Two observations about last night’s SurveyUSA/KSTP poll:

It’s A Miracle! KSTP and a slew of other media played this story like it genuinely showed Tom Horner moving into the race.  As one wag noted, this is the first time in polling history that a candidate under twenty points, getting half the numbers of the second place candidate, has given the media a tingle up their legs.  KSTP breathlessly compared Horner to Jesse Ventura who, they reminded us, had only ten points at this point in the 2002 race.

The comparison ignored two key facts: the Independence Party had had absolutely no traction, anywhere in the country, since Ross Perot (then calling his vehicle the “Reform” Party) threw the 1992 election to Bill Clinton; and, lest we forget, Tom Horner was never a professional wrestler.  He will not draw the bobbleheaded election-day-voter in with his fame, since he has none (other than his years as an MPR commentator), and he’s not talking about sealing any deals by cutting license fees on jet-skis.

The Independence Party is the product of a much more trivial era in politics.  Times were good in 1998, and had been for a long time.  History may not have ended, but it was sure taking a break.  People felt they could afford to spend a vote on a joke.

Horner’s no joke, but he’s no Ventura.  And that’s why neither he nor any other IP candidate will ever win a race.

Debateable: But the debate itself didn’t suck.  I listened to most of it; Rick Kupchella, formerly of Channel 11 and now with “Bring Me The News“, ran a great show.

After years of listening to trite, softball questions that served mainly to let candidates tie their talking points together in sequence, Kupchella went for the guts.  His first questions set the tone; to Horner, “do you matter?”; to Emmer, “are you an extremist?”; to Dayton, “can you handle the pressure?”.

Who’da thunk it? Debates as political journalism.  Never thought I’d see the day.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, September 16th, 2010 at 7:07 am and is filed under Campaign '10. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.