To: Jim Klobuchar
From: Mitch Berg – guy with long memory
Re: You Are Full Of It

Mr. Klobuchar:

I got a kick from this bit from a flak piece you wrote for your daughter, Senator Klobuchar (quoted in Andy Aplikowki’s Residual Forces):

I still remember a time when campaigns were conversations – genuine debates between people of good will and mutual respect.

Baked wind.

I remember the condescension you used to heap on anyone that wasn’t DFL-blessed back in your days as a columnist, and on your old KSTP radio show.

Yo are – and I mean this with all due respect – full of crap.

That is all.

Immediately after Pawlenty withdrew from the presidential race, his name was getting bandied about on the GOP side (and in some cases, bandied right back).

Eric Ostermeier notes that out of twelve former Minnesota governors who’ve tried to run for Senate, only one has won the race:

Even presuming, for the moment, that Pawlenty does not need a breather from political campaigning after 10 years in the Minnesota House, eight years in the governor’s mansion, and the remainder seeking the GOP presidential nod, Minnesota history suggests taking on Klobuchar (or even Al Franken in 2014) is risky business.

A Smart Politics review of Minnesota electoral history over the last century finds that sitting or ex-governors were elected to the U.S. Senate just one time in 12 attempts since popular vote contests were introduced in the state in 1912.

The only Minnesota governor to go on and win a Senate election during the past century was Republican Edward Thye, who defeated DFLer Theodore Jorgenson by 19.1 points while serving in his second term as governor in 1946.

All of which is true – and an interesting read, as far as it goes.

And so was “The Eighth District is solid Blue, and has been for three generations”, this time a year ago.

The point?  Every election is unique. If things continue like they are, bikini car washes will have longer coat-tails than Barack Obama.  A Senator who’s actually helped deliver a good economy might just gain a few points on a Senator that’s  done…

…what?

Well, that may be A-Klo’s great advantage.  She’s been thoroughly innocuous in her five years in office; there really is no there, there.  She’s made no mistakes.

But in change elections, mistake-aversion and innocuity aren’t not always much insurance.  Ask Gil Gutknecht, George H.W. Bush and Gary Laidig.

Just saying – all political records stand, ’til they stop standing.  They we forget about them.

Question:  If you were storing a car in your garage for the winter, would you carry insurance on it?

If you’d discovered you didn’t read the Strib anymore, would you continue to pay for the subscription?

If you got an hour’s exercise a day by biking or running or swimming, would you pay for a gym membership?

No, no and probably not, I’m guessing.

Careful.  Award-winning journalist ® Karl Bremer might accuse you of driving without insurance, illiteracy and being out of shape…

…well, no.  That’s not quite right.  He’d write a piece on his blog Ripple in Stillwater with a headline like “Is Joe Schmo Driving Without Insurance?”, or “Is Mary Moe Illiterate?” or “Is Evonne Yeo Obese And Out Of Shape?”, listing the factoids and not a whole lot more.

One of the great plagues of the “alternative media” – and by that, I mean mostly the left-wing alternative media – is the “I’ll ask an inflammatory question – one with either no facts to back it up, or facts presented with no context that would help the uninformed that are my target audience decide whether it’s a valid quesiton – and let it dangle out there”.

It’s sort of like this classic South Park spoof of Glenn Beck…:

Which brings us to this piece from Bremer’s Ripple, in which he writes:

Throughout her political career, Michele Bachmann has rarely passed up an opportunity to burnish her lawyerly credentials by claiming that she’s a “tax litigation attorney.” And for almost as long, Bachmann hasn’t even been authorized to practice law in her home state of Minnesota.

Now, it appears that Bachmann’s license to practice law in Minnesota should not only be unauthorized, but suspended and placed on “not in good standing” status for failure to comply with the “Rules of the Supreme Court on Lawyer Registration.”…

…

This is only the latest in a long history of sloppy record-keeping, tardy legal filings and questionable campaign reports that litter Bachmann’s political career. Will anyone care enough to enforce the law this time?

You bet!

But since the allegations are coming from the award-winning journalist ® Karl Bremer, perhaps it’s not my place to check it out.  I’m no award winning journalist ® after all – I’m a mere uppity peasant.

So I wrote a couple of lawyer friends of mine; Joe Doakes of Como Park, and Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci (*).  And, for good measure, called the Minnesota Judicial Branch, which maintains the lists of lawyers that practice in Minnesota and, by the way, which Bremer cited.

And the answer I got?  To borrow a quote from Joe Pesci in the greatest movie ever made about the law in America, My Cousin Vinny, “Everything that guy just said is bullsh*t”.

Let’s break down Bremer’s charges, one by one:

“Suspended” Disbelief: Let’s go back to that last paragraph:

Now, it appears that Bachmann’s license to practice law in Minnesota should not only be unauthorized, but suspended and placed on “not in good standing” status for failure to comply with the “Rules of the Supreme Court on Lawyer Registration.”

Bremer writes this because Bachmann’s record with the Minnesota Judicial Branch reads “Not Authorized”.  Here, take a look.  It says she’s “Not Authorized Resident, Not Practicing in MN / Voluntarily Restricted (By Choice).

What does this mean?  I mean, to me – a mere uppity peasant – it appears that she may have taken her license out of “active” status to pursue another career for bit.   But what do I know?

Doakes – not an award-winning ® journalist, but a lawyer – explains:

Mr. Bremer doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He reminds me of the guy who has read the “to coin money” phrase in the Constitution, interprets it to mean the only valid money is gold coinage, and therefore refuses to pay his mortgage. In similarly erroneous fashion, reading the plain English words in the Rules governing lawyer licenses doesn’t mean he understands how the Rules are applied in real life.

 First, Ms. Bachman’s license to practice law has NOT lapsed – she has voluntarily self-limited her license precisely as provided by the Rules. She could un-self-limit her license at any time as provided in the Rules (notify the Court, pay a fee, catch up on classes).

Sort of like letting the insurance lapse on a car you keep stored; it doesn’t preclude reinstating the insurance and going back on the road.

Unless you’re a conservative and you wander into Karl Bremer’s attention span.

Second, the Rules provide several different categories of lawyers – some actively practicing law and some not – for the excellent reason that some people may want to take a break from representing clients day-to-day in order to do something else (missionary work, for example, or perhaps public service) [Or serve in Congress – Ed.] but also want to be able to resume practicing law later, without having to retake the Bar Exam. This regulatory scheme is designed to let lawyers “park” their licenses for a time. It’s perfectly legal and commonly used.

Another friend of mine, also an attorney, raised some eyebrows when she let her Minnesota license go inactive.  It seemed odd – except her firm was giving her nothing but cases in Iowa and the Dakotas.  It only made sense to keep her active licenses there, but keep her MN license inactive until she really needed it.  Does it mean she’s “not following the rules”, as Bremer would claim?

