless, for you service block walking. Hope it translates to oblivion for Cruz.
Thanks for the insult! Straight out of Trump’s playbook of how to treat women. It is NOT motivating me to blockwalk. Getting rid of people who insult women who dare to stand up and question why a man feels he has the right to walk into a conversation, insult the woman writer, and get others to gang up against the ONE WOMAN WHO IS WORKING TO DEFEAT CRUZ (don’t see any of you talking or posting photos of your blockwalking) is what motivates me. If that means the Texas Democratic Party needs to be cleansed of misogynistic power operatives who work to keep men in charge while gratuitously insulting women is the day I work towards.
Your reaction to Cruz is very similar to my reaction to Mark Robinson who is running for Governor here in NC. I am not prone to violence, but I woud so like to personally like to wipe that smug look off his face.
That is never going to happen, but I am working hard to elect Josh Stein (and the rest of the NC Democrats on the ballot) along with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz!!
Kelley, is alienating a portion of the voting public a good idea? I feel your anger, but wouldn't it be better to direct it towards your election efforts rather than ranting here (where everyone basically is on the same side)? I think we need to offer a little grace to everyone, especially when the times are so fraught with emotion.
Again, please allow me to defend myself when attacked by a member of the “same side”. Heaven forbid a woman display anger at being insulted and publicly dismissed by men who play victim! Please direct your chiding of “no violence” and “no anger” to the men who stepped in to insult and belittle my comments, which were never insulting or “violent”.
Well, I'll overlook the very silly indeed comment about "...voting for Ted Cruz...", but Cruz was also "hated in Texas" when Beto ran against him in 2018, and who himself ran a sterling campaign, but in the end couldn't persuade a small wedge of the GOP electorate majority to vote for him.
OK, maybe it *could* happen with Allred, but that would more likely occur if the Harris-Walz ticket really outperformed the polling, IMHO.
This man, Lance Khrome, stepped into my note/comment and is attacking me. Would you mind if I defend myself and point out that Lance Khrome is responsible for starting the carping and snipping so if anyone should quit attacking, it’s him. I realize men are used to being able to shut women up with Lance’s type of tactic but, to quote the woman I am voting for: WE ARE NOT GOING BACK.
Misogynistic, inadequate response. What male privilege to ask a woman who has bested you in a debate to “please go away”! Men like you are the reason- even if you never voted for him- we are dealing with the specter of Trump. Men like you support insulting and belittling women in personal attacks that have nothing to do with the discussion and that allowed Trump to gain enough social acceptance so that all of society is mired in Trump’s - and your - childish behavior. I’m not having it. I’m calling out. I AM NOT GOING BACK.
Rafael advised the RWNJs to appoint those horrible beings to judgeship. No matter how awful you think he is...he is always worse. (He was in law groups with those right-wing rectal fistulas. So he knows how backwards and dogmatically fanatic they are.)
Sadly, Gilberto Hinojosa, the Dem chair in Texas, is no Nikki Fried (the chair of Florida's Dem Party who seems to be building a killer ground game there). He's been pretty ineffectual for some time. I don't know how he keeps his job.
But local Dem groups in urban areas like Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Austin, and Dallas are making up for the normal lack of Dem ground game there at the state level, from what I'm reading in various sources.
According to the Texas Tribune:
"Since U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz was last on the ballot in 2018 and narrowly won reelection by just 215,000 votes, Texas has added nearly 2.6 million voters — the size of Connecticut’s entire voting rolls.
"The biggest growth has come in Harris County (Houston) and along the I-35 (Austin-Dallas-San Antonio) corridor, areas that have trended blue in recent elections.
"While transplants from other states make up a good portion of that rise, voter advocacy groups say it is also a product of their work in places like Houston and San Antonio to find and register Texans who don't typically participate in elections."
I'm a hopium addict. I think Allred's got a chance.
Well said, Charles, but there remains the party reg. headwinds for the Dems, and to turn round the voting predilections of a firm Red state in one or two election cycles is a big ask. It took the GOP several rounds of voting to take TX from the LBJ/Yarborough/Bentsen/Richardson era to where it is today, and I imagine the Dems need the same order of time to reverse party representation at the state and federal level.
