As most of you already know, state Senator Wendy Davis will not be the next governor of Texas despite the efforts of so many, including those at Daily Kos who applauded her courage and stamina in filibustering for 13 hours and then supported her throughout her campaign. I am grateful to all who stood with us as we fought to take back our state from the Republican Tea Party of Texas. Thank you so much. In all of the chaos that is Election Day, I thought that you might have missed hearing Wendy's heartfelt speech to supporters that night. In it, she acknowledges that, of course, we are all disappointed, and why:
Voices that had been held down and pent up for decades all through this state cried out and demanded to be heard in the most incredible exercise in democracy and determination and just plain old raw fight that this state has seen in decades.
Yes, we did. And we're not about to sit down and shut up now.
Wendy Davis continues:
I am so proud of all that we have accomplished. And every time I think of what we've done here, of course I can't help but think about the words that Teddy Roosevelt spoke in Paris over a century ago, when that city was still reeling from devastating floods. [...] It has been a saying that has inspired me to do so many of the things that I have been able to do and that I know you've been inspired to do. The quote reads as follows: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming." My friends, the credit for that kind of fight, the fight that we have been valiantly fighting, belongs to you. You are the ones who have been in the arena day after day, and you'd been fighting quiet battles before any of you ever even knew my name.
Then Wendy encourages us to keep on fighting to take back our state.
Credit also goes, in my opinion, to our impressive slate of Democratic candidates who had the courage to step up and run for statewide office this year, not several elections from now when demographic trends suggest that Democrats stand a much better chance of winning: Wendy Davis for governor, Leticia Van de Putte for lieutenant governor, Sam Houston for attorney general, Mike Collier for comptroller of public accounts, as well as many other worthy and qualified candidates. Our statewide candidates racked up an impressive array of endorsements from the state's major newspapers, with many penning scathing indictments of the Republican Tea Party's extreme and unqualified nominees. For anyone who has been paying attention to news coverage of Texas politics during the past few decades, this was a startling and, of course, welcome development in and of itself.
Here is Wendy’s speech in its entirety (h/t to Chrislove for finding the video).
YouTube Videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V4nhmBoUY4
I will leave you tonight with words from Jacob Riis. He's a twentieth-century muckraker who said that, "When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow, it will split in two, and I know that it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before." My friends, keep believing with me. Keep fighting with me. Keep hammering with me. And in the end, we will win.
Count me in.