Suffice to say that if this is true…:

…the fashion world has remained particularly quiet on the Ann Romney fashion front, with many questioning whether or not outspoken Obama supporter Anna Wintour is keeping stylists and designers away, silently threatening their standing should they endeavor to promote their outfitting of the wife of a Republican presidential hopeful.

…then I will be boycotting Anna Wintour and all of her endeavors.

Over the past year, the Vogue matriarch [Oh, snap – Ed.] – who many say has enough power to make or break fashion careers – has become one of President Obama’s leading financiers. Wintour has raised over half a million dollars for the incumbent, hosted numerous lavish dinners in his name and even enlisted designer pals like Marc Jacobs and Thakoon Panichgul to design pro-Obama products.

Whatever will Republicans do?

Contestant:  “What did the President know, and when did he know it?”

Trebek:  “Correct, and you have the board…”

While the “Left MN” blog seems to be a re-boot of the late, demented but unlamented “Cucking Stool”, the site’s associate blogger Tony Petrangelo is one of those rare Minnesota leftybloggers who ought not be under police surveillance – a compliment I give rarely (becaiuse it’s rarely deserved).  Over the years, he’s written some excellent stuff about polling, redistricting, and the mechanics of politics.

And this past week, he’s been releasing a set of predictions for the MN House and Senate.  He’s done this before, by the way:

This is my second time doing race ratings of Minnesota legislative elections, the first time being in 2010. Here are links to my Senate ratings and House ratings from that cycle. I used a Safe/Tilt/Toss-up ratings scale and prior to the election I rated the Senate seats as 31 total DFL seats (Safe+Tilt), 19 total GOP seats and 17 Toss-ups.

The GOP won all 19 seats I had them winning. They also won every single race I had listed as a toss-up. They also won a race I had listed as Tilt DFL, the Don Betzold – Pam Wolf race. Clearly 2010 was a wave year for the GOP.

Still, as Petrangelo notes, it was a game effort:

That said, I don’t think my ratings did particularly bad especially since there was no sort of adjustment incorporated to account for the broader political context of the election.

We’ll come back to that.

As with my previous foray into race ratings I’ve kept this years version to an entirely numbers based exercise. Meaning at no point is a race rating the way it is because I made a subjective judgement about the quality of a candidate.

There’s some more methodology talk in there, which you should oughtta read, because it’s useful stuff and I don’t disagree with any of it.

Which is notable, in that my own ratings below are largely the opposite.

Well, not entirely; in many, maybe most cases, I agree with Petrangelo.  In many others, I made a different prediction because of some qualitative aspect to the race that isn’t readily apparent in the empirical numbers Petrangelo used.  A race held after a redistricting is going to toss a lot of those empirical measures up in the air – as will a wave election (as Petrangelo discovered in 2010).  While this may not be a wave year, there’s a dynamic at work that I think will affect a lot of these races.

I’ll do the House of Representatives first.  I’ll include the House District, the DFLer, the GOPer, Petrangelo’s rating, and mine; if mine differ from Petrangelo’s they’ll be in bold.

Senate tomorrow!

For the benefit of our Commander in Chief, a look at a recent, modern, counterinsurgency use of the bayonet – which is still issued as standard equipment to infantry around the world:

In May 2004, approximately 20 British troops in Basra were ambushed and forced out of their vehicles by about 100 Shiite militia fighters. When ammunition ran low, the British troops fixed bayonets and charged the enemy. About 20 militiamen were killed in the assault without any British deaths.

Soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders – the “Argylls” – who carried out a successful bayonet charge in Basra in 2004, killing 20 Mahdi without casualties. Although to be fair to President Obama, they were not on horseback.  

The bayonet charge appeared to succeed for three main reasons. First, the attack was the first of its kind in that region and captured the element of surprise. Second, enemy fighters probably believed jihadist propaganda stating that coalition troops were cowards unwilling to fight in close combat, further enhancing the element of surprise. Third, the strict discipline of the British troops overwhelmed the ability of the militia fighters to organize a cohesive counteraction.

I can imagine a Scottish squad leader muttering “That’s jooost crrrrezzy enoof to wairk”.

Remember when Amy Klobuchar, former Henco Attorney, tried to paint herself as “tough on crime”?

Apparently only if the criminal was poor and black:

Perhaps because of the lure of [legendary Ponzi schemer] Petters’ campaign cash or his deep connection to Minnesota Democratic politics, Klobuchar used the power of her office in 1999 to ensure Petters was not charged with financial crimes. And despite significant evidence against him, she cleared the way for Petters to build his multibillion-dollar illegal empire by prosecuting only his early co-conspirators.

One of those co-conspirators, Richard Hettler, told The Daily Caller that Klobuchar was aware of what Petters was doing, yet willingly accepted campaign donations from Petters’ company and its employees.

