Joe Doakes from Como writes:

John Kerry graduated from Yale in 1966 and served in Vietnam. It was one of his major qualifications for office.

George Bush the Younger graduated from Yale in 1968. He caught a lot of flack because his National Guard time wasn’t “real” military experience. Democrats commonly accused him of shirking his duty to serve his country – a draft dodger – implying he was unqualified for office.

Mark Dayton graduated from Yale in 1969. He then . . . what? Taught school in New York? What happened to that duty to serve the country? Was he deferred? 4-F? Is he unqualified for lack of military service?

That’s a good question.  With most people who were of draft age back then, there’s some kind of story; one relative of mine who graduated earlier than Dayton described getting several deferrals because he was a teacher in a place that was drastically short of ’em.

Is that what Dayton did?

Just curious.

I grant that Tom Emmer’s closest brush with military service was going to St. Thomas Academy. But Emmer did his college and law school in the 1980’s when there was no huge military push. Dayton graduated six months after the Tet Offensive, at the height of the Vietnam War, when every gentleman’s son knew where his duty laid.

Look – other than Jesse Ventura, I’m at a loss to remember a recent Minnesota governor who did serve in the military.

But how did Dayton get out of the draft?

We do know how the Dems mocked Dick Cheney for getting five deferments; how they discredited Dan Quayle’s time in the National Guard, and tried to do the same with President Bush’s in the Air Guard.

It’s an appropriate question.

Does that ‘military service’ requirement only apply to the Presidency because he serves as Commander in Chief? Governors command their own National Guards – are overnors exempt from any duty to serve their country?

Or does it only apply to Republicans?

As far as the media is concerned…

The SEIU, in endorsing Mark Dayton, writes:

I can’t donate millions of dollars like corporate CEOs,

The SEIU has donated at least as much as Target so far, and that was as of five weeks ago.

As this is written, Tom Emmer has just finished announcing Part One of his budget plan – the one that the DFL and the Chanting Class has been wondering about for the past two months.

To paraphrase James Carville, Part One is about the jobs, stupid.

Emmer is going to…:

1. Lower The Corporate Income Tax. This will enable new businesses to get profitable faster, and allow large companies to stay that way – forestalling layoffs, enabling job additions, and addressing business’ #1 complaint about doing business in Minnesota, our top-in-the-nation business and corporate tax rates.
2. Increase The “Angel” Investor Credit. “Angel” investors – people who are willing to take long shots on new companies that don’t yet have established sales, assets or revenues.  They are what get new companies off the ground, and allow them to survive and make payroll until they turn a profit – are in many ways the lynchpin of the new economy.  Of all “new economies”, really.  Angel Investors were the underpinning of much of the high-tech revolution that transformed our economy, and our lives really, for the past fifty years.  Currently, investors can deduct 25% of their investment (up to $125,000 from a $500,000 investment); Tom Emmer will increase that credit.
3. Accelerate The Refunds From The Sales Tax Exemption On Capital Purchases.  Minnesota allows a refund of sales taxes on capital equipment –  in the tax cycle after the equipment is purchased.  Emmer will front-load that – essentially lopping sales taxes off of capital equipment, making it easier – 7% easier – for companies to buy the equipment they need, when they need it to be easiser, when they buy the equipment; freeing up 7-and-change-percent of the company’s revenue to do more important things – like hire people.

By the way – as noted above, Minnesota currently has a Sales Tax exemption for capital purchases. Someone tell alleged “smart guy” and “political expert” Tom Horner, who seems to believe that’s not the case.

From the Emmer press release:

The GOP candidate noted that all of the tax relief measures in his plan have received bipartisan support in the legislature and were endorsed by the 21st Century Tax Reform Commission in its 2009 report. Also, small and large companies alike will benefit from two of the three tax cuts in the Emmer Jobs Agenda, ensuring benefits to the broadest range of Minnesota employers, including those which make little or no profits.

More on this as the week progresses.

Over the next two weeks, we’ll see Emmer’s plan for reforming education and state regulatory processes.

It’s been about two months since the DFL started chanting “Where’s Emmer’s Plan?”

As I quite correctly pointed out in June, it’d have been stupid of Tom Emmer to release a plan at a point in the campaign when only wonks, journos and political junkies care about it.  The average, non-aligned voter doesn’t care about politics before mid-September; Emmer has been completely right to keep his powder dry.

But the first part of Emmer’s plan comes out at 12:30 today, at Permac Industries in Burnsville.

Emmer’s long-awaited offensive begins.  And smear as the DFL and “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” may, they might just have to focus on issues now.

More after the conference.

The conversation below is “Fake But Accurate”, and reflects things said – to me and otherwise – by DFLers in a variety of media over the past week or so.  I have synthethized those conversations into a single, “composite” character, whom I’ll nickname “EVERY DFLer” for clarity.

Don’t try this if you’re not an English major.

SCENE:  A coffee shop.  MITCH is sitting at table drinking black coffee.  EVERY DFLer walks by drinking an organic mo-chai-frapp-iato, recognizes MITCH.

EVERY DFLer: (Hisses).

MITCH:  (Notices ED):  Hey, what’s up?

EVERY DFLer:  Tom Emmer doesn’t have a plan!

MITCH: Of course he does.  He just hasn’t released it yet.

EVERY DFLer: That means he has no plan! HAHAHAHA!

MITCH: Well , no.  It means that he’s saving the plan for the campaign homestretch.  Because until sometime between Labor Day and Election Day, the only people who really care about politics, especially specifics of things like “plans”, are wonks, “journalists” and political junkies.  All releasing a plan right before people actually give a crap does is give the DFL time to frame it before any actual voters – including undecideds actually give a hoot.

EVERY DFLer:  Yabbut, Mark Dayton has a plan!

