Texas Is A Big State; Expect It To Eventually Play A Big Role In Democratic Party Politics
I was still a teenager the first time I ventured from home in New York to Texas. I had only passing interest in what I saw as a Big Oil-controlled fascist-oriented state where they killed JFK, but I was hitchhiking to Mexico and there was no way around it. It went as badly as I imagined it might. I was robbed of everything I had, then driven out into the desert by Texas police who pretended they were going to shoot my friend and me. Instead, they just left us.
I don't think I went back to the state again for over two decades, and even then it took the beginning of Austin's "South by Southwest" in 1987. Bernie Sanders went to the same high school I did in Brooklyn, James Madison, but he was a few years ahead of me and I have no idea how he felt back then about Texas. He sure seemed happy to be there yesterday!
Politically, Texas is still part of the Solid South, a bloc of states that once upon a time always voted for Democrats from the bottom of the ticket to the top. After Texas was admitted to the Union, the first presidential election it participated in was in 1848, when 8,801 Texans casting their ballots for Democrat Lewis Cass, as opposed to the 3,777 who voted for the victorious Zachary Taylor, a Whig. Four years later Texas was on the winning side with Democrat Franklin Pierce and it was again in the next go-round, which gave the election to Democrat James Buchanan.
In the pivotal 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln didn't appear on the ballot in Texas. The state voted for Vice President John Breckinridge (D-KY), who has the distinction of being the only United States senator convicted of treason against the United States by the Senate, having enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861 while still serving as a senator.
Read more: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2015/07/texas-is-big-state-expect-it-to.html
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