…that for Republicans to win in the age of Obama, they have to run for the center like a bunch of beaten dogs.

The evidence is everywhere:

-In a three way contest Doug Hoffman leads Bill Owens by 19 points. In a two way contest Hoffman leads Owens by 15 points. So the Dede Scozzafava withdrawal and endorsement will probably tighten the race some but not nearly [“]enough[“].

Keep that in mind, all you Minnesota First District Republicans.  And all you Minnesota Republicans who have been taking Lori Sturdevant seriously.

Give people in the middle a reason to move right, rather than an unimpressive ersatz lefty, and…

…well, let’s see what Tuesday brings.

It looks like even the Administration is sticking a fork in Creigh Deeds.  And it goes deeper than just a candidate with a funny name.  If current trends hold, it might just mean that not only is the Hope ‘n Change honeymoon over, but dead, buried, and pushed out to sea.

Democrats seem to be learning that life without a boogeyman is hard:

They’re learning, painfully, that campaigning without George W. Bush is baffling, frustrating and scary. Worse, it offers a preview of what the congressional campaigning will be like next year. One Obama doorbell ringer, working neighborhoods in Northern Virginia for Creigh Deeds, says even the promise of free pizza can’t lure faithful Democrats to a rally.

And when you can’t get Democrats to let other people pay for their stuff, you know you got a problem.

(badda-BUM)

Suddenly, the White House is treating the bereft Mr. Deeds as if he’s on the fourth day of a three-day underarm deodorant pad. Bill Clinton, accustomed to speaking to cheering thousands at a hundred grand a pop, was dispatched the other night to a Deeds rally to set the throng on fire with one of his late-October stumpwallopers. The rally, such as it was, was held not at an arena or a hotel – not even a Motel 6 – but in a campaign office in the Washington suburbs. The “throng” was counted in the dozens, about the size of a PTA meeting. Not even Bubba could dispel the gloom of a wake.

It’s not all good, of course – polling shows John Corzine is coming back in New Jersey, which on the one hand isn’t much of a shock, since New Jersey is just New York without the nightlife, but there had been hope.

Still, this could be a good sign.

Mark Dayton.

He’s the darling of the public employees’ unions.

He’s the favorite of the chicken little set.

And let’s not forget – the 9/11 Truther-endorsed candidate for Governor!

We could have this in the Governor’s office!

Isn’t it a great day to be  Minnesotan?

The Strib notes – wonder of wonders – that the GOP’s candidates are a conservative lot:

In the early GOP field for 2010, a common theme has emerged — government should be smaller. Some candidates want to dramatically cut back on mandates and local funding, some would merge departments, reduce state workers and slash one out of every $5 the state is slated to spend. What they want, at bottom, is a government that not only does more with less, but which simply does less.

The candidates are ambitious in their pledges to shrink government — “The sky’s the limit,” state Rep. Tom Emmer said at a recent forum — but haven’t yet worked out all the details.

And that’s the good news.  The GOP of Arne Carlson is dead and unlamented.

“But wait!”, the likes of Lori Sturdevant and Nick Coleman will respond, “what about the GOP that sat down and worked with the DFL for a better Minnesota?”

For starters, your idea of a “better Minnesota”is a Minnesota that looks, taxes and spends like Massachussets and California.

Second – it was all baked wind and you know it.  While the MNGOP – under its old guise, the “Independent Republican” Party – compromised to the point where it was indistinguishable from the DFL, the DFL never compromised on anything unless the votes forced them to.

Third – this is the campaign. This is the time when parties should present choices to voters.  The MNGOP during Arne Carlson’s era was nothing but the DFL in better suits with less chanting.  Compromise and “working with the opposition” are for after the election, when everyone is in office.

The plans, still in their infancy, could run into political trouble, practical and legal problems and have even prompted disagreement among the Republican field. A smaller, leaner government — long a mantra for Republicans — could hold appeal in cost-conscious times but could alienate those who believe government must step in during economic low-points.

That’s the point.  People who believe that government’s role is to spend money like crack whores with stolen Platinum Cards probably should be in the DFL.  It’ll make for a more honest conversation.

No huge surprise here; AFSCME, the party that likes its politicians dumb, compliant, and voting for big government, endorses former Senator and State Auditor Mark Dayton, who…well, fits the description to a T:

Dayton, a DFLer, won the AFSCME Minnesota Council 5 nod over nine other DFL contenders as well as Republican candidate Patricia Anderson screened for the endorsement Saturday.

