This looks like it’s going to be a rough election for Republicans, in Minnesota and nationwide. While I think Mac has a decent shot in upending the Messiah in the stretch, here, I think Congress is going to be just brutal. As I’ve said in the past, I think that if the Democrats come up with less than an 80-20 majority in the Senate, and less than 340 seats in the House, it’ll be tantamount to a defeat. It’s been pointed out that that is technically impossible – there aren’t that many seats up for election this year. That is technically true, and still false; the electoral debacle should prompt the requisite number of Republicans to resign, or be impeached, or attacked and carried from office by mobs with pitchforks and torches. 80 and 340, or bust, Democrats.

And yet, being a conservative, I temper my pragmatism about people and temporal trends with unshakeable optimism for the future.  As such, I’m not merely pondering the “future” this November. I was looking waaay off into the great wide open.

Someone – I think it was either Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill – said “the best way to learn about the future is to look back on it”. 

So I decided to do just that.  I took a little dig through the archives of the future.  I wondered – given the long-term trends that are just starting to poke their noses into the public consciousness, what will Minnesota – especially the Twin Cities metro – look like in 2050?

And the message?  Well, it was surprising.

———-

November 2, 2050
Nguyen In Landslide:  Third-Place DFL Ponders Future
Ozriel Phamagagides, Hot Air (Saint Paul Bureau)

The outcome of the top of the race was never in much doubt; Conservative Republican John F. Nguyen won his second term as governor of Minnesota.  The Nguyen/Moss ticket’s 56% majority was two points stronger than the election-eve Rasmussen/Hajib/Lepkowitz poll predicted, indicating that the generation-old conservative powerhouse in Minnesota politics continues unabated.

The only real question was would the DFL – at one time Minnesota’s dominant, supermajority party – hold on to second-party status. 

“We think the results are more optimistic for us than some predicted”, said State DFL Chairbeing Starfish Bronkhorst-Rabbit, referring to a late prediction on the ultra-left HuffingtonPod that “the ground will open up and swallow the DFL”. 

But the results still don’t bode well.  The statewide votes for all Legislative, Constitutional and Local offices, according to the Secretary of State’s office, broke out like this:

GOP: 51%
Independence Party:  19%
Democrat/Farmer/Labor:  16%
La Raza USA: 14%

Bronkhorst-Rabbit is undeterred.  “I think we’re well-positioned for a comeback.  I think Minnesota is more ready than it’s been in years for the DFL’s message”.

Larry Jacobs of the University of Minnesota isn’t so sure.  “Look – the DFL finished third behind the conservative GOP, the pragmo-moderate Independence Party, and barely ahead of the ultra-social-conservative, pro-legal-immigration, hardline-anti-illegal La Raza.  That says something; that the party of Hubert Humphrey isn’t what it used to be.”

“I think the DFL faces two big questions.  First:  do the people of Minnesota still want a party whose platform of returning to the long-rejected Factory School model, economic shrinkage, a state parliament, institutionalized state guilt, catch-and-release sentencing, unrestricted immigration, socialized medicine, union featherbedding and open-ballot intimidation, and forced reparations to gays, the handicapped and the mentally ill in power?  And, second, given that the party’s entire base of support is concentrated in the third through fifth tiers of suburbs, and is nonexistent in the inner city and outstate Minnesota, will they even be able to retain major-party status?

Duffy Shabazz, four-term GOP representative from Thief River Falls, agrees.  “Given that they barely even beat La Raza in their own former home turf, really, what future is there for the DFL?”

The biggest question for many DFL rank-and-file, today, is “how did we get to this point?”

How, indeed?

With that in mind, I’m going to devote some time on this blog to a series, “Minnesota 2050”, in which we will look back on the next 42 years of Minnesota history.  And while this look will be both satirical and speculative, I’m correct in pointing out that all of my frighteningly accurate predictions started out as satirical swags.

Shot in the Dark – blurring the line between satire and secular prophecy for 78 months. 

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 12:02 pm and is filed under History And Its Making, Minnesota Politics. 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.