Green Party's David Cobb wins 2008 Texas Senate seat?

. . . dawg ain't a-goin' to hunt.
I'm an actual Texan, too! :) And it is quite a challenge.

Somehow DC David Cobb would have to hit the sweet spot on issues, somehow fundraise (huge challenge), . . . . . and the Republicans would have to stumble that same election.

In addition, I also have DC winning re-election in 2014, in part through excellent constituent services without overpromising.
 
kffpoll-062317.jpg


http://khn.org/news/poll-most-americans-unaware-gop-plans-would-make-deep-funding-cuts-to-medicaid/

This is public opinion toward Medicaid, the health care program for low-income persons. And these positive numbers also need to absorb the people who don't give high rankings because they believe it's too complicated to get coverage or doesn't do enough.

Notice that even among Republicans, 22% have a very favorable view toward Medicaid and an additional 39% have a somewhat favorable view.
 
Let's say Dave advocates extending Medicare (for seniors) to persons over 50 and young people 0-19 years.

This might be the sweet spot, in that enough older persons may have heard enough stories about friends and colleagues having a heck of a hard time getting jobs once they're in their fifties, and pretty much everyone is in favor of medical coverage for kids.

Or, it may not be the sweet spot. This is an example of something which is not entirely luck but neither is it entirely knowable.
 
kffpoll-062317.jpg


http://khn.org/news/poll-most-americans-unaware-gop-plans-would-make-deep-funding-cuts-to-medicaid/

This is public opinion toward Medicaid, the health care program for low-income persons. And these positive numbers also need to absorb the people who don't give high rankings because they believe it's too complicated to get coverage or doesn't do enough.

Notice that even among Republicans, 22% have a very favorable view toward Medicaid and an additional 39% have a somewhat favorable view.

Not surprising. The GOPe tends to overestimate how conservative rank and file Republicans are.
 
Let's take another view of the situation (i.e. cheat):
Some unlikely confluence of events (Al Smith wins in '28, some progressive Republican wins in '32 and pushes through a New Deal?) means that the Democratic Party stays powerful in Texas and reactionary at large. The Republicans don't take off in Texas as quickly as OTL - big oil remains Democrat-friendly in Texas, even as more Republican information-tech and banking etcetera businessfolk begin to proliferate. By 2002, though, a red sun is on the horizon.
That year, Austin's Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Pampa's Warren Chisum face off for an open Senate seat. One's a liberal Republican with a focus on fiscal prudence and a penchant for showwomanship. The other is a rural conservative Democrat with a reputation for hardline moralism. After a protracted recount - who knew there were so many Democrats in Webb County? And how did Henry Cuellar get Chisum's old job as Land Commissioner? The world may never know - Chisum scrapes ahead.
The next six years see an oil glut, a budget crisis, and a showdown with the Feds over gerrymandering - in short, the perfect storm for the Republicans. Maybe the Governorship was out of reach, but Warren Chisum had been an uncompromising and ineffective ideologue in the Senate. Who better to win the nomination than a longtime activist and a Strayhorn ally? Someone who promised to put the hammer to corporations that screwed hardworking Texans and the political establishment that aided and abetted them? Someone palatable to everyone from Michael Dell to Royce West?
It had to be David K. Cobb.
 
. . . Someone who promised to put the hammer to corporations that screwed hardworking Texans . . .
This seems to be DC's big issue. As early as (?) 1996 (?), I remember him in favor of a Constitutional Amendment to revoke corporate personhood. Which I found just laughable, not that I don't agree with it, but it terms of developing any kind of political traction. Now I'm not so sure.
 
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