The AFSCME endorsement, which brings with it the campaigning might of the union, is Dayton’s first major endorsement.

“Mark Dayton has won statewide elections — twice,” Eliot Seide, executive director of AFSCME Council 5, said in a news release. “Minnesotans know and like Mark.”

Well, yes – we “like” him because he makes us laugh.  For example, when he closed up his DC office and scampered back to Minnesota because of some unnamed terrorist threat that left every other senator’s office opened.  We got our yuks.  We did.

Seide had said earlier that union members would be very interested in candidates’ electability as well as their history and stands on issues important to union members. Democrats have not won the governor’s office in Minnesota for more than two decades.

And if Dayton wins the endorsement, they should continue this record pretty handily.

Back at my first usability/human factors gig about ten years ago, a very smart systems analyst (who is an occasional reader of this blog) gave me a piece of advice on how to analyze problems.

Any proposed solution exists, really, on two planes – Policy and Mechanism.  Policy is “what you want”.  Mechanism is “how you get what you want”.  Policy is your goal, mechanism is the work it takes to achieve it.  You need both, formally or informally; great work without a coherent goal, or “policy”, is like pushing hose up a hill; great policy that can’t be implemented by any attainable “mechanism” is just baked wind.

The advice was given to me in an engineering context, from someone who worked on the “mechanism” side, to someone who designed and validated “policy” by the ream. 

But it applies in politcs as well.  There are groups in politics who are neck-deep in policy, but who can’t implement anything; the Libertarian Party jumps to mind as a group with lots of policy, but no real ability to implement anything (since they never, ever get elected to anything; Ron Paul was the first Libertarian to actually start to implement some “mechanism” to Libertarian policy, by trying to co-opt the GOP).

Of course, for everyone involved in any place where the real world impacts theory – where “mechanism” and “policy” have to be made to match when they don’t want to, knows that that can be mighty difficult.  In the world of technology, making “mechanism” deliver on “policy” is called “engineering”.  Your policy is “I want to drive across the river”; the initial mechanism says “gravity and fluid dynamics make it literally impossible, and the river is too wide to just throw boards across it”; your job is to solve the problem.

And in “real world” politics, where ideals (“policy”) of necessity get corrupted by political reality (“mechanism”), there is a push and pull between What You Want – often expressed as “What You Believe” – and “What Is Realistic”, or “What Can Happen”, or most importantly “What We Can Either Ram Past The Opposition, Or Get Them To Agree To In Some Form”.  It’s also called “politics”.

The point being, most human endeavor occurs out of the tension between what you want, and what you can actually get.  It’s as true when building a bridge or a ship or a bipartisan compromise as it is when your kids bug you for money for their latest expensive obsession.

When it comes to politics, it hits all sides.  If the world obeyed liberal “policy”, then Lyndon Johnson’s “War On Poverty” would have resulted in a surrender ceremony on the deck of the USS Missouri by 1970. 

And we conservatives have the same battle to fight.  Conservatives all follow, to one degree or another, certain first principles and core tenets of our belief system.  Of course, some of us emphasize different parts of those principles – I’m more a growth and security guy than a social conservative – and others pay them lip service while they focus, to be polite, on the “mechanism” side of the equation (with Duke Cunningham being an extreme example).  

The upshot?  No pure ideal survives its first brush with reality unscathed.

Although Dave Mindeman of “mnpACT” m seems to think conservatism is not only immune from this, but so immune that conservatives should be held to the standard of absolute idealism.

Or at least, that Pat Anderson, GOP gubernatorial candidate and former State Auditor, should:

GOP Governor candidate Pat Anderson wrote an opinion piece in the Star Tribune a few days ago, which gives a pretty good summation of why she could never be elected Governor of Minnesota.Her problem is that she thinks the Free Market is actually “free” and that “limited government” approaches can succeed. The evidence says she is wrong on both counts.

Right – if by “evidence” you mean “the results we have after Republicans have to try to jam their beliefs – “policy” – through legislatures full of people who believe other things“.

Republicans constantly preach to us about the dangers of government expansion. How less government is good government. Yet, their free market and limited government approaches never adhere to any semblance of real principle and the approach they do use is blatantly biased toward corporate America. Free markets? Not here, not now.

Let’s take the so called free market. How is it that Republicans can elmininate government involvement in the societal areas where government really needs to be — such as the social safety net…..and yet can’t eliminate the corporate subsidies that drastically distort competitive forces?