It all starts down at the grass roots , and I can't speak to what sort of success the ground game is at this point, but one major win may be all that is needed to catalyze a rejuvenation of the Texas Democratic Party,
Harris County makes up 16% of all Texas voters. That's huge. It's drawing new voters. The ranch counties are not. They're losing people. The oil and gas counties - such as the Permian Basin, have a lot of red voters but they are often quite transient in nature. Many of these oil workers are in one state one month and another another month. The Permian is also running dry, so even if Republicans squeak by in this election, the basin's population is going to drop sooner rather than later.
I think one way to look at it is how Texas Republicans look at it.
“They’re terrified,” Harris County commissioner Rodney Ellis, a Democrat, said about the change Republicans have witnessed at the ballot box over the last decade.
“They keep coming after us because we represent the future,” Ellis said. “They know as Harris County goes, eventually so will Texas.”
Like Florida this year, Harris County has built a significant ground game. That's where elections are won/lost. So, although the state chair for the Dems seems to be one of those guys who puts his feet on the desk with his phone turned off, the urban areas are stepping up their game.
PS: There is a still photo, not video, following your comment, "You can see him getting called out on his non-answers and avoidance of the question by the moderators around the 3:20 mark and the 5:10 mark:"
⬆️
A hyperlink to the Tweet with the video is embedded in the sentence you quoted above. Jay does this a lot, especially for longer video clips. Aways try clicking what appears to be underlined text. ;-)
It chilled me to hear Cruz casually referring to parents' rights to know their pregnant "child" was seeking an abortion. That it's ok for children to be pregnant and forced to bear other children IS Republican policy.
I know two women who were forced by their religious parents to bear children as teens, it screwed them up because they really weren't ready, or willing to do so. The parents ended up raising one kid who must have sensed she wasn't the product of a healthy relationship. She ended up in jail for a long time, the other seems okay, but it's a guy so hard to tell.
I never believe the polls. They are rigged, as you described in great detail yesterday on The Big Picture. Adam Kinzinger has actually moved to Texas and has campaigned vigorously for Colin. Liz Cheney has also been there several times for Colin. Colin is out raising Cruz. According to Colin's interview with Simon Rosenberg on Hopium Chronicles, Colin has broad support from Republicans as well. The polls do not reflect new voter registrations, especially among women and Gen Z. AOC, Bernie, and Jasmine Crockett of course have campaigned for Colin. 20 more days. And, by the way, thank you for your piece yesterday on The Big Picture. I have friends who canvas and phone bank. I was able to calm them and present the facts. And 3 men I know have decided to canvas on a bus we have going to Pennsylvania this weekend rather than watch football or golf. I have postcard parties as I'm in family caregiver mode at the moment. This is the most important election of our lifetime. We all most DO SOMETHING! That's what Michelle Obama told us to do.
I love this story about Al Franken’s take on Ted Cruz, the man(?) who didn’t defend his wife over DJT’s attack on her and who is one of the most hated men in politics.
"I probably like Ted Cruz more than most of my colleagues like Ted Cruz, and I hate Ted Cruz," Franken said on CNN's "New Day" Wednesday morning. "And I make an exception with him because he is a toxic coworker, and to get anything done in the Senate, you've got to be collegial. You're a small town of 100 people. Ted doesn't get anything done. His big accomplishment was shutting down the government."
Last year, I helped collect petitions here in the backwater state of Ohio to restore Roe to our constitution.
It was the raped , pregnant 10 year old child that couldn’t receive the healthcare she needed here in Ohio that spurred many, many young women I worked with to get involved. They have young daughters. They, themselves, could find a similar situation thrust upon them.
Texas has broken my heart too many times. Perhaps the young women whose maternity rates has skyrocketed to 56% will have had enough and show up to vote. After all it’s their lives that are on the line. They just need to show up to stop the madness.
I'm in OH as well. I voted yesterday. I was surprised by how many people were there - middle of the day, Tuesday, and the line was out the door, the longest I've ever seen there. We were in line for about 45 minutes, I think. I hope that is a good sign.
