The critique has nothing to do with Thompson beating Henry. It has to do with you including a throwaway line about bloggers. The only purpose for its inclusion is to make a dismissive statement about bloggers and voters (which doesn’t hold true in other races, including one mentioned not five paragraphs earlier in the same story!). I’m just calling that out as a bunk point to include in your article.

As an aside- you use the fact that no one wrote about this race except the blogs. You’re right. Where was the Texas Observer on that one, eh? What’s happening on the Texas Railroad Commission and the oil & gas industry is truly saddening in regards to the Texas environment and regulation. Sounds like something that would normally be up the Observer’s ally- don’t you think?

Thompson’s win will still do down in history as an electoral mystery. Good thing- it’s about time Gene Kelly had some competition.

Thompson has the benefit of having had over 900,000 people vote for him once already — and over 100,000 of those came back to vote for him again.

Instead of offering him help and supporting the nominee, what we get are these sarcastic comments?

Is it because the line between blogging and campaigning has been blurred in 2008? Thompson won fair and square — why not give him a chance — since he is and will be the nominee?

The fact is, the only place anybody could read about the Democratic runoff for railroad commissioner was in the Texas political blogs (R.G. Ratcliffe at the Houston Chronicle made a valiant effort). But, as Vince has pointed out, there was little coverage of it in the mainstream press. The blogs were all pro-Dale Henry, often just pasting in press items from CapitolAnnex.

And nobody — still — has been able to explain why Thompson has done so well. I think there’s something to be said for it. You’re welcome to be as sarcastic as you want in reply. It’s cool. I live for it.

We endorsed Barack Obama earlier than most major news sources and he won more delegates in Texas. Do we get credit for that too? Our coverage of that race has been nationally syndicated so a few people paid attention to our unimportant jibber jabber on that little, irrelevant race.

So does Rosemary Lehmberg’s victory show that Travis County Democrats did follow the lead of bloggers since we supported and endorsed her?

That is good, cuz most voters are pretty stupid people in this state.

Mark Thompson is not some grassroots hero-he’s a clueless hobby candidate who will have no chance against a well financed incumbent.

Even if he prevailed, by some miraculous blue wave taking over Texas, he is ill suited to protect the citizens of Texas against greedy, lying oil and gas corps who’ve had their way for a very, very long time.

I realize that trad media enjoys any chance to bash bloggers, but the fact is no blogger I know thinks writing a blog post by itself does a damn thing to elect anybody.

Nor did anyone I know think that the huge turnout for the Presidential primary, thrilling though it was, meant cotton candy clouds, lemondrop trees, and the best candidate always coming out on top. We live in real world Texas.