There is actually a good question there, one that has much occupied the Minnesota and National GOPs.  “Corporate Subsidies” are both anathema to real conservatives on a “policy” level, and have been one of those things that have been exacted from politicians (who have been by no means all conservative or even Republican, by the way) at a “Mechanism” level to garner support for differnet initiatives.  Which, for better or (usually) worse is how politics actually works.

There’s also a great counter-question, too; turn Mindemann’s statement around.  “How is it that Liberals can push government involvement into all areas of society regardless of “government need” (whatever that is), and …..and yet can’t eliminate the problems for which they tried to justify eliminating competitive forces?” 

Dave, if you answer that, please feel free to phrase your answer in the terms of the same degree of ideological purity you demand of Pat Anderson.

And without the strawmen, please:

GAMC is cut completely in unallotment. But JOBZ and Tax Increment Financing and building stadiums are never eliminated in the “limited government” approach?

While Tax Increment Financing is a targeted tax cut, which is a core conservative principle (except for the “targeted” part), I don’t know that you’ll find a whole lot of actual conservatives who support JOBZ or stadium subsidies.

Why should large corporations get incentives to move to this state? How does that translate to “free” markets? Isn’t that unfair to smaller but local businesses?

They shouldn’t, it doesn’t, it totally is, and it’s an utterly non-partisan “tool”; the biggest corporate subsidy stories and boondoggles- Target’s Minneapolis development, Best Buy’s conquest of Richfield, the USBank Westside Flats developments, the entire hole that New Brighton dug itself – have been the province of the states’ biggest assemblies of liberal whackdoodles.

And in regards to “limited government”. This libertarian approach that is based on “Constitutional” grounds feels that government should only due what it was originally mandated to do.

So, I assume that means we eliminate Social Security and Medicare for starters. That is not a governmental role — security in retirement is an individual responsibility. If you do not acquire the means to support a retirement, it is too bad. Keep working or live with relatives.

And again with the distinction between “policy” and “mechanism”.  If we were operating from a blank slate, or a slate that could be blanked, then it would be a tenet of purist, limited-government libertarian/conservative policy that huge interventions (and distortions) like Social Security and Medicare should be eschewed. 

But the fact that both of those trains left the station 1-3 generations ago notwithstanding (creating the multi-generational dependency on government that they were arguably intended to in the first place), most conservatives recognize the need, as Winston Churchill put it, to “not level out the peaks to fill in the valleys, but to spread a safety net over the abyss”.  So when you see Mindeman echoing stuff you’d more usually hear from an orthodox big-L Libertarian, like this…:

We must also get out of government welfare of any kind. The poor are on their own. Depend on charities or beg in the streets. Not our collective problem.

…it’s inflammatory, simplistic balderdash, of course; you will find very few conservatives who don’t recognize some imperative to keep people from starving, especially given forces that are sometimes beyond the individual’s control (and usually the “unintended” consequences of government actions anyway – like the Great Depression and our current troubles themselves!).  That liberals confuse “cradle-to-grave entitlement” with “safety net” shouldn’t be held against conservative policy.

Buy why do we give subsidies to Exxon? Why are there farm subsidies to corporate farmers? Why do we prop up grain prices? or dairy prices? or why do we pay farmers to leave land idle?

Why?  Because successive generations of politicians – mostly liberals – enacted programs to make farming “safer” and “more secure”; they created a national farm policy that has destabilized agriculture to the point that the majority of the farmers the program was intended to stabilize are now working in factories and shopkeepers and carpenters, and their children are programmers and teachers and everything-but-farmers.  But where they failed in securing individual farms, they did succeed in making sure the big farmers that are left, and the political establishments they support, conservative and liberal, are utterly dependent on government subsidy.  Again, it’s a bipartisan failure.

Which is why conservative “policy” would be to trash all these corporate subsidies as the debilitating interferences they are – and why reality has these subsidies so interwoven into the farm economy that it’d take a political effort far beyond the attention span and pain threshold of any American politician of any party, to fix.

Government is only limited when the constituency that gets downsized has no power or money to contribute to the political collective. That isn’t limited government — that is special interest government.

Well, no.  It’s a manifestation of De Tocqueville’s classic dictum, “Democracy will only survive until people discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury”. 

And for all the preaching that candidates like Pat Anderson give to us regarding their “limited” government approach and their free market systems, they are never really adovcating either of them….and if elected, they never will.

Tell you what, Dave Mindemann; why don’t you lefties sit back and give actual conservatives a prohibitive supermajority that’d allow us to wipe the slate clean for ten years or so, and get back to us on that, OK?