MITCH: Right.  And it’s full of holes and union swag and at the end of the day doesn’t even solve the problem it is putatively designed to deal with [Note:  the link goes to my “Dayton Dustbowl” category, which will be the subject of about ten posts on Tuesday – Ed.]

EVERY DFLer:  But he has a plan!  Emmer doesn’t!

MITCH:  Oh, I think you can count on seeing a plan starting to come out any day now.

EVERY DFLer: Yeah, but it’s not out now!  It doesn’t count!

MITCH: So when Emmer does come out with a plan, your entire attack falls flat…

EVERY DFLer:  No!  Because Emmer doens’t have a plan!

MITCH: But when he does come out with his plan…

EVERY DFLer:  Emmer doesn’t have a plan!

MITCH: But when he does come out with his plan…

EVERY DFLer:  Emmer doesn’t have a plan!

MITCH: But when he does come out with his plan…

EVERY DFLer:  Emmer doesn’t have a plan!

MITCH: But when he does come out with his plan…

EVERY DFLer:  Emmer doesn’t have a plan!

EVERY DFLer:  Emmer doesn’t have a plan!

EVERY DFLer:  Emmer doesn’t have a plan!

MITCH: OK, let’s try a different tack, here. Let’s say, hypothetically, that a candidate – let’s call him “Ron Bremmer” – comes out with a plan to cut spending and hold the line on taxes, maybe even cut ’em, while re-engineering government so that it doesn’t eat up every nickel in overtaxation with frivolous spending when the times are good, like the DFL and the old, RINO MNGOP did from 1968 through 1992.  What then.

EVERY DFLer: …

MITCH:  Well?

EVERY DFLer: …

MITCH: It’s a hypothetical question.

EVERY DFLer: …

MITCH:  What would you do?

EVERY DFLer:   Your a racist who hates immigrants and gay people!

MITCH: No, I’m not.

EVERY DFLer:  Target!  Trigg Trigg Trigg Trigg!  Best Buy! What about the children?!?!

That pretty much covers it.

UPDATE:  Schwoops – someday just came!   Emmer is reportedly unveiling the first part of his plan later today.

Stay tuned.

Mark Dayton demanded that GOP trackers start wearing uniforms.

That’s not the kind of challenge you put in front of Derek “Chief” Brigham from Freedom Dogs.

He’s got 12 potential designs.  My favorite:

Check ’em all out here.  Details of the challenge here.

It’s actually a contest put on by the MNGOP.  Contenders will be unveiled Labor Day morning at the MNGOP booth at the State Fair.

Might juuuust have to show up for that.

…you can count on in Minnesota politics, it’s that the Twin Cities media will keep an eagle eye on…

…Republican candidates’ kids.

Did Mark Dayton fall off the wagon in the past two years?  How severe are his alcoholism and depression?  How far down will Dayton have to push his definition of “the Rich” to close the deficit, and what’ll be the opportunity costs of doing this in the middle of a terrible recession?

Who the hell knows?  Not Minnesota’s voters!

Because the media can’t spare a few moments from “covering” a 20 year old careless driving conviction and a 20 year old kid’s stupid college drinking photos.

Thanks, KARE11!  Keep scouring Facebook.  You truly do Know What Matters™.

“Recovery Summer” is now turning into “Failure Fall“.

By all means, Dems; raise taxes.  Turn the screws on all us working people just a little harder.

Florida will see the biggest slime-attack of its entire history…

…against Jennifer Carroll.

Carroll, a native of Trinidad, a retired Navy Lieutenant-Commander, a mother of three, an immigrant from Trinidad, and a conservative, is Rick Scott’s new running mate on the Florida GOP gubenatorial ticket.

Oh, yeah; she’s of African descent:

“Jennifer Carroll is the embodiment of the American dream. She came to America as a young girl, decided to serve her country with the United States Navy, pursued a higher education, started a small business, and then was elected the first African-American female Republican in the Florida Legislature,” said Scott, who launched a new website featuring his new running mate (www.ScottCarrollforFlorida.com).

“Her conservative principles are in line with mine, and this fall we will present a clear choice between conservatives with business experience and a plan to create 700,000 jobs and liberal Obamacrats who want to bring the failed Obama agenda to Florida,” Scott said in a statement to his supporters.

Ms. Carroll looks to be a very, very sharp candidate.

Look for a Democratic smear campaign painting her as stupid, unaccomplished and, most likely, racist; look for at least one “Auntie Tom” reference from a C-list pseudo-celebrity.

She’s the thing the left fears most; an apostate.

(Via E-Mo)

Let’s make no mistake about this; I’m predicting Tom Emmer is going to win this fall’s gubernatorial race.  It’s going to be tight – 3-4 points, very likely less – but he’s going to win.   On the chance – heaven forefend – that he doesn’t?  In the wake of Jesse Ventura and Al Franken, Minnesota will have proven itself a fundamentally un-serious people for all time to come.

But I have more faith in the people of this state than that.

Still, there’ve been some of my fellow Republicans – that is to say, Republicans, as opposed to conservatives – cracking under the pressure of the campaign.  I’ve talked with a few otherwise-stalwart GOPers who aren’t sure that Emmer can pull this off.

I am sure he can and will.  But let’s break it down.

Here’s how Emmer wins this election:

Endure: Dayton’s family and cronies have subjected Emmer to the most expensive, slimy smear campaign in the history of Minnesota politics.  And yet, according to the latest MPR/Humphrey Institute poll, Emmer is tied, inside a fairly generous margin of error, and plenty of undecideds in a year with a huge tailwind for the right conservative candidates.  He’s stood up to it well, taking a consistent high road – knowing, I suspect, that behind all the slime, Dayton’s really got nothing.

It’s gotta be hard, sitting and acting like a punching bag for a bunch of dirtballs like “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”.  But eventually even bags of slime empty out.  And while the people of Minnesota have long shown a capacity for electing the shamefully bizarre – Ventura, Franken, even Perpich – these mood of the voter is not as dissipate as it was in 1998, and there’s no way Franken would have won without the Democrat tide in 2008.  All that remains, then, is to fill in the vacuum.

