A group of former GOP legislators and governors have endorsed Tom Horner.
I brought a camera to their press conference.
GOP Notables Endorse Horner
8
Monthly Archives: October 2010
Chanting Points Memo: “Anti-Gay”
One of Big Left’s attacks against Tom Emmer in this election is that he’s “anti-gay”. It drove the most egregious tempest in this election’s teapot – the mass PR mau-mauing of the relentlessly-“Diversity”-hugging Target Corporation on behalf of Big Gay for donating money to “MN Forward”, a PAC that promotes pelting gays with rocks and garbage.
No, no, no. I’m a kidder. I kid. MN Forward was a purely pro-business PAC, supported by businesses alarmed at Mark Dayton and Tom Horner’s anti-business policies. But you’d never have known that from the hype surrounding the incident. (And comparing stock prices with other major retailers, you’d never know there was an incident. I did call it a tempest in a teapot for a reason).
The case for Emmer being “anti-gay” is based around two pieces of “evidence”:
- He supported, along with a wide swath of legislative Republicans, a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a dude and a chick.
- He voted against a bill that would have banned bullying. Really. It purported to enjoin all “forms of harassment based on actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, disability, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, physical characteristics, and association with anyone with one or more of these characteristics”
As to the former? Most Minnesotans oppose same-sex marriage. Most Minnesotans oppose allowing courts to mandate its legalization. The way to jump ahead of the courts is to enact valid, sound law which, in theory, the court has no legislative authority to overturn. That’s how separation of powers works, even when it’s inconvenient to your beliefs.
The latter? It’s a stupid law that, as written, would have made bullying against Black or Zoroastrian or Buddhist or female or blind or poor or gay or transgendered or elderly or amputee-Minnesotans really really double-dog bad , as opposed to the merely single-dog bad act of bullying, say, a white, straight able-bodied straight 19-year-old Methodist boy.
It’s just plain bad law. Of course, it was never intended as law. It was introduced so that conservatives could vote against it, thereby to give lefties a cite when they bellow “TOM EMMER WANTS GAY KIDS TO GET KILLED” on their cowardly, illiterate, lobotomized little blogs.
But let’s cut the crap. Who do you think is more anti-gay? Is it:
- Tom Emmer – regular guy, who reflects the point of view of the vast majority of Minnesotans, but freely admits that the focus of his governorship is jobs, the economy, jobs, the economy, and more jobs and the economy some more? Or is it…
- Barack Obama, who, like Paul Wellstone before him, actively courted the gay vote in the most cynical terms, and then supported the Defense of Marriage Act, which is no further to the left of the MN House GOP Caucus in point of fact? Or is it…
- The vast majority of black and latino voters, who vote Democrat but oppose gay marriage much, much more vocally than even conservative Republicans?
I love asking this question of liberals in face to face discussion.
You can practically see the gears stripping in their heads as they try to process a conundrum that can not be processed via any means short of stuffing logic down the garbage disposal.
Oooh, What Can I Do?
I hadn’t seen this one onlne yet…
Chanting Points Memo: Garbage In, Garbage Out
Mark Dayton has run one of the single dumbest campaigns in Minnesota history.
Dayton himself has been a virtual non-entity, relying on the Twin Cities’ media’s inability and/or unwillingness to question him on his background, the immense gaps in his budget “plan”, his history of erratic behavior…anything.
His surrogates have been another matter entirely; “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” – whose financing, almost exclusively from big union donors and members and ex-members of Mark Dayton’s family of trust fund babies – has run the slimiest, most defamatory campaign in Minnesota political history. From mischaracterizing Emmer’s “DUI” record and slandering his efforts to reform Minnesota DUI laws, to their outright lies about his budget, ABM has profaned this state’s politics in a way that I only hope can be salvaged in the future – although I doubt this will happen until the DFL decays to third-party status.
If it were a Republican group doing it, the Dems would be whining about “voter intimidation”.
The Dayton campaign, in short, has been not so much a campaign as an attempt to orchestrate negative projected PR, social inertia and the ignorance of most voters to their advantage. It hasn’t been a dumb campaign, per se; when your job is to sell Mark Dayton, “The Bumbler”, desperate situations call for desperate measures. And as we saw in 1998, there are enough stupid people do make anything possible.
A big part of Dayton’s under-the-table campaign has been to portray the impression that Dayton’s coronation is inevitable. If your nature is to be suspicious of institutions with long, arguably circumstantial records of bias, one might see the Minnesota Poll as an instrument toward that aim – given its three-decade record of showing DFLers doing an average of 7.5% better than they ended up doing. (If you favor the Democrats, you might say the same about Rasmussen – if you ignored the fact that they’ve been consistently the most accurate major pollster for the last couple of cycles. Other than that, just the same thing).
The latest chapter in this campaign has been the regional DFLbloggers’ chanting the latest results from Nate Silver’s “Five Thirty Eight”, a political stats-blog that was bought out by the NYTimes a while back.