Betty McCollum (DFL MN4) confirms it – “bipartisanship” is just for Republicans! (emphasis added):

“Now is the time to pass a public health insurance option. Now is the time to expand access to quality health care, control rising costs, keep American businesses competitive, and improve the health of the American people,” she told the crowd of assembled party activists.

“You know there is a lot of talk about how Democrats need to reach out to Republicans and work for a ‘bipartisan’ health care bill. I am sick and tired of talk of a bipartisan health care bill — that’s just a plan for less health care for people in need and more profits for corporations driven by greed,” she said.

But McCollum – famous for ducking any debates and avoiding any dissent, as befits a “representative” from a one-party city who has never needed to remember that there are at least two sides to any issue – does make one illustrative point:

“Since I’ve been in Congress there have been a number of historic bipartisan bills — historically bad!”

She’s got a point; “bipartisanship” is the plea of the weaker party, or at least of the party that doesn’t need to reach across the aisle – which, as a Saint Paul DFLer, is all McCollum knows; the “bipartisanship” of ramming our agenda down the opposition’s throat.

Of course, McCollum is in the majority now.  She can afford to talk like a petty absolutist tyrant.

That “Majority” thing’s gotta change. 

Which is why your vote matters in 2010.  When McCollum is in the minority again – then she’ll see the value of “bipartisanship”. 

Let’s hope a new Republican majority doesn’t make that mistake again.

It was thirty years ago that elections in the United Kingdom presaged an epochal change in American politics.  After three decades of Labour hegemony presiding over the sloughing off of the British Empire and the near-collapse of the British economy, Margaret Thatcher’s Tories swept into office, and spent the next decade first saving, then reviving Britain, and finally leading it back to the head of Europe’s economy.

A year later, Reagan did the same for America.

This year, we’ve been faced with the vision of the French president Sarkozy chiding Obama on his risible Iran policy.  Angela Merkel has extended the center-right lead in Germany.  Berlusconi isn’t going anywhere just yet.
Has the left hit a high water mark in Europe?

Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.

German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.

To this student of German and German history, the Sozialdemokraten‘s slow bleeding is wonderful to see.

Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.

Some American conservatives demonize President Obama’s fiscal stimulus and health care overhaul as a dangerous turn toward European-style Socialism — but it is Europe’s right, not left, that is setting its political agenda.

Of course, as has been noted elsewhere, “conservative” has always meant something a little different in Europe:

Europe’s center-right parties have embraced many ideas of the left: generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European Union. But they have won votes by promising to deliver more efficiently than the left, while working to lower taxes, improve financial regulation, and grapple with aging populations.

Europe’s conservatives, says Michel Winock, a historian at the Paris Institut d’Études Politiques, “have adapted themselves to modernity.” When Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Germany’s Angela Merkel condemn the excesses of the “Anglo-Saxon model” of capitalism while praising the protective power of the state, they are using Socialist ideas that have become mainstream, he said.

Which means European conservatives would be Blue Dogs by American standards, to be sure; it also means that the Euro left is even more insane than ours is.

Oh yeah – our left isn’t doing all that well either:

Though Democrats maintain an edge in party support over Republicans, Americans’ tendency to identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party is lessening, coming down from the heights it reached near the end of the Bush administration. The changes in party support have been mainly among those who do not have a firm party commitment — those who initially identify as independents but express a leaning toward either of the major parties.

In fact, Gallup has found that independents are more likely to oppose than support healthcare reform, and to express concerns about increased government spending and the expansion of government power. Thus, the drop in Democratic support is partly a response to concerns about the policies Obama and the Democratic Congress are pursuing.

I’m feeling better about 2010 every day.

Taryll Clark is a Saint Cloud state Senator who’s running against Michele Bachmann in the MN6.

Leo Pusateri (writing at Freedom Dogs) wondered – where does  she get her support?

The answer was on Twitter:

Thanks to the Laborers Union for your support and endorsement. It’s going to be a fun campaign! Have you joined? www.tarrylclark.com

The new AFL CIO booth is fabulous and full of fun people! Thanks for all your encouragement!

The new AFL CIO booth is fabulous and full of fun people! Thanks for all your encouragement!

Spoke at the Famers union booth….I’m ready to work with Cong Peterson in Washington!

More fun on the campaign trail: thanks to the Carpenters for your endorsement, too! http://tinyurl.com/lc6tfw

Glad to have more friends joining the campaign – thanks to Teamsters Joint 32 and Teamsters Local 120 for your endorsements!

Got to see my AFSCME, working America and teacher friends. AFSCME’s early endorsement has gotten us off to a great start!

