Obama & Noriega Seem More Organic Than Sanchez & Kirk In 2002

On Texas Primary Day, March 4, I’ll be voting for Barack Obama for President and Rick Noriega for the U.S. Senate.

( Please click here for a Texas Liberal History of the Texas Primary.)

Mr. Obama is black and Mr. Noriega is Hispanic.

Six years ago, Texas Democrats tried what was essentially a stunt by running Tony Sanchez for Governor and former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, a black man, for the U.S. Senate.

It was a “dream team” or a “dream ticket.” It was going to bring a surge in minority turnout.

Sure.

(Below is a print from the Civil War era called “The Soldier’s Dream of Home.”)

Now I have no problem with stunts. Look at the guy of the motorcycle in the picture—Good for him. He has drawn a crowd and I presume he is getting a check for that act. That sure makes him smarter than many bloggers.

Everybody needs an act to get by in this world.   

But Mr. Sanchez was a terrible candidate and Mr. Kirk was a total insider.  The idea that these men were going to bring out a larger minority turnout was pretty much a non-starter.

Six years later we again have the prospect of an all-minority top of the ticket in Texas. (Though of course here in Texas, land of John Wayne and all that, it is white folks who are in the minority.)  

This time around, the possible multi-racial combination at the top of the ticket has a more genuine feel.

For one thing, it’s a chance meeting. It is not a ticket cooked up in the backrooms. ( You’re telling me Mr. Obama still must win the nomination? Oh! Keep your fussy Felix Unger detail-orientated thinking away from the abstractions I hawk in this blog!)

For another thing, Mr. Obama seems to have tapped into a real feeling that we can have something more in this country than Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton.

Mr. Noriega also seems like real progress for Texas. He is as progressive a candidates we are going to see running for the Senate from Texas, and he combines his strong positions on issues with military service abroad.  

As for counting on Anglo urban “liberals” to value positive change more than they value order, and counting on minority turnout to bring home an election victory…..Yep–We are indeed thinking big in Texas for 2008.

(From a web profile of Martin Luther King—It was not clear how SCLC and King could move from their civil rights work in the South to addressing the economic problems of poverty in the North and elsewhere. In 1966, King undertook a Campaign to End Slums in Chicago. After nine months the campaign ended in failure. King discovered the liberal consensus on race relations stopped short of fundamental economic change.)

(Please click here for the Texas Liberal Martin Luther King Reading & Reference List.)

Below is a picture of an organic farm. That’s nice. I’d like some crops from that field in my salad. This is how I see Obama and Noriega. 

Now look at this remote factory farm. It’s an alien landscape sucking up all our water. This reminds me of the soulless Sanchez and Kirk team from 2002. 

A simplification you say? Hey—That’s politics.  

Texas Liberal is leading the way in political history blogging in 2008.