Silver’s latest look at the Minnesota gubernatorial race gives Dayton an 83% chance of winning, in a six point race.
And that’s where the Sorosbloggers leave it.
Of course, Silver’s analysis on its face has a margin of error of a little over eight points – which is – considerably larger than the forecast margin.
Of course, with any statistical, numerical output, you have to ask yourself – “are the inputs correct?”
Here are Silver’s inputs:
Courtesy 538/New York Times
The important column is the “538 Poll Weight” column, the third from the right. It shows how much weight Silver gives each poll in his final calculation. The number is at least partly tied to time – but not completely; for some reason, the five-week old Survey USA poll gets 20% more weight than the four week old Rasmussen poll; the October 6 Rasmussen poll that showed Emmer with a one point lead gets about 3/4 the oomph of the latest Survey USA poll, which showed Dayton with a five point lead…
…and whose “likely voter model” seemed to think that Democrats are four points more likely to show up at the polls that Republicans. This year.
Pollsters – and Silver – are fairly cagey about their methodology. I’m not a statistics wiz. I dropped the class after one week, in fact. But I can tell when something isn’t passing the stink test. Any poll that gives Democrats a four point edge in turnout this year may or may not be wishful thinking (we’ll find out in less than two weeks, won’t we?), but does seem to be based more on history than current behavior which, I should point out, involves a lot of hocus-pocus to predict during a normal election.
And this is not a normal election.
I’m not going to impugn Nate Silver, per se – if only because I haven’t the statistical evidence. Yet.
I will, impugn the NYTimes, but then that’s what I do. They very much do want to drive down Republican turnout.
And that is the main reason the DFL machine – including the ranks of more-or-less kept leftybloggers in this state – are parrotting this “story” so dutifully. They want to convince Republicans that all is lost.
Pass the word, folks. We’re gonna win this thing.
An Experiment
“Let’s make sure nobody who isn’t supposed to vote, votes”.
Let’s see which leftyblogger is the first to say that I’m “supporting voter intimidation”.
Because it seems they do set the bar that low.
I Don’t Like Thursdays
Thursdays are the Tuesdays of the blogging week.
Mondays are easy; I usually have three or four posts written over the weekend spotted in advance; I barely need to write at all, although I always do.
Tuesdays are usually good news days, plus there’s all sorts of early-week energy.
Wednesdays usually have a story or two of overflow, plus news.
Friday? Always good for end-of-the-week stuff, plus the late-day news-dumps.
But Thursdays reek. No emergy. No desire to write.
Which is why I make a point of writing something.
Even if it’s just this…
The Dayton Dustbowl: Dayton Speaks On Charter Schools; Pants Burst Into Flames
As we noted during our first look at the Dayton Dust Bowl – the budget “plan” that, if implemented, will turn Minnesota into a cold California or a blonder Greece – Dayton proposes cutting 25% from the state’s “lease aid” provided to charter schools.
The cut was one of the elements that carried over, verbatim, to Dust Bowl 2.0.
As I’ve reported in the past, this cut is going to gut charter schools – whose primary customers are inner-city families of color, immigrants and poor families who, nonetheless, want a decent education for their kids, along with not feeling patronized and talked down to by the city school districts that, by any objective measure, do a terrible job with their kids.
The Dayton campaign has been quietly spreading the word among charter school advocates that Dayton’s cuts really aren’t going to affect charter school operations all that bad, really, honest.
It’s a lie.
And over the next week, I’m going to be reporting on some of my conversations with charter school administrators and advocates to show you exactly how badly Dayton is lying, and what the consequences will be for the children and their families who quite rightly view their charters as their educational lifeboat.
Stay tuned.
I Was Lost, I Am Found
The teenage years are huge, raw and dramatic. Hormones drive all that rawness to the surface and beyond, making (it comes as no surprise to parents with teenagers) everything – discipline, moralism, sex, food, music – immediate, dramatic and skin deep in way that’s both intensely powerful and utterly trite.
Boy by U2 was the perfect album to reflect that teenage reality. And it’s thirty years old today.
Boy introduced America to four 20-ish guys from Dublin – Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen, Dave “The Edge” Evans and Paul “Bono” Hewson – who seem improbably young today:
U2 in 1980 - Mullen, Bono, Edge, Clayton
They’d gotten together as teenagers (initially with Evans’ older brother Nik) in 1976 – and quickly discovered that they stank at trying to play covers, and started writing their own songs. After a year and a half of gigging around Dublin, the band won a contest sponsored by CBS records in 1978, and used the proceeds and exposure to CBS management to produce a three-song “extended play” record and a few singles that were largely heard only in Ireland and, with their first “big” single, “I Will Follow”, the UK.
“I Will Follow” is, of course, the album’s instantly recognizable, iconic anthem – and, really, the template for much of U2’s next ten years. It’s anthemic – you can’t not shout along. It’s ambiguous – is it about faith, or love, or politics, or…who can tell? (It’s actually about the death of Bono’s mother in 1974, but really, like all art, it’s about whatever the listener wants it to be about).