Thanks to my friends in AFSCME Council 65 for your endorsement! We’re off to a great start. Hope you will join too at www.tarrylclark.com

Proud to have the endorsement of my friends in AFSCME Council 5

Now, let’s not cast aspersions.  Just because a candidate is entirely beholden to special insterests whose entire goal is more spending and political power, that’s not a problem, is it?

Fresch Fisch – a longtime friend of this blog and of the NARN – attended F Rep. McCollum’s “Town Hall Meeting” at Macalester last night.

Yes, I was there with my big red sign that read “More debt? Print more money?”. I got in, one of only 400. I would presume that more than a couple thousand were there by 6:00 PM, and the show didn’t start till 7:00PM.

Astroturf?  Betty had it! 

And could you believe it? The place was packed with pre-made Obama signs that said “THANK YOU”. I didn’t see any pre-made signs from the insurance lobby, just simple homemade signs.

Part of me wishes I could have been there – but I couldn’t have made it by 4PM anyway. 

Anyone else make it?  Please leave a link or a comment…

A prior family commitment makes it impossible for me to attend tonight’s Betty McCollum town meeting.

Anyone who goes – email or leave a comment in this thread.  If you’re blogging it, send me a link. 

What a wonderful, civil country we’d have if it weren’t for all those deranged wingnuts making all those townhall meetings so dang uncivil.

It started during Bachmann’s introductory remarks when she said, “Let’s not destroy the greatest health care system the world has ever known.” That sparked a chorus of boos that was quickly drowned out by cheers.

“Participatory democracy is alive and well in America,” Republican Rep. Michael Burgess, a physician from Texas who was Bachmann’s guest at the meeting, wryly observed.

The capacity crowd of about 450 in the school auditorium was decidedly pro-Bachmann. An estimated 400 more watched the meeting on closed-circuit television in the school cafeteria.

People packed the aisles, waiting to get to microphones to question — or lecture — the two-term congresswoman.

When angry shouting matches broke out, Bachmann didn’t join in. She calmly and patiently listened to her critics, and when the audience shouted

them down, she asked her supporters to let them speak.

While cheers and jeers frequently interrupted the meeting, it was not as rowdy as some other town halls around the nation earlier this month. Unlike some of her congressional colleagues, Bachmann managed to keep her temper when confronted by angry protesters.

One might have expected the local left to disgrace themselves with their boorish behavior; rabid conspiracymongering and rage-honing has become a cottage industry among Bachmann’s regional detractors.  Bachmann Derangement was alive and “well” long before Sarah Palin was even elected governor.  She is proof that there is nothing the left hates worse than one of their supposed constituents – a woman, a minority – who goes apostate on them.

I’d love to hear from people who were there.

Note to Congress: the people sent you to office, and they can bring your sorry tush home

From the Austin-American Statesman:Back in Central Texas while Congress is on a month-long recess, Congressman Lloyd Doggett faced an angry reception at a town hall meeting at an Austin Randalls store yesterday…A video of the event on YouTube shows many in the crowd showed up with signs denouncing President Obama’s proposed health care plan.

Witnesses say that when Doggett was asked if he would support the plan even if he found his constituents opposed it, Doggett said he would still support the plan.

I was about to write “remember – Obama’s only got one vote”.  But after the Gregoire/Rossi election and the Franken/Coleman thing, I’m not so sure, anymore.

But all of that notwithstanding, I think it’s still considered good form to pay some attention to what your constituents want.  For now.

I spent a weekend doing yard work, doing the show, taking care of kid stuff.  The mundane workadaddy, hugamommy stuff that consumes so much of most of our time.

But I’m considering the possibility of spending next weekend squiring Scarlett Johannsen around New York.

No, seriously; I’m thinking about it.  It’s theoretically possible.  I’m a straight guy and Scarlett’s a straight girl, so it could happen.  I could fly to NYC next weekend, if I cut back on groceries and car insurance.  Don’t rule it out!

“But Blogger Berg!  You are never going to get a date with Scarlett Johannsen!”

Silly critics.  There mere fact that it could happen makes it a story!

In related news, Bob Anderson might run against Michele Bachmann.

“Bob who?”

Bob Anderson.  He’s with the Ventura “Independence” Party.

I’ll forgive you for flipping to the next story right now.

