Texas Primary Campaign Left Out Texas Issues
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in 2008 Election, Democrats, TexasTexas hasn’t had a relevant primary campaign in over a generation. Maybe that’s why both Democratic candidates seemed so clueless here. They know how to address the Iowa agricultural community, the New Hampshire independent streak, the South Carolina African Americans. They even do pretty well with the myriad of local concerns and interests found within the most important Super Tuesday states. But when it comes to the nation’s second most populous state, they never found a groove that worked.
A few weeks ago, the ads and messaging revolved around healthcare, which was a decent choice as our state has plenty of problems in that regard. But that issue quickly disappeared and was replaced by a series of ads I call “vote for me because I’m me.” Hillary Clinton focused hard on her Texas political roots, featured lots of Hispanics and somehow expected us to believe that because she registered voters here in 1972 she knows all about Texas in 2008.
Barack Obama just gave up on serious messaging altogether. Other than a spot touting his judgment on the Iraq war, which I saw for the first time last night, most of the Obama ads in the final weeks featured him inspiring people and/or people being inspired by him. The message: change is good, Obama is change. Issues were mentioned but they were subservient to the cults of personality both candidates tried to whip up.
That’s a shame. Texas has real issues a president could address. A good deal of the Mexican border is right here and I would love to have heard more about how the candidates would handle the massive federal land grab that will be necessary to build a wall and how they will balance immigration enforcement with Texas’ need for an expansive workforce. I would like to have heard some pandering to our road problems, we could use some federal money to increase our highway capacity. How about telling us how they plan to reform NAFTA and tax oil companies without hurting the Texas economy? Then there’s drug gang border violence, coastal hurricane preparation, education funding and how to produce enough power for the rapidly growing metro areas (Coal? Nuclear? Wind? – they all have their supporters and detractors).
Sure, some of Texas’ concerns run counter to the Democratic narrative for this campaign. Ohio is a much better fit. But, still, I think Obama and Clinton could have done a much better job of explaining what Democrats can do for Texas. If the party ever wants to win the Lone Star state back from the clutches of Republicans (who hold every statewide elected office) they can’t just expect the national message to work. The state party is certainly happy about the attention it’s received but it should be disappointed the candidates failed to meaningfully address issues most important to us Texans.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Democrats, Texas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 4th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Good campaign analysis. It is surprising that both Dem candidates were so tone deaf to Texas issues. Particularly immigration and the fence. What about McCain? Did he have anything meaningful to contribute to the immigration dialog in Texas? He has also been all over the map on the issue. I suspect the topic was onsidered just too radioactive for all candidates in both parties. However, I would have thought at least the local press would have forced a discussion of the Immigration/Fence issues.
March 4th, 2008 at 9:55 am
MW,
McCain and Huckabee were prett much MIA. They made a few stops but neither had a media presence and the press spent scant time on them. Interestingly, the local press here spent much, much more time discussing how the Latino vote will shake out than they actually spend talking about the issues.
There was at least one column on immigration that basically said “no matter who’s elected, tough enforcement won’t happen” and there was a question about the fence during the Austin debate (which Clinton and Obama both hedged on and then escaped) but it just wasn’t a huge issue.
Odd campaign.
March 4th, 2008 at 10:00 am
MW,
McCain and Huckabee didn’t really campaign outside of a few personal appearances. The press, for the most part, ignored them.
The local paper here in San Antonio spent much more time discussing how the Latino vote might shake out than they spent examining the issues. As with all things Obama and Clinton, the two are so incredibly similar in their positions that the discussion always seems to come back to issues of character. They got asked about the border fence during the debate but they both hedged and escaped without clarifying their full opinions.
If other reporters pressed the candidates on Texas issues, I missed it. The candidates themselves certainly didn’t make it a priority to treat the state as a unique place with unique issues.
March 4th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Is there a difference between actually raising tax rates on an industry and taking away a tax break? The proposals I’ve seen concerning the oil companies involve taking away an $18 billion dollar tax break unique to their industry that they received which doesn’t exactly translate into huge bucks considering their current profits.
March 4th, 2008 at 10:43 am
In general, I strongly agree. At least in theory. As our state’s Tip O’Neill is famous for saying, all politics is local.