“She took Ponzi money to get elected,” he insisted.

Read the whole thing.

Because goddess only knows you won’t read it in the Strib until they’re dragged to the story kicking and screaming.

I got an email from MPR the other day.  It was actually a combo email from MPR News and “The Current” asking what song we thought best summed up the state of the nation during this election season.

I wrote back with my suggestion – a song that has layer upon layer of significance to our nation, our society, our zeitgeist and the election itself.  A song that’s all about dreaming a big dream, and having those dreams run up on the rocks, and hitting that moment where you have to think “was that a dream or was it a mirage?”.  A song about that moment when you have to decide – do I drown, or do I sack up and carry on?

A song about truth and consequences.  A song that, on a work week after a long trip across the prairie, reminds me of the huge swathe in the middle of this country, the square states full of bitter gun-clinging jebus freaks like me that are, in fact, my home and background and blood and my past.  And that is, with a blessing and a tailwind, may be our nation’s future.

The song is “This Hard Land” by Bruce Springsteen.

It’s a song he wrote during a John Steinbeck jag, for Born in the USA, and that should have been on the album (be honest – would anyone miss “Downbound Train?”) and was in its day one of the most sought-after bootlegs in Springsteen’s oeuvre.

So many layers to this song, and to the reasons I chose it.

First verse?

Hey there mister can you tell me what happened to the seeds Ive sown

Can you give me a reason sir as to why they’ve never grown

They’ve just blown around from town to town

Till they’re back out on these fields

Where they fall from my hand

Back into the dirt of this hard land

Thomas Hobbes, the 18th-century British intellectual who was one of the patron saints of conservatism as we understand it today, couldn’t have expressed better the fundamental conservative ideal that “life’s a bitch”, that there are forces that are bigger and more powerful than men and their dreams.

But well return to that.

Now me and my sister from germantown

We did ride

We made our bed sir from the rock on the mountainside

We been blowin around from town to town

Lookin for a place to stand

Where the sun burst through the cloud

To fall like a circle

Like a circle of fire down on this hard land

America is a land of myths.  Mostly big and glorious ones – like the ones that drew our forefathers, like the singer and his sister, from their old homes, the Germantowns and Norwayvilles and Saigon Centers, to This Hard Land.   Much of what America sees as its own self-image – whether the wilderness of the Badlands or the wilderness of the tradiing floor or the inventors garage or the moon or the neighborhood or the entrenched beliefs of the human heart – is about the epic American dream of going where your ancestors have never gone before, of being something they weren’t.

And over the past seventy years, it’s become about the marketing of those dreams, whether via John Wayne or “Hope and Change”.

But like all dreams – and their cousins, the myth and the chimera – they run afoul a brutal reality:

Now even the rain it don’t come round

It don’t come round here no more

And the only sound at nights the wind

Slammin the back porch door

It just stirs you up like it wants to blow you down

Twistin and churnin up the sand

Leavin all them scarecrows lyin face down

Face down in the dirt of this hard land

The prairie is dotted with the remains of old farm homes from families that just didn’t make it, flindered remains of their back doors still slamming in the wind.  Just as America is dotted with businesses that tried and failed, leaving behind empty buildings, rusty frames, doors drifting back and forth in the desultory breeze.  And yes, the wreckage of government initiatives like the one that’s dominated our political life this past presidential term, a dream – a chimera from a brief majority four years ago – of an undertaking that, despite the fervency of its dreamers’ beliefs, has failed as completely as the sodbuster in the song.  Whether through poor design, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or being fundamentally wrong or – like the singer and his sister – just from suffering a bad run of luck in the face of a merciless and uncaring Nature, all of human existence is a tough grind dominated by forces we don’t, by ourselves, control.

Being human, we attempt to control them anyway – to bring order to the chaos, and to tame the untameable:

 From a building up on the hill

I can hear a tape deck blastin’ “Home on the Range”

I can see them Bar-M choppers

Sweepin’ low across the plains

Its me and you, Frank, we’re lookin for lost cattle

Our hooves twistin and churnin up the sand

Were ridin in the whirlwind searchin for lost treasure

Way down south of the Rio Grande

Were ridin cross that river

In the moonlight

Up onto the banks of this hard land

It’s human nature to try to bottle up and contain Nature, whether the nature around us or the nature inside us.

And it’s one of the great dividing lines in human nature, the one between those who are content for their “home on the range” to come recorded, to have the almighty Bar-M or The Almighty  or The One out looking for the strays, for those who are just fine being “Julia“…

…and those whose dreams, or mirages, embrace the chaos that ensues where life and Nature, natural and human, are in conflict.

