Nose Bleeds and Crickets

What I am hearing from my friends and associates who are having a ball in Charlotte, NC this week at the Democratic National Convention is that the Texas Delegation has been relegated to the nosebleed seats at the convention center, and to the boonies in their accommodations.

 

The reason? Well for the past decade Texas Democrats haven’t had a majority in either legislative house, nor have they had a statewide office holder for over 10 years. This is reason enough to put Texas in the stratosphere let alone the nosebleed seats. The message is clear, deliver a majority or bring oxygen to the convention center.

And now I am reading it in the Austin American-Statesman.

Now when the Republican delegation was seated at the Republican convention they were also relegated to the nosebleed seats but for far different reasons. Texas delegates were, for the most part, too white, too overweight, and wore far too many white Stetson hats. And boy did they complain.

But in fairness, it didn’t help to see a speaker at the platform make some sort of comment and have the cameras pan over to the Texas seats only to see them milling around and not applauding. Maybe because they couldn’t hear the person at the stage.

So how did that happen? How did the steadfast Texas Republicans rate the cheap seats?

Texans, it seems, were removed to the upper tiers in favor of, wait for it, the Marianas Islands delegation and the Puerto Rico delegation.

Brown people in other words.

The RNC is chafing under the very correct claim that the Republican Party is being run by a bunch of old fluffy white men. They have their share of older women with big hair as well. So much so that they took the sure thing low-diversity delegations and placed them far away from the cameras’ telephoto lens. But judging from what I could see in the crowd pans, they didn’t do a very good job.

Either that or TV camera optics are getting better and better.

I think that’s a scream. Texas Republicans deliver a solid red state every two years to the Republicans and this is the thanks they get: seats where you can hear crickets. Texas Democrats get the same treatment, understandably, but respond with whooping and hollering, and are having a grand old time.

They even love their accommodations, some 20 miles from the convention center. 

Yes, that is a chandelier made out of deer antlers.

From the looks of it, it looks rough around the edges, but here it is. Would you trust some Yankee delegate to stay at the Great Wolf Lodge with its rustic look and feel, or would you want to assign it to a delegation that is likely to make the best of it?

I thought so.