Rep. Bachmann, with her LL.D in Tax Law from William and Mary, practices a fairly abstruse flavor of law.  Since she’s not currentlytrying cases, the license renewal is, at this moment in her life, an unneeded extra complication and expense – especially since it’s a relatively simple matter to get it back should she need it again.

My pseudonymous lawyers aren’t good enough for you?  Fair enough; I called the Minnesota Judicial Branch, and the Board of Continuing Legal Education.  They confirmed it. “Lots of attorneys go inactive when they are out of state, not practicing, or not in a position to do their Continuing Legal Education” due to, say, being in Congress, said a MJB employee who asked not to be named.

Paid Up: Bremer wrote:

Lawyers licensed to practice law in Minnesota are required to register annually with the Lawyer Registration Office in the Minnesota Judicial Branch. They’re also required to pay an annual registration fee that varies depending on the lawyer’s active/inactive status, income level, residence and years in the profession.

And – mirabile dictu  – she paid her fee!  Check out her MJB record; third line down?  “Last Payment:  7/11/11”.

Joe Tucci – a lawyer and member of the Minnesota Bar – notes:

I would add that the dues you are required to pay when you are on voluntary restricted status are about $100 less than on active status. If you have no prospect of representing clients in your jurisdiction because you are working in a different career out of state (which also hinders your ability to keep up on your CLEs), it just makes sense to to go on voluntary restricted status.

Hm.

States Of Existence:  Remember when Bremer insisted that there is something in Bachmann’s status that is deeply prejudicial?

Now, it appears that Bachmann’s license to practice law in Minnesota should not only be unauthorized, but suspended and placed on “not in good standing” status for failure to comply with the “Rules of the Supreme Court on Lawyer Registration.”

He even quoted the letter of the law…:

“A lawyer or judge who fails to meet all of the criteria to be on either active or inactive status is placed on non-compliant status, and the right to practice law in this state is automatically suspended,” the Supreme Court Rules state. “A lawyer or judge on non-compliant status is not in good standing. A lawyer or judge on non-compliant status must not practice law in this state, must not hold out himself or herself as authorized to practice law, or in any manner represent that he or she is qualified or authorized to practice law while on non-compliant status. Any lawyer or judge who violates this rule is subject to all the penalties and remedies provided by law for the unauthorized practice of law in the State of Minnesota.”

Wait a minute – where on the record does it say that Bachmann is in any sort of “non-compliant status?”  Check for yourself!

If you can’t find anything but the phrase “Not Authorized to Practice”, join the club.  Doakes notes that there is nothign to Bremer’s claim but, well, Bremer being Bremer:

Third, the phrase “Not Authorized to Practice” is not as ominous as it sounds. It has no negative connotation. The Rule is binary – you’re either Authorized or you’re Not Authorized.

And Doakes offers something Bremer didn’t – context:

For comparison purposes, here’s Michelle Bachman’s information.

And here’s the information for [another prominent local attorney].

And here’s the information about former Court of Appeals Judge Rollie Amundson, who was convicted of stealing from his clients and sent to prison.

You’ll notice all their licenses both are listed as Not Authorized but for different reasons: Ms. Bachmann’s because she’s chosen to stop representing clients while she serves in government, Mr. Shadduck’s because he’s dead, and Mr. Amundson’s because he hasn’t paid his annual fees. “Not Authorized” doesn’t mean “bad lawyer;” it simply means “not authorized.”

Because award-winning journalists ® don’tneed to give complete, accurate context, I guess:

Where? Finally, Bremer attacked Bachmann’s attention to paperwork in re reporting her address:

The Supreme Court Rules also require that “Every lawyer or judge must immediately notify the Lawyer Registration Office of any change of postal address. Every lawyer or judge who elects to use the online registration system must immediately update their online registration profile to reflect any change of their postal address and email address.”

That rule is clearly referenced on the Minnesota Judicial Branch website on Updating Lawyer Registration.

Bachmann paid her most recent annual registration fee on July 11, 2011. Her address listed on her registration is 1801 Johnson Drive, Stillwater, MN. But Bachmann hasn’t lived at that address for nearly four years.

That would appear to put Bachmann in noncompliance with the Supreme Court Rules—not just this year, but for at least the past three years.

“A lawyer or judge who fails to meet all of the criteria to be on either active or inactive status is placed on non-compliant status, and the right to practice law in this state is automatically suspended,” the Supreme Court Rules state. “A lawyer or judge on non-compliant status is not in good standing. A lawyer or judge on non-compliant status must not practice law in this state, must not hold out himself or herself as authorized to practice law, or in any manner represent that he or she is qualified or authorized to practice law while on non-compliant status. Any lawyer or judge who violates this rule is subject to all the penalties and remedies provided by law for the unauthorized practice of law in the State of Minnesota.”

 

Doakes, however, notes that Bremer is just making stuff up now:

Fourth, I know the plain English words in the Rule say you must update even an Inactive registration but nobody updates an Inactive registration while it’s still Inactive; you update your registration when it goes Active again, when you want to resume practice. Take another look at Mr. Shadduck and Mr. Amundson’s addresses – they use their last address from the time they last were in Active practice. That’s the common and widely accepted practice and Ms. Bachmann is following it.

And if that were not the case? Well, Bremer’s gonna be one busy little award-winning ® wannabe muckracker:

Finally, to address the major point of Mr. Bremer’s column, the phrase “postal address” in the Rule does not require you to list your HOME mailing address, the place where you eat and sleep, but only to list SOME mailing address at which the Court can send notices to you. In this age of wackos with instant Internet access to public records [heh heh – Ed.], NOBODY gives the home address where they actually spend their days and nights, on their registration.

[Ramsey County Judge] Robert Awsumb doesn’t list his home address.

Nor does the leading personal injury lawyer in the state and founder of Schwebel, Goetz and Sieben.

Nor even ordinary government bureaucrats, such as the Attorney General, Lori Swanson.

And see United States Senator Amy Klobuchar, another Minnesota lawyer now serving in Congress.

Swanson and Klobuchar? Scofflaws?

Er, Karl Bremer?  You’ve got some wrongdoing to expose!  Our Attorney General and Senior Senator should both be chastised, shunned, and disbarred, by the logic in your own story!

You get right on that!

Doakes concludes:

Not Authorized to Practice – Voluntarily Restricted – and showing an address where she doesn’t actually eat and sleep on a daily basis (Senator Klobuchar lives somewhere closer to her job in Washington, DC, obviously, and simply maintains this condo in Minnesota for residency purposes). Nothing wrong with that – perfectly common practice for lawyers in government service. Such as Ms. Bachmann.

