Health care reform is up in the U.S. Senate. The economy continues its slow recovery. A jobs bill is on the way. Misled by Fox News, I guess, some doomsayers have, until now, thought 2010 wasn’t gonna be great for Democrats. But suddenly they remember: Gov.  Rick Perry was elected with 39 percent of the vote in 2006.

Texas, meanwhile, is an incumbents’ nightmare, and all the incumbents are Republican. Why is it a nightmare? Because Hutchison is playing a practical joke,  Perry is a practical joke, Dewhurst is a bad joke, Comptroller Susan Combs writes dirty jokes (bodice rippers, anyway), Abbott doesn’t get the joke, and House Speaker Joe Straus and Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson would rather be at the track or the gun range, respectively, no joke.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that while teabaggers do their best to redraw a Mason-Dixon line along the Red River, most moderate Texans are alarmed that they can’t afford their kids’ college, they can’t afford health insurance, they’re losing their jobs, their mortgage company is knocking on the door, they pay tolls to a Spanish company for the privilege of waiting in traffic and breathing poisonous air. They can’t even get a glass of water when they stop at the diner because there’s a drought and nobody’s planned for the state’s water woes.

Watch out, because December is almost here, the deadline for filing for office just six weeks away, and there’s about to be a scramble among Democrats to see who is running for which statewide office.

Before very long, there will be either surprising new energy or a major shake-up of some sort in the governor’s race. That shake-up, and a general sense that somebody’s gonna get there first if they don’t move now, will energize potential down-ballot statewide candidates, in fact, it will energize more candidates than there are statewide offices. So behind the scenes there is going to be some serious arm-twisting, posturing, positioning, and all-around fun.

There’s also this often overlooked fact:  Texas Democrats have a statewide organization that far surpasses what was in place before their legendary sweep of 1982, or Ann Richards’ victory of 1990, or certainly before the nationwide losses of 2002. It’s not even close. There’s more organization, more discipline, more capable leadership  — almost all of it behind the scenes. All of it critical to potential 2010 successes.

There is an army of activists waiting to be mobilized. I have to admit, they are as nervous and impatient as Texas patriot/citizens were at Sam Houston’s dithering (to coin a word) before attacking (and beating) Santa Anna.

A couple of things have made Hungry Young Democrats wait for the whites of GOP eyes before deciding what to do. First, of course, is their youth.  The storied 1982 ticket had seasoned incumbents Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Hobby at the top, and a bunch of them — Mark White, Ann Richards, Jim Mattox, Garry Mauro — wanted to get near the front of the line ahead of would-be competitors. They didn’t want to wait. Today’s young Democrats have, until now, figured they had years to go before they found themselves out to pasture.

But waiting is always a bad risk in politics. Just ask Hutchison. Or Henry Cisneros. This isn’t lost on the young bunch (I am leaving out names ’cause I’ll sure enough forget someone and I can’t afford the minutes on my cell phone for the angry calls from the overlooked).

There’s also:  1)  All the downspinning of Democratic chances in 2010 was based on air. This is not to say the Eeyore gloominess couldn’t be self-fulfilling if it prevailed; 2) What exactly is supposed to happen between 2010 and 2014 that will make the latter a better year for Democrats? Uh…no one can answer that. There is no swinging pendulum. Democrats have to build their future.

With apologies to the Beatles, in politics the votes you take are equal to the votes you make.

I’m very aware that some so-called sophisticates remain skeptical about 2010. Some do so for self-interested reasons. Others are glass-half-empty types. As I’ve said before, sophistication is often the enemy of courage. So call me unsophisticated.

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Today’s Republican leadership in Texas has betrayed them all, and it’s time to quit reading tea leaves, playing for personal advantage and holding our fire for days of a sure thing and a safe bet. It’s time to get down and throw the bums out. “This train is leaving it’s rolling down the tracks and there ain’t no turning back.” The Parlor Mob sang that. Not a bad anthem for the times.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn votes to give corporations such super-human rights that a merely human rape victim is denied her day in court. Gov. Rick Perry covers up the decision-making that may well have led to the execution of an innocent man. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst says he and his cronies could have balanced the state’s budget without the $12 billion in federal stimulus money they took to balance the budget. This Dewhurst did to help Perry cover-up his transparent lies to his own teabagged base.

Cheering on the teabaggers with cries of “Hands off Texas,” Perry pulled his pockets open for the very feds he was name-calling. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s been named “porker of the month” for her profligate earmarking, you know, the practice John McCain said would be the ruin of us all. Texas House Speaker Joe Straus only wants to get along with the rest of the gang. There’s no hope there, given the company he keeps and all.

The hypocrisy and mismanagement have reached levels the word failure doesn’t quite capture. All the while Texans work hard and accept responsibility for their lives and the lives of their children. They do what Texans have always done in a pinch: worked harder and faced the future with an unblinking gaze that gets it.

When our public schools succeed it’s because of the commitment of teachers, parents, students and local supporters who care enough to get involved. State government has turned its back on public education. We have more kids without health care than any other state. We have more uninsured people than any other state. Our highways are crumbling. College is out of reach for many Texans.

We are in a serious tight. Too often, so-called political sophistication is the enemy of courage. The future is what we make it. Good times are not going to come around on their own and wait for our passive endorsements of our luck. We have to build a just and prosperous Texas future.

Durn near everybody in Texas who knows anything about the state of our state knows that the current leadership has looted the treasury, trashed the infrastructure necessary for a healthy bidness climate and tested our children to death while trying to replace science with superstition and history with right-wing idols. We have the best medical facilities in the world and most of our citizens are locked out of them, victims of an insurance industry that owns the Republican leadership. This ain’t no revelation. Everybody knows it. Some shrug it off, others think it will expire on its own. I wish it would, but it won’t.

If Rick Perry had been in charge at the Alamo Santa Anna’s family would still own all the Texas toll roads and Perry himself would have lived to a ripe old age proud of how he mortgaged Texas independence to save his own ass. I can hear him now, railing against the meddling government in Mexico City as he fills his pockets with gold coins emblazoned with his own well-coiffed likeness.

Texas is coming back. Are you?

People get ready. The late Curtis Mayfield:

Or, as the Parlor Mob sing, “This train is leaving it’s rolling down the track and there ain’t no turnin’ back.”

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