The rumor is buzzing that Romney “may have picked a running mate”.

I personally expect that Romney, if he’s smart, will keep the media nipping at the bait for the next month, ’til the convention.  Or so I hope.

Given a choice between Palwenty, Jindal, Portman or Rice, it’d be a tough call for me.  I’d be most excited with a Jindal pick, but I could be persuaded any of those directions.

But one thing that does not excite me is some of the chatter from a few Minnesota paleocons over the weekend, saying if Pawlenty were the pick they’d forget about voting for Mitt.

Word to the wise; if Obama wins re-election because Romney lost Minnesota by two votes, I’ll be sending you the bill for my Obamacare tax hike.

The DFL treats a lot of constituencies like serfs – which is a polite word for “slaves”, although there’s usually not an actual title transfer on the humans involved.

Name ’em – women, blacks, Latinos, Gays, Asians, the DFL expects to get all their votes, in exchange for doing nothing of use for them except try to crank up social spending.

Among them we have to add Private-Sector Unions.  Unlike the government employee unions, AFSCME and MAPE and EdMinn and the SEIU, the private sector unions have to work within the free market to keep working.

And DFL rule is disastrous for them.

Nowhere moreso than in the 8th CD, where the economic slump has hit, as usual, hardest, in what was a former DFL sinecure.  The hits keep coming, of course – the DFL’s environmental lobby – anaemic on the Iron Range, but big and powerful in the Twin Cities – has worked tirelessly to shut down the mining industry and to try to keep it shut down.

But in 2010, Chip Cravaack shocked the world – bringing the hope of some free market reforms, and more importantly jobs, to the Range and the Arrowhead.  Cravaack tipped Jim Oberstar in a hard-fought campaign for a seat that had been held by Democrats continuously since the Truman Administration.

The DFL is telling themselves they smell flip-back.  But Iron Rangers are not better off than they were four years ago – and despite Cravaack’s tireless efforts, the environmental lobby, hooked in as they are with the interventionist Obama and Dayton regulatory sledgehammers, the EPA and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, wants to keep them that way.  Poor, broke and dependent.

The first union has had enough:

The International Union of Operating Engineers announced that it supports GOP Rep. Chip Cravaack’s reelection bid. The move will allow Cravaack to note on signs, in ads and in campaign lit that he’s “Labor Endorsed” in a union friendly district.

The IUOE – better known as “The 49ers” – are a huge force in the district.  And this is an upset; they endorsed Oberstar two years ago:

Earlier this week, the union held open meetings for members in the 8th District to hear from Cravaack and the three DFLers looking to replace him. After meeting with the candidates, “the strong majority voted to endorse Congressman Chip Cravaack,” according to a statement from the union.

Sources familiar with the election say it wasn’t even close – like, 60-40.

Specifically, the union applauded Cravaack for voting against several attempts to dial back prevailing wage laws, as well as his support for construction projects such as the Keystone Pipeline, the Polymet mining project and a new St. Croix River bridge.

“When we took a look at Congressman Cravaack’s term in office, it became clear that he has done a good job of staying away from partisan Washington politics, and really focusing on bread and butter issues that are important to construction workers in his district,” the group said in a statement. “He is not afraid to stand up to his party when he disagrees with their direction, and his votes reflect that.”

If you’re a member of a private sector union, ask yourself – are you better off than you were four years ago?  And if not, how is your union remaining devoted to Barack Obama and the DFL helping you?

It’s not.

You’re just a serf; you’re a source of union dues, and a biennial vote. ;

The demand for my first episode of “FACQ” was so immense, I thought I’d do a follow-up.

Q: “So what do you think about Mitt’s “Swiss Bank Account”?
A:  “Fascinating.  Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Q: “Mitt made his money by short-selling America!”
A:  “Speaking of short-selling – how does the value of your house compare to four years ago?”

Q: “Is it moral that Mitt short-sold America?”
A:  “He didn’t – that’s a narrative repeated by people who don’t understand the term, intended for and repeated by others who also don’t have a clue.  Short-selling is a way of creating wealth out of the process of creative destruction.  It in turn creates more capital to create more jobs.  Speaking of jobs – are you better off than you were four year ago?

Q: “People don’t like Mitt Romney”
A:  “You know what people like less?  Being out of work.  Did you see last Friday’s jobs report?   Most of us are doing much worse than we were four years ago!”

Q: “Hahahaha!  Obamacare is constitutional!”
A:  “We’re working on it.  Now – are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Q: “Mitt’s wife rides a horse!”
A:  “I bet the horse is the only one who’s better off than he was four years ago.  Speaking of which – are you better off than you were four years ago?”

More as conditions warrant.

WIth a (as yet unrevised) job number of around 80K – a fraction of what’s needed to meeting population growth – the unemployment rate held steady at 8.2% with this morning’s Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers.

But the actual Labor Force Participation Rate also held steady at 63.8%.

That means the actual percentage of the work force that’s actually working – that 63.8% of people between the ages of 16 and 65 that are working, or trying to work, and haven’t been out of work for longer than a year, and less all of the unemployed – is actually 58.57%.

• That’s two points lower than when Barack Obama took office.
• Thats 7/100 of a percent better than in October of 2009, when unemployment peaked at 10%.
• It’s half a percentage better than when participation bottomed out two months later, in December of 2009.  Which was a very brief downward spike, by the way – with rates in general being right about where they are today.  Equal to the worst rates at the “bottom” of the recession.
• That’s almost five points lower that the best rate under the Bush Administration – and two and a half points lower than the worst rate Bush had (as he left office).  A fairer comparison?  Its 3.5% worse than the bottom of the rate during the post-9/11 recession.

Face facts, America.  There is no recovery.  Obama’s “economic policy” is a joke.

If America votes for four more years of this, it deserves what it gets.

Update:  It’s worse if you’re Hispanic.