Mr. Bremer may have read the Rules governing lawyer registration, but he doesn’t understand them. Oh, and he still has to pay his mortgage, too.

The moral of the story?  If it’s the Twin Cities award-winning ® leftymedia, and they’re writing about conservatives?  Distrust, then verify.

Then, almost inevitably, distrust some more.

(And the very nice lady from the Minnesota Judicial Branch?  She confirmed everything Doakes and Tucci said).

UPDATE:  Another rep from the Continuing Legal Education office called back.  “Someone who voluntarily suspends their license but keeps their fees paid up is in good standing”.

As opposed to, y’know, bad standing.

(more…)

Why don’t you ever put liberals on your show?  We do.  Ed and I have interviewed Erik Black, Dane Smith, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, and my old friend, Erik “The Transit Geek” Hare.  All of them but Rybak at least once (and we may extend another invite to Hizzoner).

Beyond that?  I have standing invtations out to…:

1. Senator Amy Klobuchar (although finding an actual media contact at her office is always a challenge))
2. Senate candidate Al Franken
3. Rep. Keith Ellison
4. Rep. Betty McCollum (who, let’s be honest, doesn’t make even a token effort to be press-friendly)

While Ed and I are overt, partisan conservatives, we’ll put the level of civility and respect in our interviews up against anything you hear on MPR (and better than NPR; we’re honest about our biases – hello, Nina! – and neither Ed nor I has ever wished a death by AIDS on anyone).

And of course, our producer Tommy has standing orders to jump liberal callers to the front of the caller queue when we’re taking calls, which is pretty much always.  All you have to be is on-topic, or off-topic in a way we’re interested in discussing.

What about Michele Bachmann?  Do you think she’ll be the nominee?  Her surge in the early – let me say again, early – running is pretty impressive,  It shows that the Tea Party has gone from demonstrating to voting.  That’s a good thing.  So does Michele and her organization pack the gear to go all the way to the nomination?  I have no idea.  That’s why the nomination season is so fun to watch.  Who’s gonna end up on top?  More later…

No, I don’t mean why don’t you put liberal pols and wonks on the air.  I mean why don’t you put liberal bloggers on the air to debate with you?  Well, if there’s one that has something to say, that is something that’d interest and entertain our audience – which, remember, is national as well as regional – go ahead and pitch Ed and I.   We’re open to just about anything, provided we think it’d be good radio.

And by “good radio”, I mean entertaining and informative.  The sad fact is that general, “throw out a topic and let’s go at it” debates are really dodgy as radio entertainment.  Still, even abstruse ideological whizzing matches are kinda spotty when it comes to being entertaining radio – wonks love ’em, audiences usually don’t, although to be fair the Patriot’s audience, especially the Northern Alliance’s, is much more receptive than most – but anything’s possible, which is why I say “throw us a pitch”.  There’s not much in radio I haven’t done (other than “get rich); I’m game – but it can’t suck.

How can you say the shutdown was a victory for the GOP?  The Republican borrowed money!  Yeah, that particular DFL chanting point is a funny one.  First – no conservative is happy about the “borrowing”.  But we’re borrowing from ourselves.  Not China.  Not our children’s future.

Second – you do know Dayton’s “education shift” was going to be a lot bigger than the GOP’s.  You do know that.  Right?

No, Merg, I mean why don’t you let me, a “progressive” blogger with a history of bellowing, browbeating and namecalling, into your studio, so you can’t turn me off?  Hm.  Intrigueing offer.

I mean, I kinda spelled it out above.  If you have a subject that’s topical, interesting and potentially entertaining, we can talk.

If, on the other hand, you’re one of those leftybloggers who’s good for about one round of factual discussion – say, until your chanting points from Media Matters and “Crooks and Liars” and Mike Malloy get debunked – and you turn straight to the browbeating and the name-calling?  Well, the only real entertainment value would be in the whole “mocking your intellectual impotence” thing, and we don’t need you in the studio to do that.

And since you, not I, said that I “couldn’t shut you off”, that kinda implies the fun would end there.  Because yes, I certainly could!  It’s called a microphone switch, and I control it!  One of the key rules of hosting a talk show is “stay in control”.  Callers and guests don’t control the show – the host does!  So if a guest (hypothetically) veers from “entertaining” to “not entertaining” for whatever reason?  It’s done!  We move on!  And while it’s a fuzzy gray line between “mockery” and “not entertaining any more”, rest assured we’ll know it when we see it.

So stick with “pitching us a story”.  You might learn something.

As the MN GOP gets ready for the push to topple Amy Klobuchar, the question is “who will go for the Senate endorsement?”

Sitting here at the CD4 convention at Jimmy’s in Vadnais Heights, we are getting our answer.

That’s right, Minnesota.  Harold Shudlick is running again!

Senator Amy Klobuchar, up for election in a very short year, is sandbagging her constituents on the Senate Dems’ proposed repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act.

From the Minnesota Birkeydependent:

Sen. Amy Klobuchar is one of only two Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee who have not signed on to a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, and that committee is only two votes away from passing the bill out of committee. Klobuchar and Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl are seen as the two key votes on the committee and both have said they haven’t decided which way they will vote when the bill is taken up in the coming weeks.

Kohl, too?  Why would he sandbag his gay constituents?

Oh, that. So if a Wisconsin Democrat is going slow on DOMA repeal, does that mean maybe Wisconsin isn’t sliding back into the blue camp over Walker?

It is rather important for DOMA repeal that A-Klo get on board:

Minnesota’s Sen. Al Franken, who also sits on the 18-member judiciary committee, is a sponsor of the bill. In order to pass the committee, the bill needs 10 votes, and eight senators on that committee are already sponsors. Eight other members of the committee are Republicans not likely to vote for the bill. That leaves two votes unaccounted for, those of Klobuchar and Kohl.

Naturally gays, like feminists, don’t actually expect liberal legislators to do what they said they would during the election.

Or do they?

The Courage Campaign, a proponent of the bill, contacted Klobuchar and Kohl late last week.

OutFront Minnesota, the state’s largest LGBT advocacy group, responded to the news in a Facebook posting: “Who knew Amy Klobuchar hasn’t taken a position on the repeal of DOMA? It’ll probably come as a surprise to thousands of voters (and donors).”

Hm.  Well, we’ll see, won’t we?

Minnesota Public Radio’s Mark Zdechlik notes that Minnesota could very well see a lot more nail-biter races, because…

…well, we all know how this works, don’t we?  Minnesota is more polarized, and the parties are more extreme.  Right?

Analysts say elections have become so close because Republicans and Democrats share almost the same number of supporters and that both sides are becoming more extreme and more polarized.

And who’s the source?

You only get one guess!  Hurry!  (Emphasis added)

University of Minnesota Political Science Professor Larry Jacobs…

Oh, who the hell else?