And the last verse is for them:

Hey frank wont ya pack your bags

And meet me tonight down at liberty hall

Just one kiss from you my brother

And we’ll ride until we fall

Well sleep in the fields

Well sleep by the rivers and in the morning

Well make a plan

Well if you can’t make it

Stay hard, stay hungry, stay alive

If you can

And meet me in a dream of this hard land

Whether it’s the pioneer seeking more elbow room from all the other settlers and their choppers and tape decks, or from bouncing back from a failure, or a big part of a nation taking a deep breath and saying “this is not the path we want”, or, I dunno, Atlas shrugging for all I know, this verse – with allusions to Okies loading up their trucks and bidding their relatives goodbye, or immigrants climbing on the boat and wishing their old lives auf wiedersehen, or men kissing their wives and kids and mustering down at Liberty Hall as the drums and the hobnails rattle on the wind, or a people saying “thanks, Julia, and all the best to you and that mysterious niece and/or nephew that appeared a few frames back, but I’m looking for something a little more…epically mythical” – is the American myth; the idea that we are a restless pack of strivers looking for a newer, better, freer horizon.

Beyond that, in terms of politics today?  Every generation dreams of leaving a better world to their kids, as I do for my kids and my new granddaughter. We have a distinct chance, as things go, of leaving them a world that my ancestors in the Dust Bowl would look at and whisper “there but for the grace of God…”.  And unlike the the Okies, our immigrant forefathers and protagonist in “This Hard Land”, this time there’s noplace to ride away to to start over.  We’re stuck with this hard land.

More on this after the election.

Anyway – ask a question, you’ll get an answer.  Usually.

UPDATE:  Hobbes, not Hume.  Sigh.  It’s been a few years.

UPDATE 2:  Welcome, Bob Collins’ readers!

(more…)

If the shoe were on the other foot, can you imagine a Democrat – any Democrat – passing on a story like this?

“If the Obama campaign is sitting on a picture of Romney drinking a cup of coffee, they better bust it out now” — Gary Miller, on Facebook.

The by-no-means-right-of-center Saint Cloud Times endorsed our old friend King Banaian in his re-election bid in Saint Cloud:

 Given an effective first term, Banaian deserves re-election. He authored the Sunset Commission law and helped college students with textbook prices. His expertise in economics also is a strength.

They also acknowledge that the district is full of government clients who would happily sell the state as whole down the river for extra bread and circuses for state employees:

DFL challenger Zach Dorholt presents a formidable challenge in large part because Banaian’s allegiance to hardline GOP fiscal and business principles might not sell well in a district that’s home to a public university and many public-sector employees.

The paper’s right – King won by 10 votes after a recount, down from a couple dozen on election night, in 2010 – but redistricting was, by most accounts, kind to King.  While some commentators call this race a toss-up, I think that between redistricting and the fact that Obama will have all the coattails of a hunting vest, King will start to pull away this round.

Don’t forget – tonight Brad Carlson and I will be hosting the AM1280 Final Debate Party at the Blue Fox in Shoreview.

View Larger Map

Come on out at 6 for a silent auction supporting Kurt Bills, courtesy of the North Metro Tea Party.

Then, stay for the debate! Brad and I will do a quick set-up before the debate, and a quicker Q and A afterward – but most of the evening will focus on the debate, the Blue Fox’ great food and drink specials, and you, the audience!

Hope to see you there!

How do you measure success in a politician?

If you’re a liberal, it’s likely in terms of sheer volume of legislation created and money moved about.  Because to a liberal, government is about creating reams of paper, rules, laws, stuff for government to do.

If you’re a conservative, it’s probably more a matter of princple; of getting government out of the way, of taking pointless laws and needless regulations off the books.

We’ll come back to that.

———-

Mike McFeely is a talk show host in Fargo.  He’s the current house liberal at KFGO, which was at one time the WCCO of the Fargo area, and like WCCO has shrunk greatly since its heyday (and since I left North Dakota).  He fills the role Fast Eddie Schultz used to play on the station, the token lefty.  Like Schultz, he’s apparently a former small-market sportscaster; like Schultz, he sounds like it.

And like a lot of liberal D-list pundits and pseudo-celebs, he’s got a jones for Mary Franson, GOP incumbent in District 8B and, like most uppity female and minority conservatives, the same sort of catnip for lefties that Michele Bachmann has been for the past decade and a half.  It started  a few weeks ago, with McFeely’s Schultz-like chanting of rumors that even some of the smarter regional leftyblogs long ago debunked.  McFeely came across in that case as a small-town crone abusing the “power” of his radio bully pulpit (and as much as KFGO has atrophied, it’s still not chicken feed)

I’ll give the guy kudos for at least trying to go legit in this letter to the editor in the East Otter Tail County Focus last week.

Rep. Mary Franson does not represent Greater Minnesota values and, by her own admission, will not have a strong voice for her constituents in House District 8B if she is re-elected.

Now, whenever a critic says their target has said something “by their own admission”, you can usually be pretty sure someone’s trying to play a rhetorical card trick; they admitted nothing of the sort.