Things are heating up in the race to unseat 6th District Rep. Michele Bachmann: Democrat Maureen Reed raised $230,000 in the two months following her announcement to run

Most of it, I’m told, from big and out-of-district donors.

past Bachmann challenger Elwyn Tinklenberg says he’ll be in the Democratic primary whether he gets the DFL nod or not;

Please, please, please, DFL.  Send E-Tink up against Bachmann again.  If a bureaucratic drone like Tink couldn’t beat Bachmann in 2008, the low-water mark for Republicans, he will get crushed in 2010 in a Sixth District that realizes what a bill of goods the nation has been sold.

and state Sen. Tarryl Clark is expected to announce her candidacy soon.

Ooh, even better; Clark is like a jello-cooking Nancy Pelosi. If nothing else, it’ll shut up all those dolts who think there’s no choice between politicians.g

A new twist: Third-party candidate Bob Anderson — who garnered 10 percent of the vote in the 2008 election — is seriously considering running again.

That ten percent was people saying “I’m a Republican voter in a Repulican district, and I’ll never vote for E-Tink; how will I chastize the GOP without voting for Obama?”

Last time Anderson ran as an unendorsed Independence Party (IP) candidate; Tinklenberg was cross-endorsed by the DFL and the IP. This time, Anderson says he wants just one endorsement — the IP’s. Coinciding with the IP’s executive committee mee…

…blah, blah, blah.

Here’s hoping this is the election where the Ventura-tied fluke of the IP being a “major party” ends.

Jim Ramstad is officially out of a gubernatorial race that he never actually announced he was in.

Ramstad’s a good guy.  He’s a fellow Jamestown, ND native, so he has a huge head start.  And his nine terms in the House made him one of Minnesota’s most experienced politicians.

And I’d never have voted for him.

Oh, that’s not true.  If the DFL had nominated a typical “East Is Red” crypto-Maoist and the Ventura “Indy” party had nominated pretty much anyone in their party, I’d have held my nose and voted for the Rammer, after having joined with whatever pressure group was out to drive him to the right a la Brian Sullivan vs. Tim Pawlenty in 2002.  At least with an “R” in front of the name, there’s a fighting chance there’s a working brain trapped in there somewhere.  It doesn’t always work (ipse the Congressional GOP caucuses since 2000), but I am pragmatic enough to know a Jim Ramstad, “moderate” as he is (his ACU rating is a point or two to the left of John McCain) will make a better governor than a Susan Gaertner or a John Marty or whatever other indistinguishably-“progressive” hamster the DFL throws up. 

But in the weeks before Ramstad bowed out, you started to hear the most dreaded sentence anywhere in politics; DFLers saying “I’d vote for Ramstad!”  With some,  you knew they meant it, more or less. 

But I remember when McCain was every Democrat’s favorite Republican, putatively a “maverick” who’d as soon take on the conservative establishment as vote with it.  He was “the Good Republican”…

…until he got through Super Tuesday.  And then, out came the knives.  Overnight, he became Karl Rove’s spawn.  He “ran to the right” and “embraced the theocrats”, supposedly – I keep asking, but nobody can exactly tell me how he did any of this.  But no matter.

Just remember – whenever the left sets up a “good Republican”, it’s for the sole purposes of tearing them down when and if they become a threat. 

Had Ramstad won the nomination, he’d have been labelled as “Pawlenty Lite” overnight (ironic, since Pawlenty is hardly a rock-ribbed movement conservative – although he’s delivered in the clutch on taxes and spending, and gotten the labels from the local left and media to prove it.  Pardon the redundancy). 

Republicans can not win if we don’t present an alternative to the Democrats – in Minnesota or nationwide.

It’s waaay early – which is what makes it fun.

It’s time for the first=ever SITD “Straw Poll In The Dark”, where we attempt put a finger on the pulse of that portion of America – smarter-than-average, better-informed and more generous than most – that reads Shot In The Dark.

So let’s take nominations for our first ever, way too early Minnesota Govenor straw poll.  List your nominations; one nomination per person, please.  We’ll poll mostly for Republicans, but we’ll take nominations (and do the straw poll) for all parties (that get more than one nomination, anyway).

I’ll run the voting Wednesday.

Start the nominations!

The Congressional Budget Office notes that while Obama may be a “lightworker”, the miracle seems to be slow coming to the economy.  The unemployment rate is suppposed . to keep on climbing through…well, the 2010 mid-terms:

The growth in output later this year and next year is likely to be sufficiently weak that the unemployment rate will probably continue to rise into the second half of next year and peak above 10 percent,” CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf said in prepared testimony to the U.S. House Budget Committee.It will likely take several years for the unemployment rate to fall back to levels seen before the recession hit, in the neighborhood of 5 percent, he said in the prepared remarks.