I wonder – does the Humphrey Institute give some sort of spiff to reporters for quoting Jacobs in every single story about politics at any level anywhere in Minnesota?

If every single news outlet – MPR, WCCO, the Strib, the PiPress, the MinnPost – quoted Mitch Pearlstein of the conservative Center of the American Experiment, do you think someone would squawk that they were adopting a partisan point of view?

So given the largely  monochromatic, left-of-center pedigrees of the Humphrey Center’s faculty, why does this monopoly on sourcing in the Twin Cities media pass unmentioned?

…said politics in Minnesota has been reduced to something akin to tribal warfare; most Democrats and Republicans are dug-in so deep they wouldn’t even consider supporting a candidate from the other side.

“You’ve got kind of the Hatfields on one side and the McCoys in another,” Jacobs said.

Far better, to some in the Twin Cities “intelligentsia”, to return to the seventies, when all politicians came to us in generic yellow boxes with black lettering, all spouting more or less the same center-left institutional twaddle?  When you had your choice between John Marty and Arne Carlson – ergo no choice at all?

Jacobs said this year’s governor’s race is a good example of the polarization. He said that Republican Party candidate Tom Emmer was probably the most conservative statewide candidate we’ve seen nominated on the Republican side in the state’s history, or at least since World War II.

They always put this like it’s a bad thing.

He was nominated – they know that, right?  It’s not as if Karl Rove flew in and gave the guy the nomination personally.

With the exception of DFL Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s lop-sided 2006 victory, the past three statewide elections have shown core Republicans and Democrats in Minnesota are evenly split.

Because winning with a majority has become so difficult, Jacobs said election strategy in Minnesota has become all about ripping the opposition and appealing to the base.

And, um, trying to scare off independents by showing that your guy is really ahead, appealing to the Bandwagon Effect.  Right, Dr. Jacobs?

Question:  If I had access to Lexis/Nexis, and could divide the number of stories on politics in the Strib, PiPress, WCCO, MPR and the MinnPost featuring quotes by Dr. Jacobs by the total number of stories on politics, would the result be over or under 25%?

Franken and Klobuchar vote for pork:

Today’s cloture vote on an amendment from Sen. Coburn to ban earmarks from legislation in the U.S. Senate failed while both of Minnesota’s Senators voiced their lack of concern over pork-barrel spending by voting “no”. A similar measure was passed recently by the House of Representatives and the Coburn motion would have banned earmark spending from being attached to bills through 2013.

Are they- especially A-Klo – banking that the electoral climate will swing back to mindless Obamamania by 2012?   That next year’s tax hikes will leave people unperturbed, even here in Minnesota?

Or is the spell of boundless power to spend other peoples’ money that powerful?

It’s almost become a cliche, among conservative observers of Minnesota elections.  You’re supporting a Republican.  You know the race is close.  You can feel the race is close.

And the final Humprhey and Minnesota polls come out, and the DFLer leads by an utterly absurd margin – like this year’s Humphrey Institute Poll, which showed a 12 point race…

…which, two days later, came in a statistical dead heat, with much less than half a point separating the two candidates.

And yet the Minnesota and Humphrey Institute polls have their defenders.

———-

Remember the 2006 Senate race?  Mark Kennedy vs. Amy Klobuchar?

The Minnesota poll did pretty well, all in all.  The final Minnesota poll showed Mark Kennedy getting 34 points, to Amy Klobuchar’s 55.  The race ended up being 58.06 to just shy of 38.    The Minnesota poll showed both candidates doing a little worse than they eventually wound up doing – Klobuchar a little worse, in fact.

Defenders of the Minnesota Poll – media people and lefty pundits – chimed in.  “See?  The Minnesota poll is OK” or at the very least “The Minnesota Poll is an equal-opportunity incompetent”.

But if you’re a cynic – and when it comes to the Minnesota and Humphrey Polls, I most certainly am – the answer there is obvious; if you accept that the polls exist to help one party or another out of close jams (and let’s just say I think there’s a case to be made), then the real question is “how do the polls stack up when it really counts – during the close elections“?

I took a look at the Minnesota poll’s history with close races – Gubernatorial, Presidential and Senate races that ended up less than five points apart – over the past 66 years.   Since 1944 in these races – twenty of them – the DFL ended up getting 47.69% to the GOP’s 47.57% in the final elections.  The Minnesota Poll has shown the DFL getting 44.3% to 43.28% in the final pre-election poll.  Both numbers are very close, of course.  The Minnesota Poll has underrepresented Republicans by an average of 4.3 points, the DFL by 3.39.  So while the poll underrepresented Republicans in 14 of 20 races, it was by less than a point, on average.

But that’s over 66 years.  And if you recall from episode 1 of this series, the Minnesota Poll used to systematically undercount the DFL.  But long story short – looking at the poll’s entire history, things are fairly close.

When you look at the Rob Daves era at the Minnesota poll, though, things change.

In close races (<5 point final difference) during the Rob Daves era, the GOP has actually gotten a slightly higher average vote total – 46.77% to 46.48% – in actual elections.  But the final Minnesota Poll has shown the DFL outpolling the GOP 43.33% to 40.78%.    Republicans come up an average of six points light in the final Minnesota Poll before the election, with DFLer finishing a little over three points short – nearly a 2-1 margin in underrepresentation.

In other words, in close races the Minnesota Poll has shown the GOP doing six points worse than they actually did, compared to three points for the DFL.  And the average Minnesota Poll has shown the DFL leading the GOP, when in fact the races have been mixed, with move Republican winners than in the previous 20-odd years of Minnesota history.

If you are an idealist, you could think that  it’s just a statistical anomaly.  To which the cynic notes that of eight close races, the GOP has been undercounted by less than the DFL exactly once.

The cynic might continue that it’s entirely possible that the Minnesota Poll doesn’t systematically short Republicans in close elections.  But given that the poll shorts Republicans in races that end up less than five points apart by an average of considerablymore than five points, the cynic would ask “if the Minnesota Poll were designed to keep Republicans home from the polls out of pure discouragement, how would it be any different than what we have now?”

Well, it could look like the Humphrey Poll.

Because the Humprey Poll is worse.  Granted, it’s a smaller sample size – there’ve been four “close” races (2004 Presidential, and the 2006 Governor,  2008 Senate and 2010 Governor races, which were/are very close indeed).

But in those race, the DFL won by an average of 45.43% to 44.7% (most of the gap coming from the four-point 2004 Presidental race; the other three had/have tallies within a point in difference).   But the final HHH poll showed the DFL/Democratic candidate winning by an average of seven points – 42.5 to 35.75%.  The DFL, is underrepresented in the HHH’s final pre-election poll by just a shade under three points; GOP is underpolls its real-life results by an average of almost nine points.

