Democrats put Texas on their target list

LA Times:

As they review the results of Tuesday's election victories and begin looking toward future campaigns, some Democrats have settled on a rallying cry: Texas is next.

It sounds improbable for the Republican bastion that produced President Bush and served as an early laboratory for Karl Rove's hard-nosed tactics. But Texas is one of several reliably red states that are now in Democrats' sights as party strategists begin to analyze a victorious 2008 campaign that they believe showed the contours of a new movement that could grow and prove long-lasting.

A multiethnic bloc of Latinos, blacks, young people and suburban whites helped to broaden the party's reach Tuesday well beyond its traditional base in the Northeast and the West Coast -- carrying Barack Obama into the White House and expanding the party's majorities in Congress.

That new formula was evident in state exit polls and county-level election results showing that Democrats scored gains from a voting base that is growing progressively less white than the population that helped forge Republican advantages in past elections. In state after state, from GOP strongholds like North Carolina, Indiana and Colorado, minorities made up a larger share of the vote than in the past, and in each case they helped turn states from red to blue.

A major shift in the Latino vote took place in Florida and the Southwest, where the Obama campaign spent at least $20 million on targeted appeals and organizing, including one television ad in the final days featuring the candidate reading Spanish from a script.

Latinos made up a greater share of the electorate than in the past in every Southwestern state, according to exit polls compiled by CNN. And in each Southwestern state, as well as Florida, the Democrat pulled a bigger percentage of the Latino vote -- a turnaround from 2004, when President Bush cut deeply into Democrats' hold on Latinos and won that bloc in Florida, where many Cuban Americans remain loyal to the GOP.

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This piece overlooks the fact that the Democrats did not win any statewide races in the state of Texas and indeed hold none. They also lost one Democrat congressional House seat in a year that favored Democrats. They did pick up some judicial races in Harris county because of a surge of Obama votes among straight party black voters, but they can't count on those votes in 2010 since he will not be on the ballot.

Then there are Democrat policies which are hostile to the Texas energy economy. If those policies were adopted they would do for Texas what Democrats have done for Michigan. In fact it is likely that the country will look to Texas in the future because Republican policies have resulted in the strongest economy in the country and the creation of half the new jobs in the country during the last two years. When you consider how the Democrats screwed up the mortgage business and wrecked the housing market there is just little reason to think they will be able to improve the economy as a whole. That will give voters elsewhere more reason to look to the success of Republicans in Texas and reject the failed Democrat policies.