With what?

Be Tom Emmer: I’ve been saying it for three months now; when people meet Mark Dayton, they walk away feeling…weird.  On the other hand, when people meet Tom Emmer, even opponents get won over by the guy; if not by his policies, then by his energy and personality and regular-schnook bonhomie.

More importantly – much much more importantly?  When I first encountered Emmer the Candidate about a year ago, in a couple of radio interviews I did with him as both a host and a panelist, I noticed he has a gift that is exceedingly rare among partisans on the right or left; the ability to address a room full of people who don’t start out agreeing with him, and getting them to at least consider what he was to say.  It’s the same gift Ronald Reagan had; the ability to move people from “the center” over to him.

And it shows; in the gubernatorial debates I’ve seen, Emmer has mopped the floor with Dayton and Horner; Dayton comes across as a mumbling, skittery, dissipated professor; Horner, a PR flak who forgot his talking point sheet and is going from a very short list of lines he remembers.

Which is why I suspect you won’t see all that much media coverage of this year’s debates; Emmer, in person, is a dynamo.  The more people know and see that, the better he does.

The Plan:  The left has dusted off an old chanting point.  Last June, they were demanding to see the specifics of Emmer’s plan.   They’ve been doing their best to frame a plan whose details they know very little as yet about.  The chanting points, on the blogs, Twitter and the Strib, are growing increasingly desperate; “Where is it?  Since we haven’t seen it, it must not exist!  It’s probably just tax cuts!  That did SO well so far, didn’ t  it?”

The pace of the framing is picking up because the DFL knows it’s out there.  And, with the likes of Annette Meeks and the rest of Emmer’s policy crew working on it, it’s gonna be a doozy.

What’s in it?  I dunno.  I’m not on the campaign.  Never have been.  Oh, I can speculate – indeed, next week, I will.  In great depth.

But everyone from Emmer and Meeks on down to lil’ ol’ me knows this is the game-maker – and the game-breaker, potentially.  In a year that is more friendly to government reform than any in history, The Plan will be Emmer’s opportunity to throw Dayton and his pathetic “tax the rich” ( who make over $130,000 a year) plan on defensive for good.  A chance to show that there’ll be a grownup at the helm.

It’s a huge chance.

Like all huge chances, it could break good, or break bad.  My bet is on “good”.  Overwhelmingly so.

And that’s what the DFL is betting on, too.  It’s why a candidate like Dayton – rich, with 100% name recognition and “experience” – needs to throw such an incredibly slimy campaign, and call in so many markers from the media to insulate him.

As I noted in my original piece on the subject, Emmer is right to wait on releasing The Plan.  He’s going to be outspent three or more to one, to be sure – but the race, and most of the talk about it, so far has been among the wonks and the political junkies.  And all of them made up their minds about the time I did.

But The Plan should impact right about the time the people who really matter – the undecided voters – start to realize there’s an actual campaign going on and that they should pay it some attention.  And that window starts to creak open in about the next couple of weeks.

Take Back “Miracle”:  This is the big one, as far as I’m concerned.

It was forty years ago that the DFL stole the term “Miracle”.  The “Minnesota Miracle” was huge expansion of the Minnesota economy; it was accompanied by the institution of a huge government wealth-redistribution plan designed to subsidize poorer parts of the state with money from the then-wealthy Twin Cities.   It’s been presented over the past forty years as if the redistribution program caused the blooming of Minnesota as a business, educational and population center, as if Minnesota – a place blessed with immense resources and 150 years as the transportation, commercial, social and demographic hub of the entire north-central United States – would have remained a desultory backwater forever without “Local Government Aid”.

The fossils of the “Miracle” have been perverted over the years into a money-laundering scheme to help the DFL-dominated governments in the Twin Cities and Duluth hide their spending.

This is the “Miracle” at 40.

Emmer realizes, rightly, that there needs to be a new “Miracle” in Minnesota – one that puts government back in its proper role, and otherwise stays out of the way of Minnesotans’ natural industry and energy.

That’s the right message in this day and age.

No matter how much mindless flak the other side puts up.

I do believe Mark Dayton taught high school.

I believe it because it’d be grindingly stupid for a public figure to lie about something that is as relatively easy to run down (even given New York City’s sclerotic bureaucracy) as whether he actually taught.

And even if Mark Dayton were unaware of how nothing remotely public is secret from The Cloud – and it’s possible, since the last time he ran for office there were no blogs, and The Cloud and crowdsourcing were the stuff of futurists’ jabberings – he’s got people on his staff who, by all accounts, should.

So yeah, I suspect Dayton probably taught for a couple of years.  Because he put his teaching experience in his bio for a reason – to burnish his “I understand the plight of the commoners” cred, which might be suspect, given his plutocratic pedigree.

So yes; I’ll accept Dayton worked as a teacher.  But I’d be interested in knowing where.  And with whom.

Charlie Quimby has a quote from the director of the “Peace Corps”-like program for whom Dayton worked, right out of Yale in the late sixties.

Mark taught on the Lower East Side where my headquarters were located. He was one of the first to come into the program, along with a number of recent Yale graduates, and I knew him quite well. He did a very good job and the conditions were in some ways more demanding than the Peace Corps.

It is indeed contemptible that anyone would attempt to claim that Mark did not teach in the New York City public schools or deny his youthful idealism.

In other words, “shut up, madding peasants!”.

Still, we’re getting closer.  Dayton taught on “the Lower East Side”.  Quimby even intimates that he taught at a “PS65”, on the Lower East Side.

Well bully!  Now we’re getting closer!

But so far what we have is the word of a training program director, and a copy of his license that was apparently delivered to…the address of the training program.