While Rep. Franson has made embarrassing headlines nationally and statewide for, among other things, comparing her constituents who receive food assistance to wild animals (a claim she repeated even after “apologizing” for it on social media)

Now, when you’re a sportscaster, you can pretty much babble any kind of crap you want – because it’s just sports.  McFeely – like Schultz before him – seems to think politics is about the same.

But no – the smart people dispensed with that meme, too, and months ago; Franson pointed out, correctly, that long-term dependence dehumanizes people, and casts government in the role of the benevolent, responsible pet owner.   The remarks were taken out of context during a fractious session by a DFL noise machine that exists only to provide grist for their campaign mill.

And like a lot of D-list talk show hosts – and yes, my NARN pals and I are better than this – McFeely and “context” are never really on good terms:

At the event during which she repeated her comparison of assistance recipients to wild animals, Rep. Franson admitted that members of her own party did not support her and distanced themselves from her.

Yep.  During the “Animals” fracas, the House leadership shamefully backed away from Franson – one of several “ready fire aim” moments in a trying session for GOPers.

But teapot-tempests come and go; at the end of the day, always, “it’s the economy, stupid”.  McFeely takes a brisk dip into actual fact:

Despite low unemployment in Douglas and Todd counties

Wait – back up.  This Republican corner of the state is doing pretty well, you say?

Huh.

So let’s take a quick breather and set up some actual, factual history:  Representative Franson was…:

1. …elected in the Tea Party wave in 2010 on a conservative ticket…
2. …to represent a traditionally conservative Republican part of the state…
3. …that’s doing relatively well, and apparently – by dint of having sent a conservative freshman legislator to the legislature in the middle of a grueling recession – wants to keep it that way.

Just so we’ve got that straight.

McFeely:

Instead of spending time in St. Paul fighting for issues specific to her constituents – such as lowering property taxes for farms and small businesses in rural Minnesota – Rep. Franson spent her two years in the Legislature authoring bills that accomplished nothing.

Perhaps McFeely would favor us by showing us the bill where Franson raised – or declined to lower – property taxes.

Go ahead, Mike, We’ll wait.  Cough up that bill.

[Mr. McFeely – don’t look at this next statement.  Scout’s honor?  OK – all the rest of you know that property taxes are the role of county commissions and city councils.  The legislature doesn’t set property taxes.  Now, the Democrats have spent the last two years babbling about how lowering Local Government Aid inevitably raises property taxes.  McFeely would have you believe that on Franson’s watch, taxes rose as a direct, cause-and-effect consequence of lowered LGA.  It’s one of those chanting points the left throws out there to gull the ill-informed.  But, again, that’s the job of the counties and cities.  Assuming LGA was cut.  Was it?  We’ll come back to that – but I’ll give you a little spoiler; McFeely makes Ed Schultz look smart and ethical].

Got that bill, Mike?  Hint:  It’s between the snipes and the half-round squares.

———-

Next, McFeely botches history – and by “botch”, let’s be charitable and assume he just doesn’t know the actual facts involved; if he does, then he’s just lying:

In her two years in St. Paul, Rep. Franson authored 36 bills. None became law. Very few were even discussed or forwarded. Even her own party wasn’t interested in the agenda Rep. Franson was trying to push. That is the definition of an ineffective legislator.

Wait – authoring laws that don’t get passed “defines” “ineffective?”

Let’s go back to the beginning of the post; conservatives don’t believe generating new laws defines success.

But let’s go by the left’s – and McFeely’s – definition of “effectiveness”.  None of Franson’s 36 bills passed into law.

Which is exactly the same record as House Minority Leader Paul Thissen; none of the two bills he authored passed into law, either!

Or how about a more rank-and-file member?  Ryan “The Intellectual Id Of The DFL Caucus” Winkler chief-authored 22 bills.  None passed; none even came close.

And do you know what?  Neither Thissen’s 0/2, Winkler’s 0/22 or Fransen’s 0/36 are even below average – because in a typical session (for example, 2008, the latest one with statistics) over 4,000 bills are introduced, and around 100 get signed.  That’s about 1 out of 40.

In other words, McFeely tossed out a number that is in itself meaningless without context.  Just like the “Animals” comment and his “property taxes” comment; either he doesn’t know what he’s taking about and doesn’t care, or he does and he’s hoping nobody checks his facts.  Like all Democrat campaigns, he – and by extension, the Cunniff campaign that McFeely is supporting – is hoping people aren’t curious enough to poke at those numbers.

Oh, we’re not done.

———-

McFeely turns next from misleading context to just-plain-ignorance:

At the same time, Rep. Franson consistently voted to raise taxes on residents of Greater Minnesota. She supported elimination of the Market Value Homestead Credit, raising property taxes on all Minnesotans and particularly those in rural Minnesota.

