As you probably know by now, Howard Dean kicks off a Democratic Party Voter Registration Blitz across the South starting this week in --ironically-- Crawford, Texas.

This is a great opportunity to show all naysayers that Dr. Dean's 50 State Strategy was the right prescription for Democratic Party success.

Good Sunday morning, this weekend, I had to good fortune to watch on VH-1
Classic, the making of Aja, the classic Steely Dan album, and it made me realize how much I miss music.

The point of this diary is for all Dem candidates running statewide races in TX in 2008.

Don't just go to the metros and disregard West Texas.

Every person I have talked to who has looked at the Yes We Can U Tube video is swept away by it. It is powerful and can make a difference Tuesday.

You may have seen the AP stories this morning that said in all likelihood Super Tuesday will not result in presidential nominees, and in fact, it may take until the March 4 primary in Texas.

I couldn't believe the number of pundits that MSNBC had last night, they had
ten people who were doing nothing, but sharing their own personal biases.

By contrast, I was very wowed by CNN's map, and their linkage of ideological tendencies by geography on the map.

In short order, CNN was telling us it was going to come down to Dartmouth, whereas MSNBC had Tweety barking "if she loses, she loses--no matter how close".

John King's analysis on the maps was great.
Bill Schneider's analysis on the exit polls was excellent.
And Wolf Blitzer's referring to the website was very helpful, too.
In fact, they had the exit polls up on the website by 8 p.m. CST. and you could tell--if you looked--at the exit polls that Hillary would win.

MSNBC was all style and no substance, and I'm disappointed in Olbermann, he seems to have joined the Tweety bandwagon of bashing Hillary.

I'm not a historian, and I've done a bit of Googling, and it looks to me
like she's the first woman to have ever won a U.S. primary.

From last night's debate:
Was it just me or was it a little smarmy for Edwards to talk poetically about the patient's bill of rights as the crowning achievement of his senate tenure, and then we find out, in a very smart rebuttal by Hillary Clinton that it never passed?

In the past couple of days, there have been several diaries/stories about how Texas is turning from red to blue.
For Texans, this is very exciting. We have had many eras of populism in our past, although recent history has been darkened by the aftermath of DeLay's
cynical gerrymandering.

But, no more, we are 5 seats from reclaiming the Texas House.

And in fact, the biggest regret that most Democrats had in 2006 was a lack of candidates.

In 2008, it's looking better in the metro areas--Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and to a certain extent, El Paso.

This is a story that has been largely under the radar, but slowly but surely, Texas Democrats are taking back the state house-even after DeLay's dastardly gerrymandering.
Great story from the Burnt Orange Report today about Dan Barrett's victory in Ft. Worth.
www.burntorangereport.com

I saw it being streamed on Obama's website, which is ok, but . . .
my internet is not hot.

Many Democrats have written off Texas, just like other Southern, right-wing enclaves, such as Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia.

But Texas has a history of progressives from Jim Hogg to Jim Hightower,
Ma Ferguson to Molly Ivins, Ann Richards to well, there is no parallel to Ann Richards.

Precinct by precinct, pockets of progressive thought popped up in unlikely places in 2006.

Dallas, for example, where the Dems swept the ballot.

If John Edwards and Barack Obama are sincere about bringing virtue and a more civilized
discourse to politics, then they should condemn the kind of Southern GOP venom that
erupted at John McCain's Hilton Head soiree yesterday.

It's not okay to call a presidential candidate, "a bitch".

It's beneath the dignity of the American people, and we all should be outraged.

If a Dem had allowed a slur to be thrown at a GOP candidate, they all would be disavowing
such a lack of integrity.

Where is the infamous backbone that Edwards refers to?

Oh, god, how I hate it when a tabloid story takes over cable network news.
How do we stop them from polluting the airwaves with the OJ Simpson garbage?

There's been a lot of disappointment and contempt with the Democrats in Congress not being able to end the war, and at them, for being ineffectual in getting Bush to clean up the justice department.

But there's a huge difference between Democrats and Republicans and always have been and always will be.

When Hillary announced that she was "in it to win it" umpteen times when she entered the race, she said she that when your opponents hit you, you deck them.

Mitt Romney in a Cheney-esque snear has been calling her "the intern" for days.

Where's the fight back?

Actually now that I think about it. He may like right-wing Cheney in drag kind of women, like Kate O'Beirne or Mary Matalin.

But have you ever seen him have female Senators or Congresswomen as guests?

Isn't it mostly white, inside the beltway boys?