I've seen some pretty good Planned Parenthood sponsored ads that have teenage girls talking about wanting to protect their bodily autonomy. Hopefully, all those kids will see those ads and take them to heart.
Today was day 1 of early voting in NC. I waited until mid-morning to go and waited about 1 hr 15 minutes to vote at a new polling place. I am midway between two EV sites - the other one (a library) is always swamped since everyone knows where it is.
It's Texas. They would have simply elected someone just as vile. Hopefully, eventually, Texas turns blue again. I think pollsters are grossly underestimating the new registrants in places like Harris County.
So justified, though. He has killed women because of his picking his equally vile right-wing associates to be appointed to the 5th circuit judgeships to carry out his preacher father's Dominionism.
They actually don’t care, it is just a distraction because Cruz has zero to run on. When I was in Ohio two weeks ago, I thought I was getting a Cruz ad on TV (I was in the kitchen) and walked into the living room and said “Why on earth are we getting a Cruz ad up here?”. It wasn’t. It was a Moreno add running on the same anti trans divisive nonsense. He has no record. And Cruz has been in the Senate 12 years. That says something. It is a non issue here in Texas. First of all, no child under 18 can have any sort of surgery period. Second puberty blockers, block puberty not enhance them. Third, none of this is actually happening. But using actual facts does nothing sense this is all distraction, just like Allred says that Cruz doesn’t want to talk another women dying in parking lots.
I'd dearly love to believe Cancún Ted AND Neb. Sen Deb Fischer are going down and out to their respective challengers, but for sooooo many election cycles, we've seen completely odious GOP incumbents win reëelection against excellent Dem candidates, and I'm not sure that this will change in 2024...however, one lives in hope.
The problem with my fellow Texans is they don't vote. Approximately 40% of registered voters can't be bothered to cast a vote in major elections. That's an insane level of apathy.
Excessive gerrymandering means that after 30 years of nothing changing no matter how hard you fight, you lose hope, that is the point. But that is finally changing.
Almost nothing would make me happier than to see slimy Ted Cruz beat by the amazing Colin Allred. But its Texas and there's no such thing as too slimy for Texas. I know there are wonderful people and good strong democrats in Texas. Just not enough of them. I so want to be proven wrong.
Honestly, what are Texans waiting for? Cruz has shown time and again what an incompetent, immoral person he is. Allred did a fantastic job exposing Cruz for what he is. Texans, do the rest and boot Cruz out!
I really want Cruz to be defeated, but Trump trumps that in my desires. With his laying out his fascistic side clearly for everyone to see, it will be a sad statement if he wins. Meanwhile Kamala Harris is the bravest women in America and should be made into a Superhero. In fact, I would like to see that movie more than The Apprentice. I assume a lot of people who see it who like Trump will just think it is cool how he was taught to get over by Roy Cohen. I would rather see a movie about a hero, the women who is standing up to the bad guy, who has been surrounded by bad guys all his life and gravitates to them as they to him. Bad guy Bros. I wish they would all be put in a rocketship, like one of Elon Musks, and orbit the earth or go deep into outer space.
I just want to make a comment about Montana. Apparently 100,000 people there consider themselves sovereign citizens and have no government ID. Because the state just passed a requirement that you must provide ID to vote, these Trumpists can't vote. Could that help Tester and the Democrats?
Cruz defeated his 2018 challenger by two points. According to polling, that spread should have been closer to 10 points. Cruz has not only moved further to the right since then, but his behavior during the freeze of 2021 and the hurricane that hit Houston in July have substantially eroded his support in the state.
It’s also interesting to me that a Hispanic immigrant is so vocally opposed to immigration. Perhaps someone needs to point this cognitive dissonance out to Rafael? 🤔
What pissed me off back in '18 was that during early voting, many people reported that if they voted straight-ticket Democrat, their ballots would switch the Senator vote to Cruz. After a week, the SoS declared that they'd fixed the issue, but he did not allow impacted voters to cure their ballots. I'm 100% convinced that that was the sole reason he defeated Beto.
I’d forgotten that. Thank you for reminding me. More evidence that those crying most about voting corruption are the corrupters.
Every accusation is a confession!