MVHC was a subsidy of metro-area housing; it kept metro-area property taxes artificially low, and subsidized spending by the wastrel DFL governments in Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth.  Like LGA itself, it transferred money from the parts of the state that support themselves to our basket-case metro areas.

But at least that was a chanting point with a coherent argument.  Next, McFeely wafts away into fantasy-land:

Rep. Franson sided with metropolitan legislators by failing to fight for an increase in Local Government Aid, a tool that provides property tax relief primarily for Greater Minnesota cities and towns.

Local Government Aid, as we’ve discussed in the past, was originally a way to transfer money to poor, outstate towns from the wealthy Metro, to allow them to buy some of the amenities of modern life; modern schools, roads, water treatment plants and the like.  It’s turned into a subsidy of Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth (although Iron Range towns get the most aid per capita).

(And while McFeely doesn’t name, and I suspect doesn’t know, the “metropolital legislators” with whom he claims Franson sided, it’s worth noting that the Metro is divided between cities that are constantly begging for more aid, and suburbs that largely receive none).

The GOP ran in 2010 on a platform of returning LGA to its original purpose – supporting smaller towns that don’t have the tax base to buy the necessities of modern government. And how’d that work?

State funding for LGA has been cut 25 percent over the last 10 years and has remained flat since 2010.  Eliminating or reducing LGA will seriously weaken regional centers like Alexandria and small cities like New York Mills.

McFeely gives a statewide number – but since McFeely’s writing about Franson’s performance in re her district, 8B, let’s ask what are the district’s specifics?

Let’s track LGA payments in 2008 and 2011 – payments, not pledges – for the three counties in Rep. Franson’s district, as well as the state averages and the metro areas (measured in per-capita dollars actually paid to the various jurisdictions).  All figures come from that noted conservative tool, the State of Minnesota:

Ah.  So that’s why McFeely gave a statewide number!  Because since 2008 – the only period Rep. Franson had any control over as a legislator – LGA actually rose in Otter Tail and Todd counties; it shrank by an insignificant amount in Douglas County, where Alexandria is. and where as McFeely himself admitted, the economy is doing better than the state average.

So if you’re a liberal?  District 8B’s LGA was steady to slightly up.  More money!  Franson was effective!

And if you’re a conservative?  LGA spending in the district was in line with the GOP’s platform, raising payments to smaller out-of-state jurisdictions that actually need it, and were the original intended target of this spending.  Franson was still effective!

And if you have a functioning BS detector?  Mike McFeely is out of his depth writing about anything that doesn’t involve throwing a ball, and is serving as a trained chimp reciting DFL chanting points he may not understand, and certainly hopes you, the voter in District 8B, won’t.

Like the following:

Under her watch, property taxes have risen sharply…

Although, as the state’s figures show, not because of anything the legislature did, least of all in District 8B.

…while she has embarrassed her constituents with controversial national headlines.

Which were cowardly manglings of context by people who are getting more and more desperate at their prospects in two weeks, and for whom female conservatives are like red capes in front of bulls.

Franson did get an 86 from the Taxpayers League, among many other spiffs from conservative groups.  She was one of the freshmen “Tea Party” class that held the line on things like spending, tax hikes, and giving money to Zygi Wilf, while erasing the deficit, reforming regulations, keeping Minnesota’s unemployment rate way below the national average, and working to reform our state’s business climate.

In short, she did what the majority of (pre-redistricting) District 11B’s voters – mostly Republican, mostly conservative – sent her to do.

And if this is how desperate her opponent, Bob Cunniff, and his campaign are getting, it looks like she’ll do the same for new district 8B.

And if you live in the area, feel free to let the East Otter Tail Focus – and Mike McFeely – know I said so.

———-

So we started the article by asking how you measure a politician.  The answer – whether you’re left or right – most likely involves doing what one is sent to the Capitol to do.  Has Mary Franson done this?  That’s for the people in her district – not talking heads from Fargo or the Twin Cities – to decide.

So how about a media figure, an uninvited pundit?

Getting one’s facts straight, or at least being honest, would be a great start.

As several state flirt with legalizing marijuana, it’s time for a quick pro-and-con check:

Legalization would be good because:

• The “war on drugs” has killed more people than Vietnam, and with less to show for it.
• The “war” has also destroyed most American inner cities.
• The black market has created a multinational organized crime network that Al Capone would envy, and whole soulless violence would make Sammy The Bull Gravano blanche in mute horror.
• Pot is probably less harmful, all in all, than booze.

Legalization would be bad because:

• Stoners are the most annoying people in the world.
• Stoner culture is the most annoying counterculture in the world.
• Phish and Dave Matthews.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

…and at any given time, it might even be correct; according to Battleground Watch,  the numbers and the demographics indicate Minnesota just might be in play in the Presidential race this year.