I think it’s very good idea for politicians to investigate the local issues and the unique local perspectives on national issues.
However, moving forward to follow up and actually speak to these things can be dangerous, and ought to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
For example, Clinton or Obama might consider asking “what can Texas tell us about how to move forward economically in this 21st century of globalization?” and then follow up by kissing Texans asses about the places that have grown economically by trading with Mexico under NAFTA auspices. But that would be potentially toxic at the primary stage. And once the general election comes round, no one seems to expect democrats to compete for Texas, it’s too red, from what I hear of Texans’ testimony.
Immigration? Another tough one. It’s so divisive that you’re apt to lose one vote for every one you gain, so where’s the profit? And honestly, I think there’s a basic paradigm on the issue that most folks fail to acknowledge, and it’s this…
…most of our mainstream leaders in both parties think privately that going too protectionist on this issue would be very damaging economically. In general, anti-immigrant sentiment is fairly high among native citizens, but variations from state to state and party base to party base make the stated yet vague positions of each candidate sensible for electoral reasons.
After the election, regardless of who wins, the main stream of politicians will seek to do the minimum possible to mollify popular anti-immigrant sentiment while finding a way to sustain a flow of inexpensive and highly motivated labor comparable to what’s currently occurring. Regardless of whether that labor is documented or undocumented.
In other words, Obama, Clinton and McCain all know that comprehensive immigration reform that closely matches either side’s most ideological prescriptions and substantially alters the real-world status quo would be political suicide.
If some sort of immigration reform passes, it may throw in the fence as a bone and include something to increase the documentation rate (change the rate of legal to illegal immigration), and add token penalties for illegal immigration. But what we can count on is that any reform is pretty unlikely to substantially alter the labor flow when it comes to total head count.
March 4th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Spot on. Could either of them have hit - fairly safely - with some potential ideas about the gang violence? I wouldn’t expect a senator from Illinois or one from Texas to have much knowledge about the issue, but one could’ve at least come out and said they’d make it a priority. Its a safer issue to address than immigration since there wouldn’t really be anyone AGAINST it, other than perhaps the gang vote which I don’t think either is particularly interested in.
As for the fence issue, they did both state during the Texas debate that they each favored a “virtual fence.” That has its advantages - you don’t need to use imminent domain to grab millions of acres of land, it costs far less, etc… However, it’s also far less effective. Boeing’s system I hear is plagued with issues and has already significantly overrun its budget (though I doubt its in any danger of becoming the next VF-22 Osprey).
As a military guy, I keep waiting for someone to suggest that were going to stop fighting an asymmetrical war, and instead, start forcing terrorists to fight on their own terms. IE: Instead of stationing 140K troops in Iraq, why not just have our own Army of a few thousand covert operatives? The costs would be far less and would allow us to actually take the offensive to terrorist leaders. Plus, the simple necessity of the mission would mean it would have to be nearly completely covert, minimizing negative publicity. I dont expect the Bush administration to do it, they clearly entered the war for fiscal reasons which would be hurt by a withdrawal, but we can at least fight this war in a way thats advantageous to us.
March 4th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Jim, taking away a tax break still reduces profits. Now, maybe that’s money the oil companies can afford to lose without a single Texan being affected — if so, I’d like to have heard that point made because the general feeling down here is that the Democrats are going to go hard after the oil companies. Unsurprisingly, Texans kind of like those oil companies. Just like many Texans like NAFTA. This would have been an excellent opportunity for Clinton and Obama to promise that they’d keep the state’s concerns in mind. But, as has been mentioned, neither really expects to have a shot in hell at winning Texas in the general election so they probably wanted to get in and out without compromising themselves to much.
March 4th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Whatever its merits, both tactically and strategically, I can’t see anybody selling a large covert-ops force as the answer to terrorism. And it would probably work best if it was kept well out of the spot light, anyway. (For that matter, for all I know we are already doing exactly that, in parallel with the regular troops.)
Can you think of any way to sell the idea? One that wouldn’t immediately get denounced as “un-American assassination squads”?
March 4th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
“Can you think of any way to sell the idea? One that wouldn’t immediately get denounced as “un-American assassination squads”?”