Update2:  And worse still if you’re black.

A few things popped into mind as I was listening to the news.

Immigration Is The New War On Women:  I was a captive audience while some CNN show with Soledad O’Brien last night.  She was playing – and re-playing – a series of questions to Romney advisors failing to cough up details of Romney’s immigration plan on demand.  And demand.  And demand.

And demand.

It beats talking about the economy (with its 11% Latino unemployment), I suppose.

He Was A Republican, You Know!: Arne Carlson spoke out, from the midst of spooning with Walter Mondale, against the Voter ID amendment.

Expect to see the media and DFL (ptr) portray this as “an argument within the GOP” on the amendment.

As a Norwegian-American, Tony Sutton’s terming Carlson a “Quisling” was a bit loaded for my taste – but Carlson was a worthless spendthrift of a governor and an even more worthless former governor, and the GOP’s big mistake was in not booting him out of the GOP in 1990.

That’s it for now.

Dave Mindeman is one of the small group of Twin Cities leftybloggers who doesn’t deserve to be under police surveillance.

That’s actually pretty solid compliment, given the nature of Twin Cities leftybloggers.

But he obeys a bunch of the usual leftyblogger strictures – most notable among them the idea that conservatives, as they relate us, never, ever ask questions, broach issues, object to things, or any of the other ways civilized grown-ups communicate.

No.  According to this post, we deal in cliches, whining and too-convenient caricature:

Oh, yes.  And they’re mind-readers, too:

Like clockwork, the right wing bloggers get on their high horse and rip into large donations going to liberal PACs. Alida Messinger gave $500,000 to WIN Minnesota and the cries of “foul” go ringing through the righty blogosphere. Example: Mitch Berg at Shot In The Dark.

I wish they would make a factual clarification in their indignation… it is only liberal money that they object to.

Nonsense.

While I don’t expect that Mindeman has memorized the last ten years of this blog, I’ll drop a hint here; I’m one of those guys who thinks that everyone should be able to give everything they want to anyone they want – provided they disclose it.

The problem isn’t that Alida Messinger donates millions upon millions to the DFL.

The problem is that the DFL spends hundreds of thousands a year trying to cow conservatives out of doing it.

For years, they supported speech rationing – like McCain-Feingold with its strict limits on corporate and personal giving but oh-so-convenient exemptions for, mirabile dictu, the unions.

And for the past year or two, they – via their astroturf stealth PR group “Common Cause Minnesota” – have been working nonstop to demonize giving by anyone that opposes them. Target?  The Koch Brothers?  All of those are threats to democracy, naturally.

Alida Messinger and her plutodollars – well, that’s just a response!

Apparently, the progressive side of the ledger is supposed to unilaterally disarm in wake of Citizens United and give proper deference to the Koch Bros., the Freedom Fund, the Chamber of Commerce PAC, or Hubbard Broadcasting.

Then there was the overreach that ended up hurting GOP donations when proper transparency was allowed. Namely, the Target donations to a group supporting Tom Emmer which has chilled Target’s involvement in partisan campaigns for 2012.

Well, it wasn’t an “overreach” so much as “the left finding a corporation that was socially and politically vulnerable to being bullied into compliance with the DFL’s the Alliance for a Better Minnesota’s agenda”.

Conservatives are continuously using the left’s dislike for money in politics to shame us from working to achieve similar dollar numbers.

No, Dave,

We’re using your (plural) craven, cynical hypocrisy on the issue to let the people know what a bunch of double-talking used-car-salesmen are setting the Democrat agenda.

There is a huge difference!

Perhaps you’ve heard about Barack Obama’s new bridal registry, wherein couples can opt to have wedding guests give to Barack Obama in lieu of (or in addition to) wedding gifts.

It’s a brilliant idea, of course – bolster anemic small-donor giving by instituting a voluntary tax on life’s little joys, just one little bit of asceticism for the greater good.

But why stop with weddings?

With that in mind – my top ten other ideas to help “gift” America and the world with four more years of Barack Obama:

6. You kids’ birthday money – If Obama wins, every day will be a birthday party!

5. Bar/Bat Mitzvahs – With news that the Jewish vote is eroding, it’s way past time to get the younger generation on board!  Today you are a Democrat!  Mazel Tov!

4. Grandma’s Nursing Home Budget – You can clean out that spare bedroom, for the good of the country, right?

3. Your Internet Access bill – good Democrats should be getting their news from NBC anyway, right?

2. Your pledge to MPR – Let’s face it, if Obama loses, the Republicans are going to send tanks to the studios anyway.  Just like they did during the Bush Administration.

1. Your “Friday Night On The Town” money – Why should newlyweds carry all the burden?  Instead of wasting money trying to get some desirable of your preferred gender to go home with you, donate the money to Obama!  Republicans will just outlaw sex if they win, anyway, right?

Hugh Hewitt sounded off in the WashEx yesterday on two big myths about Tim Pawlenty:

First, his critics (who include no doubt backers of other horses) say Pawlenty is dull.

Other than Romney, I have interviewed Pawlenty more often than any other elected official over the past 12 years. With great certainty I can say he is easily the funniest, best interview of all the shortlisted candidates I have spoken with.

Hewitt notes something I’ve been saying all along; Pawlenty, in his element, is one of the best stump speakers in politics.  He’s not a thunderous stem-winder in the William Jennings Bryan mold – too many pols try and fail to rewarm that act.  But he’s affable, quick on his feet, and has a natural knack for relating to an audience.  He may be the most underrated orator in American politics today.

Because the hockey-playing, quick-to-smile former chief exec of the Gopher State is at ease with himself, he is similarly at ease in sit-downs with reporters, ready, willing and very able to give as good as he gets, and very disciplined when it comes to message delivery.