It’s possible that this is an honest error.  It is possible that the Humphrey Institute really, really believes that they have a likely voter model that accurately reflects Minnesota.  Perhaps it even does; maybe Minnesota really is a land of people who answer “DFL” on polls but come racing over to the GOP on election day.  But again – if the Humphrey Institute intended to help the DFL and keep Republicans home, it’s hard to see what they’d do differently.

Especially given the media’s reaction to these polls.

More on Friday.

———-

The series so far:

Monday, 11/8: Introduction.

Wednesday, 11/10: Polling Minnesota – The sixty-six year history of the Strib’s Minnesota Poll. It offers some surprises.

Friday, 11/12: Daves, Goliath:  Rob Daves ran the Minnesota Poll from 1987 ’til 2007.  And the statistics during that era have a certain…consistency?

Monday, 11/15: Hubert, You Magnificent Bastard, I Read Your Numbers!:  The Humphrey Institute has been polling Minnesota for six years, now.  And the results are…interesting.  In the classic Hindi sense of the term.

Wednesday, 11/17: Close Shaves: Close races are the most interesting.  For everyone.  Including you, if you’re reading this series.

Friday, 11/19: The Hay They Make: So what does the media and the Twin Cities political establishment do with these numbers?

Monday, 11/22: A Million’s A Crowd:  Attention, statisticians:  Raw data!  Suitable for cloudsourcing!

Hasn’t the Twin Cities media – especially the “alternative”, liberal version – been barbering for years about how Rep. Michele Bachmann just doesn’t do “mainstream” media?

Why, yes – they have! 

But – did I hear Michele Bachmann doing an extended interview with Cathy Wurzer on MPR’s Morning Edition this morning?

Why, yes I did!

Someone tell Andy Birkey!

No, don’t.  Rather, tell Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, all of whom I’ve invited onto the Northern Alliance Radio Network in the past two years, none of whom have so much as responded.  (In the interest of completeness, note that Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak appeared, as did “Growth and Justice” majordomo Dane Smith.  We had a great time talking with both of ’em, because – shibboleths about conservative talk radio aside – Ed Morrissey and I will put our cross-aisle interviews up against anything in the commercial or public media today in terms of civility and fairness (while allowing that we are, in fact, conservative).

So whatdya say, Reps Ellison and McCollum?  How about it, Senators Franken and Klobuchar? 

For that matter, we’ve had an invite out to Common Cause Minnesota for six weeks now – submitted on this blog, via email, via a voice mail message, and on Twitter.  Not a word.

How about Denise Cardinal of “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”?  Perhaps she could come on the show and discuss the Dayton-family-finance slime campaign she orchestrated?

For that matter, howzabout we get an invite to Mark Dayton?  I’ve heard Tom Emmer do a center-left show; d’ya suppose Dayton’s got the gumption to go across the aisle…

…like Representative Bachmann did?

The Hubert H. Humphrey Institute is a combination public-policy study program and think tank at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.  Named for the patriarch of the Democratic Farmer-Labor party – a forties-era amalgamation of traditional Democrats and neo-wobbly Farmer-Labor Union members whose Stalinist elements Humphrey famously purged in the mid-forties – the institution serves as a clearinghouse of soft-left chanting points and a retirement program for mostly left-of-center politicians and heelers.

The Institute has been doing general public opinion polling for years; in 2004, in conjunction with Minnesota Public Radio, they dove into the horserace game.

Let’s just sum up their performance in each of the five Presidential, Gubernatorial and Senate races they’ve polled in that time:

2004 Presidential Race

• HHH Poll:  Kerry 43, Bush 37
• Actual Election Results: Kerry 51, Bush 47
• Bush underrepresented by 10.61, Kerry by 8.09.

2006 Gubernatorial Race]

• HHH Poll: Hatch 45, Pawlenty 40
• Actual Election Results: Pawlenty 46.45.
• Pawlenty underrepresented by six, Hatch polled accurately.

2006 Senate Race

• HHH Poll: Klobuchar 54, Kennedy 34
• Actual Election Results: Klobuchar 58.06, Kennedy 37.94
• Kennedy underpolled by 3.94, Klobuchar by 4.06 – but it was a blowout.  We’ll come back to this.

2008 Presidential Election

• HHH Poll: Obama 56, Mccain 37
  
• Actual Election Results: Obama 54.2, McCain 44.
• Obama overrepresented almost two points; McCain, almost seven points under. A ten point race was portrayed as a 20 point landslide.

2008 US Senate Race

• HHH Poll: Franken 41, Coleman 37
• Actual Election Results: Franken by 41.99 to 41.98.
• Franken underrepresented by less than a point; Coleman, by almost five.  A tie race was portayed as a convincing five points beat-down.

2010 Governor Race

• HHH Poll: Dayton 41, Emmer 29.
• Actual Election: Dayton 43.63, Emmer 43.21, recount in progress.
• A tie race was depicted as a 12 point blowout.

A polling guru will say that these gross inaccuracies are a function of the Humphrey’s likely voter model – which for whatever reason assumed in each case that Democrats were much more likely to vote than Republicans, and likely to make up a greater portion of the electorate.

And yet the Humphrey Institute’s heuristics – the procedural, institutional and methodological rules by which institutions develop intelligence about things like voter behavior – seem to be stuck, for whatever reason, in the eighties.  The average HHH poll shows Republican candidates to be polling over five and a half points lower than Democrats in their real-life election performances.

Coincidence?

In five of the six races covered above, the errors in measurement underrepresented the GOP.  It’s an figure lower than that of the “Minnesota Poll” only because they’ve been in business sixty years fewer than the Strib’s poll.

Why would this be?

More next week.

In our next installment: I’ve shown you the behavior of both polls in horseraces across the board.  But a particularly interesting bit of behavior comes out if you throw out the blowouts – the 30 point massacre in the 1994 Governor race, the 20 points slaughter in the 2006 Senate contest – and focus on the tight races.

More on Wednesday.

———-

\The series so far:

Monday, 11/8: Introduction.

Wednesday, 11/10: Polling Minnesota – The sixty-six year history of the Strib’s Minnesota Poll. It offers some surprises.

Friday, 11/12: Daves, Goliath:  Rob Daves ran the Minnesota Poll from 1987 ’til 2007.  And the statistics during that era have a certain…consistency?

Monday, 11/15: Hubert, You Magnificent Bastard, I Read Your Numbers!:  The Humphrey Institute has been polling Minnesota for six years, now.  And the results are…interesting.  In the classic Hindi sense of the term.

Wednesday, 11/17: Close Shaves: Close races are the most interesting.  For everyone.  Including you, if you’re reading this series.

Friday, 11/19: The Hay They Make: So what does the media and the Twin Cities political establishment do with these numbers?

