Alex Root

I'm going to make my rare political post at this time. If you are going to have purity tests for the candidates that are allowed to be on the ballot, you also need to have purity tests for a bare minimum of character. I don't care how much you love someone's policies. Policies are transferable. You can run someone with the exact same policies who doesn't break every moral and social code whenever he thinks no one is looking. You also can't outsource your policy platform to whatever out of state donor writes the biggest checks. No one is invincible on a Tuesday in November, no matter how much money is in your campaign account. Now, all that being said, the Democrats have a very important choice to make now. If these candidates have a shred of self awareness, they understand that they got incredibly lucky for being the name on the ballot in the right year. That's the reason they will now take office. They don't have a mandate for taking our state wildly to the left. If Texas has spoken tonight, the message it has sent is that we don't want radicals and we don't want morally bankrupt individuals running the state. You've got a few years to prove the ads wrong, and build a coalition of good, moderate government. Be Charlie Stenholm and you might stay in power more than a few years. Be Nancy Pelosi and you'll be kicked to the curb as quickly as this rotten Republican leadership core has been. As a Lubbockite, I am also glad to see that our local delegation has survived. We have a good group that cares about our area. I hope that they now feel free to lead from their own moral fabrics (that I know they have), instead of having to pander to statewide electeds that they know in their heart of hearts don't have our best interests at heart. Our state has a big opportunity here to cast off the entrenched power that answers to no one, and instead build something that answers to the people. I am hopeful that we can rise to the challenge.