This is an enormous advantage in our media-soaked world, especially in these days of 24/7 news cycles and social media ubiquity. The candidates are always “on,” and the would-be veep needs especially to be out in the lists every day, doing talk radio, local television and endless fundraisers at which every cellphone is a potential game-changing link to the mainstream media.

I, myself, have not come close to making my own call for Veep (not that it matters); I have a few on my short list, with Jindahl, Paul Ryan and Pawlenty near the top.

Speaking to Hugh’s point about media presence – while I’m a big Bobby Jindahl fan, I note his one big oratorial asterisk – his one infamously disastrous appearance in 2008 – is something I’ve never seen TPaw do on stage.  Say what you will about him, the guy’s a 100% performer in front of a camera.

The second objection is Pawlenty’s failed presidential campaign, and the appearance of losing to Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich.

The answer here is the peculiar dynamic of the 2012 primary race, a dynamic Romney understands, having been caught in a crossfire in the race in 2008. Pawlenty ran into an early GOP primary electorate not looking to win the fall 2012 race so much as to promote vehicles through which to express anger at the president. That impulse — the demand for white-hot passion — played itself out as more and more Republican voters got serious about winning, but Pawlenty was its first victim.

This has been a huge issue throughout races, nationally and especially in Minnesota (see the MN Senate race, where activist passion slewed the race hard toward Kurt Bills, a candidate that would have been a dark horse under any normal circumstances).

There’s a third issue that dogs Pawlenty, especially among Minnesota conservatives – that Pawlenty is “not conservative enough”.  My response is “conservative enough for what?”   Conservative enough to win a conservative rhetorical beauty contest?  Of course not – he’s had his slips over the years.

Conservative enough when the chips were down to hold the line on taxes and stand by the principles for which he was elected (are you listening, MN Senate GOP caucus), at a time when a lesser governor could have found ample political cover to collapse like a Wal-Mart end table?

Absolutely.

It remains to be seen whether Hewitt’s attention will damage Pawlenty in this race – ask Pete Hegseth about the “Hewitt Curse” – but you should read the whole thing.

Remember when Obama’s career as a “Constitutional Scholar” was supposedly a signal qualification for his bid for the presidency?

As we career toward the Supreme’s – ahem, the “Death Panel’s” – decision on Obamacare, either does law professor Glenn Reynolds:

Perhaps if Obama had ever written any scholarly articles on the Commerce Clause, he’d have had a better understanding. But then, he never wrote any scholarly articles on anything. As former Obama colleague Richard Epstein said: “I like Obama but I reject the suggestion that he is an intellectual. He is an activist merely mimicking the mannerisms of an intellectual.”

Not that being an intellectual is especially a qualification for the Presidency either; career academic Woodrow Wilson was not only one of our most disastrous presidents ever, but one of the most disastrous leaders in world history, whose incompetence caused problems we’re still paying for in treasure and blood (although he’s criminally overrated by the same academy he sprang from).

But as to those who said Obama’s tenure as a “constitutional law professor” was some sort of dispositive qualification for office?  Baked wind.  A President needs to know the Constitution about as well as a good policeman.  He’s got people to do the detail work.

Although with any luck, Obama’s going to need some new ones tomorrow.

Two years ago, this blog led the Twin Cities media in documenting the extent to which liberal plutocrats and government employee unions were buying the gubernatorial race.

Because remember – money in politics is baaaad, unless it’s from a liberal plutocrat…

…like Alita Messinger, billionaire and scion of the Rockefeller fortune and, need we mention, ex-wife and chief bankroller of Mark Dayton.  She is the prime financier of a network of little-publicized groups – “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, “Win Minnesota”, “Common Cause Minnesota” – that funnel vast sums of money into epic, toxic sleaze campaigns against Republican candidates.

And Alita Messinger is back with a vengeance.  While her epic sleaze campaign against Tom Emmer was able to eke out a win for her ex in 2010,. the uppity peasants went and elected a Tea Party legislature.

And uppity peasants are one thing up with which she will not put:

Philanthropist  [!!!!!!!!] Alida Messinger, the ex-wife of Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton, is putting big money into overturning Republican control of the Minnesota Legislature.

Fundraising reports released Tuesday showed that Messinger gave $500,000 to the WIN Minnesota political fund. That group funneled money to the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, a Democratic-supporting independent expenditure group expected to sink significant amounts into key legislative races.

Among others, they are pouring money into trying to unseat Doug Wardlow in Eagan and Dave Hancock in Bemidji.

Dayton is asking voters to give Democrats control of the Legislature for the second half of his term.

This story is Berg’s Seventh Law in action; months of caterwauling about the Koch Brothers and “ALEC” have been done, entirely and without exception, to either distract attention from Messinger and her fellow plutocrats’ flow of money, or at least to let them say “Yeah, but you do it too!”:

Messinger’s donations dwarfed all others to independent groups so far this year. Three Republican-oriented funds combined had $380,000 on hand.

In 2010, Messinger was a major donor to funds that ran ads attacking Republican Tom Emmer in the governor’s race, which Dayton won by less than 1 percentage point.

On the one hand, this election is the national debate writ small:  Dayton, like Obama, depends almost entirely on big donors – Obama on Hollywood and Silicon Valley, Dayton on the Hamptons and the government unions – to cling to relevance.

On the other?  The Democrats know they can count on at least 43% of the voters to be ill-informed enough to fall for their propaganda machine’s slop.

The GOP’s freshman class in the legislature brought a lot of good, hard-nosed, idealistic conservatives into office – Wardlow and Hancock and Roger Chamberlain and Mary Franson and King Banaian and many others included, many of whom are on Messinger’s hit list.  They’re counting on the disarray in the state party to help them.

The GOP – especially its freshmen, who largely kept their promises – need your support more than ever.  If there were ever a time for Minnesota’s conservatives – a true Army of Davids – to pull off an upset against the DFL’s League of Plutocrats, this is the time.

Because the GOP Freshmen are all that stand between us and Minnesota becoming a cold Greece.