Monday, 11/22: A Million’s A Crowd:  Attention, statisticians:  Raw data!  Suitable for cloudsourcing!

Rob Daves took over the Minnesota Poll in 1987.

Rob Daves

I have never met Rob Daves.  Either, to the best of my knowledge, has anyone else.  I don’t know that his alt-media bete noir, Scott Johnson, has even met him, despite not a few requests for interviews.

I have no idea what Rob Daves thinks, believes, wants, says or does.  I know nothing about his personal life, and I really don’t want or need to.  For all I know, he’s a perfectly wonderful human being.

But for a 20 year period under his direction, the Minnesota Poll turned into an epic joke.

How epic?

The numbers don’t lie.

———-

During the Rob Daves years, party politics in Minnesota skittered all over the map.  The governors office started DFL, changed hands, and maybe have changed back last week – we’ll see.  The Reagan/Bush 41 era seesawed to Clinton, then Dubya, and now Obama; both Senate seats started Republican; both switched to the DFL, eventually.

There has, in short, been a lot of variety, at least in terms of the Party ID winning the various elections.

But the Minnesota Poll has been oddly homogenous.

Throughout the Rob Daves era, the Democratic or DFL candidate in Presidential, Gubernatorial and Senate races has gotten an average of 45.68% of the vote, to 45.21% for the GOP.  That’s very, very close.

Some of the races have been blowouts – Amy Klobuchar’s 20 point drubbing of Mark Kennedy, Arne Carlson’s 30 point hammering of John Marty – and some, like our 2008 Senate and 2010 Governor races, have been (or still are) painfully close.

But you’d never know it from the Minnesota poll. The average vote totals – between the blowouts and upsets and squeakers – during Daves’ 1987-2007 tenure favored the DFL, barely, by 45.98 to 45.34%.  But the Minnesota Polls released just before all those elections showed the population favoring the DFL by 43.33 to 39.89%.

And of 18 total contests, the polling inaccuracies skewed in the direction of the DFL in 15.   The average skew toward the DFL came to almost three percentage points.

When you break things out, the differences get wider; in the five Presidential elections, the Minnesota Poll discerned a 49.67 to 36% DFL lead; the actual results were 50.13 to 41.64%.  The Minnesota Poll underrepresented the GOP by an average of 5.64% in Presidential elections during the Daves years.   The Strib Poll showed every single GOP candidate coming up short of his actual election performance:  George HW Bush polled 3.80% light; Dole, 7.00%;  Dubya, 8.50 and 6.61; McCain also polled seven points under his real performance.  The Democrats, on the other hand, seemed to be polled fairly accurately; the average error poll  and election for Democratic presidential candidates was less than half a point.

The Senate races are a little closer – the Republicans underperform the election results 4.29% to 3.14%, a difference of 1.15% under their election results, which isn’t very significant – if you just look at raw numbers.  Well come back to that next Wednesday.

In the Gubernatorial races during the Daves years, though, the polling results were pretty lockstep. In gubernatorial races since 1987, the GOP has outpolled the DFL by an average of 46.77 to 38.91% – including one huge blowout (1994) and several squeakers.  But the Minnesota Poll has shown Minnesotans’ preferences at 40.17 to 36.67 in favor of the GOP.  Republicans’ performance was underpolled by 6.6% in the Minnesota poll – that of the DFL by only 2.24%.  The Minnesota poll showed Minnesotans underselecting Republicans by almost triple the margin of the actual elections.

A classic – and large – example was the 2002 Governor race.  The election-eve Minnesota Poll showed Pawlenty tipping Moe by 35-32.  The real margin was 44-36.  While the poll oversampled Independence Party candidate Tim Penny by a fairly impressive margin, the fact is that while the final MN Poll undershot Moe’s support by 4%, it underrepresented Pawlenty’s by nine solid points.

All in all, of the 20 Presidential, Senate and Gubernatorial races during the Daves era, 16 of them showed the Minnesota Poll underpolling the GOP by a greater degree than the DFL.

And that’s just counting all the races.

———-

Daves was let go at the Strib in 2007.  The Minnesota Poll was taken over by “Princeton Research Study Group”, which also does polling for Newsweek (whose polling is generally considered atrocious).

The 2008 races were very different, of course; the Senate race was a virtual tie, while Obama beat McCain handily.

But the day before the election, the Minnesota poll said McCain was polling just 37%; he ended up with 44%.  It overestimated Obama’s support by under a point, calling him at 55% when he got 54.2%.  The Minnesota Poll sandbagged Mac by seven points.

And Franken v. Coleman?   The day before the election, the poll showed Coleman almost four points below his actual performance (38% versus 41.98) ; it nailed Franken almost dead-on (42% i the poll, 41.99% by the time the recount was over).

PRSA showed both GOP candidates performing drastically off their real pace on election eve.

And three weeks ago, a week before the gubernatorial election, the Minnesota Poll showed Emmer at 34%; he got 43.21%.  Nine points better than the Minnesota poll indicated.

The upshot?  Of the 20 total election contests in the Rob Daves and PRSA eras, the Minnesota Poll has underpolled GOP support in 17 – 85% – of those races.

And PRSA polling has, on average, underpolled the GOP by 6.12% in those three elections.   In other words, PRSA’s errors have favored the DFL to the tune of six points – which is more than the three-plus points of the Rob Daves era.

One might think that random statistics would scatter on both sides of the middle more or less equally.  And in the first 42 years of the Minnesota poll, in aggregate, they did, as we showed Wednesday.

But during the Daves years, and continuing with PRSA, the errors developed a consistency – shorting Republicans – and grew in magnitude.

———-

Of course, those averages hide some big swings; some races in those averages were real blowouts.

It’s been my theory that the Minnesota Poll’s “peculiarities” are most pronounced during close elections.

We’ll test that out next Wednesday, when we’ll examine races that were decided by the proverbial cat’s whisker.

First – Monday – we’ll meet the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute Poll.

———-

The series so far:

Monday, 11/8: Introduction.

Wednesday, 11/10: Polling Minnesota – The sixty-six year history of the Strib’s Minnesota Poll. It offers some surprises.

Friday, 11/12: Daves, Goliath:  Rob Daves ran the Minnesota Poll from 1987 ’til 2007.  And the statistics during that era have a certain…consistency?

Monday, 11/15: Hubert, You Magnificent Bastard, I Read Your Numbers!:  The Humphrey Institute has been polling Minnesota for six years, now.  And the results are…interesting.

Wednesday, 11/17: Close Shaves: Close races are the most interesting.  For everyone.  Including you, if you’re reading this series.

Friday, 11/19: The Hay They Make: So what does the media and the Twin Cities political establishment do with these numbers?