We saw some sketchy evidence of this in the last Star/Tribune “Minnesota” poll, of course; if you rolled the turnout model from its’ absurd +13 Democrat split even to 2008 turnout numbers, Romney was within two points.

Read the whole thing, naturally.

All the more reason to get out there…

Sandra Fluke speaks to ten in Nevada.

Apparently the women of north Nevada are conscientious objectors in the “War on Women”.

They don’t call it a horse-race for nothing.

As a rule in polling, outliers tend to get ignored.  Or you can choose to believe that Bush won Hawaii in 2004, Alf Landon won a 1936 landslide, or that Clinton v. Dole was a nail-biter.

But it becomes harder to ignore an outlier when it’s A) close to the election and B) one of the oldest and most respected polling outfits in the nation.  Thus as the media enters Campaign 2012’s home stretch, the narrative of a nip-and-tuck contest looks decidedly jeopardized by Gallup showing Mitt Romney with a 7% lead – and such an outcome apparently has to be challenged:

With a record of correctly predicting all but three of the 19 presidential races stretching back to 1936, Gallup is one of the most prestigious names in the business and its outlier status has other polling experts scratching their heads.

“They’re just so out of kilter at the moment,” said Simon Jackman, a Stanford University political science professor and author of a book on polling. “Either they’re doing something really wacky or the other 18 pollsters out there are colluding, or something.”

The caveats to Gallup’s polling (as with any pollster) are well-versed.  But to find an answer as to why Gallup posts a major Romney lead while the Real Clear Politics average of pollsters shows essentially a tie has nothing to do with credibility or collusion.  It has everything to do with turnout.

Take the recent IBD/TIPP poll as Gallup’s doppleganger with Obama leading by 5.7%.  Democrats are outsample Republicans by 7%.  The UConn Courant showing Obama up 3%?  The sample shows Democrats with an 8-point advantage.  Gallup plays their cards close to the vest, not showing the partisan affiliation of their likely voter model.  But their registered voter breakdown still shows a Romney lead, albeit of a modest 3% and is likely based on their party affiliation polls showing Democrats up 4 points.

Gallup says it determines its “likely voters” by asking whether they have voted in the past, if they know where their polling place is located, and other similar questions. The formula has been tweaked this year to take into account the increasing prevalence of early voting.

Gallup’s Newport pointed out that the firm’s likely-voter formula has more accurately predicted the election results than its wider poll of all registered voters going back to the 1990s and, in fact, the likely voter prediction tended to slightly favor Democratic candidates.

The idea of a single pollster being simply a part of a larger trendline is accurate, even if most media outlets tend to overlook that fact to trumpet their own poll to the exclusion of competitors and thus create news rather than report it.  Yet even if we exclude Gallup’s results, the trendlines have to be concerning for Obama’s camp.  Despite wielding turnout margins better than what propelled him into office four years ago, many polls show Barack Obama at best narrowly ahead – and more commonly tied or behind.

Gallup might be overstating Romney’s support, although the pollster’s worst estimations of support were in the 5-6 point range and happened in 1936 and 1948.  In the modern era, if anything Gallup has consistently overestimated Democratic support at the polls, giving Obama 2% more, Kerry 0.7% more and Clinton 2.8% and 5.7% more in his campaigns.  Which may mean that despite a 7% lead causing headaches among the media, Mitt Romney may…hold for dramatic effect…lead by more.

Here are some of the questions that’ve come over the transom lately.

“Hahahaha!  Kurt Bills is going to lose!  That’s a loss for you!”:  Well, I am not on the ballot, so it’s not a loss for me. And I supported Severson at the convention.  Now, it is a fact that Kurt Bills would be a much better Senator than A-Klo; I support him, and will vote for him as many times as many times as Mark Ritchie will let me.  I’m praying – seriously – for an upset victory.  America’s future is not assured until modern “progressive” liberalism is peacefully extincted from politics, and getting Klobuchar out of the Senate would be a great step.  But this is going to be a tough race.  No doubt about it.

“Why don’t you shut up?  Minnesota votes Democrat!”:  OK, so what?  I still have a right to dissent.  So far. Chris Matthews notwithstanding.

“Why haven’t you taken on Michael Brodkorb!  You have no integrity”: Partly because there’s nothing to “take on”.  It’s a court case.  I don’t agree with Michael about everything, including inside-the-party politics, and I don’t endorse (or poke my nose into) his personal life choices, but he’s a friend of mine.  If you don’t like that, you’re free to give yourself a stroke fretting about it, but it won’t make any difference.   To the extent that the whole incident is portrayed as a symptom of the problems the MNGOP got itself into?  There’s a case to be made.  I don’t know, and my only real interest is in the party’s future.  Michael’s a brilliant political operator, and his career will no doubt resume its upward parabola.  If you have a problem with that, then say so.  Good luck; as long as Michael is a wedge within the GOP, he’ll be the media’s BFF (above and beyond his value as a source, which Michael earned). And if you have a problem with the fact that I’m letting other peoples’ personal dogs lie and moving on to the GOP’s future, grow some balls and quit the passive-aggressive sniping and take it up with me directly.  You’ll lose, but you’ll lose with some shred of honor.