Preach! I mention that EVERY TIME people say Cruz beat Beto. I'm pretty sure he didn't.
Sounds like Republican voter fraud to me, you'll should of been able to correct this. Why is it that when voter fraud come up its always the repthugs doing it and whining about the Democrats dishonesty must be pure projection learned from Der leader. The orange Pendejo.
First of all, he is from Cuba and is, ipse facto, a privileged immigrant! Secondly, the phenomenon of recent immigrants being opposed to immigration is more widespread than many think. In England, we had an expression, “I’m alright, Jack!” with the following unspoken expression, “screw the rest of you!”.
I was involved as an expert in condemnation cases for the border fence construction near Nogales Arizona. As part of my analyses I talked with many Latino property owners—males—and several Latino—male-border guard officers. Overall, they seemed to despise attempted immigrants at the border. They were obdurate to these people’s suffering and had deep rationalizations for their beliefs.
Opinions, opinions, opinions. How humans wrap their arms around their opinions and make them their identities.
Good description about opinions, but that is inevitable.
Not for all of us.
You have a point.
We must change the mind set
His father is from Cuba, unfortunately his mother is American, he was born in Canada in the province of Alberta (a northern version of Texas) *shudder*So because his mother is from the states, it made him eligible to apply for status here. Which he did, I don't think we could oust him. And yes conservative cultures are quite crappy towards other more unfortunate immigrants. They fit right in with our republican party whose motto is : "I got mine f*ck you."
We have several excremental immigrants in our country: Peter Theil, Elon Musk, Rafael Edward Cruz, Rupert Murdoch, just to name a few of the worst. Not the hard working immigrants they are blaming and want to deport.
Being a retired chef 👩🍳 I have worked with many immigrants over 40 years never had a problem with. Goals are not dissimler from anyone else in this country, want to work hard and take care of family, lofty Goals huh! tRump is insane and projecting that all immigrants are criminals and rapist or murderers, is ridiculous, eating pets in Ohio? When he said that his cult should of collapsed and we must never forget that crap and never let tRump/Vance forget it or live it down.
Don't get me wrong here -- AFAIC, Cruz is made of the same stuff you have to scrape off the bottom of your shoe after an unfortunate misstep.
But let's get the facts right. Ted Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, to a Cuban father and an American mother, thereby having dual Canada/US citizenship. He renounced his Canadian citizenship some ten years ago.
Still, he's not a native Texan, so his call to keep Texas Texas rings a little hollow to my seventh-generation ears. I figure that since my great-great-great-great-grandfather was a registered voter in the Republic of Texas, that my liberal beliefs are, by definition, what a "real" Texan thinks.
Thank you. Also, his father was the crucible holding Senator Cruz’s brain that was mashed with a pestle so that elements of bigotry and elitism could be mixed in.
Much to Canadians 🇨🇦 relief I'd guess.
Rafael also accused his last opponent, a white man who went by the Hispanic nickname of Beto because he grew up in Hispanic majority El Paso, of denying his heritage. Look in the mirror, "Ted."
He's from Canada. I believe he internally identifies with non-hispanics unless it's convenient for his politics.
Fantastic article! Thanks for inspiring Texans to #LoseCruz and employ Colin Allred as the next US Senator for Texas. VOTE BLUE TEXAS! VOTE ALLRED for US Senate!
PS: There is a still photo, not video, following your comment, "You can see him getting called out on his non-answers and avoidance of the question by the moderators around the 3:20 mark and the 5:10 mark:" I point this out because the video clips from last night's debate are so damning of Cruz and speak very highly of Allred's ability to handle himself verbally and intellectually, in the heat of debate moments, they need to be seen and shared widely.
Beto just missed beating him. When I lived there, I frequently watched his live streams of his car tour. They were awesome. He ran a great campaign but I think Allred has a little more general appeal than Beto did. Republicans in Texas did a good job convincing gun owners that Beto was going to try to enact draconian gun laws.
Cruz is gross and disgusting. Allred comes across sort of the same way Walz does... an everyday guy with confidence and empathy.