Look – as I’ve said, I believe that Dayton taught.  And as the grandson, son and brother of teachers, I do truly want to “deny his youthful idealism”, heaven forfend.  Teaching is an important job; if he actually was a teacher, it improves my opinion of him ever so slightly (and, commensurately, if he is, heaven forfend, lying about it, it’ll certainly tank whatever respect I may have had for him, little as that may be).

So would it kill Dayton to simply say “I taught for two years at PS65; my principal was Lev Abramowiec”, or wherever?

Because what we have so far are…:

• Dismissive huffing from an educational “community organizer” who assures us that Dayton taught for his program, but doesn’t apparently go into details.  In the spirit of inquiry, I’ll ask anyone to stop me if I’m wrong.
• A copy of a teachers license delivered, apparently, to the address of the program above.  A teachers license proves that someone was deemed qualified to teach, and that they passed their student teaching evaluations, and a bunch of classes in pedagogy and psychology (“Theory of the Eraser 351”, my dad – who only taught for forty years so, plus a couple stints teaching teachers – called ’em).

Well, it proves that Mark Dayton could have been a teacher, all right.  It doesn’t actually put him in a classroom, but I’m sure that’s just a formality.

So would it kill the campaign to give us a school name?  A principal?

Quimby signs off by saying he really, really doesn’t like uppity peasants asking questions of their betters:

If you find something factual that refutes me [which would be difficult, since the only facts in the linked piece are the one-time existence of a lower-east-side school], please do get back to my readers in the comments. I’ll be in Turkey, where that nation has an election that may move it every closer to democratic rule.

Otherwise, it would be a good idea not to raise questions when you really don’t know the answers.

It makes you look like an ass.

Sometimes it surely does.

And sometimes it leads to other questions, which lead to bigger answers than you’d ever dreamed.

(more…)

Alaska’s GOP Senate nominee starts his quest to ask voters to “look into your heart”.  Senate Democrats may start asking contributors to look into their wallets.

It had all the looks of an epic recount slugfest.  Narrow margin of victory.  A near blood fued between the waring factions.  Lawyers from Washington.  Instead, Alaska’s GOP primary battle royale ended with a whimper, not a bang:

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska conceded late Tuesday in her Republican primary race to Joe Miller, a lawyer from Fairbanks backed by Tea Party activists, Sarah Palin and other conservatives…

Ms. Murkowski’s concession followed the counting of about 16,000 additional ballots on Tuesday, which left Mr. Miller with a lead of about 1,469 votes out of about 103,000 cast. Several thousand more votes were to be counted on Friday but the trend suggested Ms. Murkowski would not gain enough ground to win.

Despite fumbling her re-election bid worse than Joe Pisarcik and entertaining a variety of ways to get onto the November ballot, Lisa Murkowski decided – at least for the moment – not to further risk the odds of a Republican holding her seat come November.  That hasn’t stopped Murkowski from sidestepping an endorsement of her primary bête noire.  And from the looks of yet another early poll, Joe Miller could use the support as Rasmussen has Democrat Scott McAdams within 6%:

Rasmussen Alaska Senatorial Survey

• Joe Miller (R) 50%
• Scott McAdams (D) 44%
• Other 4%
• Not sure 2%

Favorable / Unfavorable {Net}

• Scott McAdams 43% / 36% {+7%}
• Joe Miller 50% / 44% {+6%}

To call McAdams’ post primary fundraising Lazarus-like would imply his financial efforts had once been alive.  But since Murkowski and Miller headed to extra innings, Democrats in the lower 48 states have been slowly funneling McAdams coffers – thus far to the tune of just over $77,000.  Such figures might help in the 173rd “largest” media market in the U.S., but McAdams may be fighting his own internecine battle with state and national Democrats who are hinting at trying to replace him with more established names like former Governor Tony Knowles or former Lt. Gov. Fran Ulmer.

More likely, Alaska will be witnessing two AAA candidates battling in the political majors, egging on by activists from both sides.   Neither party’s senate branch is likely to pour resources into Alaska; the DSCC even moreso if McAdams remains on the ticket as they simply can’t afford to expend resources with so many vulernable incumbents.  But that hasn’t stopped conservative and liberals activists from trying to throw gas on the cooling embers of the primary in an effort to stoke interest and donations.  Consider the race the defacto Tea Party vs The Daily Kos battle of the frozen tundra.

But Joe Miller’s biggest opponent isn’t Scott McAdams but – depending on which numbers you feel matter more – either the 40% of Republicans who say they have an unfavorable opinion about him or the near 50% of Republicans who voted against him.  To that effect, Miller needs to keep Tea Party interest in his campaign brewing lest the coffers run dry, especially as he attempts to bridge the divide between his supporters and Murkowski’s. 

Could Murkowski torpedo the entire endeavor and endorse McAdams?  Sure, but doing so would stain the entire Murowski legacy in Alaska and all but formally ensure that Lisa Murkowski’s political career truly ended on primary night.  Murkowski’s relatively quick concession at least shows enough political acumen to suggest she’s still interested in surviving to fight another day.

My impression is that having a license to teach in a state means one has…:

• taken (and presumably passed) the state-mandated series of education courses from an accredited college or university education program
• practice-taught a state-required amount of time with a regular teacher
• Applied for and gotten the license.

What am I missing here?

My dad taught high school – writing, English and especially Speech – for close to forty years.  He taught in two districts – Rugby and Jamestown, ND.  It’s not hard to prove it; everyone in Jamestown either had dad, or their kids did, or their parents did.  There were not a few two-generation families of students in that town.

Of course, you could ask him about it.  He’ll probably tell you all you wanna hear.  He’s kinda proud of the work he did.  Justifiably so.

Any good teacher should be!