“Hahaha, you are teh heppocreet!  When the polls were showing Obama ahead, you attacked them! But now that they’re showing Mittens in the lead, you are teh silent!  You are TEH HEPPOCREET!  You is sucks!”:  I don’t know that I’ve written a whole lot about the polls showing Romney ahead, but here’s the kicker;  the partisan turnout model of the polls are still mostly showing more Democrats than Republicans (Susquehanna poll in Pennsylvania and perhaps a few others excepted).

“So how about the Congressional and Legislative races?”: I think if Romney comes close to tying in Minneosta, we’ll hold the Legislature with votes to spare.  Some of the open seats in the ‘burbs are looking good, and the 8th CD is looking better.  And I hear rumors of another possible surprise outstate.  We shall see.

“Hahahah!  You are teh Springstein fan, but he’s endorsing Obeama! Hahaha, you looser!”:  This wasn’t even news in 2000, chuckles.  And stay tuned – because there’s a case that Springsteen may be America’s best conservative songwriter.  And there’s only one blogger that’s gonna tackle that job.  After the election.

“Hahahaha, you are teh Republican in Saint Paul!  You are teh PWN3D!”:  As Abraham Lincoln said, “the likelihood that he might fail ought not deter a man from a cause he believes just”.  And there is no more just cause than bringing democracy to Saint Paul.  It’s going to be a long job.  I’m not going anywhere.  (Because it’s impossible to sell a house in St. Paul).

“You support the Marriage Restriction Amendment?   You ave full of teh hate!”:  I”m ambivalent about the Amendment.  I don’t so much support it as I reject the arguments of most of its opponents.  More next week.  Probably.

“How about those Bears?”:  As I wrote a few years ago, the Bears are truly America’s barometer.  Stay tuned to their record over the nest few weeks.  It’ll be a kety barometer, not just for this election, but for the future of this nation and our civilization.

To: America
From: Mitch Berg; taxpayer, private-sector worker, concerned neighbor
Re: Us

Everyone,

You are not better off than you were four years ago.

That is all.

Mitt Romney at the Al Smith Dinner last Wednesday:

My favorite line:

Campaigning is exhausting.  President Obama and I are lucky to have someone on our side that helps us get through the day.  I have my lovely wife Ann.  He’s got Bill Clinton.

And the last one – about politics not being the most important thing in the world?  Yeah, that one too.

MN 7th District representative Collin Peterson – generally regarded as a bit of a blue dog, representing a socially-conservative but farm-bill-money-hungry district – lost his long-time endorsement from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for LIfe, the state’s main pro-life group over his flip on Obamacare.

And he’s done something that’s suicide for most politicians; he’s actually said what he believes, in a video recorded at Concordia College in Moorhead of a conversation between him and a pro-life student:

In the video, Peterson, speaking to Concordia junior Kate Engstrom after posing for what he believed was a photo with her, says the MCCL is “being a bunch of extremists” and the group’s stance on the Affordable Care Act is “the end of them as an organization.”

“They’re now a completely partisan organization,” he said in the video, in response to Engstrom’s questions about the MCCL’s endorsement decision. “When you get into that position, you’re done.”

Oh, yeah – remember when Jim Oberstar referred to his detractors as a “flat earth society?”

Peterson had a similar moment; he apparently believes his pro-life constituents are teh loosers and dummeys: :

 He also said: “The only place it (the dropped endorsement) got reported is on MPR, and those people don’t listen to MPR.”

Further evidence of the same exact phenemonon that got Jim Oberstar tossed two years ago; he acts one way when he’s out and about in  his districit – but when he thinks he’s among friends, or back in DC (or when he just loses control, as Oberstar did), he turns into Mr. Hyde.

Ms. Engstrom – who I believe I have actually met – would have a bright future as a reporter, if news organizations actually hired reporters rather than DFL stenographers (I’ll add a bit of emphasis):

 Engstrom, 20, made the video with a friend. She said she approached Peterson after the event on campus featuring a handful of Democrats because she wanted to speak to him about the lack of the MCCL endorsement… ”I knew that Collin would probably not respond or tell me his actual thoughts on it if he knew it was on camera,” said Engstrom, a political science student who describes herself as a Republican. “I just thought it was really important that people would know the truth of what Collin Peterson thinks.”

And Engstrom gets the “Mr Hyde” bit too:

 She said she believes Peterson assumed she was a Democrat, “so he felt like he could say whatever he wanted.”

She said she found the remarks insulting.