Berg’s Seventh Law – “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds” – is going to be one of the dominant themes of the both the Presidential and the Minnesota Legislative campaigns.

We’ve been subjected to a solid year of caterwauling about the Flying Koch Brothers – who donate a fraction of what George Soros has pumped into liberal politics over the years – and “ALEC“, which “donates” ideas and the model legislation, which is pretty much what the Teachers Union does (except the Teachers donate lots of money too).   And above all, we’ve been subjected to years of liberal do-gooder fronts like “Common Cause” telling us that money in politics is baaaaaad.

Why?

To draw attention away from the extent to which the Democrats are controlled – not “supported”, “controlled” – by plutocrats.

Here in Minnesota, the DFL has basically handed its entire message operation over to “Alliance for a Better Minnesota“, the PR arm of a network of fundraising groups, unions and, especially, wealthy liberals.  They’ve even put Ken Martin, former administrator of part of that network, in charge of the DFL – which is, really, a measure of how much the DFL has become the instrument of the will of a small pack of liberal moneybags.

More on that later.

With Obama’s support among the middle class, small business and blue-collar whites in free fall, and enthusiasm among Latinos, women with kids and the unemployed young stagnant, Obama really has only one important constituency locked up:   the extremely wealthy, and Hollywood.  And since the regular “big-money” donors – people who donate between $500 and $2,500 to the campaign – are bailing on Obama…

…well, you see the conundrum, here, right?  Where’s Obama going to go for money other than the people who still support him completely, and lavishly?

And with that said, who is he going to listen to when it comes time to try to enact policy?

Obama has seen enough Architectural Digest-type interiors in Park Avenue triplexes and Beverly Hills mansions, and on the block in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights, where every house is owned by a billionaire, to develop an expertise in Louis XV walnut commodes and Brunschwig & Fils fabrics.

He’s also had plenty of chances to absorb the advice of the kind of rich liberals who like to give money to Democratic presidents. And the evidence that he has taken some of that advice is his initiatives on three controversial issues, each of which involves serious political risk.

Barone spells out how plutocrat money drove Obama’s positions on gay marriage, government-paid contraception and abortion (and the jamming the bill for both down on churches that oppose them on religious grounds), and…

The third issue is the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport oil produced from tar sands in Canada to United States refineries and create thousands of jobs in the process.

Earlier this year, Susie Buell Tompkins, John Kerry’s fourth-biggest money-raiser in 2004, picketed outside an Obama fundraiser at San Francisco’s W Hotel to protest the pipeline. She wanted Obama’s State Department to block it because she thinks tar sands production hurts the environment and the planet.

Our neighbors the Canadians, who are not unconcerned about the environment themselves, disagree. The pipeline’s promoters say it would produce 20,000 American jobs and would tend to lower U.S. gas prices.

Obama came out on Tompkins’ side and blocked the pipeline.

And enacting non-fiscal, mostly-social policy pushed by plutocrats is great politics, because plutocrats represent real people -right?

If the same-sex marriage reversal seems somewhat risky politically and the contraception mandate considerably riskier, the Keystone pipeline decision seems downright foolish politically. Voters tend to favor it by two-to-one margins — and if they’re not aware of it, the Republicans (and maybe the pro-pipeline unions) will make sure they are.

The priorities of the well-connected, donation-happy and frighteningly well-off will continue to drive Obama’s policy.

And when your liberal friends – and the DFL’s trained chimps like “Common Cause’s” Mike Dean – plump about the evils of money in politics, ask them to clarify who’s money they’re talking about.

I’m doing a little campaign volunteering these days, for the Herndandez for Congress campaign.

There’s a ton of work to do – but if there was ever a year when a Republican could upset Betty McCollum, this is one of them.  Tony needs plenty of help, by the way – financial and volunteers.

But for tonight?  Tony’s going to be appearing at “Ignite the Right”, at the Blue Fox in Shoreview.  Tony’ll be on the bill with US Representative Michele Bachmann and GOP Senate candidate Kurt Bills.

The event, sponsored by the North Metro Tea Party, will take place at the Blue Fox, in Maplewood.  Social hour starts at 5:30, with the program kicking off at 6:30.

The Blue Fox Bar and Grill is at 3833 Lexington Avenue North in Arden Hills.

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I’ve got nothing in particular against marijuana.  I’ve never smoked it, in part because I’m just not a “mellow” kinda guy – if I did a drug, it’d be cocaine, hands (and nose) down.

And I personally support legalizing pot.  Making this cheap commodity the focus of a federal prohibition has contributed to untold deaths and incredible misery in America’s inner cities. Decriminalizing pot would at least remove some of the expense and dislocation that our failed “war on drugs” has caused.

But with all that out of the way?  Stoners annoy me.  There is nothing in the world more annoying that numbed, hemp-reeking munchy-grubbing cackling drone of the Chiba Monkey set.   I’ll sit in a chair and listen to Shakira’s fingernails on a chalkboard all weekend before I listen to stoners babbling in Shaggy-Doo cant without forcing bongs down peoples’ throats.

So I’m glad to see that, along with Hollywood, government worker unions and plutocrats, America’s muzzy-headed hemp-clad frito-guzzling bong-o-nauts are among Obama’s big hopes in the coming election, as several state roll out pot legalization bills at least in part to try to turn out America’s Dave Matthews-listening, cheeto-searching, High Times-reading, neo-comatose Baked Caucus to vote for Obama.

Getting more young people to vote has long been a Democratic fantasy, since they tend to vote so heavily Democratic. But past attempts to bong the vote have been disappointing, in part because stoners aren’t the group anyone would most count on to bother filling out a ballot. Ahead of the 2010 midterms, The Wall Street Journal ran the story, “Democrats Look to Cultivate Pot Vote in 2012,” noting that California’s pot-legalizing Proposition 19 was being studied to see if similar measures “could energize young, liberal voters in swing states for the 2012 presidential election.” But exit polls that year showed no spike in young voter turnout, and marijuana legalization was the top issue for just 1 in 10 voters, the Los Angeles Times reported.

