Well, damn. Not only was there no Fort Worth miracle for John Sharp, the late ballots in San Antonio wound up pushing Henry Bonilla over the top in the 23rd CD. Can't even get a consolation prize around here.

What next? I'm certainly disappointed with the results. I was excited about the Democratic slate of candidates, I was encouraged by the effort that I saw, and in the end I got nothing for it. It's pretty painful.

I hate to admit it, but it probably won't get better soon. There is reason for optimism, but it's farther off than I wanted to believe.

I believe the "Dream Team" ticket was the right idea, and I believe it's a step in the right direction. The candidates were solid, though in the end Tony Sanchez had too much baggage. One of the objectives of the Dream Team was to help broaden the Democratic Party's base. That objective wasn't fully met - Hispanic turnout wasn't as good as hoped. Both sides are claiming they got more of the Hispanic vote than they were expected to. I'll need to see some objective polling first.

The path forward, as they say, is to continue to build on the base without alienating the existing base. Sylvia Garcia's historic election to the County Commissioner's Court is a good start on the former. The latter is problematic. The Republicans thoroughly dominated the Anglo vote, getting over 70% of it. That's way too much. Some of that can be attributed to the first-minority-candidate factor, but there's a lot of work to be done here.

I'm going to take a short break from all this political stuff so I don't burn myself out on blogging. I plan on participating in Kos' Political State Report when it begins, and I've already got a couple of ideas to explore for it. So please stay tuned.