So yesterday, Sheila Kihne at Activist Next Door noted that her Freedom Of Information (FOI) request to the NYC School District came up with no record of a Mark B. Dayton having been employed there forty-odd years ago.

Now, it could be that the bureaucrats reponding to the FOI request did their perfunctory least to answer Sheila’s question.  It could be that someone typed “Mark V. Dayton” instead of “Mark B. Dayton” into a computer.  It could be, as a commenter on Sheila’s post noted, that the forty-year-old teacher records aren’t on the computer yet.  It could be that, being civil service employees in the most sclerotic bureaucracy east of Chicago, they really don’t give a rat’s ass.

But Mark Dayton could settle this right now; we know he’s not above settling the things he wants to settle – he just released his NY teaching license, which at least proves he went to college and got certified.  Yay!

That’s how easily he could shut down those who are asking the questions about his classroom time.  It’d take about five seconds.  Just tell the world – where did he teach, and when?

Because a teacher should be proud of the work they did.

While Pauline Kael, the doyenne of American film critics, passed away years ago, her syndrome is alive and well here in Minnesota.

Yesterday’s MPR/Humphrey Institute poll, which showed Mark Dayton and Tom Emmer in a dead heat, drew a chorus of “bad methodology!” from the local leftysphere; none of their friends, after all, voted for Emmer!

Jeff Rosenberg at MNPublius says the methodology just can’t be right, because it didn’t poll enough latté-guzzling hipsters:

The poll was based on a “landline, random-digit dial survey.”

Landline? Are you kidding me? I wonder how many younger voters were missed. Not having a landline, I could never have been contacted for this poll.

Perhaps.  The first time I heard this excuse was 2004, when an earlier generation of leftybloggers – Chuck Olson, if memory serves – swore that the polls were undercounting John Kerry supporters because “…I don’t know anyone with a landline, all my friends use cell phones”, too.  I don’t know how much weight to put on this; most people still do have landlines; the younger crowd that may not have ’em is also less likely to vote than the general population.  And MPR says they thought of this: “The survey data has also been weighted to accomodate for factors such as the number of telephone lines, cell phone usage, gender, age, race and ethnicity to approximate the demographic characteristics of the state’s population according to the Census”.  Did MPR and the HHHI do a good job of compensating?  Time will tell.  As an Emmer supporter, I certainly hope so.

Rosenberg:

Maybe that helps to account for the poll’s likely-voter model:

Republican: 46%

Democrat: 41%

Independent: 13%

You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t buy that. The oversampling of Republicans is yet another reason to suspect that this poll overstates the extent to which the race has actually narrowed.

Only if you have become accustomed to a diet of “Star/Tribune Minnesota Polls”, which tend to poll “registered voters”, who are less likely to vote.

The MPR/HHHI poll is likely voters.  Republicans are energized this year; the Tea Party is turning out conservatives in a way Minnesota and the rest of the nation hasn’t seen since 1994.  I’ve seen not a few Dems complain that the DFL usually tops the GOP in voter ID in Minnesota.  This is a fact – among registered voters and random respondents.  Among likely voters – people who will go to the polls come hell or high water?  That number varies widely.

How widely?  Let’s go back to 2006.  The GOP was reeling and groggy; the DFL was on a roll.  And in October of ’06 the state broke down at 48% DFL, 37% GOP,  13% Independence Ventura Party, and 2% everyone else.

We know how that turned out; Pawlenty held on by the skin of his teeth. The GOP lost all the other Constitutional offices, and lost control of the Senate.  Gil Gutknecht got sent packing; Michele Bachmann won by only 8% against a weak candidate in a solid red district that’ll send her back to DC with a two-digit majority this year.

Now – were there 11% more Democrats than GOPers throughout the entire population of Minnesota?  Of course not.  But among those that were planning on going out to vote, there was a pretty serious DFL majority.

The leftyblogosphere seems to think it’s unthinkable that the tables have turned.

Mr. D covered it as well, on his blog and on the MinnPost:

You can look at this a number of ways. Here are a few things I’d suggest:

• Dayton and his minions (and I would include Matt Entenza in that collection) have spent millions of dollars demonizing Tom Emmer all summer long, with very little response from the Emmer camp. If the best they are able to do is get a tie, that doesn’t bode well for Dayton.

That’s the part that’s gotta be keeping DFL strategists up all night; after running the most expensive sleaze campaign in Minnesota history, they’re way inside the margin of error.

• There’s no point in pretending that Emmer’s campaign hasn’t had a few hiccups up to this point. The tip credit flap was an unforced error and he’s been slow to respond to some of the calumnies that have been heaped upon him thus far. While it’s good to see him starting to respond now, his passivity has been puzzling and often maddening. It’s not what we saw in the primary.

I figured that this was about “keeping the powder dry” until the final kick, the last six weeks before the election where the undecideds’ decisions really get made.  I figured Emmer was saving his big plan for cutting spending and re-engineering state government until it’d do him some good; I have solid reason to believe I’m right.

Emmer’s been absolutely scrupulous about running a clean campaign; when Ed and I interviewed him this past Saturday, he insisted he doesnt’ refer to Mark Dayton and the DFL as “the opposition”.  That’s idealism for you.  It’s also swimming against the tide of sleaze that “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” has unleashed.  Will it work?

We’ll see.

(In the meantime, he’s got us bloggers and talk show people for the rough stuff…)

• The current economic conditions in Minnesota aren’t as dire as they are in, say, Nevada, which has allowed Dayton to run the sort of campaign that would have been laughed off elsewhere. That could change, though. One thing worth remembering is that many voters will start seeing the first fruits of Obamacare in October, when they get the bad news about their insurance premiums going up. That won’t help the standard-bearer of the party that is responsible for these increases.

And that – the emerging reality of the Demcrats’ tax debacle, and the true price tag of Dayton’s insane plan – along with Emmer’s actual plan, when it impacts (and we are in the home stretch), is going to be a huge game-changer.  Properly presented to Minnesota, it should leave Dayton stumbling around like a cow that’s been stunned.