“I Will Follow” is just one of many cut from the same cloth: “The Electric Co” featured a Bono vocal that veered down the thin line between glorious and histrionic…:
…and “Out Of Control”, an infectious call-and-answer between Bono and Edge that set up three decades of one of the most distinctive lead/harmony pairings in the history of rock and roll.
So what was important about Boy? Other than being an album that gloriously captured all the joy, angst and brio of of being, well, boy?
Bono, the singer? The guy had pipes, all right – but his singing was often sloppy and undisciplined. He’d grow, by War in 1982, into one of rock’s most powerful singers – but on Boy, the promise of the future was liberally mixed with sloppiness on the one hand and unpolished histrionics on the other. Larry Mullen was a powerful, physical drummer – perhaps the band’s most conventially-capable musician in its early years, but not especially a standout.
Adam Clayton – reportedly the least proficient musican in the band when it had started? As U2 rose to prominence, stories circulated about how the band had built much of its stripped down, minimalist style around Clayton’s developing skill on the instrument. True or not, it shows in the arrangements on Boy; the bass lines really tie the songs together, powerful in their simplicity. My theory’s always been that the simplicity started out as lack of development – and evolved into style.
That would certainly explain The Edge. Also a newbie when the band started, Evans wasn’t, and has never been, a guitarist with raw pyrotechnic technique, along the lines of a Van Halen or a Randy Rhodes. He wasn’t one with a deep, developed style spanning genres, like Richard Thompson, Mark Knopfler or Nils Lofgren. And despite the first review in Rolling Stone, which compared his style with Neil Young in terms of unpolished ambiance, he wasn’t a raw, ragged improviser. What he is – or what he was starting to develop into, thirty years ago today – was a meticulous student of the tonal and harmonic possibilities of the guitar, its chordal structures, and the colorations of the guitar’s instrument/special effect/amplifier chain. Evans used the guitar sometimes as harmonic coloration (“Shadows and Tall Trees”, “An Cat Dubh”), sometimes as a borderline-percussion instruments (“I Will Follow”, “Electric Co”), in a way that was much, much more analytical and meticulous than Young, much less dependant on his own dexterity and fingerboard acrobatics than any of the guitar deities of the era or since. The Edge of the Boy era didn’t change the way people looked at the guitar just yet – that’d come in a couple of years, on War, The Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree (of which more in two, four and seven years, respectively). What would be instrument-changing by the middle of the decade still seemed lo-fidelity in 1980.
The album sounds like it was recorded in a garage – early reviews pointed out its raw, unpolished sound. It was a bit of an illusion – while far from overproduced, the album’s rawness was intentional and studied and, in its own way a work of art that’d become part of a vital idiom of the music of the next decade.
Because in a very real sense, and in more than one way, it was a template for the entire “Second British Invasion” of the eighties, of which U2 was one of the lynchpins.
And many of those groups – from the big, dramatic arena-rockers like Big Country, Simple Minds and Peter Gabriel, to more eclectic groups like Irish folk-punks The Pogues and girl-group memorialist Kirsty MacColl – had their sounds defined by producer Steve Lillywhite – who produced Boy, which became his first big international success, if you discount his work on Peter Gabriel’s Melt.
And the sound that Lillywhite would make into his trademark, at least through the eighties and into the nineties – big, raw, passionate, meticulously unpolished, clean yet cacaphonic – would define U2’s archetypical sound (as it did that of his other protegès) to the point where the band felt the need to escape it in the next decade, via its collaborations with Brian Eno and others through the nineties, before returning to him in the early ’00s. Lillywhite was, along with Jimmy Iovine, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Quincy Jones and Keith Forsey, one of the iconic producers of one of the great eras in pop music.
So in a real way Boy was not just U2’s debut, but the debut of the eighties’ style of anthemic, passionate arena-rock as we came to know it.
We didn’t know it yet, of course.
The Definition Of Who “Likely” Is
When I saw last Friday that Randy Demmer was five points behind Walz in the First District (the southern tier of counties), I thought it was good news. Walz’s last challenger lost by 30-odd points in the middle of the Obamascension.
And seeing that the poll surveyed 36% Dems and 32% Republicans in what is generally considered to be a slightly GOP-leaning district in normal times…
…and add in the fact that these are not normal times, with Walz’s buddies in the Obama Administration gutting Medicare, favoring Cap ‘n Tax policies that’ll shred agribusiness, and turning the district’s major industry, the Mayo, into a Minute Clinic in a strip mall along Highway 52…
…and I have to suspect that the poll is a tad pessmistic for Demmer.
Again, just a hunch.
Let the “you are teh stooped Fauxmusen suportar” comments begin.
Dear State Of New York
Dear New York State: your rent is too damn high.
He can be your Jesse Ventura.
