Good News, Better News
By Mitch Berg
The good news: Hatch lost the governor race. The Napoleon of the Range’s political career would seem over – scuttled, in part, by the same raging temper that made the Attorney General’s office such a pleasant place:
But on Wednesday, Hatch acknowledged that in the final days, “there were hiccups galore. A lot of things went wrong. I put my gaffe right up at the top.”
His “hiccup” was an outburst in which he called a reporter either a “Republican whore” or “hack,” a temper flash that came after punishing attacks that followed Dutcher’s blunder.
In defending Dutcher, Hatch said he made matters even worse at one point by telling his attackers to quit picking on a woman.
“I was thinking, don’t pick on the lieutenant governor, pick on me,” Hatch said. “But at one point I said don’t pick on a woman. That was a dumb, dumb, dumb comment to make.”
Ultimately, he said, that may have cost him more votes among liberals in the metro area than his original outburst.
And therein lies the better news: Hatch’s defeat may have also rid us for good of Judi Dutcher, former uberliberal Republican who changed parties, thus becoming the Most Qualfied Woman For An Office as far as the DFL was concerned, earning endless soft-focus praise that was only recently outstripped by Barack Obama.
Hopefully we’re done with that, now.
Blois Olson (who is apparently on track to be the “Larry Jacobs of the 2020’s”) notes:
Blois Olson, a co-publisher of Politics in Minnesota and a DFL commentator, said most in the DFL were “too happy about other wins” to be upset about Hatch’s defeat or his e-mail.
And, he said, he wouldn’t count either Hatch or Dutcher out for future runs.
“If a cat has nine lives,” Olson said, “a politician has at least 10.”
Blois: I think the metaphor you’re looking for involves garlic and wooden stakes through the heart.
