Some notes from the Texas primaries:
In Texas early voting has been going on for more than a week, and early voting stations have opened, campaign signs have proliferated, telephones have been ringing all over the state leaving automated messages and mailboxes are stuffed with campaign ads. In addition to the regular early voting locations on some university campuses, government buildings and shopping centers, there are also early mobile voting stations, they set up for one day in varied locations around Austin and today one of them was at the psychiatric hospital where I work. While mobile voting provided a convenient place for us to vote, the main impetus for making the Austin State Hospital a mobile voting location was to give the patients we serve that very same opportunity. So my colleagues and I were glad to vote there today and hopefully we will continue to host these polling stations in future elections as well.
From my own nonscientific observations, of the eight or so individuals voting at the same time that I was, none of them requested a Republican ballot. Of course, it is Austin. But I have heard that Democratic turnout has been huge all over the state. So much so that the local news station had to interrupt its nightly litany of children harmed by accidents or abuse, murders and fires to wonder whether the huge Democratic turnout could actually bode well for Democrats in state races as well – or as the news station put it, “could Texas go blue?” The next phase is on Tuesday (the official primary day), when precinct caucuses take place and more delegates are apportioned based on results of those caucuses.
About the Cleveland debate: Tim Russert is certainly dogged in his interrogation of the candidates. He is tenaciously grilling Barack Obama about Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement. Obama has repudiated, rejected and complpetely denounced Farrakhan. If only Russert had used some of that tenaciousness instead of his lackluster interrogation of Cheney and other administration officials in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Of course, he is not the only media personality who dropped the ball in 2003. I suppose he is now making up for lost time.