(Also carefully note, all you Paul supporters who think pot legalization is your path to the presidency)

I caught this yesterday in a piece on MPR about the number of legislators, mostly DFLers (because it’s mostly them that got ushered out of office in 2010) that are trying to get their jobs back:

In a year when about 20 percent of the Minnesota Legislature plans to retire, there are also 20 former state lawmakers working hard to get back to the Capitol.

The list of former legislators attempting political comebacks is dominated by Democrats. Some are trying to win open House and Senate seats created by redistricting. Others are taking on incumbents to try win back the seats they lost.

Yadda yadda.  That’s fine – they want that pension.  A DFLer’s gonna look for taxpayer money to use up.  It’s understandable.

Less understandable was this statement:

[Former Eagan rep Jim] Carlson said he thinks many of the DFL candidates share a common motivation.

“I think a lot of us think the voters made a mistake in 2010, and we probably can reverse that mistake,” he said.

“You voters sure are stupid!  But via relentless repetition, even a moron like you, simple voter, can get it right eventually”.

I really do hope that that Carlson’s opponent – maybe it’s Doug Wardlow, but I’m not sure – prints that statement up on T-shirts.  It may just be a contender for a 2012 Shootie Award.

Ebony & Irony

The media begins to chum the political waters for race-baiting.

There was little doubt that race was one of the larger underlying narratives of the 2008 presidential campaign.  The election of the country’s first African-American president, by the largest popular vote margin in twenty years, was widely hailed by Barack Obama’s supporters as a sign that racial relations had truly improved.

And now, what of the electorate that gave Obama 69 million votes, 365 electoral votes, and an 8% margin of victory?  According to the polling analyst du jour, America has not only returned to being a land of racist voters but, in fact, always was:

Though many people believe that our first African-American president won the election thanks in part to increased turnout by African-American voters, Stephens-Davidowitz’s research shows that those votes only added about 1 percentage point to Obama’s totals. “In the general election, this effect was comparatively minor,” he concludes. But in areas with high racial search rates, the fact that Obama is African American worked against him, sometimes significantly.

 

“The results imply that, relative to the most racially tolerant areas in the United States, prejudice cost Obama between 3.1 percentage points and 5.0 percentage points of the national popular vote,” Stephens-Davidowitz points out in his study. “This implies racial animus gave Obama’s opponent roughly the equivalent of a home-state advantage country-wide.”

Apparently Obama was supposed to have won by 11% or even 15%.  Or maybe simply by acclamation.

Where is this thesis of latent racism coming from?  Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a doctoral candidate in economics at Harvard University, who gleaned his insight from that fount of all wisdom – the Internet.

Stephens-Davidowitz coupled internet search histories with racially charged words with searches for “Obama”, compared them to results for the 2004 election, and faster than you can google “the Bradley effect,” surmmerized that Americans are actually super secret racists.  And if you believe the liberal-leaning polling outfit, Public Policy Polling, you may need to add roughly one-quarter of African-American voters to the ranks of the racists since they’ve soured on Obama in North Carolina.  Perhaps Stephens-Davidowitz is saving that study for after he get his doctorate in an unrelated major.

There are a few issues within Stephens-Davidowitz’s thesis that most people wouldn’t contest.  Racists still do exist in some places in America and the electorate’s view on the condition of race relations has plummeted since Barack Obama’s election:

A myriad of reasons explain such stark polling data, but it doesn’t help that the media consistently attempts to propagate stories that seek to find racists around every corner.  Especially in political coverage which implies that to oppose President Obama is to oppose him based on the color of his skin.  It’s false and deeply insulting.

It’s also an attempt to prepare the battlefield post November.  As Stephens-Davidowitz concludes:

The state with the highest racially charged search rate was West Virginia, where 41 percent of voters chose Keith Judd, a white man who is also a convicted felon currently in prison in Texas, over Obama just this May. Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Alabama, and New Jersey rounded out the top 10 most-racist areas, according to the search queries used.

…

 

What does this mean for this year’s contest? “Losing even two percentage points lowers the probability of a candidate’s winning the popular vote by a third,” Stephens-Davidowitz explains. “Prejudice could cost Mr. Obama crucial states like Ohio, Florida and even Pennsylvania.”

 

The narrative is set.  If Barack Obama loses re-election, the nation of progressive, racially-harmonious voters will have suddenly become extras in a remake of “Deliverance.”  But is this exactly a wise political strategy?  It’s bad enough when one party blames their defeat on the electorate being stupid enough to fall for the rhetoric of the opposition, but what is there to be gained from inferring that voters are racists?

Do Republicans need to counter that if you vote for Barack Obama, you’re secretly a religious bigot who hates Mormons?  Sheesh.

For the benefit of conservatives in the audience, I thought I’d give quick primer on how to answer questions you may commonly get from Democrats and “Indepdendents” as we ramp up for the Presidential campaign.

Q:  “What do you think about Obama’s record in pursuing the War on Terror?”
A:   It’s fine.  Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Q:  “What about the “War on Women?”  Any comment?
A:   There is none.  Are women better off economically now than they were four years ago?

Q:  “What about George Zimmerman?  Doesn’t he speak to a larger racial issue in this country?”
A:   It’s in the hands of the Florida courts, and none of us are parties to the case.  Are Afro-Americans better off than they were four years ago?

Q:  “How about the corrupting influence of money on politics?”
A:   Don’t know.  Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Q:  “Wouldn’t a new stimulus help us build more infrastructure?”
A:   No.  Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Q:  “So don’t you think conservatives are un-thrilled about Mitt Romney?”
A:   Don’t care.  Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Q:  “What about Medicare?  Won’t the Paul Ryan plan kill it?”
A:   What’s more important – that seniors are cared for, or that a specific program survives?  Anyway – don’t care.  Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Q:  “Didja see where Mitt Romney was allegedly a bully in high school?”
A:   Are bullies doing better than they were four years ago?

