Tag Archives: 2014 midterm election

State news

Good news, bad news on Texas midterm election turnout

The Texas Tribune is reporting a classic good news-bad news story as it relates Texas’s voter turnout in the 2018 midterm election.

The good news? Texas is among the nation’s leading states in the increase in voter turnout over the 2014 midterm election. Texans boosted their midterm turnout this year by 18 percent, ranking No. 6 nationally.

The national increase in turnout was 13 percent, the Tribune reports. Hey, that’s good, right? Of course it is!

The turnout boost no doubt was fueled by the extraordinary interest in the race for the U.S. Senate, which Republican Sen. Ted Cruz won narrowly over Democratic challenger U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke.

Oh, but then there’s the bad news. You ready? Texas still voted below the national average. Total voter turnout percentage ranked us at No. 40 nationally. That’s bad, yes? Yep. I am afraid so.

The lack of competitive statewide races has helped drive down Texas voter participation. This year was remarkably different, as the increase over the 2014 midterm turnout illustrates.

Read the Tribune story here

However, we had a huge hill to climb from the near bottom of all the states in voter turnout.

Baby steps, though, are better than no steps. So we’ve taken some big steps toward improving our participation in this thing called “representative democracy.”

I’ll take the good news any day of the week.

national news, political news

Obama rising; GOP standing firm

Do you kind of get a sense that a huge political struggle is going to become the hallmark of Barack Obama’s final two presidential years?

The president’s poll numbers are up significantly in recent weeks. Congressional Republicans — feeling pretty flush themselves with their takeover of the Senate after the 2014 mid term election — are going to dig in their heels.

Can Obama keep rising?

Get ready for the fight.

So many fronts. So many battles. So many hassles.

Ah, politics. Ain’t it noble?

Polling suggests Obama is scoring better with some key demographic groups. Hispanics and young voters are approving of the president once again. Hispanics particularly are buoyed by the president’s executive action on immigration.

But as GOP strategists are quick to point out, as noted in The Hill article attached, the president’s base is holding firm right along with the impenetrable ceiling that keeps him from soaring even higher. That ceiling is put there by stubborn Republican resistance to almost every initiative he proposes.

That’s where the GOP thinks it will win the day.

Well, what happens then will be — dare I say it — more gridlock and more “do-nothingness.”

Obama is planning to reveal a $4 trillion budget that will seek tax breaks for middle- and low-income Americans while asking wealthier Americans to pay more. There will be other areas of the budget that are certain to draw a sharp line between the White House and Congress.

The president believes the wind is behind him. Then again, Republicans believe they have the advantage.

All that talk about “working together” is likely to give way — rapidly — to more of what we’ve witnessed for the past, oh, six years.

Get ready for a rough ride, my fellow Americans.