Long term, Texas will end the modern Republican party.

It's coming.

Large cities tend to be very Democratic and more tolerant of the GLBT community.

The most recent poll I could find for the state was from May and showed Romney up 55-35. So it will probably be quite a while before Texas flips in a presidential election.

The media portrays Texas as horses and tumbleweed, but it's actually very urban.

Dallas - 6.5M
Houston - 6M
SA - 2.2M
Austin - 1.8M

Those numbers are for metropolitan statistical areas. Definitely not the same as cities. MSAs include suburbs and whatnot. The city of Houston is about 2.1 million. That's still a lot of people, but only 1/3 of the entire Houston-Sugarland-Baytown MSA.

Solidly blue.

but in recent years, the suburbs have been voting more and more like the urban cities they are adjacent to.

and that's been swinging elections a lot in recent years/decades.

take for example the Bay Area, where the urban centers of SF and Oakland have been Democratic for ages, but the suburbs were not --one of the earliest areas where the suburbs began mirroring the city vote was here and since 1988, the Bay Area suburbs have been trending Democratic --in fact, there really isn't a single Republican legislator in the whole region now.

or look at the Philadelphia area. the city is a Democratic stronghold but historically the suburbs were solid Republican. but in recent years, suburban counties were a battleground and lately, they are slightly on the Democratic side.

multiply these examples across the country and the trend you see, if it follows the California pattern (where it happened first), will overwhelm because of demographics.

this state gave us Ann Richard, Jim Hightower, and Molly Ivins- there is still hope.

but DFW has a lot of people in it, and this area is very red.

I am surrounded by stupidity, or think I am because they are so loud. There is hope- hell, this state produced LBJ, who was a great man (if you can overlook Vietnam, which is hard to do)

.. we have been gerrymandered out of existence on the state level.

For the decent into Repuke hell. I believe that Texas was used as a conservative experiment from then on. Religion was twisted by right wing televangelists into something I never recognized. The climate in Texas does keep some people inside an inordinate amount of time, and they are the most affected by Fox News. It's the inverse of people up north getting cabin fever in the winter. At least of some people I knew.

As far as Fox being dominant, it now is. When I was growing there was never such claptrap on the television. The media was swallowed up and the Repukes gerrymandered and went wild with every theme they could push to ruin the best things about the state.

You cannot be deprived of fairness in media and have an informed electorate. We expected the news on tv and radio and not propaganda when I was younger. Good conversations and debates hosted by the League of Women Voters and all parties and views offered.

The 1990's were the years of the great collapse as far as I could tell in media. There were signs with the Reagan victories and when Bush ruined Texas governmnet almost and went to D.C. the same fellows kept screwing the Texas mind. What is terrifying is that this model is being used in every state to attack people at their weakest points: religion, media, school, work. People are social beings and absorb what is fed to them.

The people of TX aren't as dumb or prejudiced as people percieve them from media. There are many mixed families and immigrants around the globe have moved and live in Texas doing very well in safety. It is more diverse than people think but the very worst in people has been brought out.

I would love to see the Dem win Hutchinson's old seat and a strong candidate replace Perry. Houston was a fairly liberal place in many ways and tolerant. We'll see what unfolds.

rise of cable teevee & talk radio + huge dollars in the hands of rightwing tools like Roger Ailes = brainwashing of an enormous voting bloc.

We may not be a swing state yet but should be in that category by 2016. Project Promensa is focused on increasing Hispanic voter participation. My county's party was out registering Hispanics and passing out school supplies last weekend. We have a couple of dream act students speak to the voters. Progress is being made.

We had the opening of the Fort Bend County Democrats Headquarters last night and we had over 100 people show up. The party has a headquarters at one end of the county and the Silver Democrats have a headquarters at the other end of the county. If Fort Bend County goes blue, then the rest of Texas will follow suit. In 2008. we came within 4,000 votes (less than one percent) co carrying the county for President Obama. We expect even higher turnout this time and expect to carry the county.

So it's been fairly reliable Dem territory for a while now. Colorado looks to be moving left though.

I think Ohio will retain its swing status for some time to come. It generally goes with the winner. Right now there is a Republican governor and Republicans have a pretty large lead in the State legislature. I think it will go Obama this time, but I wouldn't say it's going to be a reliably Democratic state anytime soon.

They have legalization of weed of the ballot this year. Just don't bring up gun control.

I live in the mountains and even the dems have guns....most of us who retired from the city are the non gun ones...

in 1992 and 2008.

Gore only won it by a few hundred votes, while Obama won there easily. Of course, the 2000 election was close and the 2008 election was not, but it was still wider than the national margin in 2008.

either way, is still shocking to me.

If Dems can get a foothold in NC, wow.