He’d actually do less damage than Andrew Cuomo…
A New Day In Ramsey County?
The Strib endorses Matt Bostrom for Ramco Sheriff:
Sheriff Bob Fletcher is seeking a fifth term as the top county cop and police chief for seven Ramsey county municipalities. Challenging him is Matt Bostrom, an assistant chief with the St. Paul police.
Though Fletcher, 55, has performed some of the duties of the office effectively, the department needs a fresh start under a more collaborative leader. We recommend Bostrom for the job.
Bostrom, a 49-year-old St. Paul native, has 28 years of experience — much of it in management — as a St. Paul cop…Most important, he has the temperament and a record of working well with other government law enforcement jurisdictions. That’s a much-needed skill, since police, prosecutors and the courts will have to work together more closely in the future to make the best use of limited resources.
Temperament and leadership style are our primary concerns about Fletcher. The first time the former St. Paul officer and City Council member ran for sheriff, this editorial page expressed concern that he might stretch the office’s mandates and make it too political. Those concerns were justified.
It’s been noted that Fletcher’s office has by far the highest rate of rejections for carry permit applications – rejection that are by no means related to actual unfitness for permits under the law, a rate well over 10%, vastly higher than any other county in the state. The county also claims to lose money on carry permit applications – the $100 fee that applicants pay – even though every other county in the state ends up spending a little over a buck per permit, and the labor is performed by dispatchers during slack times.
More on that issue later this week.
But as a resident of Ramco, I have no comment.
None whatsoever.
Vote Bostrom.
A Bit Of Red Hot Nostalgia
At one time – between my turning into a conservative and, say, about 1990 – opposition to gun control was an intellectual, philosophical thing. Oh, I’d had my own episode, but for the most part the Second Amendment wasn’t much more immediate to me than the Third.
Then the Luby’s Cafeteria Massacre happened – and Suzanne Gratia Hupp’s testimony…:
…turned it into an intense, passionate commitment.
With This Much Respect For The Law And Democracy…
…then Al Quaeda is really redundent. The Ohio Democrat Party, with the full apparent connivance of the public school system, is doing the job for them:
Three van loads of Hughes High students were taken last week – during school hours – to vote and given sample ballots only for Democratic candidates and then taken for ice cream, a Monday lawsuit alleges.
As Hugh Hewitt says, if it’s not close, they can’t cheat.
I think he was too sanguine, frankly.
Work To Be Done
Being a wanna-be wonk who writes a political blog and does a show at a talk radio station whose audience is frighteningly well-informed and follows politics pretty obsessively.
And while they didn’t obsess on the subject, I certainly grew up in household where politics was an occasional subject of discussion. I have been more or less aware of politics and how they work for a long, long time (albeit I didn’t become aware enough to be a conservative until I was 20 or so).
So it’s always a mild culture shock to realize not everyone is the same. In an intellectual sense, I know this, because probably 90% of the people who actually bother to vote at all make up their minds about their decision in the weeks, if not hours, before they go to the polls.
Still, it astounds me how out-of-touch some people are.
No, not the people who don’t follow politics. I’m talking about those of us who do.
I was talking with a business associate the other day. He’s a small businessman – one of the people at whom the Dayton tax hikers are directly aimed. He’s successful at what he does. He makes over $150K a him and his spouse for a couple of thousand dollars a year.
And he asked me what I thought about the campaign. And who the GOP candidate was.
Now, some wonks would roll their eyes – but I know business people who work 70-80 hours a week, and raise families, and try to save a little some mental headspace for themselves; politics doesn’t make the final cut on their schedules, any more than following the NBA or the PGA does on mine.
And so I told him all about Tom Emmer – especially what’s in it for small business people if Emmer wins.
Now, there was little danger the guy was going to vote for Dayton. He remembers Dayton’s disastrous run in the Senate. And he’s gonna vote for Emmer in two weeks, and I suspect his wife will too.
But I walked out of there thinking that it’s a travesty that there is so much as a single small businessperson in this state that has been left in any doubt which candidate is going to help them, and which one is going to screw them blue.
The MNGOP and the Emmer Campaign have some work to do.
They Know What Matters
The state deficit is zooming out of control.
Two of the three gubernatorial candidates have no idea how they’re going to fix it; they’re a step or two shy of hosting a contest looking for ideas.
The DFL, which has controlled the legislature for the past four years and dominated it completely for two, has spent the whole time whining about wanting more money to give to public employee unions and all but claiming Tim Pawlenty personally blew up the 35W bridge, and telling you you’re a racist who hates children if you don’t agree.
Minnesota’s health care – which, with its private/public partnership currently insures well over 90% of Minnesotans, including virtually all of them that actually want insurance – is about to get tossed into a vortex of government-controlled mediocrity by Obamacare.
So what do our brilliant DFL hamsters think is the real priority?
Recycling fake outrage over the FBI’s raids on protesters at the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul two years ago (in the House and the Senate).
