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The ultra top-secret TSTA staff blog, Gravity and Waggery, has been revealed to me, and I must say I have to agree with the latest post on Speaker of the House Craddick.

As Richard writes in his post the subject of Junior Tuesday:

TSTA endorsed candidates who support Tom Craddick and candidates who don't because our endorsements were based on the candidates' votes on education issues. I wrote this in response to the question I seemed to be getting most often from just about everyone who is answering the political pundits' favorite question about Texas House races: Was Tom Craddick the reason candidates won or lost on election night?

I see something different - something probably far too simple for the political pundits and professional class of political operatives - that Tom Craddick was essentially irrelevant on election night.

I had the same thoughts. Are we crazy? naive? As far as I could tell, long-time incumbents had the advantage last Tuesday, and as Richard explains, those who didn't usually had a problem: Haggerty faced a lack of Democratic crossover. Macias lost by about the same edge he won last time. Latham's seat flipped again against a popular mayor.

And, of course, Van Arsdale lives in Sen. Dan Patrick's district, and woe be to anyone who crosses a Senator who is a conservative talk show host who owns his own radio station. That's a bloc vote out there.

As for me, I remember the video street survey that the Star-Telegram did, passing around pictures of David Dewhurst, Rick Perry and Tom Craddick. Did anyone on the street know them? Nope. They might know their money, of course, but most did not know them.

And Pat Hardy? Dodged a bullet, I think. I don't know that Pat would say that. I guess I would quote my own story, but you have to pay to read me. Here is the Star-Telegram's story. Almost 100,000 votes in that race. In the Republican primary. Those numbers are comparable to the 2000 Republican primary, which was GWB's first run at president. 

Actually, the phone is not ringing. It's closer to 5 a.m., and I just walked into the house after spending the evening at the television station, posting election stuff.

I don't know if you were tracking results. On Debate Night, I spent a lot of time being obnoxious on Jenny's blog. Tonight was a lot more serious. I had a lot more races. I had candidates to call.  I really hadn't been by the station to set anything up with them.

Above: Clinton and Obama talk about the fact I didn't get any sleep on Tuesday night. In this picture, Barack is suggesting I get a real big raise. Hillary is more concerned with national defense.

But how could you see Barack Obama drawing crowds in the thousands to Town Lake and Reunion Arena and every other venue in the state and still see him lose the state?

The simple answer that I was told was that Hispanics showed up and African-Americans did not. I haven't seen the numbers out of the races to confirm that. Although we wondered aloud in the newsroom tonight, Candra and I, how you can get the stars any more aligned to motivate African-Americans. You've got an eloquent African-American man with a populist message and a huge following and plenty of publicity... and you don't go vote?

I have to say, from the beginning, I've always thought that we had a farce of a campaign down here in Texas. I had conversations with a number of Dem operatives here ...

While all the local media were salivating over the huge rallies and thousands of people, I was thinking that these two candidates just didn't act serious enough. Now, I'm going to have a counter view on this theory of mine, but my theory was that we had the candidates here, but they just weren't saying much about Texas.

They talked... but never in specifics. They reached out to me, but not with a great deal of creativity. They sent surrogates and actors, but they didn't seem ready to dig into any real thought about the particulars of what is going on in Texas.

I guess I thought this was best illustrated by a luncheon I attended hosted by Obama. He sent a surrogate -- an economist -- to talk Obama talk. And so the first question out of the shoot is from a local Realtor. He wants to know what Obama's plan was for Texas on the foreclosure market, and specifically the fact that while the rest of the country is going bust, Austin is still generating a housing market.

So while Hillary is proposing a freeze on loans, and Obama is talking about a big bailout pool aimed at those in trouble, there is nothing in either plan that addresses an Austin. And I guess it just struck me that this economist -- and I hate to generalize him to be the entire campaign -- just wasn't prepared for variables like Texas.