Whew.  Good thing the Dems are jacking up taxes, or goodness knows how long a recovery might take.

(Via Gary)

It’s early – but Rasmussen shows Republican Chris Christie is  leading pluto-Democrat John Corzine by nine points in the New Jersey gubernatorial race:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Garden State voters shows Christie with 47% of the vote and Corzine with 38%.The Governor does better when matched against Republican Steve Lonegan. In that case, it’s Lonegan with 42% and Corzine just a point behind at 41%.

That’ll leave a mark.

Moe Lane notes that Rasmussen shows the Democrats’ Trust-On-Issues numbers are dropping faster than President Obama before Saudi royalty:

I’ll break down the declines; see the article for the original numbers:

• Economy – Down 12%
• Govt Ethics – Up 1% (who are these people?)
• National Sec. – Down 10%
• Education – Down 6%
• Healthcare – Down 2%
• Taxes –  Down 11%
• Iraq – Down 7%
• Social Security – Down 3%
• Abortion – Down 9%
• Immigration – Down 1%

Lane:

As you can see, back in October it was fairly clear that Democrats were enjoying consistent leads over Republicans when it came to how much the public trusted them on various issues. It’s also fairly clear that in most cases, those leads have been savaged.

Part ot it is the inevitable attrition that comes from being in power and having to implement you campaign promises.

Part of it is that their campaign promises and other ideas are just so wrong.

Porn star Stormy Daniels claims to be running for Senate, in a move I fear will upset the gravitas and integrity…:

Miss Daniels, 30, born in Louisiana, insists she’s serious and is spending her own money on a “listening tour” to hear what people have to say as she considers a possible run, and said she isn’t just starting a publicity stunt to promote her work or embarrass Mr Vitter.

However, she said she hasn’t lived in Louisiana for seven years – she currently resides in Florida – and would need to re-establish residency to run.

…of the pornography industry.

Her fellow New York Democrats don’t like Senator Gillibrand:

Gillibrand, the newly appointed junior senator from New York, has never been shy about her political ambitions — or her willingness to vault over older, more experienced politicians.That aggressiveness and self-confidence has endeared her to the powerful politicians who share her impatience to get ahead — including Hillary Clinton, whose seat she’ll take; David Paterson, who appointed her to it; and Chuck Schumer, who’ll be the senior senator to her junior.

But many of those who know Gillibrand best — Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation — weren’t exactly high-fiving over the pick, and not just because several wanted the job themselves.

“Nobody really likes her,” sniped one New York City-area member, speaking on condition of anonymity.
She’s smart and capable, but she’s rubbed people the wrong the way,” said another.

“I think she’s going to get a serious primary in 2010,” opined a longtime state Democratic operative who supports Gillibrand.

Many members of the state’s congressional delegation skipped Gillibrand’s announcement in Albany, mostly citing other commitments.

And one notable absentee was sending a message: Pro-gun-control Long Island Rep. Carolyn McCarthy says she’ll run against Gillibrand to protest the new senator’s pro-gun record and perfect NRA rating.

Pro-gun?  Perfect NRA score?

I might just peel off a $20 to support her myself.

Henry Louis Gomez at Babalu Blog crunches the numbers behind Obama’s win in Miami:

I was looking at some of the elections data for my ongoing series about the shift and found that John McCain only garnered 544 fewer votes in Miami-Dade County than George W. Bush did in 2004.

It wasn’t so much that people shifted to the Democrat, it’s that the Democrats recruited a bunch of new voters. We knew this already but not the extent of it. Obama garnered 90,099 more votes than Kerry did.

Look for the Dems to spend the next four years telling you that this past election was a definitive sea change.

A few years back, I had a conversation with a friend of mine, a psychologist by trade. 

He was talking about a client of his who’d spent twenty or so years in US Army Special Forces – a “Green Beret”, specializing in “unconventional warfare” around the world.  This client had spent most of his career in Latin America – and while the closest he’d come to fighting an actual “war” was in Panama, he’d apparently spent a long time in a lot of pseudo-war situations.  My friend didn’t go into many details, but Latin America from the late seventies through the mid-nineties was full of brushfire wars and counterinsurgencies where the USSF was involved to one level or another, training local troops and working with local communities.  While they weren’t “at war”, per se, there was apparently enough danger involved that the client spent a good chunk of his twenties and thirties operating on some sort of war footing. 