From the Senate bill:
1.1A resolution
1.2memorializing the President of the United States and Congress to review the FBI
1.3raids on Minnesota activists.
1.4WHEREAS, a number of Minnesotans were issued subpoenas to appear before a grand jury
1.5in Chicago in October; and
1.6WHEREAS, these Minnesotans have not been arrested or charged with any crime; and
1.7WHEREAS, four of these Minnesotans are American Federation of State, County and
1.8Municipal Employees members in good standing in the union; and
1.9WHEREAS, FBI spokespersons have stated that the raids were prompted by the activities
1.10of the four union members, and other individuals subject to the same raids; and
1.11WHEREAS, these people are entitled to a presumption of innocence under the United
1.12States Constitution; and
1.13WHEREAS, every American has the constitutional right to advocate and organize for
1.14change of the foreign policy of the United States; and
1.15WHEREAS, the recent report by the Department of Justice Inspector General soundly
1.16criticized the FBI for improperly targeting domestic peace and antiwar groups for investigation;
1.17and
1.18WHEREAS, Minnesota’s elected officials have frequently gone on record in defense of
1.19trade unionists and others to educate, mobilize, and organize for the legitimate goals of peace,
1.20justice, and solidarity with all working people; and
2.1WHEREAS, Minnesota’s elected officials disavow any practices or policies which threaten
2.2the rights or civil liberties of trade unions and nonviolent peace organizations, and oppose both
2.3attacks on traditional constitutional guarantees and the granting of wider powers to the FBI to
2.4infiltrate or intimidate community groups, unions, and activists; NOW, THEREFORE,
2.5BE IT RESOLVED by the Legislature of the State of Minnesota that it expresses grave
2.6concern that the recent FBI raids are reminiscent of the Palmer Raids of the 1920s, the McCarthy
2.7hearings of the 1950s, and the FBI’s harassment of nonviolent civil rights and peace activists of
2.8the 1960s and 1970s, and that these raids may be the beginning of a new and dangerous assault on
2.9the First Amendment rights of union activists and antiwar peace campaigners.
2.10BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED by the Legislature of the State of Minnesota that, since
2.11no acceptable justification or evidence has been presented for these raids and subpoenas and
2.12there is no reason to believe any are forthcoming, it urges Congress to review these arbitrary
2.13and capricious raids.
2.14BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED by the Legislature of the State of Minnesota that, in light
2.15of the Inspector General’s recent report on the FBI investigation of certain domestic advocacy
2.16groups, we call upon the President of the United States to order an immediate investigation
2.17into the circumstances, motivation, and propriety of the judicial and FBI intimidation of these
2.18Minnesotans.
2.19BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Secretary of State of the State of Minnesota is
2.20directed to prepare copies of this memorial and transmit them to the President of the United States,
2.21the President and the Secretary of the United States Senate, the Speaker and the Clerk of the United
2.22States House of Representatives, and Minnesota’s Senators and Representatives in Congress.
Glad to see they can prioritize.
UPDATE: Nachman from Loyal Opposition went to the Capitol to protest – one on one, in person. He notes that the resolution, in support of the “Anti-War Committee”, would seem to be a violation of the DFL’s putative core princples:
The Anti-War Committee believes that:
“The Anti-War Committee is opposed to the U.S. military, political, and economic support for the state of Israel. We see Israel as an illegitimate apartheid state, and we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice and self-determination. We support the Palestinian right of return, the demand for a dismantling of Israeli settlements, an end the Israeli Occupation, and an end to racist policies in all of the territories. Our work includes protest, education, and solidarity trips to Palestine.” [4]
Aside from being libel, this is their statement of support for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel, the Salafi Islamists who call for it’s destruction, and, in turn, for the subsequent annihilation of Jewish presence in the Holy Land. The Anti-War Committee and it’s supporters are public about their support for these ends, as their public statements of their support for the re-establishment of supply lines to and material support for the Harakat Al-Muqawama Al-Islamiyya (Hamas – the Islamic Resistance Movement), a designated terrorist organization. [5] The warrants were issued based upon probable cause and pursuant to an investigation concerning violations of “Providing, attempting and conspiring to provide material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations”. [6]
As a reminder, here are the core beliefs of the DFL.
“We, the members of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, in the State Convention assembled, in order to…sustain and advance the principles of liberal democracy, and uphold human rights, civil rights and constitutional government, do establish this Constitution.”
Representatives Clark, Davnie, Hayden, Kahn, and Hausman; Senators Berglin, Pappas, Moua, Dibble (see UPDATE, infra), and Torres Ray have some explaining to do.
I’ll need to follow up to see how that appeal to “core principles” works…
Kriesel For House
I wish I could go vote for John Kriesel.
If you don’t have to break any laws, by all means, do vote for him.
That means you, if you live in House District 57A – Cottage Grove, Newport, St. Paul Park, South St. Paul and Grey Cloud Island.