I hope Kamala spends a day or two out in Texas. There is a ton of hard core blue urban area in Texas, and if she and Allred could just peel off a little bit of red in each red county (there are by my count approximately 37 billion sparsely populated red counties in Texas), she could pull off a miracle victory and make this an early election night.
Correction: Kamala spent four of her first 10 days as the new nominee campaigning in Houston. I fact checked myself!!! Yay!!
Also Liz Cheney has been doing campaign interviews with Colin Allred.
According to the emails I get she's gunning for Cruz, donate to her it's beneficial to Colin.
Probably more about getting some oil money donations, but she was in Texas!
Such a cynic! :-) But yeah, probably. She didn’t write the Citizens United decision, so she’s gotta play the game. Hopefully, under her guidance, we can get it overturned through legislation after her landslide victory.
You'll never convince me that Beto didn't beat him. There was the Cambridge Analytica nonsense that Cruz was in deep with and then there were the straight ticket votes that switched from Beto to Cruz. With a Republican SoS and such a small margin of "victory", I smell cheating.
Don't worry, I won't try!
I certainly would if I could! Vote Allred, that is. (otherwise, I'm voting all blue!)
The link is in the text, not the picture.
https://x.com/theraisedvoice/status/1846439796664926620?s=61&t=dlYuBcwzZXmET9Xd_RRdaQ
Normally, I'd find it annoying that Substack doesn't have the capability to embed Twit videos like many other apps/website content platforms do.
On the other hand, I think anything that helps get people to stop visiting Leon Musk's apartheid platform is a good thing.
Thanks for pointing out the text. I missed it, too. It's in the text, "You can see him getting called out."
The link took me to the video! Cruz never answered the question about abortion exceptions. He’s creepy and full of hot air😡😡
Getting humbled and ridiculed in debates rarely result in an incumbent's loss in a coming election...sure, it may be great for the challenger's fund-raising, but doesn't change the basic calculus of a race: party registration wins the day usually, and that's the Dems cross to bear in Tejas.
You sure sound like you’re voting for Ted Cruz. You most likely haven’t been blockwalking for Democrats every day the way I have for the past month. Ted Cruz is hated in Texas - and that changes the “calculus”.
The women of Texas will never forget that Ted Cruz is responsible for voting in favor of putting three extremist right wingers with conflicts of interest on the US Supreme Court that then overturned Roe v. Wade. Texas women are not forgetting that Ted Cruz is among the men responsible for forcing 26,000 raped Texas women to give birth to their rapist's child.
Since Cruz won't renounce, or even discuss, his refusal to grant a raped woman an abortion, I'll again speculate as to why: Is Ted Cruz an incestuous rapist who is using his legislative position to make his criminal rapes, "legal"? What is Cruz hiding that he insists raped women cannot get abortions, even when the rapist is blood-related (incest) to the victim and the child to be produced is a product of such incest? What sort of a monster denies a woman raped through incest, an abortion?
The most obvious conclusion: Ted Cruz is an incestuous rapist who attempting to make his heinous crimes "legal", using the exact same tactics his guru, Trump, taught him: deny, lie, obfuscate, project and accuse your opponent of your crimes, and destroy democracy through destruction of women's bodily autonomy, among other methods.
Dumb of you to assume the commenter is voting for Cruz. Thank you, nonetheless, for you service block walking. Hope it translates to oblivion for Cruz.
People are scared. We should all be as gentle as possible with one another.
That sure gets my vote. Enough violence please.
Thanks for the insult! Straight out of Trump’s playbook of how to treat women. It is NOT motivating me to blockwalk. Getting rid of people who insult women who dare to stand up and question why a man feels he has the right to walk into a conversation, insult the woman writer, and get others to gang up against the ONE WOMAN WHO IS WORKING TO DEFEAT CRUZ (don’t see any of you talking or posting photos of your blockwalking) is what motivates me. If that means the Texas Democratic Party needs to be cleansed of misogynistic power operatives who work to keep men in charge while gratuitously insulting women is the day I work towards.
Your reaction to Cruz is very similar to my reaction to Mark Robinson who is running for Governor here in NC. I am not prone to violence, but I woud so like to personally like to wipe that smug look off his face.