Finally, Joe Bodell from Minnesota “Progressive” Project:

If it takes an 8-point oversample in Tom Emmer’s favor to get him up to a tie, I feel pretty great about Mark Dayton’s chances in a real electorate in which younger, cell-phone-only voters show up.

Except Bodell is comparing apples (likely voters) with axles (out-of-date registered voter ID numbers).  Does the poll oversample GOP voters?  Perhaps, but Bodell wouldn’t be able to quantify it with the numbers he’s using.

But aside from the weird methodology, check out the published crosstabs:

1. Independent voters:

Undecided: 38%

Horner: 26%

Dayton: 23%

Emmer: 13%

There’s a lot of room for movement there, but there is virtually no way Emmer picks up significant enough ground among independent voters to make a dent in the overall results. Keep in mind that this is a mid-term election, and the non-partisan vote is generally going to be a lot lower than it is in presidential years, so given a normal partisan breakdown…

That’s all textbook conventional wisdom.  But many, many independents that stayed home in 2002 or 2006 are looking at their tax bills and health insurance today, and making plans for November 2.  Which group of ’em is more likely to show up?

2. The gender gap: MPR’s writeup indicates that there’s no significant gender gap — that women are currently favoring Mark Dayton by a similar margin to men favoring Tom Emmer. However, what they fail to mention directly is that the sample includes 52% women (about normal for Minnesota) which is yet another built-in advantage for Dayton. Again, given a more reasonable partisan sample, this will go straight through to the final results of this election.

Let me shorten that: “Given that MPR took a legitimate sampling of women, and a sampling error I can’t really quantify, I’m crossing my fingers”.

3. Age gap? MPR doesn’t appear to have published the support breakdowns by age, only the sample sizes — which look weird in and of themselves, since it’s a decent bet the senior vote will be bigger than this poll indicates.

I’m lost; did MPR not publish the breakdowns, or did they just publish senior numbers?

Look – this is going to be a tough race for Emmer.  There’s never been any doubt about it.  He’s fighting a 3:1 financial disadvantage, and a big, powerful political machine with 100% name recognition in a blue state.  He’s fighting against the most scabrous, truth-free smear campaign in Minnesota political history.  He’s the underdog.

All he’s got is a tailwind of revulsion with Obama, a very weak (and possibly potemkin) opponent, a soon-t0-come plan, and his own skills as a campaigner.

Even seems fair, so far.

Sheila Corbett Kihne from the excellent blog “Activist Next Door” did something nobody else in the Twin Cities media seems to feel the need to do; she started asking questions about Mark Dayton’s biography:

Mark Dayton’s current website biography reads:

After college, I taught 9th grade general science for two years in a New York City public school. It was the toughest job I’ve ever had!

Sheila thought she’d do a little simple fact-checking, and sent a “Freedom of Information Act” request to the New York Public Schools:

This was my request (in addition to standard template language for a FOI request)

Please email the following records:

confirmation of employment of:

Mark B. Dayton (birthdate 1/26/47) by the New York City Dept of Education/NYC Public Schools

dates of employment (believe them to be approximately July 1969-July 1971)

job title at the time of employment

school of employment

home address during the period of employment

The NYC Dept. of Education came back zilch; Sheila has scanned the NYCDOE’s response.  Follow the link and check it out.

Now, it’s quite possible that Mr. Dayton never took a salary while teaching, however there would still be some record of his employment. Why doesn’t the NYC public schools have any record of Mark Dayton working there when he says he did?

With an insanely left-leaning Minneapolis media establishment– with long-standing ties to the Dayton family– it’s unlikely that any will bother to ask Mark Dayton about it nor likely that this post will make any news.

I’m certain it’s just a bureaucratic snafu.

Perhaps the Dayton campaign could release some sort of documentary evidence to put this to rest?

It’s just an MPR poll.

But we’re just about two months from the election – so we’re getting to the point that a well-done poll is getting to be worth something.

The poll – which focuses on likely voters, whom conventional wisdom says tend to break for the GOP – shows that the money Dayton’s spent on his soft-money smear campaign so far is just keeping things close in a year that’s going to be terrible for Dems, even in Minnesota.

It also shows that Emmer is losing some of the “base”.  Part of that is that the “base” is so ill-defined; I’m not sure how MPR identified “Republicans”; there’s a big difference between someone whose total identification is having voted for McCain in 2008 versus someone who went to the precinct caucuses.  The former is much more likely to defect, I’m going to guess.  More to the point, a fair chunk of respondents showed some degree of “Pawlenty fatigue” – while they may have voted Republican, these are not the kind of voters who are motivated by principles and policy specifics; they vote on the sort of surface-y things that the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” campaign has focused on.

And yet for all of Dayton’s family’s millions in the race, it’s deadlocked, in a poll that has trended slightly Dayton so far.

Expect a Star Tribune/Minnesota poll shortly that shows an implausibly-large Dayton lead from a poll that oversamples DFLers by five percent.  The Minnesota Poll largely serves as a morale-building tool for the DFL; they may need one after this MPR poll.

I thought this part of MPR‘s piece on the MPR/Humphrey Institute poll was interesting:

While Democrats in Minnesota often rely on the lopsided support of women to win elections, a significant gender gap has not materialized in the 2010 gubernatorial race. Women favor Dayon and men favor Emmer by similar margins as in the education gap.

The education gap shows a slim lead for Emmer among college-educated likely voters, and a similar margin for Dayton among people with less than a college education.

Women not breaking overwhelmingly for the DFLer?  Watch for major efforts to stanch that particular wound; if the DFL loses women in the long term, they’re toast.

