Rogers Points to the Future,
While Texas Democrats Crash
by Harley Schlanger
May 28—At the end of an intense five-month campaign, LaRouche Democrat Kesha Rogers told participants at her victory party on election night that their activity has changed the world.
"My U.S. Senate campaign was not about an election, she said, but about a mission, of giving the United States a future. We defied the odds by getting into the runoff, and we ran a campaign in which we told the truth about the existential crises facing the nation, and the enormous potential for the future, once we defeat the Anglo-Dutch Empire and impeach its puppet, Obama. We made this the issue, and in the end, nearly 3 in 10 Democrats who voted in the runoff responded to my call for his impeachment."
" We proved, by running my campaign this way, that a growing minority of voters will respond to 'big ideas.' "
Rogers highlighted some of the events which demonstrated that potential. She spoke of how she had been moved by meeting with veterans, whose initial skepticism about her, and politics in general, changed dramatically, into supportive emotional outbursts, as they were inspired by her appeal to their higher qualities of patriotism over parties. She recalled this same quality of response throughout the campaign, as she addressed desperate people, suffering under the worsening effects of the economic blowout of 2008, who have become demoralized about their present circumstances, and unable to even think about the future.
"What they are looking for is leadership that can create optimism about the future. What we initiated with this campaign," she concluded, "did not end tonight. We have proven that the spirit of the Kennedy years can still be tapped, and that the desire for scientific and technological progress inspires real hope for a better future. I will not stop fighting for that," she said.
Change in Texas Politics
Unofficial results posted by the Texas Board of Elections this morning credit Rogers with 27.45%, about 51,500 votes. But the numbers don't tell the real story of this contest.
By election day, the Rogers campaign had completely broken out of the pathetic efforts of LaRouche-haters among Democratic Party officials to contain it. Democratic Party hacks worked overtime on Memorial Day weekend, to try to put it back into a box. A number of state and county Democratic Party officials retailed the same old anti-LaRouche slanders, in a spate of e-mails and mailings, while their chosen loser, Rogers' opponent David Alameel, was stumbling incoherently through several interviews, convincing no one of anything.
Leading party officials who were supporting Rogers reported that the Obama defenders backing Alameel had nothing left but threats of exclusion, vote fraud, and voter suppression, to deploy against Rogers. One official said that the anti-Rogers operatives were shocked by the low level of early voting, as Alameel's backers were depending on a well-funded, large, early voting turnout, including mail-in/absentee ballots, to achieve a margin of victory. Even in counties with proven vote-fraud capabilities—as in the Rio Grande Valley fiefdom of party chair Gilberto Hinojosa—the numbers of early ballots cast fell far below their expectations.
One party insider added that Rogers is running an insurgency, based on what used to be the best tradition of Texas Democrats—their anti-Wall Street views, which included the belief that government must work for the interests of the people, not for mega-corporate interests. This insurgency will ultimately succeed, despite what happens on May 27, he said, because voters who are now leaving the Democratic Party in Texas will soon discover that the Republicans are anti-government, pro-austerity fascists, and they will come back to the Democrats—"provided that the ideas of Rogers and her co-thinkers take over the party."
This view was reflected in many comments in the media in the last days of the campaign, typified by Rice University political science professor Mark P. Jones, who told the Washington Post that, whatever happens in the election, "I would expect that we will be seeing more of Kesha Rogers in the future."
Texas Dems Self-Destruct
David Alameel's victory over Rogers in the runoff is the classic Pyrrhic victory. What he did to win the election—spending $5 million (or more) to run a negative campaign of lies and slanders against Rogers, targeting only likely loyal, pro-Obama Democrats, while doing nothing to bring the mass of demoralized voters into a dialogue on matters of principle—suppressed the vote total to a recent historic low. While over 750,000 votes were cast statewide in the Republican runoff for Lt. Governor, fewer than 190,000 voters cast ballots in the Democratic runoff. With 13 million-plus registered voters in Texas, the turnout in the Democratic Party runoff was approximately 1.37%—hardly an indication that loyally sticking with Obama is a winning strategy in Texas!
While Rogers' more than 51,000 votes represent a hard-core developing constituency, Alameel's millions of dollars in personal campaign contributions could only bring out 136,000 voters. It is not just that he is a flawed candidate, but that the party strategy is self-defeating. It is well-known that the Wall Street-controlled party apparatus has no intent of seriously challenging incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn.
Lyndon LaRouche warned Texas Democrats, in an historic address to the state party convention in San Antonio in 1980, that the rejection of a scientific, pro-growth orientation, to be replaced by a Wall Street-ordered commitment to free trade, deregulation, and greenie environmentalism, would doom the party. His warning was prophetic. Kesha Rogers, in her 2014 race for U.S. Senate, took up the challenge posed by LaRouche, to rebuild the party based on a return to the principles of the American System, embodied in Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and John F. Kennedy's New Frontier.
In the course of the campaign, Rogers drew support from a broad spectrum of Democratic voters, and those who had left the party in disgust with its Wall Street program. Support came from African-Americans who know Obama has followed the Bush-Cheney path, to Hispanics who know Obama as the "Deporter in Chief," to largely white farmers and so-called Tea Party activists—all eager to hear how the existential crisis of the country can be solved.
As Rogers emphasized on election night, this fight will continue, and we will win it!