The Dayton Dustbowl: Really Really Dead Dead Dead On Arrival
Between the Tea Party and the general distaste for more taxation and government spending, it might be bad year to be proposing…taxing and spending.
As I noted on Labor Day, Mark Dayton’s tax-hike-based budget plan is very likely dead on arrival at the legislature. My rationale at the time was that Dayton’s tax hike was ten times the size of the increase that the DFL managed to pass by a single vote (Tarryl Clark’s, as luck would have it), when they had overwhelming control of both chambers of the legislature, at the height of Obama mania in one of the most ostensibly liberal states in the nation. Will they get ten times the money out of a legislature that is much more conservative, maybe with a flipped chamber, and an electorate that is just not buying more spending?
According to MPR, even some DFLers aren’t buying it:
DFL candidate former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton wants to raise income taxes on upper earners, but you won’t hear about it from some DFL legislative candidates.
You also don’t hear “Democrat” or “DFL” from some of them. But I digress.
Some are also promising to vote against the proposed income tax increase if Dayton is elected governor.
“I don’t talk about that,” said DFL state Sen. Terri Bonoff of Minnetonka, who spent a recent afternoon knocking on doors in in Plymouth, a mostly Republican area of her suburban district.
Bonoff is a moderate Democrat, and she said her re-election bid depends on the support of independents and some Republicans.
It’s not that Bonoff is against tax hikes, of course:
“I have a lot of respect for Mark Dayton. But I have my views about what we ought to do with regard to taxes, and it’s not about protecting the rich,” she said. “It’s about right now we have too much reliance on the income tax, and as the demographics change in our state and our folks are getting out of the workplace, more and more seniors, they don’t have that kind of income stream.
“If we’re too reliant on the income tax, I think we’re going to find ourselves in this same mess three years from now.”
The DFL opposition seems to be largely coming from districts that should be GOP, but went DFL during the ’06 and ’08 elections, which were terrible for Republicans. One of those is Kathy Saltzman, who won her seat in largely-Republican Woodbury in 2006:
The concern is similar in the east metro suburbs. Sen. Kathy Saltzman, DFL-Woodbury, who’s locked in a tough re-election fight, also stresses her independence on tax issues. She’s voted against previous attempts to raise income taxes on upper earners.
Saltzman hasn’t endorsed a candidate for governor, but she’s met with Dayton and Horner. Saltzman said she asked Dayton to be open to other tax ideas, not just taxing the rich.
“I believe that it’s not about targeting one group or one group of services,” she said. “We really should be looking at an overall tax reform policy. That would be the most responsible way to approach this.”
It’s not that they’re deserting the DFL, naturally…:
Saltzman said Republican Tom Emmer’s cuts-alone approach to the budget is unrealistic. She favors a balanced approach that includes some revenue, and is open to a sales tax expansion as part of a broader reform of the tax code.
But Saltzman said she will not support the Dayton tax plan. “It will be very difficult to get it by me. I would say he won’t get it by me. He will note get my vote,” she said.
The Dayton Tax “Plan” will never see the light of day, if Dayton is elected.
Electing Dayton would be a complete waste of time.
Oberstar Breaking The Law?
The other day Politico did a piece about Jim Oberstar’s fundraising, and how little of it comes from within the Eighth District.
And one of his staffers apparently knows something the rest of is don’t. Or didn’t. Emphasis added:
“They are taking lawn signs, putting up lawn signs, making voter-contact calls, door-knocking, distributing campaign [literature],” [Oberstar staffer Jim] Schadl told POLITICO in an e-mail. Moreover, Schadl, says, there are another 527 waiting in the wings to help out in the final run-up to the election.
Er…campaigns aren’t supposed to act in collusion with 527s.
Because that’s how they get money out of politics. Y’know. By preventing politics from being polluted by money. From businesses or unions.
If we had a functional mainstream media in this state, full of bright, curious people whose job it was, say, to dig into stories like this – people like, I dunno, Pat Kessler or Erik Eskola or Tim Pugmire (not to keep picking on Pugmire; I just don’t want to have to wing it trying to spell Mark Zdechlek) – perhaps the people of Minnesota might find out if there was there, there, story-wise.
File Under “Things That Sound Dirty, But Aren’t”
Tagline of new Jesse Ventura “Conspiracy Theory” promo:
VENTURA: “I’m going to expose things that’ll blow your mind”.
Emmer Rally With Mitt Romney
I’m live at the Ramada in Bloomington to cover Tom Emmer’s appearance with Mitt Romney. I’ll be doing a joint live-blog with Luke Hellier at Minnesota Democrats Exposed;click on the player below to watch and participate.
Brave Sir Mark
Everybody sing along:
Bravely bold Sir Mark, Rode forth from Wayzata.
He was not afraid to serve, Oh brave Sir Dayton.
He was not at all afraid to serve in elected office,
Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Dayton.
He was not in the least bit scaredTo keep his office hours.