It’ll be interesting to see what form the DFL’s effort to solidify women takes…

Reading through MPR’s piece on the latest MPR/Humphrey Institute poll:

Both Dayton and Emmer are seeing the effects of voter backlashes as both President Obama and Gov. Tim Pawlenty appear to be hurting their party’s chances. Of likely voters in Minnesota, 64 percent say the U.S. is on the wrong track, while 53 percent say the state is on the wrong track. Likely voters who disapprove of each executive’s performance are decidely breaking for the opposing party.

Read literally, that means Minnesotans are about 20% more likely to disapprove of Obama’s job than Pawlenty’s (and it’d be interesting to find out how much of that 53% disapproves of Pawlenty or of the DFL-controlled Legislature).

Nearly 40 percent of likely voters said an endorsement by Pawlenty for Emmer would weaken their support for Emmer. A quarter said they would be more likely to support Emmer. Similarly, 44 percent of likely voters said an Obama endorsement for Dayton would mean they would be less likely to support Dayton. Thirty percent said it would increase their likelihood of support.

This is an interesting stat.  After eight years in office, some form of Pawlenty fatigue is inevitable.

Obama’s been in office a year and a half, though.  It’s interesting that the DFL booth has absolutely no reference to the sitting President at the State Fair.

More on the poll as we go.

The latest MPR/Humphrey Institute poll is showing a tossup

Tom Emmer and Democrat Mark Dayton are running are running even in the 2010 race for governor according to a new MPR News-Humphrey Institute Poll…

…Among likely voters, Mark Dayton and Tom Emmer are even at 34 percent support each. Independence Party candidate Tom Horner received 13 percent support.

It’s volatile, of course…:

A fifth of likely voters are undecided. Defections of both Democrats and Republicans from their party’s candidates and splits among key voting groups also contribute to the tight race…One-third of partisans are defecting from the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor, draining usually reliable bases of support for each.

Some DFLers are crying foul over the crosstabs…:

Republican: 46%

Democrat: 41%

Independent: 13%

You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t buy that. The oversampling of Republicans is yet another reason to suspect that this poll overstates the extent to which the race has actually narrowed.

…and the technology…:

Landline? Are you kidding me? I wonder how many younger voters were missed. Not having a landline, I could never have been contacted for this poll.

Although the pollsters tried to pre-empt the technical issue…

The survey data has also been weighted to accomodate for factors such as the number of telephone lines, cell phone usage, gender, age, race and ethnicity to approximate the demographic characteristics of the state’s population according to the Census.

…while a GOP activist notes that the poll might reflect the passion gap between Republicans and Democrats fairly accurately.

Alaska’s Libertarians freeze the state’s U.S. Senate race.

With the GOP primary between Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Joe Miller headed into overtime, Alaska’s Libertarian Party suddenly found their own Senate prospects switching from irrelevant to relevant.  Between D.C. rumors of Murkowski courting the LP for ballot access and the willingness of the party’s own Senate nominee to step aside should Alaska’s senior senator come up short in the absentee race, Libertarians found themselves needing to make a familar choice between principle and politics.

By that definition, the outcome should never have been in doubt:

On Sunday morning, over coffee and donuts, the ExComm voted unanimously, 5 to 0 to deny the Senator the ballot line. There was no malice intended. ALP Chair Kohlhaas has repeatedly stated that she is a nice lady, and the ALP was flattered by the offer.

While the decision guarantees Lisa Murkowski won’t become a political footnote as the first Libertarian U.S. Senator, it also likely guarantees that short of a near landslide of Murkowski absentee ballots, Joe Miller will be the GOP’s nominee.  Despite the race closing to just over 1,600 votes and talk of tens of thousands of absentee ballots left to be counted, only 5,801 absentee ballots were sent to Republican voters.  Thus Murkowski needs to win those remaining ballots with totals around 60% – a possible but not particularly probable outcome.

Should she lose any recount attempt, Murkowski’s options are few other than simply conceding.  No other party can give her ballot access (other than the Democrats), meaning Murkowski’s last hope to return to Washington lies in a longshot write-in candidacy.  Although polling showed Murkowski competitive in a 3-way race, the hurdles of a successful write-in campaign are taller than Yao Ming on stilts.  Strom Thurmond managed to win a U.S. Senate race as a write-in candidate in 1954, and a handful of others have won U.S. House general or primary elections as write-ins.  But in almost all cases, the victory came because the opposition was either completely unknown and unmotivated to run, or because there simply wasn’t any opposition at all.  Neither could be said to be true in Alaska.

Murkowski’s likely forthcoming disappearance from the race makes Alaska’s senate race – at least for the moment – look mildly competitive.  In a two-way battle, Miller leads Democrat Scott McAdams only 47% to 39%, perhaps partially explaining why Miller’s ill-tempered tweet comparing Murkowski’s possible party switch to prostitution has garnered as much lower 48 media exposure as it has.  Or maybe because it had the media wondering if the analogy made the Libertarians the pimp or the john.

Democrats are obviously looking for GOP-held targets to help mitigate their likely November losses.  But despite the early polling, Alaska isn’t fertile ground for the DNC.  McAdams had raised only $9,000 as of the last reporting deadline, with a grand total of $4,500 on hand.  How much money would Democrats really want to pour into a state that requires more campaign infrastructure than TV ads in order to compete? 

Between McAdams’ nearly nonexistent campaign and Tea Party activists throwing money at Miller, it seems doubtful at the moment that Republicans will be required to spend much capital – monetary or otherwise – to ensure the seat remains safely in the ‘R’ column next January.

I’d like to thank Hugh Hewitt and Duane Patterson for inviting me on the Hewitt Show at the Fair this evening.

