Texas Dems Are Done Taking High Road With Republicans

I’ll believe it when I see it

The fact that they came back makes everything else meaningless. "No one knew the word 'gerrymandering'." WTF are you talking about? Staying overnight on the floor is an empty gesture when she should have been in Illinois. The whole thing is no better than a strongly worded letter.

California needed to go further

This is the equivalent of announcing you intend to fight someone, which is so basic. Steve Zissou says, "you just nod, and smile, then you sucker punch them, Ned." So, in the case of that TX rep that was effectively kidnapped, she should have barrelled her way out of the statehouse and been shouting about how she'd been held against her will-- capitulation to what the opposition wanted was a tacit endorsement, after all. As well, shame on the reps that signed the "permission slip" and agreed to the unwarranted, illegal surveillance.

Political theater. If this was really serious they would have all stayed in Chicago and JB Pritzker would have paid for it.

"When they go low, we go high" aka "when they go low, we lose"

I hope the people of Texas are absolutely livid enough about this that these districts backfire entirely.

take the high road: RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES! (even if bill clinton has to go to prison)

The pernicious thing about the Texas legislature volunteer-type pay is that inherent in its structure is the compulsory nature of money. Those who already have it, or those who ally themselves to the interests of those who have it, can weather whatever storm their opposition causes without many headaches. On the other hand,, the opposition is unable to equally fight back, because those representatives need to have day jobs to make ends meet and families with mouths to feed. It was never anything more than a class war. Everything else is a smokescreen.

I don't see how we can even frame this as protest when they're accepting the premise of the Republican demand. "Sign this permission slip if you want to leave the building" is the demand, and "fine, then I won't leave the building so I don't have to sign that slip" accepts the premise that that's a thing that is even possible to demand. A real protest move would have been leaving anyway by any means necessary, maybe breaking a window or something and climbing out. Make them arrest you for escaping being held against your will. Or even better, hire private security to break the kneecaps of any rent-a-cop that tries to stop you from leaving your workplace. Also, they shouldn't even have returned in the first place.