The problems – for the client – started when he got out of the service.  He’d spent the best years of his life, literally and figuratively, in one Latin-American insurgency zone or slum or another, looking over his back and watching for threats around every corner as he did his job, training local soldiers and building things and giving vaccinations and whatever else Green Berets did when they were on the job in the Third World toward the end of the Cold War.  He’d spent so much time doing that that it became normal for him; when he got out of the Army, he missed it. 

So the client had spent several  years of his post-service life, my friend said, putting himself into situations where he felt that little stab of danger, where he got to exercise his self-preserving habits; he lived in the worst possible neighborhoods; he hung out at the worst bars; he did whatever it took to keep himself on that “war footing”. 

To do anything else just didn’t feel normal.

The post-election hangover on a blog is sort of like that.  Win (’02, ’04) or lose (’06 and ’08), there’s a huge letdown and readjustment, as the fever-pitch of excitement fades into the post-election waiting for the new regime (or the new take on the current regime) to take hold. 

This past election was the fourth election cycle this blog has been through.  Every year, a number of new political blogs fade out after the election; without an election, what do you write about?  Not me, of course – I’ve been doing this long enough to know the pattern, so it doesn’t especially faze me.  But there’s always a period of readjustment, as one switches from the always-on mental scrum of writing about politics-as-current events, and switches to politics-as-daily-routine, along with writing about all of life’s other routines.  Or, y’know, not writing about them; there are bloggers for whom politics is the only subject.

The readjustment is particularly jarring this time around.  This electoral season was so intense, so fraught with consequence on both sides, and just-plain more-engrossing than the last couple of turns.  We’ve spent most of the last year writing about what has been was supposed to be an epochal generational and social shift in American politics; going from that epic clash to two years of talking about congressional maneuvering is a jarring shift.

The readjustment is coming along, though. 

Although I can hardly wait for 2010…

John Boehner must make Lori Sturdevant’s leg all tingly:

House Republicans are not shifting to the political right, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told CNSNews.com on Wednesday, just hours after two of the top three GOP leadership spots were won by conservative lawmakers in an internal leadership election.

I said it before.  I’ll say it again; John Boehner presided over the most disastrous session the GOP House Caucus has suffered that didn’t involve a Great Depression or a presidential resignation.

Members Reps. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Mike Pence (R-Ind.), and John Mica (R-Fla.), however, told CNSNews.com that they think the conference is shifting to the political right.
 
But Boehner said, “No, I don’t think it’s right or left. It’s what are the issues Americans are concerned about, and how do we build solutions on our principles? It’s not left or right.

The hell it’s not. 

He should have gone.  He has to go. 

One of the dominant memes in GOP circles since November 5 has been “the need to use the internet better”. 

And while that’s a fairly big, amorphous concept, there is at least one empirical measure of the Obama and McCain campaign’s successes (other than online fundraising, although someone really should investigate all those millions in anonymous donations); someone has done a Usability Test comparing the two campaign’s websites:

A quick online usability study of the Obama and McCain websites was conducted on November 3rd and 4th, 2008. [Note:  Passive must be avoided – Ed.] Preparation for the study took about 2 hours and data analysis took about 4 hours.

I should point out that Usability Testing is a part of what I do for a living.  We’ll come back to this.

One of the key questions you have to ask when doing a usability test is “what is the user trying to accomplish?”   These tasks should, ideally, reflect things the the user actually would need to accomplish using your website, software, hardware, store design or whatever it is you’re testing: 

Participants were asked to do four tasks on one of the sites: find where to vote, find the candidate’s position on Social Security, find a photo of the candidate waving, and find the impact of the candidate’s tax plan on them.

I’m trying to picture someone trolling the web thinking “I need to find a picture of Barack Obama waving to a crowd.  Where, oh where…“.  But three out of four ain’t bad.

The next step is qualifying and quantifying your results:

Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two sites; 44 of them completed the tasks. Task success (self-reported), task times, and task ease ratings were collected, as were ratings on several scales, including the System Usability Scale (SUS).

Pay no attention to the terms of art among Usability geeks; let’s jump to the results: 

Overall, the users were successful with 78% of their tasks on the Obama site but only 47% on the McCain site. Users of the McCain site also took 28% longer and rated the tasks as 27% more difficult. Users rated the Obama site as being significantly easier to find information on and significantly more visually appealing. And the Obama site received a mean SUS score of 76% compared to 45% for the McCain site. Usability issues with both sites were identified from user comments. Overall, it was a landslide usability victory for the Obama website.

Just a quick note to whomever runs for President in 2012; the little things count.  And I know a few conservative usability geeks that’d love to lend a hand getting that particular problem solved.