That is never going to happen, but I am working hard to elect Josh Stein (and the rest of the NC Democrats on the ballot) along with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz!!
Kelley, is alienating a portion of the voting public a good idea? I feel your anger, but wouldn't it be better to direct it towards your election efforts rather than ranting here (where everyone basically is on the same side)? I think we need to offer a little grace to everyone, especially when the times are so fraught with emotion.
Again, please allow me to defend myself when attacked by a member of the “same side”. Heaven forbid a woman display anger at being insulted and publicly dismissed by men who play victim! Please direct your chiding of “no violence” and “no anger” to the men who stepped in to insult and belittle my comments, which were never insulting or “violent”.
“dumb of you”? Hmmmmmm.
Well, I'll overlook the very silly indeed comment about "...voting for Ted Cruz...", but Cruz was also "hated in Texas" when Beto ran against him in 2018, and who himself ran a sterling campaign, but in the end couldn't persuade a small wedge of the GOP electorate majority to vote for him.
OK, maybe it *could* happen with Allred, but that would more likely occur if the Harris-Walz ticket really outperformed the polling, IMHO.
You sure are a negative Nellie. Are you sure you're not voting for Cruz and trolling everyone here?
It seems to me you both may be on the same basic side as each other and attacking Lance for his opinion—IMO—IS COUNTER PRODUCTIVE.
Let’s shake hands and both help to get this squirrelly, disgusting worm of a human being defeated. I try to keep my powder dry to save for MAGAs.
This man, Lance Khrome, stepped into my note/comment and is attacking me. Would you mind if I defend myself and point out that Lance Khrome is responsible for starting the carping and snipping so if anyone should quit attacking, it’s him. I realize men are used to being able to shut women up with Lance’s type of tactic but, to quote the woman I am voting for: WE ARE NOT GOING BACK.
Oh, do go away, thank you very much.
Misogynistic, inadequate response. What male privilege to ask a woman who has bested you in a debate to “please go away”! Men like you are the reason- even if you never voted for him- we are dealing with the specter of Trump. Men like you support insulting and belittling women in personal attacks that have nothing to do with the discussion and that allowed Trump to gain enough social acceptance so that all of society is mired in Trump’s - and your - childish behavior. I’m not having it. I’m calling out. I AM NOT GOING BACK.
Hmmm. I guess I was wrong and Kelley was right. Sorry Kelley.
Rafael advised the RWNJs to appoint those horrible beings to judgeship. No matter how awful you think he is...he is always worse. (He was in law groups with those right-wing rectal fistulas. So he knows how backwards and dogmatically fanatic they are.)
Sadly, Gilberto Hinojosa, the Dem chair in Texas, is no Nikki Fried (the chair of Florida's Dem Party who seems to be building a killer ground game there). He's been pretty ineffectual for some time. I don't know how he keeps his job.
But local Dem groups in urban areas like Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Austin, and Dallas are making up for the normal lack of Dem ground game there at the state level, from what I'm reading in various sources.
According to the Texas Tribune:
"Since U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz was last on the ballot in 2018 and narrowly won reelection by just 215,000 votes, Texas has added nearly 2.6 million voters — the size of Connecticut’s entire voting rolls.
"The biggest growth has come in Harris County (Houston) and along the I-35 (Austin-Dallas-San Antonio) corridor, areas that have trended blue in recent elections.
"While transplants from other states make up a good portion of that rise, voter advocacy groups say it is also a product of their work in places like Houston and San Antonio to find and register Texans who don't typically participate in elections."
I'm a hopium addict. I think Allred's got a chance.
I love reading that.
Well said, Charles, but there remains the party reg. headwinds for the Dems, and to turn round the voting predilections of a firm Red state in one or two election cycles is a big ask. It took the GOP several rounds of voting to take TX from the LBJ/Yarborough/Bentsen/Richardson era to where it is today, and I imagine the Dems need the same order of time to reverse party representation at the state and federal level.
