So...What the Hell Happened Last Week?

Last week was brutal. No bones about it.

What everyone wants to know is what happened. Well lets break it down a little. I told you guys that we were going to get swept at the statewide races. I told you the math wasn't there.

But if you want to find someone to blame, and trust me after an election lost there's no shortage of blame, look to the TDP's complete lack of effective messaging. Sorry guys, but depending on the gringa being hot isn't going to get people to the polls in the numbers we need.

We needed an effective message against Abbott and Costello, or whatever the crazy guys name is. Its not like there wasn't an effective message ready to be leveraged. There was plenty to go after with both of them.

The TDP had the chance to define the opponents and they didn't. We had what we needed. We had the money, we had the candidates, we had the infrastructure and ground game in place. What the didn't have was an effective message. This was a brand election and we didn't do anything to try to reverse the tide.

The TDP's inaction in formulating an effective message handcuffed the local counties across the state.

I actually got a chance to look under the hood at the local effort, which I'm pretty religiously critical of, and I saw something that amazed me. They did what they should've done locally. Money was raised and spent effectively. It wasn't blown on consultants, pachangas, and other feel-good-do-nothing old school rallies. It was spent in the field where it belongs. Maybe they spent a little too much effort on the youth, but thats a common mistake and not one that was going to change the out-come.

The TDP sent out a ton of emails, so much so that I eventually unsubscribed and still kept getting them, that kept asking for money. But in the worlds biggest waste of electronic media, they never gave people a reason to vote against the other two. Now the emails are going out to party activist and people who donate to the party primarily. The kind of people that can organically spread a message about the opposition through conversations at bars, barbershops, the nail place, and church through casual conversation.

Not once did I hear a meaningful attack on how anti-immigrant the ticket was. You'd think at the very least in a border community that would be a central theme. Did we hear that? Nope, we just heard about Abbotts suegra being brown.

And that had a huge domino affect on the two local elections that were banking on at least a decent showing from the Democratic Party. Julio Diaz did everything necessary to win. Sure he had his vulnerabilities that I mentioned, but they were never really capitalized on.

Haggerty didn't do any block walking and perhaps made a feeble attempt at phone banking. But for most of the campaign season, he did the usual ineffective campaign stuff.

And he still crushed Diaz.

That's how you know it was a brand election. Haggerty didn't have the organization in place to effectively leverage a GOTV effort that was reflected on Election Day. I bet he didn't touch more than 20% of the people that turned out.

Julio's effort was so strong that I even looked passed something I had said long ago, that the math wasn't there for the PCT 4 seat yet. But the expectation of a better turnout because of Wendy Davis had us all a little intoxicated with our own party Kool-Aide.

Normally I'm critical of the local party. But the blue-hairs weren't running the show this go-around. There was no expensive yet ineffective circle-jerk rallies, and no consultants got rich off our effort. There was a methodical plan in place that was properly executed.

We just didn't have a message that would encourage our base to go out to vote and influence anyone in the middle to vote for our side.

Win some, lose some. But you suit-up for every game.