Shot in the Dark

Category: Campaign ’10

  • At The Victory Party

    I’m at the Sheraton for the GOP’s victory party.  Early word – unconfirmed – is that turnout in Duluth and the Twin Cities is a little low. I haven’t gotten any but anecdotal confirmation that turnout in “red” Minnesota is high, but the anecdotal feedback is good. We shall see. Liveblogging will be a tad…

  • A Thousand Points Of Duh

    I”m on the phones here at the Election Integrity Watch center.  I just got a call from a woman complaining about the posters by polling stations in North Minneapolis, “targeting people of color”.  I pointed out that we’re getting most of our calls from places like Plymouth, Blaine and Golden Valley.  “Well, you have people…

  • Voting

    As you read this, I’m heading over to my polling station to get in line to vote.  I may not be the first in the door, but I’ll be close. My slate? Governor/Lt. Governor: No surprise here.  Emmer/Meeks. I believe I’ve made my reasoning amply clear both recently and over the past six months. Congress:…

  • 100 Reasons I’m Voting For Tom Emmer

    As I do before every important election, I’m listing the top 100 reasons I’m voting for the top of the ticket. Of course, I became an Emmer supporter long ago.  The GOP started the campaign early – right around State Fair time in 2009 – with a crop of great candidates and rumored candidates.  Paul…

  • Morning In America?

    28 years ago, when I was working at my first country-western radio job, about the time the early eighties recession was at its deepest, I first heard this Merle Haggard song. It was in the “recurrent” bin – music the station had played for a good six months before I started – but never quite…

  • Riding a Wave of Fear

    America is afraid tonight. Afraid that the great recession is far from over. Afraid the government, having pulled every lever in the cockpit, may not be able to save us this time. Make no mistake, no matter what the results tomorrow, occupational anxiety will persist. High unemployment levels will not soon abate. Waves of foreclosures,…

  • Top Five Reasons Emmer Should Be Governor – #1: It’s The Hope

    I moved to Minnesota 25 years ago. I moved here because my home state, North Dakota, was mired in an epic farm depression – and even in the best of times, the job market for a guy with a BA in English and a drive to be a writer was dodgy. I moved to find…

  • Welcome To Chicago

    And it’s time for the first allegation of election fraud. On Friday, October 30, 2010, a member of the Minnesota Freedom Council witnessed apparent voter fraud occurring at the Crow Wing County Courthouse in Brainerd, Minnesota. Upwards of 100 residents from a local group home for mentally disadvantaged individuals were brought into the County Courthouse…

  • Top Five Reasons Dayton Should Not Be Governor – #1: Malaise

    Yesterday, we examined how Mark Dayton would endeavor to move Minnesota backward – to try to go Back to the Seventies for its economic model. And that’s if everything goes perfectly – which it can not. But it’s so much worse than that. Mark Dayton, and the Democratic Farmer/Labor Party, wants Minnesota to not only…

  • McCollum: “Mission Accomplished!” Redux

    Betty McCollum thinks Al Quaeda is no longer a threat (from Betty McCollum Needs Change): “Al Qaeda no longer poses a threat to the United States.” That’s a fascinating conclusion. Watch McCollum with her opponent, Teresa Collett, at their Health Care debate. Watch McCollum trying to defend her role in the Health Care debate (starting…

  • Eighth District: This Is Your Congressman!

    The top ten moments of Congressman Oberstar’s peformance from the debate last week with Chip Cravaack You gotta ask yourself, CD8 – how much contempt for you and your beliefs do you find acceptable?