Q:  “Doesn’t Bain Capital destroy jobs?”
A:   No more than does George Soros.  Now – are you better off than you were four years ago?

Q:  “Would you like eggroll or wontons with that?”
A:   Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

Any questions?

I posted about this yesterday – but it came out in the afternoon, after most people have read my blog for the day.

So I’ll try this again:  I would like to ask you a favor.  Get out on Twitter and “Follow” Tony Hernandez’ Twitter account.

Tony’s running for Congress in Minnesota’s Fourth CD – my district, the district of Betty McCollum, who has been taking up space in the US House for a long, long time.

Conventional wisdom says the race can’t be won – that the 4th is just tooooo Democrat.

It’s not true, of course; it can be won.  Redistricting shaved down the DFL advantage from 70-30 to maybe 60-40.

And the Dems’ ugly secret – Betty McCollum isn’t even that popular among DFLers.  Her vote totals just keep dropping.  Oh, she raises all sorts of outside money – but her “passion index”, even in 2008., was pretty low.

I live in CD4, and I’m not going to lie – I’m ready for it to take ten years to make the GOP in CD4 a viable party.

But with a little help, we juuuuust might be able to jump-start things a bit.

Whaddya say?

You’ve been hearing it all over the place since it started sinking in among Democrats that their anointed candidate, Tom Barrett, was not going to pull off the win in Wisconsin last Tuesday – not even close.

Once the “Coin Toss” turned, for Dems in Wisconsin and nationwide, into a “Lunch Toss”, they – and their enablers in the mainstream, public and lefty media – started looking for excuses, for reasons that the ineluctable forces of history turned out to be very, very eluctable.

Among the first was the notion that Barret was outspent by 6:1.

It would sure make a reassuring story – “we didn’t get beat on ideas, we got beat by money”.

There are three answers to this meme:

Answer 1:  It’s Just Not True – The problem is, according to that noted conservative tool the WaPo, it’s really more like 2:1:

Now, Walker out-fundraised Barrett in Wisconsin, as well as outside the state.  But the part Dems never, ever tell you is that the Dems, as usual, outspent the GOP on independent expenditures by over $1.6 million

As everyone knew they would.

But they got outspent by the Walker campaign.  Which brings us to the second point:

Answer 2: Boo Freaking Hoo – So the Democrats got outspent?

In a recall that they forced?

There is not one single person in the entire Wisconsin Democrat party that knew that there would be no campaign finance restrictions on the race?  And that the GOP would call in every dog it could for this fight?  That Reince Priebus wouldn’t run his rolodex red-hot to defend the win he earned back in 2010?  And that the Tea Party wouldn’t absolutely slam the organizing?

Because there are only a few possible explanations:

• There was, in fact, nobody who knew .  It’d seem to be a drastic mistake, forcing a recall without knowing the laws involved.  Just saying.
• They knew, but figured that sheer Fleebagger passion would carry them through.  It’s the kind of hubris that is explainable, if not necessarily excusable.
• They knew, but figured the GOP would screw it up.  Not a bad assumtion, under normal circumstances.  But the GOP – or at least the Tea Party-influenced part of it – is learning.

At any rate, it was the Wisconsin Democrats who asked for the recall.  So they got outspent?

Sucks to be them!

Answer 3: Hypocrisy – So winning an election by spending lots of outside money is a bad thing?

Well, tell it to Mark Dayton, whose 8,000 vote margin of victory was paid for by…:

• An epic toxic smear campaign financed by Alita Messinger, a scionette of the Rockefeller family who dumps millions of her own money into Minnesota astroturf groups, which managed to convince just enough low-information voters that Tom Emmer had a DUI to cost him whatever…
• The DFL-friendly travesty of an election-registration system didn’t provide Dayton.
• Which, by the way, outspent Emmer and the GOP by at least 2:1.  More like 3:1, if memory serves.

In Minnesota, you have truckloads of outside money financing outreach to dumb voters and creation of illegal voters to win elections for the DFL.

I’ll await your peals of outrage.

And await.

And await.

It’s been my theory for a few years now that there are things young “progressives” in liberal cesspools like Madison, Macalester and the U of M never really learn.

One of them is how to debate; since they all go straight from high school through their college years with no real challenges to their lefty preconceptions, they seem to have the debating skills of junior high kids.

Another?  How to take a hit gracefully.  When you have no concept of what it means not to be in power, you have no idea what even the most minimal adversity – losing a political campaign – feels like.

And you react like these icons of the progressive <i>id</i>:

I’ve met libs like “Thistle Petterson” in Saint Paul; so full of intellectual entitlement they can’t comprehend, much less live with, the notion that they don’t own the world politically.

I won’t say this video makes the whoooole thing worthwhile – but it is a nice mental after-dinner mint.

Output’s a little light today.  I’ve had a lot going on outside of work, family and blogging.

But I would like to ask you a favor.  Get out on Twitter and “Follow” Tony Hernandez’ Twitter account.

Tony’s running for Congress in Minnesota’s Fourth CD – my district, the district of Betty McCollum.

Conventional wisdom has it that it just can’t be done.

Of course, conventional wisdom also had it that Jim Oberstar was untouchable, Obama would keep unemployment under 8%, and that the Wisconsin Recall was a “coin toss”, so you’re better off spending your time going to Tony’s Twitter feed and clicking “Follow” than you are paying any attention to “conventional wisdom”.

Tony’s a solid, small-government, low-taxes, family-values conservative, a second-generation American, with no freaking hyphens, and would be a much, much better Representative than Betty McCollum, for a district that direly needs some common sense in government at all levels.