Monday, 11/22: A Million’s A Crowd:  Attention, statisticians:  Raw data!  Suitable for cloudsourcing!

The DFL – and their national benefactors – went all-in on Tarryl Clark against their bete noir, Michele Bachmann.

Clark is getting clobbered. Hammered. Beaten like a cheap steak. She’s going to lose by 10 points, and I actually starting to think I’m being conservative.

And the regional left is starting to have second thoughts about their monomania.

A few weeks back Dave Schultz – former head of überliberal “Common Cause Minnesota” and reliably lefty professor at Hamline University – bemoaned the imbalance of the spending:

There is virtually no chance the Democrats will defeat Bachmann. I have argued this for months. Bachmann’s sixth district seat is apportioned approximately six points ahead for Republicans. She is a conservative candidate in a conservative district. She is the Tea Party leader in a Tea Party GOP year. She fits her district well and has already survived several attempts to knock her off in previous years (most recently ’08) more favorable to Democrats. Democrats would be better served to wait until 2012, after reapportionment, when new lines may change the Sixth and make it more competitive, or when Bachmann makes the foolish move to run for the senate againt Klobuchar and gets waxed by her.

Yet Democrats cannot resist themselves. Democrats from around the country are pouring millions into this race and yet there is no evidence that Clark is catching up or gaining ground. Yes, Democrats have to challenge her and force her to campaign at home so that she does not travel and fundraise and campaign for others. But from a cost-benefit perspective, pouring millions here makes no sense. Sure there might be a symbolic victory in knocking her off, but with Democrats having to defend so many seats and having to decide where to best spend, resources need to be placed where it makes the most sense. That is why Minnesota’s Third District makes more sense.

Nick Coleman – still writing for the Strib (who knew?)  notes the dearth of attention paid to Shelly Madore, whom John Kline is going to beat by eleventy billion points  in the Second District next month:

The media either go gaga or go to sleep. In the northern suburbs, it’s gaga all the way: Republican Michele Bachmann and her opponent, Democrat Tarryl Clark, have drawn donations and attention from near and far. Still, just 40 percent of likely voters supported Clark in a recent poll, and the New York Times’ influential “FiveThirtyEight” website gives Clark tiny 1.2 percent odds of beating Bachmann.

It’s hard not to conclude that most of the attention to Minnesota’s Sixth District race is due to the flamboyant incumbent, not her worthy challenger. But at least Bachmann has agreed to debate Clark three times. That will allow voters to consider their choices and balance their view of the candidates, evaluating their message and their performance. However the race turns out, that’s good for the voters.

John Kline isn’t about to let that kind of thing happen in the Second District

But then, either is Keith Ellison in the Fifth.  Or Betty McCollum in the Fourth – yet.  Or, as far as I know, Oberstar in the Eighth, or Peterson in the Seventh.   Because candidates who perceive themselves – rightly or wrongly – to have insurmountable leads realize – rightly or wrongly – they have nothing to gain and plenty to lose by debating dark-horse challengers.  It’s a testimony to Bachmann’s love of the scrap and the fact that she just plan destroys Clark on facts (and the fact that both parties perceive the race as at least hypothetically competitive) that she’s debating at all.

At any rate – by November 3, the DFL will have wasted millions trying to unseat the, effectively, un-unseatable Bachmann.

Would the solid, long-term incumbent John Kline have been vulnerable to the skittery Madore?

Would the fringey, netroots-y Meffert have had a shot against an Erik Paulsen that seems to be growing more conservative as his district seems to follow suit?

We won’t know this year.

Cha ching.

They never learn.

It’s been a little over two years since Andy Birkey of the Minnesota “Independent” first sniffed that Rep. Michele Bachmann “only does sympathetic media”.

Of course, it makes perfect sense for Bachmann; she represents a conservative district; talking with hostile media (and when it comes to the Twin Cities media, “hostile” is not just a rhetorical term) makes as much sense as a frontrunner looking at a comfortable 30-40 point margin agreeing to debate a non-entity opponent.

Still, let’s accept at face value the proposition that candidates talking with media that oppose them is a good thing.

Two years ago, after Birkey wrote his grand attack on Bachmann, I figured I’d see if the pancake was brown on both sides.  I contacted RT Rybak, Chris Coleman, Dave Thune, Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, and asked them to come on the Northern Alliance with Ed and I – and wrote about the experience.

Summary:  Except for Rybak – with whom Ed and I had an excellent, civil, respectful, serious-yet-fun discussion focusing on actual issues rather than the “ambush the bad guy” crap that Bachmann can usually expect – none of them did us the courtesy of so much as a brusque brush-off.

The Clark campaign must be getting desperate to make something stick, or at least to get donors in the Twin Cities to pony up; the story’s baaaaaack.  According to Paul Schmelzer at the Mindy, Bachmann snubbed CNN:

“She says God called her to run for Congress, so rushing to the media outlets that transmit her views without question is a priority, but for members of the press who might have some harder questions? Different treatment — because Bachmann thinks some in the media are out to get her,” says Tuchman.

“Speed-walking in heels through political mud,” Bachmann is shown rushing between interviews with conservative media including KTLK’s Jason Lewis, Christian radio station KKMS and The Patriot.

So they got completely shunned?

CNN is shooed away by Bachmann’s handlers, but later she agrees to an interview, but only two questions.

Ah.  So Bachmann, who leads Taxin’ Tarryl Clark by nine points and will likely win by at least ten, didn’t shut CNN out; she merely didn’t treat them with the deference to which they’re accustomed.

But in the interest of getting the whole story out there: during the run-up to the Minnesota State Fair and our long string of extra weekday broadcasts, I contacted the DFL about getting Mike Hatch Mark Dayton, Yvette Prettner-Solon, Mark Ritchie, Mike Hatch Lorie Swanson, Rebecca Otto, Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum on the show, for the same, exact, respectful-but-pointed interview we gave RT Rybak.

The DFL roundly turned us down at every turn.

So let me get this straight; the GOP is wrong for not facing hostile media, but Democrats are…

…well, still universally just as gutless as the Mindy and CNN want people to think Bachmann is.

Nick Coleman, longtime bete noir/kicktoy of regional conservative bloggers,  is back on the beach:

The message was eloquently written, but crystal clear. For one year now, Coleman had been a senior fellow at the school’s Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy & Civic Engagement. He’d tacked his title onto his opinion columns in the Star Tribune each Sunday. Now the school wanted him gone.

Budget challenges had caused the school to reconsider the fellows program, wrote Joe DesJardins, the school’s vice provost. But the real reason for Coleman’s ouster was spelled out in DesJardins’s carefully chosen next words.

“Unfortunately, many of our alumni and friends interpreted your by-line as a Senior Fellow of the McCarthy Center as an implicit SJU endorsement of the opinions you express,” DesJardins wrote. “This has brought St. John’s into the political sphere in ways that we had not anticipated and think is not in St. John’s best long-term interest.”