The best way to keep it from becoming an American Terrorist group, is to make it an international terrorist group. Bring in members of the EU like Spain and England, bring in Latin countries suffering from terrorism of their own like Brazil and Columbia, bring in east asian nationals like Indonesia, the Phillipeans, and Sri Lanka. Encourage citizens of the middle east who oppose these groups to join. Then give it a rotating leadership position, or make them regional groups, responsible to a group of nations from that region made up of members of those nations, led by those nations.
That’d be my approach. Its difficult - but doable, its pretty much the way Alexander’s empire policed itself. Regional groups of people who were allowed to police themselves and fight back as necessary. The US can provide equipment, training, and intelligence. The freer exchange of those materials can be seen as multinational coalition building, which should help increase US standing among member nations, who benefit from the increased stability of their nations, while serving a major interest of ours and save us something in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars a year fighting a war on terms we can’t win by.
March 4th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Expounding on that thought:
In order to actually make something like this work, you’d have to have a way of determining who terrorist groups actually are, as the definition varies widely. Clearly within Iran, Hezbollah is seen as a freedom fighting group, not a terrorist organization. Similarly, if you were to ask a Palestinian who their most feared terrorist group is, they would like say its the Isreali government. In that case, you’d have a lot of issues when forming a regional coalition.
But also, would we really be seen assassination squads? I mean seriously, its not like we aren’t already performing targeted killings of leadership targets that aren’t affiliated with a specific government with whom were at war with. The only difference is that we’d be doing it without having large quantities of ground troops stationed in proximity.
March 4th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I certainly hope we are doing it. But my point is that we aren’t making a major public announcement that we are. (And don’t I recall a law, probably passed back in the 1970s, specifically forbidding the United States government from carrying out assassinations? Might make public announcements problematic.)
One could see the regular troops in the area as, at least partially, providing PR cover for the covert ops. As long as everybody is focused on the regular troops, whatever the covert ops boys do tends to get overlooked. Which is doubtless how they prefer it.
I do think you’ve hit on one of the major challenges in setting this up as a multi-national effort: everybody has different views on who is a terrorist vs. who is a valiant freedom fighter. Even if we exclude those governments which are little better than terrorist organizations (foreign or domestic) themselves, it would still me a major challenge to get even regional agreement.
March 4th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Im sure that targeted killings are happening. We have been targeting Osama Bin Laden for death or capture since this whole thing started. When we get intel that he is at a certain location, we drop 5000lb bombs on it. If thats not targeted killing, I don’t know what is.
In regards to the 1970’s law, I think that its entirely possible that a law like that could be reworked if indeed it exists. While I am a military geek, I’m not exactly a proponent of using it at all turns, and I have been vehemently against the Iraq war from the outset because you can win a fight against an idea - and lets make no mistake, the people we fight harbor an IDEA that our foreign policy hurts them, and supports their enemies. They want Isreal destroyed, and they want the US to stop interfering in Muslim nations which want the right to govern themselves according to Islamic tradition.
Frankly, I for one don’t think its our place to tell them how they ought to govern themselves - I certainly wouldn’t want a belligerent Muslim superpower trying to dictate how I ought to govern myself from 12,000 miles away. Actually, its something like that which is why the US exists to begin with.
But terrorism does present a threat to this nation, albeit a much smaller one than people think. The notion that terrorists could have nuclear weapons, while possible, is not likely. The costs prevent all but the most well funded groups from seeking them, and its much easier to track those groups. Its a similar theme with any other bio/chem agent.
There seems to be however, a notion from the right wing that by fighting large-scale wars in foreign nations, were protecting ourselves domestically, and thats simply not true. Anyone could attack this nation with an explosive device very easily. And that isn’t something that can be stopped by wars abroad or surveillance measures at home. But by attacking the leadership and disrupting operations, we should be able to largely prevent an increase in organization, training, and formalizing of these groups - and it doesn’t need to ruin our economy. Because if we keep fighting this way, and keep ruining our economy, the terrorists will win simply by letting us beat ourselves.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
An interesting question then is how many things are there where the interests of Texas and the interests of the rest of the country are opposed? And are these the same people who scream about welfare but don’t mind corporate welfare for their favorite corporations?