Or to serve his constituents, and live in DC.
To dwell in a Georgetown condo,And have his trust fund burned away,
And face the same threats as the rest of Congress…
His building threatened, his mellow harshed,
And his schedule changed and his alert level raised,
And his staff sent home and his office closed
His sobriety questioned, his fitness impugned…
Courtesy
Does anyone know a good lute player?
A Bit Of A Shock
In and among the Pioneer Press’ drearily-predictable chain of DFL endorsements (which seem largely to be based on the idea of bringing more state pork to their respective districts) came this news yesterday; they endore Doug Wardlow over DFL incumbent Mike Obermuller in House District 38B.
Doug Wardlow said he wants Minnesota to be a “bulwark against encroachment by the federal government” and to assert its rights as a “sovereign government.” He said Minnesota should join the suit seeking to challenge the new federal health reform law and said he would seek to balance the state’s budget without a statewide tax increase. “We need to figure out how to do more with less,” he said.
Obermueller said legislators cannot go to St. Paul with their “mind made up” on critical issues. He said he tries to listen carefully and be a “bridge” between the two parties. He argues for a “balanced approach” the budget deficit and cautions against anti-government rhetoric.
Two capable and articulate candidates make this a tough call. We give a slight advantage to the challenger, Doug Wardlow, whose impressive resume includes work on international trade issues in Washington. We endorse Doug Wardlow for House District 38B; his conservative voice will be a welcome addition to the diversity of opinion at the Capitol.
We’ve interviewed Doug on the NARN, and I’ve appeared with him at fundraisers for Diane Anderson (who is in her second run for 38A against Sandra Masin, in a race where the PiPress declined to endorse – which has to be a cold, decaying slap in the face for Masin in and of itself). While this blog does not “endorse”, I concur completely; let’s get Doug into the House!
Coleman: “Shut Up, Peasants”
From the Strib endorsement of “Indpendence” Party former-Republican-who’s-turned-into-a-moderate-DFLer-who-had-to -join-the-IP-because-the-DFL-has-become-so-freaking-extreme Tom Horner:
Not since Elmer L. Andersen in 1960 has a successful business owner and CEO left a prominent Minnesota firm to seek the governorship. Like Andersen, Horner, the cofounder of the Himle Horner public-relations firm, is doing so for the best of reasons: He loves Minnesota; he’s a serious student of government and economics, and he feels called to service. At age 60, Horner seeks to apply the lessons of a lifetime spent working in and around public policy to the restoration of this state’s vitality.
Nick Coleman, on Twitter:
Mr. Horner: I KNEW Elmer Andersen and (my father) SERVED with Elmer Andersen and you are NO Elmer Andersen. Not sure Elmer would vote 4 you.
Listening to DFL holdovers from the sixties, like Coleman and Lori Sturdevant, yammering about what the politicians of Minnesota’s putative golden age reminds me of scholars cloistered in a medieval back room debating how many angels could sit on the head of a pin.
How The Hell Does Emmer Win This Thing, Part II
In this past week, Minnesota has been presented with four different polls on the Minnesota governor’s race; the risible Minnesota poll, the oddly-disconnected Humphrey Institute Poll, the Rasmussen Poll (which may or may not have overpolled Republicans, as opposed to the MN and HHH polls, which certainly overpolled Democrats) and, late last week, the SurveyUSA (SUSA) poll. These polls showed a smorgasbord of results. You can pick the one you prefer, really – as, indeed, most Minnesota political junkies have done.
I prefer Rasmussen. Not because it showed Emmer in the lead – that fact made me happy, but then so would a “Berg Institute” poll that showed Emmer leading 100-0; the BI poll has no real track record, so I’d put no real stock in it – but because Rasmussen has been the closest pollster on the past couple of elections.
Still, the SUSA poll sort of splits the difference between the two. It shows Dayton with a lead just outside the margin of error.
But it shows two other things that should be hugely encouraging to the Emmer campaign.
Peoples’ Hearts In Right Place – With Their Wallets: While the poll shows Emmer slightly behind, it asks the question “how should we resolve Minnesota’s budget deficit?”
And here are the answers:
Minnesota likely voters – however measured -prefer raising taxes over “not sure” by less than the margin of error. 38% favor some combination of spending cuts and tax hikes. And 53% favor cuts in spending.
Given that there is only one candidate who favors getting government spending under control, the target of Emmer’s next two weeks should be fairly clear; reaching the 53% of Minnesotans who support Emmer, but just don’t know it yet.
Is The Big Break Here?: The week before last, I reported on the landslide taking shape in District 32A, Kurt Zellers’ district in Maple Grove. The DFL’s been targeting that district all year, but it’s just not working – Zellers is clobbering Katie Rodriguez by 24 points, even though Margaret Anderson-Kelliher proclaimed the district to be prime upset territory bare weeks earlier.
