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.

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The disregard of women’s rights by Texans without uteruses

Sen. Davis' shoes.

Writing at the NY Times, Gail Collins pays appropriate tribute to the filibustering of Texas State Senator Wendy Davis:

There is an old saying that Texas is “heaven for men and dogs, but hell for women and oxen.” But the state’s history is chock-full of stories of female role models. Barbara Jordan. Ann Richards. In downtown Austin, there’s a statue of Angelina Eberly, heroine of the Texas Archives War of 1842, firing a cannon and looking about 7 feet tall.

I do not have nearly enough time to explain to you about the Archives War, although it’s an extremely interesting story. Right now we need to move on to State Senator Wendy Davis, whose 11-hour filibuster this week turned her into a national name brand.

“It was like a made-for-TV movie. I’ve been around the block, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood and the daughter of the former governor. 

Texas is a state with one of the nation’s highest teenage motherhood rates, where a majority of women who give birth are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. So, naturally, its political leaders have declared war against the right of women to choose whether or not they want to be pregnant. Funding for family planning has been slashed. This month, Gov. Rick Perry tried to pass a new law that would have shut down almost all the abortion clinics in the state, under the guise of expanded health and safety requirements.

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