  • They All Look The Same To The DFL

    It’s the second stupid, bigoted attack by the DFL in as many weeks – and it involves my good friend and longtime Northern Alliance colleague King Banaian. Can you imagine the uproar if a Republican campaign would be stupid enough to drop a campaign piece saying…: “Keith Ellison: Too involved in Saudi Arabian politics to…

  • Top Five Reasons Emmer Should Be Governor – #3: The Overhaul

    Who does government work for? If you said “us”, either you aren’t from Minnesota, or you are hopelessly naive. For the past forty years in Minnesota, the state budget has grown, consistently, vastly faster than inflation.  Not just a little faster, but much, much, much, much faster. No matter who was in charge – DFLers…

  • Top Five Reasons Dayton Should Not Be Governor – #3: Unexamined

    There are so many unanswered questions about Mark Dayton. Now, if we had an institution in our state whose job it was to ask tough questions of those who would tax our earnings and spend our money and run the free association of equals that We The People call our government – say, a big…

  • Top Five Reasons Emmer Should Be Governor – #4: Buck The Narrative

    There are two duelling narratives at work in the Minnesota gubernatorial election this year. One of them is a huge, national narrative; the immense, perhaps unprecedented in 65-100 years, backlash against the currently-absolutely-ruling party.  Conservatism is, by most rational accounts, about to deal a thrashing to liberalism that’ll make the 1994 election look like a…

  • The Real Contest

    After the release of the welter of ludicrous polls from the Strib and the Humphrey Institute that – inevitably – showed Mark Dayton with improbably large leads earlier this week, the grownups have finally spoken. First came the public release of an internal poll by the Emmer campaign showing the race an even-up, 40-40 tie.…

  • A Not Remotely Modest Proposal

    We don’t know how the Minnesota gubernaturial election is going to turn out yet.  I have my predictions in; you are welcome to do your own. But one thing is for certain; it’s not going to be a 12 point race. Which would provoke a curious person to ask; what is with the “Star/Tribune Minnesota…

  • Top Five Reasons Dayton Should Not Be Governor – #4: Fool Us Three Times…

    F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that Americans hate second acts. It’s baloney, of course, Americans love a good comeback story.  Our history is crowded with ’em; Grover Cleveland’s second term; William Howard Taft’s service on the Supreme court; Richard Nixon (who perhaps should not have had his second act); Ronald Reagan himself, whose career spanned…

  • Top Five Reasons Emmer Should Be Governor – #5: Our Better Natures

    What are Minnesotans’ great strengths? We have so many; we’re resourceful (who else could live in such a cold place)?  We’re smart – our test scores show it (although North Dakotans would seem to be smarter, by that measure); we’re communitarian, even without the heavy hand of government to drag it out of us. We’re…

  • The HHH And The DFL Get Out The Vote Effort

    Another MPR/HHH Poll. Another lopsided sample.  Another improbably huge Dayton lead. Another day in a city where the media and academy actively work with the dominant political party to maintain control. According the poll, which has a margin or sampling error between 3.6 percent and 5.5 percent and surveyed 751 likely voters, Dayton had support…

  • Top Five Reasons Dayton Should Not Be Governor – #5: We Are Better Than This

    Think back over the past six months of Mark Dayton’s campaign. Think over the ads he’s run.  Think back over the messages. Why would you vote for Mark Dayton? Now, make no mistake; the Dayton campaign – and its “third-party” advertising from the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, which is “third party” only on the…

  • Lists Everywhere

    Over the next five days I’m going to run three lists. The Top Five Reasons Mark Dayton Should Not Be Governor – I’ll be running them one per day between now and Monday. The Top Five Reasons Tom Emme Should Be Governor – One a day til Monday, except I may take Sunday off and…

  • Backing And Filling

    The DFL starts to work on its damage control from its viciously anti-Catholic attack piece. Blois Olson – who is not “the DFL”, per se, but has a history of working for DFL candidates – in his “Morning Take” MN GOP will push to find controversy with a direct mail piece in SD40. GOP operatives…

  • Pray For Cold

    Parts of northern Minnesota have gotten/will get two feet of snow out of the blizzard currently sweeping in from the Dakotas. If you follow conventional Minnesota political wisdom, the worse the weather is, the better the GOP does. So the colder it stays, and the more of that snow lingers ’til Tuesday, the better it’s…

  • Fake And Inaccurate

    Berg’s Seventh Law – “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.” – remains one of the most accurate formulas in American politics today. The left has been caterwauling about “Corporate…