But the real development in that story, as I noted, was that independents – people who are non-GOP-affiliated in that GOP-leaning district – are breaking toward Emmer by a 4-1 margin.
And in this SUSA poll, we see for the first time in this cycle that Independents are trending toward Emmer, 37-35 (with 19 for Horner). Independents tend to make up their mind at the last possible moment; this next two weeks is Go time.
It’s inside the margin of error, to be sure – but it’s trended up in since the last SUSA poll, while Dayton’s support has trended down.
So how does Emmer win this thing?
Show them that he’s got an actual plan: As this campaign has progressed, it’s become painfully clear that Dayton’s budget “plan” is nothing but wishful thinking; its entire focus is on taxes (barring a few ludicrous putative spending cuts that flunk every stink test from here to MPR), as opposed to the spending cuts a majority of Minnesotans favor. Emmer’s plan is real, it’s rational, the numbers check out (unlike either Horner’s or Dayton’s). Emmer must hammer this. 53% of Minnesotans, say SUSA, are ready and waiting.
Point out that Dayton and Horner’s “plans” are vaporware. There is no there there. The plans don’t pass any fact-checks. And Dayton’s is utterly dead on arrival with the legislature. (“But so is Emmer’s”, the leftybloggers bleat, ignoring the fact that Emmer’s plan can virtually pass on pure inertia, as opposed to Dayton’s, which will require a legislative miracle – and to paraphrase Monsieur Ferrari, the Tea Party has outlawed legislative miracles that involve hiking taxes or spending). In a legislative cycle where voters want things to get done, Dayton and Horner’s plans are both complete wastes of time, doomed from inception.
He Rides The Tide: It’s not just a, er, shot in the dark on my part. Rasmussen notes a bit of recent history:
“And by two-to-one, voters say they prefer a congressman who will reduce overall spending to one who promises to bring a ‘fair share’ of government spending to their congressional district,” the veteran pollster said, adding that a plurality of Texas voters backed Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent decision to turn down federal dollars a program because federal strings were attached to it.
The Republicans’ strong position three weeks before midterm elections began, Rasmussen recalled, “when every Republican [in the House] said they would oppose the stimulus package…And support for it never recovered.”
“And by two-to-one, voters say they prefer a congressman who will reduce overall spending to one who promises to bring a ‘fair share’ of government spending to their congressional district,” the veteran pollster said, adding that a plurality of Texas voters backed Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent decision to turn down federal dollars a program because federal strings were attached to it.
So that’s how Emmer wins this thing; show that 53% of Minnesotans that he’s got the answer.
We can all, help, of course. Pass the word. I don’t remotely believe that the major polls’ likely voter models accurately predict likely voter turnout – but there’s no reason not to make sure everyone gets the facts.
Emmer’s going to win this thing. Suck it up and let’s make this happen.
The Crap Has Been Cut
The shorter Strib endorsement of Tom Horner: “He’s wonky enough, he’s almost liberal enough, and he’s not bat-spittle crazy”.
It h runs a little longer than that, naturally:
Historic challenges confront Minnesota in the next four years. They will be met only if the state has a governor able to inspire citizens to shoulder shared sacrifice for the sake of our common future. The Independence Party’s Tom Horner can deliver that kind of transforming leadership. We urge his election.
Further proof, if any were needed, that the Strib’s editorial board lives on Planet Portland Avenue.
Tom Horner, “inspiring citizens”? The guy – like most “Independence” Party politicians, except for the one that will ever actually hold office, Jesse Ventura – is the political equivalent of a Star Trek fanatic; he loves the idea of fiddling with all those nifty levers and buttons.
As to “transforming government”? If he takes office – and this endorsement is as close as he will get – he will stand at the head of exactly zero Independence Party legislators. He will have to build a coalition of legislators who come as close as possible to agreeing with him.
And that’s the great fraud of the “Independence Party”, today as it was under Jesse Ventura. Ventura, with no legislators (technically one RINO Republican did switch to the IP for her last term), had to run into the welcoming arms and pocket-picking hands of the only legislative caucus that had any synchronicity with his own agenda.
The DFL.
And Horner will have to do the same. Because that’s the great secret that the DFL is trying to cover up with all of their “Horner Is Republican” ad blitz; Horner’s policies are indistinsuishable from a vaguely moderate DFLer.
Horner presents voters with an opportunity they cannot afford to pass up. He possesses not only the understanding and communication skills that governing requires, but, unlike either DFLer Mark Dayton or Republican Tom Emmer, he also has the temperament to bridge the partisan divide that has long stymied the search for lasting solutions to chronic problems, both in Minnesota and the nation. For us, this choice is not a close call.
No, I’m sure it’s not.
But again with the Planet Portland. Horner “communicates” like a hectoring school teacher. And the “partisan divide” exists for a reason; there are two vastly different visions for this state. Horner has his toe on one side and his foot on the other – the left side – and like all “moderate” solutions will give us the worst of both worlds.
Tom Horner: the Real DFLer.