Not to mention the additional electoral votes.

Three major universities, the state capitol, and a lot of science and technology corporations in the area.

Even though it's in the South, somehow it seems a lot more clean and fresh than most other big cities.

Why "even though it's in the South?"

Come on.

:|

(being from the west) that most Southern cities that actually WERE founded in 1792 should LOOK LIKE they were founded in 1792, but instead it's a modern city that looks about 200 years newer than half the cities in California that were laid out so two mules could pass each other on their way to and from the whorehouse.

Ever been to San Francisco?

When the EPA needed to build a new research facility they put it at Research Triangle Park.

Things mushroomed from there.

I don't spend any time in Raleigh but I detest driving through it on my way to the coast.

for the first time in over 100 years. McCrory (R) will likely defeat Dalton (D) for governor in November, which means Republicans will control EVERYTHING.

Our constitution was amended to ban "gay marriage," and fracking was approved. Our esteemed elected officials even voted to *control* sea-level rise, so as to not impede coastal development. State-wide unemployment just jumped to 9.6%, thanks to devastating Republican budget cuts. And if ever there were an area ripe for mass transit, it would be the Triangle, but Republicans have a pathological hatred of trains, so I doubt we'll ever see it.

As a whole, this state is anything BUT left. Obama won NC in 2008 by only about 14,000 votes, and I'm not so sure it will happen again in 2012. A FUX-brainwashed, fundie neighbor already has a Romney bumper sticker slapped on her car... anything to get the BlackMarxistKenyanMuslimGrannyKiller out of office, and there are PLENTY like her.

We'll see.

are BIG progressive areas. Out in the country, it's still very red.

The problem is getting people out to vote. I'm not sure we'll get the turnout
in NC in 2012 that we had in 2008, so I'm not optimistic about Obama being
able to carry NC this time. Four years ago I kept saying--all the time--that Obama
could win here. And he did.

Wake County school board fucks Margiotta and Tedesco (from New Jersey) are perfect examples.

Pennsylvania will learn the error of their recent ways.

Not to mention VA has flipped from a pretty solid R (about 8% in 2004) to a D-leaning tossup in the last 2 cycles. Iowa too.

Unfortunately, this is somewhat counterbalanced by southern states picking up electoral votes at the expense of northern states in the last census, but overall, our electoral map for presidential elections is looking pretty good.

but I love your avatar. One of my all-time favorite musicians.

LOL.. you've got to be kidding me.

Obama won Ohio in 2008 by around 107,000 votes. that's hardly a large margin.

Bill Clinton (Happy Birthday, Bubba!) won Ohio both times he ran... Al Gore lost Ohio in
2000, that's one of the reasons he lost the election overall.

Ohio is hardly trending blue. they just elected a GOP governor in 2010. outside of the urban areas,
you're looking at conservative, Bible thumping types who don't vote democratic.

safe to assume we'll be seeing both Willard and Obama spending alot of time campaigning
in OH-- until the election. Very tough to win the election w/o winning Ohio.

and because of it's manufacturing base it's more blue than it was 4 years ago and trending that way slowly.

again, you've got to be kidding.

Not long after Obama was elected in 2008, Carville wrote a book.. something to the effect
the democratic party would now have a "40 year dynasty". Huh?

it took just two years-- the election in 2010 saw several, nine at least, democratic incumbent
governors were booted from office. it remains to be seen whether the dems can regain
control of the house, and the dems may lose control of the senate.

where's the "40 year democratic dynasty"??

with all due respect, Carville's credibility is ZERO.

The same filthy scoundrels that pulled off the 2004 GOP win in Ohio are still hard at work devising ways to keep Democratic voters away from the polls.

It's going to be 10 times harder for Obama to win in 2012 than in 2008. For starters, the Secretary of State is a damned puke this time and he has been working overtime rigging the scales in favor of his benefactors. Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and their respective super pacs have dumped untold MILLIONS in Ohio brainwashing the ill-informed masses who are still reeling from huge job losses and one of the worst economies in the country.

By the time they've used all the criminal tools at their disposal, it's going to be a blessed miracle if Obama wins Ohio.

but people are getting restless. This used to be a Democratic state before the oil boom, but the industry types took over our legislature for many years (see "Corrupt Bastards Club&quot . Now we have a Republican governor who is such a corporate shill (he used to be a Conoco-Phillips lobbyist and worked for the law firm that represented Exxon in the spill litigation) that even a lot of Republicans are starting to worry about where he's taking the state.

I have little doubt that the state will go for Romney because the word "Democrat" is anathema to so many people here, but we keep working on them. Our presidential votes don't really count anyway -- we only have three electoral votes and the race is usually decided before our polls even close.