Just when you thought race wouldn't be an issue...

So Kirk's for affirmative action. You made it seem like he was playing the race card when all he did was take a pro stance on an issue many texans are against. Sounds more like Kirk's sticking to his beliefs and not trying to appease the conservative voters.

 

Yeah, I don't really see where anything out of the ordinary happened here. The two candidates just have differing views of whether or not race should be used as one of many factors when determining admission into colleges. That's a position that many hold and many disagree with-just like abortion, tax cuts, environmental policy, etc.

Now, if you wanna go back to when one of Cornyn's aides said something along the lines that the Democratic candidates for Governor and Senate where like a racial quota, then yeah, that's pretty bad.

As an aside to this specific topic, two things bug me about Cornyn, unrelated to issues. One, he's criticizing Kirk for accepting a full-time paycheck from the law firm he works at (and I work at) while running for office. meanwhile, as far as I know, Cornyn is still the Attorney General of the state of Texas and receiving a paycheck paid for by the citizens. Also, he's gone on and on about Kirk raising money outside of Texas when the two have raised nearly the same amount of money from outside the state (Cornyn-1.6 mil, Kirk-a little over 2 mil).

I do like the commercial that starts "If I'd done a quarter of things that John Cornyn's accused me of, my mother would've disowned me by now". I once talked to his mother on the phone...really funny lady.

 

I liked that one, too. It's my second favorite commercial of the election season (my favorite is the "Ron Chapman is Judge Softie" radio commercial in Dallas. But I like that one mostly because it's really stupid).

 

"The race card"

Does that hold the same stature and power as the "Wild - Draw Four" in Uno?

 

Yes, but neither hold the same as the "Skip" in Phase 10.

 

With less than two weeks to go and in Bush's home state, it's interesting that it's this close at this stage of the campaign.....

 

Thank you.....duly noted.

I think I'll get a nice game of PC Uno started right now.

 

Did you hear Cornyn's response to the drug question the other night? I'm gonna start calling him George W. Cornyn.

 

The bottom line is that Cornyn's beliefs on the affirmative action issue reflect the majority of Texans beliefs on the topic.

Perhaps that is way Cornyn has a comfortable lead in the polls.

 

I wouldn't call 5 points comfortable. That's probably just outside the margain of error.

 

Yeah, I'm sure his view on affirmative action is why he has a 5 point lead in the polls where the margin for error is 4 points.

Like others have said, this is an issue on which they disagree. Making more out of it than that is really overstating it. But, this IS politics, so spin it whichever way makes you feel good.

 

One other note on this...

African Americans are traditionally under-represented in polling situations (as are Hispanics) because they are more likely to not participate in phone polls, to not have home telephones or to not be available during polling times.

I had an interesting conversation with a pollster about this fact and he said that it is often hard to guage those communities in polls and hard to determine just how many will turn out to the polls.

 

Good point on the margin of error. The lead is probably closer to 9 points instead of 5.

I wasn't insinuating that is the only reason why Cornyn has a comfortable lead, but one of many.

 

Yeah, remember that the polls originally had Gore winning Florida. See how bad pollsters can be?

I never trust polls, especially if it's one of the Harris polls. I had a friend that worked for them, and his polling numbers were repeatedly way off from the reported statistics. Long story made short, it seemed really likely that the polls were 'tweaked' to favor someone. I think there's a lot more than a 4% margin of error on these.

 

This from Slate.com's Kausfiles on Monday...

Kf's Texas sources say it's wrong to write off Democratic Senate candidate Ron Kirk -- the unprecedented minority turnout he'd need to win just might happen (despite what you read in the Dallas Morning News). A bit of early-warning data: Yesterday was the first day of early voting in Hidalgo County, home to the sort of potential new voters Democrats are counting on. In 1998, 330 people in the county voted on the first day of early voting. Yesterday, 1,930 voted. ... Maybe Hidalgo's early voters were just so enthusiastic they all voted on the first day. Or maybe ABC and PBS were on to something when they featured the Texas contest.

and Wednesday...

Texas Early Warning, Cont.: They're already casting ballots in Texas. In the first three days of early voting, turnout in four largely Democratic counties (Hidalgo, Nueces, Jefferson and Travis) has more than doubled over that in the 1998 midterms (rising from 12,873 to 27,727). Three of these counties are heavily minority, I'm told, although in those three early turnout is only up 50%. ...Turnout is up in Republican areas too, but a heavier turnout in general favors Democrats.