Most failed presidential campaigns are high-risk bids for personal glory and a waste of time and money.
THIS WEEK: Are you planning to run for president on the Democratic ticket in 2020? If not, why not? Everyone else is. Trump looks pretty beatable, so a bewildering assortment of A, B, C and D-list Democrats are lining up to run, from strong candidates like Kirsten Gillibrand to a Maryland congressman we are told is named “John Delaney” to Mark Cuban, maybe. But Texas Democrats should fervently hope that neither Julián Castro nor Beto O’Rourke runs for president, for the simple reason that Texas needs them a lot more than the nation does, writes columnist Chris Hooks.
The Lede
Who Writes History? The Fight to Commemorate a Massacre by the Texas Rangers
In 1918, a state-sanctioned vigilante force killed 15 unarmed Mexicans in Porvenir. When their descendants applied for a historical marker a century later, the effort to commemorate one of Texas’ darkest days met resistance in Presidio County.
Writer Daniel Blue Tyx did dozens of interviews, sifted through hundreds of emails and drove across the state. He found “a county still struggling to move on from a racist and violent past [and] far-right amateur historians sowing disinformation.”
The Porvenir massacre controversy is about more than just the fate of a single marker destined for a lonely part of West Texas, Tyx writes. It’s about who gets to tell history, and the continuing relevance of the border’s contested, violent and racist past to events today.
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From the 2014 story: “On an unremarkable day in September 2012, after so many other frustrating and unremarkable days, he stepped into the woods carrying only a tarp and a hunting knife. He walked through the thickets and pines he’d fallen in love with as a child, and busied himself with the most worthwhile job he could think of: survival.”
What’s Happening at the Observer
The Texas Observer staff invites you to join us for our holiday BBQ on Friday, December 7 at 6 p.m. We’ll be hosting folks at our offices in east Austin, where you’ll get an opportunity to see where the work of our reporters and editors is done (and maybe take a picture with our life-size Molly Ivins cut-out). Tickets are available for $150 and include Micklethwait BBQ dinner and beverages (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic). All proceeds from the evening go back to fund the Observer’s award-winning investigative reporting.
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