For those of you who might be new to the blog, here are some of the stories I referred to when talking with Hugh:

• Here’s my takedown of a half-witted Star Tribune hit piece on Tom Emmer.
• Here’s my piece on the funding behind the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” (ABM), which is funded mostly by Dayton’s family and ex-wife (a Rockefeller), and has been running the ongoing smear campaign against GOP Gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer.
• I called ABM’s campaign against Target Corporation “astroturf”. I meant it.
• ABM’s got the local business media in on it, too; they were reporting that Target Corp – which donated $150,000 to a PAC that endorsed Emmer – was suffering financially due to the donation because of the backlash by pro-gay and illegal-immigration groups.  I showed it was not so.  And when a group of “socially responsible investment” firms tried to bully Target into complianece, I showed they were mice heckling lions, financially speaking, and also that their performance wasn’t nearly as good as that of…Target.
• Just how big a bunch of liars are ABM?  Not only did I notice it, but Factcheck.org basically said everything ABM has ever said is a lie.

Thanks for stopping by, Hugh fans!

It’s interesting; while the Dayton campaign is jumping up and down like a mountain baboon about Emmer’s supposed lack of specifics on the budget (so far), Dayton is being pretty vague on another wedge-y issue:

In direct conflict with FOCA, a Dayton spokesperson said in a WNMT Radio story Thursday that Dayton supports parental notification for minor girls before an abortion can be performed on them.

Well, that sounds almost…reasonable?

But FOCA would outlaw parental notification of any kind. And as a senator, Dayton voted twice against legislation to require parental notice when a minor is taken across state lines for an abortion, in violation of the law in the state in which they live. Planned Parenthood has fought fiercely at the Minnesota Legislature against parental notification bills for decades.

The “right” for a minor to an abortion without notifying parents (without the formality of a court order for situations where children have some legitimate and demonstrable fear of retribution from the parents) is one of the stretchier emanating penumbra of US Constitutional law…

Also at odds with FOCA, his spokesperson stated that Dayton also is opposed to “third-term abortions” (presumably thirdtrimester) with some exceptions. Planned Parenthood has never tolerated opposition to any abortion, for any reason or at any point in pregnancy. It fought long and hard against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which brought an end to the brutal method of abortion in which the child was killed moments before birth by puncturing the skull and suctioning out the brains, ensuring the birth of a dead baby. The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was passed by Congress in 2003; Dayton voted against it twice. How can he now oppose late-term abortions?

Because he says so.  That’s how.

Well, it seems to have worked so far.

“Has Dayton flip-flopped on his absolute opposition to parental notification, which is central to Planned Parenthood’s abortion advocacy? And does he suddenly regret his votes against the partial-birth abortion ban?” Fischbach asked. “If so, why would Planned Parenthood endorse a candidate who disagrees with its own agenda? His campaign appears to be in chaos, at least over the issue of protecting human life from abortion.”

The most important thing about Planned Parenthood’s endorsement, of course?  (Other than Dayton’s obvious, public waffle on abortion, naturally?)

The left’s assault on Target – because of a donation given to Tom Emmer, who supported a “Traditional Marriage” amendment and had a fictional, ginned-up association with fundamentalist ministry – now means that every single person, business and organization that supports Mark Dayton in any way thus endorses infanticide.

All of them.  No matter what they have shown via previous actions, much less their beliefs.

I mean, that’s the precedent, right?

…is that while he can use his family money to smear Tom Emmer (with, inevitably, lies)…

…all the money in the world isn’t going to make him anything other than a one-term flop as a governor.

(Unless, of course, the entire plan is for him to be a potemkin prop, fluffed up by medication and serving as a doddering but acceptably genial front for the real governor, Mike Hatch).

The following conversation is a “fake but accurate” synthesis of several conversations, emails and twitter threads.

Names were changed to protect the gullible.

DFLer: Target is radically anti-gay and anti-immigrant!

ME: Er, how do you figure?  Target has been the most pro-gay corporation in town!  They even sponsor the “pride” parade.

DFLer: Because they gave money to a radical extremist anti-gay and anti-immigrant political action committee!

ME: What, MNForward? Go and read their website; they are purely interested in business issues.  Not only do they take absolutely no stands on social issues, but they’ve endorsed three DFL candidates who, supposedly, endorse their own party’s putatively gay-friendly [the term you want is “gay-exploitive” – Ed.] issues.

DFLer: Doesn’t matter.  They support Tom Emmer.

ME: …and…?

DFLer: Tom Emmer is a radical extreme anti-gay politician.

ME:  Um no.  He’s said in as many words that his focus as governor is on jobs, the state economy, and re-engineering state government.

DFLer: But he’s an anti-gay extremist!  He sponsored a measure against gay marriage!

ME: Can something be “extreme” when the vast majority of Minnesotans, even younger ones, support the traditional definition of marriage?  Is that even logically possible?  At all?

DFLer: Um…A HAH!  Emmer is a big financial supporter of You Can Run But You Can Not Hide, a radical Christianist ministry that supports executing gays.  He even had his picture taken with them!  Even called them “nice guys”.

ME:  Emmer’s “Donation” was buying a $250 seat at a fundraiser for a teen outreach; no politics were involved at all.  And Emmer’s had pictures taken with pretty much every person in the state over the past year.  And whether you like their theology or not, Brad Dean and Jake McMillan are, indeed, personable.

DFLer:  Executing gays! Doyyyyy!

ME:  The quote was wrenched far out of context.  Dean was talking on the air, off the cuff, about different nations’ adherence to ultra-orthadox theology.  Not grading moral correctness, and emphatically not issuing a call to action.

DFLer: Er…says you!

ME: Well, no – says Bradlee Dean.  I called him and asked.

DFLer: But…they’re anti-immigrant!

ME: Why?

DFLer: Because they’re anti-gay!

ME: Um, we just showed they’re not.  And, by the way, the traditional Catholicism of so many Latino immigrants is pretty explicit in its views on gays!

DFLer:  So you’re saying Target is Catholic?  Hahahahaha! I pwn3d you!

ME:  Er…yeah.  I know when I’ve met my match.