I’ve spent years bagging on Dave Mindemann, blogger at mnpACT!.  Now, when I say “bagging”, I mean “on Mindemann’s policy stances and analysis”, mostly; I disagree with the guy, but he’s no drooling cretin.

And he’s in the midst of a thoughtful – if, I believe, flawed – analysis of the Sixth District race. 

Much to go after – and I’ll leave it to 6th CD residents King Banaian, Andy Applikowski and Gary Gross to go after most of it. 

But Mindemann, even as he notes that traditional social conservative issues deeply resonate with the Sixth’s voters, thinks he sees signs of “Bachmann Fatigue”:

Additional clues seem to come from the county numbers [from the ’08 election]. Bachmann clearly underperformed the Republican vote. McCain did much better county by county in the district. Now, the first thought is….. of course, that’s true, because of the three way race for the Congressional seat. However, that doesn’t explain Tinklenberg’s numbers. His support mirrored Obama’s and even exceeded it in places. That clearly indicates we have McCain voters moving to the Independence Party in the Congressional race.

The obvious question would be why? The answer can only be speculated upon, but it would seem that Bachmann’s antics are beginning to “fatigue” her marginal support. They are looking for an alternative, but can’t bring themselves to pull the DFL lever.

The other answer – the one that seems “obvious” to me – is that McCain and Obama’s numbers fairly closely mirrored the fortunes of their parties in a year that was a generational low-water mark for the GOP, especially given the phenomenon that Obama’s candidacy was (and the coattails he didn’t extend; check out Franken’s relative performance).  And in cases where McCain outperformed Bachmann, he may have a point, although I’m tempted to chalk it up to the fact that people are less engaged in down-ticket races than in the Presidency, even places like the Sixth. 

But in that context – that of a year that was a GOP bloodbath – having Bachmann come in five points lower than she did in 2006, in a year that saw catastrophic GOP results and against a massive full-court out-of-district financial onslaught and that rare Ventura “Independence” Party candidate that was remotely palatable to Sixth District voters (the otherwise apocryphal lapsed Republican Bob Anderson, who may have been the first IP candidate since Jim Gibson to draw nearly as many GOP and DFL votes) is probably a sign of strength. 

But Mindemann brings up an interesting question; do “antics” affect voters’ appreciation of an incumbent that otherwise reflects their values as closely as Bachmann obviously does those of the Sixth District?  As I noted during the campaign, Bachmann is an unusual specimen in national politics – someone who leads with her chin and wears her heart on her sleeve.  She’s the polar opposite of politican “engineers” like Tim Pawlenty and Norm Coleman, people who figure all the angles and consequences before going public with a stance or position (which makes it sound more cynical than I intend; it’s a perfectly legitimate approach).  And – this is important – every single voter in the Sixth knew this long before Bachmann ran for Congress.  Bachmann was a prominent Senator, and before that an equally-prominent and outspoken eduation reform advocate.   And the thin film of Sixth voters who didn’t know about Bachmann got whatever they may have missed from the small cottage industry in hysterical Bachmannphobia that sprang up while the Representative was still a state senator.

So is there anyone, anywhere in the Sixth, who doesn’t know that Rep. Bachmann is a live wire who wears her heart on her sleeve on all subjects, and who hasn’t long since made up their mind, pro or con?   And if there are, does anyone seriously think that the inevitably-eroding fortunes of the Democrats, as the price of the Obama administration starts to sink in in rock-ribbed fiscal hawk sanctuaries like the Sixth, is going to skip the Sixth?

Add to that the power of incumbency – I mean, if you want to talk about “antics”, remember that people keep returning people like Maxine Waters, people whose “antics” passed “amusing” and swerved into “bizarre”, to office.

Bachmann may be vulnerable, some day, against someone.  But at this remove, I find it hard to believe 2010 will be the election where anyone proves it.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under 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.