So please follow his Twitter account – and if you’re so inclined, maybe peel off a buck or two, and maybe sign up to volunteer to help the campaign.

The 4th CD needs this.  And all you gotta do, for now, is follow!

The Star/Tribune editorial board, being in effect a volunteer DFL PR operation, got to work bright and early yesterday doing damage control and trying to build a firebreak against the Republican contagion across the Saint Croix in an editorial that couldn’t be any more perfect a vehicle for national Democrat chanting points if it were being explicitly paid for.

Within minutes of projecting Gov. Scott Walker the winner in Tuesday’s Wisconsin recall election, CNN pundits began earnestly overstating the national importance of the vote.

And someone start singing “The Circle Of Life”, because the left-leaning media – the various levels in the Public Radio chain of command, MSNBC, CNN and of course the Strib itself – leapt into action to understate and diffuse it.

It was an understandable impulse, given the high profile of the attempted recall over the past 17 months. Ener­gized Wisconsin ­Democrats and an outraged organized labor threw everything they could muster at the Republican ­governor, who earned their ire last year by moving to ­curtail collective-­bargaining rights for public employees.

But a closer look at the factors that propelled ­Walker tells us that caution is in order when projecting national implications from his decisive win.

And when they say “closer look”, they really mean “a realignment of the narrative to the Democrats’ chanting points”.

Let’s start with money. Out-of state cash poured into Wisconsin as if the Packers had offered more souvenir stock, and Walker outspent his opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, 7-1. Mitt Romney’s campaign won’t have that kind of advantage in November, nor will other GOP contenders in hotly contested races.

Nor did Walker.  The 7-1 advantage was in spending by the campaigns – perfectly kosher under Wisconsin campaign law in recalls, which aren’t covered by the same limits as regular elections.  And it doesn’t count all the spending the unions did on Walker’s behalf. It also ignores – or rather, tries to suppress – the fact that Walker had vastly more support from non-insitutional donors inside Wisconsin than Barrett had.

Walker also faced a middling opponent. Barrett, who wasn’t the first choice of organized labor in the primary, was the recycled loser from the 2010 gubernatorial race.

His second campaign gained so little momentum that President Obama stayed away from Wisconsin, and the president’s single contribution to the Barrett ­effort was a 17-word tweet.

Blame Bush.

Before discounting the impact labor will have in November, however, it’s worth noting that unions won a major victory in Ohio just seven months ago, when voters resoundingly rejected similar collective-­bargaining changes backed by GOP Gov. John Kasich.

Because it was a referendum, because the unions poured money into Ohio, and the GOP wasn’t able to support the proposal as vigorously as it needed to be supported.  The Strib is trying to compare apples and axles.  There’s no comparison.

The recall attempt itself also skewed Tuesday’s results in Walker’s favor. Exit polls showed that 60 percent of voters agree with this editorial board (“Wrongheaded recall in Wisconsin,” June 3) that recall elections should be reserved for cases of significant malfeasance or criminal misconduct by elected officials. They should be the ­direct-­democracy equivalent of impeachment, not a minority party’s response to a hard-fought policy dispute.

And if ifs, ands and buts were candy and nuts we’d all have a merry Christmas.   The fact remains the Wisconsin Democrat party has responded to Walker’s upset victory by petulantly hiding out in Illinois, by clogging the Capitol, and by trying to stage an electoral putsch.

Those same polls show that Wisconsin voters would have chosen Obama over Romney, 51 percent to 45 percent.

Those were the self-same exit polls that showed the Gubernatorial race was a “coin toss”. Take them with a big shaker full of salt.

And other recall efforts appear to have given Democrats narrow control of the state’s Senate.

Which doesn’t meet until 2013.  After the next round of elections.  It was a very expensive and meaningless “victory” for the Wisconsin Democrat party.

Those results, too, ought to tamp down GOP victory swells;

Or at least the Strib editorial board is going to try to make sure they do.

Some of them were touting Walker as a future national Republican candidate after Tuesday’s win. Let him prove first that he can cease being the nation’s most polarizing governor and work effectively with both parties for the good of his state. Only then will he warrant the acclaim that was heaped on his victory this week.

He’s a “polarizing governor” precisely because of the petulant reaction Democrats – like the Star/Tribune editorial board – have to the idea of their power, either direct power or the soft authoritarianism of “bipartisanship” that favors Democrats, being challenged.

And the Strib will do what it can to keep Republicans demoralized, downtrodden, and – most of all – home on election night.

Screw the Strib.  I’m celebrating.

Sixty-eight years ago at about this time, American, British and Canadian soldiers, supported by the full weight of America’s industrial might, stormed ashore in Normandy to begin the liberation of Europe.

And for that first day – the near-debacle at Omaha, the fierce knife-range duel between the ships and the German shore guns, the Canadians’ brutal house-by-house advance off Juno Beach – the fact was that for all of America’s vast industrial might, the real arbiter of victory, and of the future of Western civilization, was the GI, the Tommy, the Jock, the Canuck, spurred on only by training and fear and guts and the skirl of Lord Lovat’s bagpiper.  It was they – not the wealth and the industry and the sheer firepower…

…who earned that victory, the first domino on the road to the liberation of the Old World.

———-

Yesterday, for all of the GOP PAC money that was poured into Wisconsin (enabled by the Wisconsin Democrats’ stupid decision to try to negate the elections of 2010, which in turn nullified applicable campaign finance laws), the victory similarly belonged to a few million Republicans – and not a few Democrats who had just plain had enough of childish petulance of the Wisconsin Unions and the party they seem to own.

It’d be specious to compare the courage of someone charging off a Higgins boat with someone going to the polls – which is, indeed, just exactly what the kid on that Higgins boat 68 years ago today was fighting for, so that voting need not be a life or death issue in this country.  (But it’s for sure some dim-bulb leftyblogger will claim that I’m making that comparison.  Mark my words.  That’s why I’m writing this here; I’ll mock them in advance).