It all starts down at the grass roots , and I can't speak to what sort of success the ground game is at this point, but one major win may be all that is needed to catalyze a rejuvenation of the Texas Democratic Party,
Harris County makes up 16% of all Texas voters. That's huge. It's drawing new voters. The ranch counties are not. They're losing people. The oil and gas counties - such as the Permian Basin, have a lot of red voters but they are often quite transient in nature. Many of these oil workers are in one state one month and another another month. The Permian is also running dry, so even if Republicans squeak by in this election, the basin's population is going to drop sooner rather than later.
I think one way to look at it is how Texas Republicans look at it.
From the same article (apologies, it was Houston Chronicle, — https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2024/texas-registered-voters-trends/ — not Texas Tribune):
“They’re terrified,” Harris County commissioner Rodney Ellis, a Democrat, said about the change Republicans have witnessed at the ballot box over the last decade.
“They keep coming after us because we represent the future,” Ellis said. “They know as Harris County goes, eventually so will Texas.”
Like Florida this year, Harris County has built a significant ground game. That's where elections are won/lost. So, although the state chair for the Dems seems to be one of those guys who puts his feet on the desk with his phone turned off, the urban areas are stepping up their game.
PS: There is a still photo, not video, following your comment, "You can see him getting called out on his non-answers and avoidance of the question by the moderators around the 3:20 mark and the 5:10 mark:"
⬆️
A hyperlink to the Tweet with the video is embedded in the sentence you quoted above. Jay does this a lot, especially for longer video clips. Aways try clicking what appears to be underlined text. ;-)
It chilled me to hear Cruz casually referring to parents' rights to know their pregnant "child" was seeking an abortion. That it's ok for children to be pregnant and forced to bear other children IS Republican policy.
I know two women who were forced by their religious parents to bear children as teens, it screwed them up because they really weren't ready, or willing to do so. The parents ended up raising one kid who must have sensed she wasn't the product of a healthy relationship. She ended up in jail for a long time, the other seems okay, but it's a guy so hard to tell.
I never believe the polls. They are rigged, as you described in great detail yesterday on The Big Picture. Adam Kinzinger has actually moved to Texas and has campaigned vigorously for Colin. Liz Cheney has also been there several times for Colin. Colin is out raising Cruz. According to Colin's interview with Simon Rosenberg on Hopium Chronicles, Colin has broad support from Republicans as well. The polls do not reflect new voter registrations, especially among women and Gen Z. AOC, Bernie, and Jasmine Crockett of course have campaigned for Colin. 20 more days. And, by the way, thank you for your piece yesterday on The Big Picture. I have friends who canvas and phone bank. I was able to calm them and present the facts. And 3 men I know have decided to canvas on a bus we have going to Pennsylvania this weekend rather than watch football or golf. I have postcard parties as I'm in family caregiver mode at the moment. This is the most important election of our lifetime. We all most DO SOMETHING! That's what Michelle Obama told us to do.
Much love and admiration to you, I'm a full-time caretaker too.
I love this story about Al Franken’s take on Ted Cruz, the man(?) who didn’t defend his wife over DJT’s attack on her and who is one of the most hated men in politics.
"I probably like Ted Cruz more than most of my colleagues like Ted Cruz, and I hate Ted Cruz," Franken said on CNN's "New Day" Wednesday morning. "And I make an exception with him because he is a toxic coworker, and to get anything done in the Senate, you've got to be collegial. You're a small town of 100 people. Ted doesn't get anything done. His big accomplishment was shutting down the government."
I miss Al.
Check out his podcast, Natalie. Always entertaining.
Oh thank you!
Cancún Ted is vile - I truly do hope we can be free of him.
Last year, I helped collect petitions here in the backwater state of Ohio to restore Roe to our constitution.
It was the raped , pregnant 10 year old child that couldn’t receive the healthcare she needed here in Ohio that spurred many, many young women I worked with to get involved. They have young daughters. They, themselves, could find a similar situation thrust upon them.
Texas has broken my heart too many times. Perhaps the young women whose maternity rates has skyrocketed to 56% will have had enough and show up to vote. After all it’s their lives that are on the line. They just need to show up to stop the madness.
I'm in OH as well. I voted yesterday. I was surprised by how many people were there - middle of the day, Tuesday, and the line was out the door, the longest I've ever seen there. We were in line for about 45 minutes, I think. I hope that is a good sign.
