An outline of just how dumb that comment from Cruz was

Cliffs:

- Texas actually grows a ****ton of soybeans, so they should want people to eat tofu
- Texas has a lot of technology jobs
- His own wife is vegetarian

No idea if accurate, but I always assume that the rest of Texas must hate everything about Austin.

Speaking of dyed hair, what does Ted Cruz think his wife's natural color is?

I assume Cruz meant silicone, not silicon.

The Rosen/Heller for Senate in Nevada is tilting the **** out of me.

Heller should be VERY beatable - he mishandled his relationship with Trump pretty badly and then went back to sucking up as hard as he could to the king, irritating a lot of voters. He's pretty much a do nothing Senator, AFAIK - comes off reasonably well in media spots, but nothing great. Nevada is shifting blue pretty quickly - he's running in a tough spot.

But Rosen is running a horse**** campaign - her most recent spot is a talking head 30 second clip that for some reason is shot from a weird three-feet-above-her-head looking down, which gives her a giant noggin with a dinky body dangling below it. It's so off-putting that the first couple of times I saw it I was pretty much hypnotized and had no idea about the content. Just this balloon floating in space.

I dunno if she's broke and can't afford to pay for professional help , or if her cousin is an aspiring filmmaker, or what. Very strange... I understand that none of this stuff should matter, but it does. And if the GOP hangs onto the Senate by the tanned fingernails of Heller, I'm gonna be pissed.

MM MD

when cruz mentioned "dyed hair" I assume he meant like weirdo hippie librul blue hair

Austin people like to assume everyone else in texas hates them (because they're "weird" (there are really only 12 weird people in Austin and everyone else thinks it rubs off on them) and they think they have the best bbq) but at least in the cities (I'm in Austin, Dallas and Houston a lot for work) they just kinda ignore em. "oh yeah, austin, right... mmm hmm".

Lol I’m actually contemplating donating to the Texas Senate race. Cruz someday giving a concession speech gives me reason to live.

Besides donating, does anyone have tips/cliffs on the most effective way to phone bank or volunteer time towards this race remotely from another state?

https://act.betofortexas.com/signup/...omepage_navbar

Basically. Austin is actually in the running for the least Weird place in Texas and it isn't particularly liberal either. Even beyond the middlebrow plurality, overt reactionaries outnumber lefties by at least 10 to 1. I can't recommend it tbh.

Also, soybeans are used overwhelmingly for cooking oil and animal feed. I'd guess that increased tofu consumption is bad for soybean farmers.

Thx. I signed up.

I also signed up to phone bank for the Democratic opponent of Dana Rohrabacher, Harley Rouda, who is basically tied with him and could flip that district.

https://events.mobilizeamerica.io/roudaforcongress/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...ll-ca48-1.html

And for the Democratic opponent of Devin Nunes, Andrew Janz, who might be a longshot, but is running a tighter than usual race, perhaps within 5 points.

https://www.andrewjanzforcongress.com/volunteer

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/31/trum...alifornia.html

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4...te-republicans

"You can't repeal history, and almost every election two years into any new administration the party of the presidency loses seats. They don't always lose the body, but almost always loses seats. And so we know that this is going to be a very challenging election on the Senate side," McConnell told reporters when asked about his party's chances of keeping the upper chamber.

Gotta manage them expectations

Seriously, though, if the senate were safely out of play, I think you'd see a few GOP senators break on Kav and dump the dude.

Kinda cool that all 8 were in the 10 my model predicted as most competitive, *in 2017*. The only ones I missed was I had Minnesota's Special Election in there & I had Texas as slightly more competitive than MO, IN and MT. It all comes down to fundamentals - all the non quant pundits had OH, WI, PA as competitive or "lean Dem", hilarious.

I'll post a new version of my model tomorrow (hopefully, took longer than I thought). Dems have a chance but they're definitely below fifty percent.

.

Cool. Looking forward to it. Thanks.

Feels like Beto is going to come up a few points short. Even so, he should be at the top of the 2020 roster.

https://twitter.com/politico/status/1039732857529356296

I said this a year ago

Willie Nelson to headline rally for Beto O'Rourke

Hell yeah. First time he's ever done that apparently.

Looks like Google is about to see a spike in searches for, "how to burn a cd." They're going to be so mad when they end up making extra copies.

Willie Nelson in Texas seems like it has to fall on the stronger side of celebrity endorsements, but I guess I struggle to see celeb endorsements having a big impact in a general election, especially when Willie has long been known to be liberal and could reasonably be assumed to be behind Beto. Maybe a bigger deal if he was a celebrity who was defecting or making a surprising endorsement.