But as a hard-fought first step toward this nation correction not just one mistake, Barack Obama’s misguided election, but indeed generations of mistakes that led the world’s wealthiest and most powerful significant nation into being a debtor state?  This is huge.

As Walker said, it‘s time for leaders who will make the tough choices, and fight for them.

Are you listening, Minnesota GOP Legislative caucus?

Are you listening, Mitt Romney?

Scott Walker, and America – real America – win.

It’s not even close.  As this is written, it’s 58-42, with 52% reporting.

It brought things to mind:

Lament!

And the Democrats, with their plutocrat supporters and smug union leader fatcat commissars gathering around them, have to know that this is not a good omen for the fall.

Because this was a victory for regular private sector working people – the backbone of this economy.

This was a victory for the Tea Party – which has moved from carrying signs to working at the grass roots and winning elections.

This was a victory for conservatism.

The Democrats would have you believe this was a victory for money.  Of course, money always wins elections; that’s why Michael Huffington and John Corzine are sitting in office today.

No.  This was a victory for the people; for real America.

And we’re not done.

The Tony Hernandez campaign is holding its Taco Party fundraiser.

It’s $30 per adult for homemade tacos and beer (for those over 21, naturally).

It’s from 5:30-7:30 this evening.  Details are available at the Hernandez Campaign website.

Jeff Rosenberg from MNPublius has sent an “Open Letter To Amy Klobuchar” that explains, if nothing else, how little DFLers really understand about their “Senior Senator”:

Congratulations on your endorsement by the DFL this weekend, and on what looks to be a relatively easy re-election bid.

(As a side note?  Look for a lot of “bandwagon”-mongering from the DFL and the media (pardon, as always, the redundancy). Research shows that if you can create a sense in your opponents’ minds that voting is fruitless, they won’t do it.  They may never say that that’s why the “Minnesota” and “HHH” polls released right before election day are so inevitably, grossly, comically inaccurate in favor of the DFL, especially for close elections – but it’s difficult to see how they’d do it any different if if were utterly deliberate).

But I digress:

You’re the most popular politician in the state by a wide margin, and in your single term as a Senator so far, you’ve built up quite a bit of political capital.

I’m writing to ask you to invest some of that political capital in making positive change here in Minnesota in 2012. Notice that I’m not asking you to “spend” your political capital, but “invest” it.

Because “invest” is always the euphemism DFLers have for “squander on something I’d like someone else to pay for”.

But, again, I digress:

With a bit of work, you’ll make it back with hefty interest, making you not just the most popular but one of the most powerful politicians in the state. What is political power but the ability to affect change?

It is that, plus many, many other things; the ability to provide for ones’ special interest (“change” be damned) is a key one for DFLers.  In fact, that’d seem to be the main thing A-Klo does with it…

…dammit, I just keep on disgressing!

That’s why I’m asking you to devote a portion of your time and energy this year to fighting the harmful constitutional amendments on the ballot this year and returning the DFL to power in the state legislature. Your overwhelming popularity gives you significant influence with swing voters, and your fundraising prowess could transform marginal seats in the legislature into major opportunities. Your involvement could mean the difference between winning and losing all of these fights.

Interesting theory – but let’s set a few things straight.

A-Klo isn’t so much “popular” as she is “not unpopular”.  She’s cautious.  She’s taken the popularity she started with – as the daughter of a Twin Cities media icon and some time as a prominent and media-savvy if not especially effective county attorney – and husbanded it carefully.  She takes no positions that will anger enough Minnesotans to hamper her polling – and counts on her Praetorian Guard in the Twin Cities media to mute any coverage of those things that she has to do to not get thrown out of the caucus locker room back in DC.

For example – Klobuchar supported the Medical Device Tax, which is going to flense and gut Minnesota’s Medical Device industry, one of our great growth industries – but it got less coverage in the Strib than the Wayzata Middle School girls volleyball game.

I know your popularity is built, in large part, on your efforts to be a bipartisan figure, so you may want to stay “above the fray.”

Heh.

But what is the point of amassing this level of support if you can’t use it to make a difference?

Because if you “make a difference” in a way that blows that “support” sky high – or erodes it to the point where one has to work especially hard to retain ones power – then it was all as if nothing happened.

And here’s Klobama’s problem; she can read polls.  She can see that Minnesotans, even the liberal ones, overwhelmingly support Voter ID, and that the Marriage Amendment’s internal numbers, while lower, lead to an issue so fraught that even the mighty Obama has to “oppose” it in the weakest way possible.

And she knows that her popularity is a mile wide – look at those numbers! – but an inch deep, a product of name recognition and six years of carefully-cultivated and media-guarded innocuity.  And a good way to blow all that is to come out against an issue most Minnesotans are definitively for. 

It’s the same reason Paul Wellstone – he, the patron saint of Minnesota “progressivism” and the “1” in countless 99-1 Senate votes –  supported the Defense of Marriage Act.  Because he knew all of his “popularity” and “power” could go out the window with one badly-timed position on an emotional issue in an election year.

Just as A-Klo does.

You’ve earned the trust of millions of Minnesotans, but that trust has little value if you can’t or won’t use it to advance a positive agenda.

And there’s the conundrum, for a thinking liberal (and let’s say they do in fact exist, because they do); A-Klo is popular and powerful – but that popularlity and power is, I suggest, predicated on keeping hands off of the issues that progressives most want.

And this in an election year when Barack Obama’s going to have all the “coattails” of a T-shirt.

Senator Klobuchar, I hope 2012 will be a year of great triumph for you. I hope it will be the year you win re-election by an overwhelming margin — and the year your coattails mean victory in the legislature and on the constitutional amendments.

Yeah, good luck with that.

(Anyone but me think that Rosenberg’s post sounded like a prayer of supplication?)