Go figure: National Democrats abandon Wendy Davis

Courtesy Wikipedia.

What is it with national Democrats? In 2008, they abandoned Hillary Clinton, the obviously better qualified candidate, to support Barack Obama with his impressive Wall Street backers - Obama was the leader of the pack with Wall Street funding in 08. Now these same stalwart Democrats, who claim to be progressive, are pulling the rug out from under Wendy Davis in the Texas governor's race. Do you suppose the big guns in the Democratic Party are a bunch of throwback sexists? Looks like it.

Over at Politico, Katie Glueck writes:


SAN ANTONIO — Wendy Davis was riding high last summer as the most watched, most talked about, most loved new Democratic star. Her fans included Harry Reid and Barack Obama. Liberals all over Washington toasted her, urging her to run for governor of Texas.

A year later, she’s hit a low point, grappling with the reality of running for office as a Democrat in a deep-red state.

Her campaign’s relationship with the Democratic Governors Association has soured. She’s down in the polls by double digits. And national Democrats have all but written off her race.

But Davis is defiant.

(QUIZ: How well do you know Wendy Davis?)

“I don’t spend time thinking about whether someone in Washington, D.C. believes that this is a winnable race – I know it is,” she told POLITICO.

In a nearly 15-minute interview here, dripping with disdain for Washington, Davis said the D.C. chattering class fails to see the energy she encounters in Texas, where, she says, people regularly come up to her moved to tears.

Read more:

Happy New Year to All

Looking out at the courtyard from my fourth-floor apartment windows in St. Paul this New Year’s morning, I see clearing skies above rooftops blanketed with snow.

Indoors, I'm still cheered by Christmas lights and a display of cards from friends and loved ones.

That's despite the fact that I went to bed last night knowing the results of the Des Moines Register's poll giving Obama a seven-point lead over Clinton. The good news this morning is that with the release of CNN's poll, Real Clear Politics shows Clinton maintaining a slim lead of 1.6 over Obama and Edwards in an average of all recent Iowa polls.

I’ve been so caught up in Campaign 2008, especially the continuing tight race among Democratic candidates in Iowa, that I’ve not given much thought to New Year’s resolutions.

Echoing in my mind is a comment a friend made a couple of years ago about a lesson she’d learned from her cancer support group: “You can’t even scratch your nose in the past or the future; the present is all you’ve got.”

Here’s the deal: the present moment is all that belongs to any of us, a reality that makes resolutions for the coming year an iffy practice to begin with.

Nevertheless, based on the familiar advice to be the change we want to make, I do have one resolution in mind. I’ve heard a lot of complaints lately about the corruption in Washington with leading candidates promising to clean up the current mess.

God knows I’ve done my share of complaining about the moral bankruptcy of the Bush Administration.

Speaking of the deity, I’m reminded of the biblical teaching that if we say we are without sin, we deceive ourselves.

Perhaps, we should all resolve this time around to be the change we'd like to see our political leaders make by acknowledging our own shortcomings and checking up on ourselves daily to make sure we're practicing what we preach about standards of personal and professional conduct.

Paying attention to feedback from family, friends, and neighbors will undoubtedly help us here.

But as we go our way, let's not forget to give ourselves due credit as well.