Canter Gone, so is the Senate

[Savannahmann]

38. The facts remain

Wendy Davis has poll numbers so low that it would take millions of dollars to make a dent in it. Even if we dumped enough money to cut the lead in half, she would still lose handily. I'm not being cruel, I'm being a realist.

Those millions of dollars could save the Senate, with only a little luck. Those same millions might feel good dumped into the hopeless black hole of Texas, but in November, will we feel better knowing we fought the good fight, and lost both Texas and the Senate?

A principle of any warfare, and politics is warfare, is that you pick your battles. You fight where you must, and where you want to engage the enemy. That means we dedicate all available means to defending what we can't afford to lose. It also means we don't get sucked into a battle we can't win, and I'm sorry, but Texas is such a battle.

There are no polls that show Wendy within single digits of her opponent. He's avoiding anything but carefully scripted appearances to reduce to the lowest possible extent the chance of a massive gaff. That leaves him being caught pants down with a sheep for all intents and purposes, and they're not going to let that happen between now and November.

I'm surprised, and I guess I shouldn't be. We would like to believe we are winning, and we are but not in such a dramatic environment as Texas. Look at the Generic ballot. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/generic_congressional_vote-2170.html

Neither side is doing well enough to have more than 50% support. We are doing a little better than the Rethugs, but not nearly enough to declare we're going to sweep them out of office. We just don't have the popular support yet.

Now, you can march from now until November, spending millions on GOTV efforts. Putting people on the phones, putting people on the street corners, and even with all that do you think, honestly believe, that Wendy Davis will win? Because I just don't see it. I doubt, but am not convinced, that Jason Carter will pull it out in Georgia. There the race is much closer, and there you can see the polling results that put it in a few percentage points of victory. It's possible to overcome a four or five point deficit. We've all seen that many times. But there is little chance of overcoming a 12 to 18 point deficit. Wendy would have to run the perfect campaign, well financed, and well coordinated. That we can do. That we can manage. But even that would not be enough. Greg Abbott would have to screw up by the numbers. He would have to offend women, minorities, and the religious right. The only thing I can think of that would save it for Wendy at this point is if we got Video of Greg wearing a leather boy scout leader uniform at a gay bondage club.

Now, you can LOL this, and sit there convinced that Texas really needs the support of the party. You can sit there and pretend that Wendy is going to win. I admire her courage, and again, in my perfect world, she would be the Governor already. But I'm not living in my perfect world. I'm living in this world, where we have to deal with those pesky realities that fiction writers (I know, I am a writer of fiction) manage to gloss over or arrange in such a way to be non existent. Fiction is pleasant, I like writing and reading it. And there is often some truth or a quote that puts things into perspective to be found in fiction. But fiction is not reality. The real world does not work that way.