Fingers crossed the young women show up. No classes for OSU on Tuesday November 5th.
Now if we can get them out of bed and voting….
I've seen some pretty good Planned Parenthood sponsored ads that have teenage girls talking about wanting to protect their bodily autonomy. Hopefully, all those kids will see those ads and take them to heart.
🙏I'm not religious, but I'm not too proud to beg for this assault on our bodily autonomy to be defeated.
Today was day 1 of early voting in NC. I waited until mid-morning to go and waited about 1 hr 15 minutes to vote at a new polling place. I am midway between two EV sites - the other one (a library) is always swamped since everyone knows where it is.
It's really too bad Cruz's college freshman roommates didn't throw him out of the third story window like they wanted to.
It's Texas. They would have simply elected someone just as vile. Hopefully, eventually, Texas turns blue again. I think pollsters are grossly underestimating the new registrants in places like Harris County.
So Putinesque.
So justified, though. He has killed women because of his picking his equally vile right-wing associates to be appointed to the 5th circuit judgeships to carry out his preacher father's Dominionism.
I will contribute if they choose to rectify that decision!
What is more ridiculous is the GOP is obsessed over the smallest possibly that, gasp, a trans person might beat a cis person in a sport.
They actually don’t care, it is just a distraction because Cruz has zero to run on. When I was in Ohio two weeks ago, I thought I was getting a Cruz ad on TV (I was in the kitchen) and walked into the living room and said “Why on earth are we getting a Cruz ad up here?”. It wasn’t. It was a Moreno add running on the same anti trans divisive nonsense. He has no record. And Cruz has been in the Senate 12 years. That says something. It is a non issue here in Texas. First of all, no child under 18 can have any sort of surgery period. Second puberty blockers, block puberty not enhance them. Third, none of this is actually happening. But using actual facts does nothing sense this is all distraction, just like Allred says that Cruz doesn’t want to talk another women dying in parking lots.
Yes, like all those damn misogynist right-wing men care about women's sports! And it is shameful that women fall for it too!
I'd dearly love to believe Cancún Ted AND Neb. Sen Deb Fischer are going down and out to their respective challengers, but for sooooo many election cycles, we've seen completely odious GOP incumbents win reëelection against excellent Dem candidates, and I'm not sure that this will change in 2024...however, one lives in hope.
The problem with my fellow Texans is they don't vote. Approximately 40% of registered voters can't be bothered to cast a vote in major elections. That's an insane level of apathy.
Wow!! Really. What do they think is more important than voting?
Excessive gerrymandering means that after 30 years of nothing changing no matter how hard you fight, you lose hope, that is the point. But that is finally changing.
Football. High school, college, and NFL football. Especially high school football.
Almost nothing would make me happier than to see slimy Ted Cruz beat by the amazing Colin Allred. But its Texas and there's no such thing as too slimy for Texas. I know there are wonderful people and good strong democrats in Texas. Just not enough of them. I so want to be proven wrong.
Honestly, what are Texans waiting for? Cruz has shown time and again what an incompetent, immoral person he is. Allred did a fantastic job exposing Cruz for what he is. Texans, do the rest and boot Cruz out!
#LoseCruz. Love it!
I really want Cruz to be defeated, but Trump trumps that in my desires. With his laying out his fascistic side clearly for everyone to see, it will be a sad statement if he wins. Meanwhile Kamala Harris is the bravest women in America and should be made into a Superhero. In fact, I would like to see that movie more than The Apprentice. I assume a lot of people who see it who like Trump will just think it is cool how he was taught to get over by Roy Cohen. I would rather see a movie about a hero, the women who is standing up to the bad guy, who has been surrounded by bad guys all his life and gravitates to them as they to him. Bad guy Bros. I wish they would all be put in a rocketship, like one of Elon Musks, and orbit the earth or go deep into outer space.
I just want to make a comment about Montana. Apparently 100,000 people there consider themselves sovereign citizens and have no government ID. Because the state just passed a requirement that you must provide ID to vote, these Trumpists can't vote. Could that help Tester and the Democrats?
Oh, the sweet sweet irony…!
🙏😁