“It made it sound like we were some sort of weird extremists,” said Engstrom, who opposes abortion. “He always claims that he’s a moderate, and in my eyes he’s not really a moderate.”

If you live in the 7th CD, you know that Collin Peterson has been the unassailable blue-dog giant for a generation, now.

But if there were ever a time to dig deep and give of your time and money to support  Lee Byberg, this is it.

Because you’re not “extremists”, and you deserve to be represented by someone who knows it.

Last night on Twitter, I twote “Binders” is so Big Bird.”

This morning on Hot Air, Ed points out that Mark Halperin – no conservative tool, he – points out the same thing at greater length; we’re under three weeks to the election, and Obama is still trying to pin his hopes on sophomoric “gotchas”:

As Ed notes, it’s a sign of political exhaustion from a campaign that

…won’t run on his agenda, because he either doesn’t have one (and he certainly hasn’t published one or pushed it at either debate, choosing to attack Romney instead), or because, as Mickey Kaus writes, any honesty about his second-term agenda would cost him the election

Binders!

Big Bird!

Contraception!

Squirrel!

Bonus question:  If Obama loses – and if Alita Messinger’s similar campaign ends up falling short of flipping the legislature and bogging down both Constitutional Amendments here in Minnesota – do you suppose the Dems will re-evaluate their strategy of the past few years of going all-in for the low-information voter?

Obama did to one great thing for America during the Tuesday debate.

He finally cut the crap and let slip his true colors on the Second Amendment

In his 2008 campaign and while president, Obama has distanced himself from gun issues, aware that it could hurt him politically in key battleground states. But when pressed about gun violence during the Tuesday town hall-style presidential debate, he fully embraced a Clinton-style assault weapons ban. Clinton’s ban expired in 2004.

Well, kudos, Mr. President, for telling the truth for perhaps the only time in the Tuesday debate; you want to return American to the collectivist nadir of the seventies.

Suggesting a ban not just on semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 but maybe even handguns, the most popular rifle in America, the president said, “What I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally. Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced. But part of it is also looking at other sources of the violence. Because frankly, in my hometown of Chicago, there’s an awful lot of violence and they’re not using AK-47s. They’re using cheap handguns.”

Whenever socialists start talking about “broader conversations” about civil rights, what they really mean is “taking more of them”.

The NRA is jumping on this – and if they didn’t, they’d be completely worthless as a political action organization:

Keene said that Obama’s statement was a “strategic error on his part” because it blew up the president’s pro-Second Amendment rhetoric. “He knows it’s politically dangerous to take on the Second Amendment,” said Keene.

“We have credibility when we say that Barack Obama is a threat to your rights. But that credibility is obviously enhanced 10-fold when Barack Obama, in a moment of weakness, says, ‘Yeah, as a matter of fact I am.’ And that’s what he did,” said Keene. “This is going to help us.”

For the sake of this country’s future, it had better.

The answers are obvious:

1. Don’t believe the Obama Administration’s and the left’s hype.  Obama has always been anti-gun.  In his world, only the government’s existence is worth defending – not yours.
2. It is the duty of every law-abiding American to own and be proficient with a firearm.  Get with it.  If we can get a few million more “bitter gun-clingers” out there, educaged and voting – and studies have shown that the law-abding shooter is both smarter and more politically-engaged than the general public – then we can not just beat Obama, but crush him.  We – the Real Americans of the Second Amendment movement – have done it before.

This has got to cost The One.

Don’t forget – Monday night is the final debate.

And along with that debate itself, we have one of the Twin Cities great political traditions:  the Final Debate party!

We’ll be at the Blue Fox in Shoreview:

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Brad Carlson and I will be  kicking things off just before the debate, and having a quick Q and A afterwards.  There’ll be a special-price menu for the event .

And don’t forget – starting at 6PM, just before the debate, the North Metro Tea Party will be holding a silent auction to benefit Senate candidate Kurt Bills.  Come on out!

Email from yesterday:

“Given the last two moderators, I think that fairness demands that the third debate be moderated by John Stossel.”

I was going to say Ted Nugent.

Romney:  Referring to large assortument of qualified women as “binders”.

Obama:  Misery for women.

Discuss.

That’s how much more time the President and VP have had than Romney and Ryan so far in the debates.

That’s just a shade over 7% more time on average; Crowley actually allowed the President 11% more mic time than the challenger.

According to the CNN debate clock, President Obama spoke at greater length than Mitt Romney during both debates, as did Vice President Biden during his debate with Paul Ryan. In the first debate, Obama spoke for 3 minutes, 14 seconds more than Romney — which means he got 8 percent more talking time than Romney. In last night’s debate, Obama spoke for 4 minutes and 18 seconds longer than Romney, giving him 11 percent more talking time. Obama talked for 52 percent of the time when either man had the floor, while Romney talked for 47 percent.

No media bias!  None!