I’ll give Mr. DesJardins the benefit of a doubt; perhaps he was one of the monks, and he’d swore a vow of never reading the Strib, just like most otherwise independent-thinking and well-informed Minnesotans.  Perhaps he had no idea about Coleman’s decades-long career as a DFL cheerleader, his “Air America Minnesota” talk show, and his history.

And it’s not like he had any road to Damascus moments while working for “Big Mac”; he pretty much romped and played in familiar territory, cheerleading the DFL establishment and catcalling the usurpers.

We’re not done with far-fetched:

“I do think something is out of whack when he’s a part of it and a liberal columnist can’t be,” Coleman says of Kennedy.

“I do think something is out of whack when he’s a part of it and a liberal columnist can’t be,” Coleman says of Kennedy.

It makes it sound like the termination was political.  Which might make more sense if Amy Klobuchar weren’t giving the center’s next lecture, and the center blog didn’t have a subtle but distinct patina of Obama worship.

What Coleman didn’t know was that efforts to unseat him from St. John’s had been brewing for months.

Bob Labat, a 1959 St. John’s grad who has donated to the school every year since, noticed Coleman’s columns right away. Labat found Coleman grating—a quality he considered inappropriate for someone associated with the Catholic school.

“He has every right to be as caustic and as strong in his opinion as he wants to be, but when you’re also writing on the masthead of an academic institution, that’s a problem,” Labat says.

He wasn’t alone. In September, Len Busch, who has given $20,000 to the St. John’s theology department each of the last three years, authored a handwritten message about Coleman.

“As long as St. John’s has this man on the payroll, I will no longer give my money to St. John’s,” Busch wrote. “I will not support lies and false statements and half truths about anyone.”

A lot of us former Strib subscribers know the feeling.

But I don’t whistle past graveyards.  I hope Coleman lands a gig soon.  While there’s no shortage of material, one must neither take things for granted nor wish ill on people; I don’t believe in Karma, but I do think what goes around comes around.

So best of luck, Nick.

I read a Tweet from State Senator Taryll Clark, the endorsed DFL candiate running against Michele Bachmann in the Sixth District this fall.

The Bachmann Agenda: More media less legislation

And I thought I should thank Senator Clark for illuminating the difference between liberals and conservatives as thoroughly as anyone possibly could.

Do we judge our legislators by how much legislative manure they shovel through the grinder?  Or can we go for something a little deeper?

The tweet linked to this bit on her website:

Minnesota congresswoman and conservative darling Michele Bachmann has mastered the art of bypassing the mainstream media in favor of more ideologically friendly outlets, according to a long profile in today’s Washington Post.

Oh, goodness.  We’re back to that old chestnut?  Goody.

The first time this accusation came out – from Andy Birkey at the Minnesoros “Independent”, no less – that Rep. Bachmann shied away from liberal news outlets and favored conservative ones, I took the liberty of asking RT Rybak, Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, Dane Smith and a few other prominent DFLers to come on the Northern Alliance – the Twin Cities’ flagship conservative media outlet.  Only Smith and Rybak appeared and, for that matter, paid us the courtesy of a response.

So since Taryll Clark is so into across-the-aisle communication, I invite her to come on the Northern Alliance Radio Network with Ed Morrissey and I.  We’ll talk for 30-60 minutes.  It’ll be fun – ask RT Rybak!  I’ll make sure she gets this invite, but if you’re a member of Sen. Clark’s staff (or one of her St. Cloud-area gadflies), feel free to forward my cordial and sincere invitation.

But that appears to have come at the expense of her legislative activities.

Washington’s got all kinds of legislators who shovel legislative manure into the hopper.  Bachmann is leading a movement, and doing spectacularly well at it.

And if Bachmann beats Clark by less than eight points in November, I’ll be amazed.

So they’ve done it.  The Obama Administration, speaking for about a third of the American people, jammed a nationalization of the Health Insurance industry down the American throat.

On the one hand, American people, you were warned.  If you voted for Barack Obama and are among the millions getting buyers remorse today as you confront the very real possibility that your health insurance premiums are going to jump like a point guard with a rocket up its butt as your access to service decays into a morass of DMV-like misery, remember – we told you so.  We told you Obama was going to do whatever he and his minions could to nationalize as much of the economy as possible.  And he said, even during the campaign, that it all started with socializing healthcare.  He telegraphed the punch, people!

I got a few phone calls yesterday.  “I’m scared”, they said.  I saw a bunch of similar comments on Facebook and Twitter.

Don’t be.

In the immortal words of Harry Dean Stanton’s “Jeb Eckert”  in that American trash-underground classic Red Dawn, there is a better solution.

Eckert knew everything he needed to about government “services”. 

And he had some simple advice for channeling emotions at times like this.

“Let it turn into something else“.

Now is the time for anger.  Constructive anger, mind you – partly because the left and media (pardon the redundancy) will be looking for every sign of anger, translating every fit of pique into an indictment of all dissent (even if they have to make it up).  But mostly because there is no time to waste.  There are only seven good campaigning months until November.

That anger needs to come out – politely, calmly, coolly as a wolf stalking its prey – at your legislators.  If your legislator voted against Obamacare – Kline, Paulsen, Bachmann and Peterson?  Call to thank them.  They need to know – even Democrats, like Peterson – that you appreciate them doing the right thing.

For the “bulletproof” Ellison and McCollum?  You may not think it does any good, and it may not flip any seats, but if Congress knows that there’s strong dissent even in “safe” districts, then they’ll know that the less “safe” districts are in trouble.

And in those less “safe” districts?  Jim Oberstar needs to know that the political trick he turned – the latest of many in a career built on a generation of pork-mongering – isn’t appreciated.  Especially all you Catholics in the Eighth District; he flipped his vote for thirty pieces of political silver. Find him a tree (rhetorically speaking).

And Tim Walz?  Does this man represent you, First District?  Does his vote to turn the Mayo Clinic into a public hospital make any sense at all?  Walz got his office by an upset win in a horrible year for Republicans; there’s no reason the district can’t redeem itself and the country by being rid of him for good.

Franken and Klobuchar?   They’re as safe a couple of votes for Obama as exist in the Senate.  But if you don’t think an avalanche of “no” calls will flip their votes, remember – Kent Conrad in North Dakota has to run for re-election in 2012.  He’s one of the most powerful men in Washington – right behind Byron Dorgan.  Who saw the train – you and me – coming, and decided to get out of the way.  If Conrad hears that the peasants are revolting in Minnesota, what will he think of his own, conservative, disproportionally Medicare-dependent constituency?

Make your calls.  And when (and, in the case of the gutless ones, if) there’s a town hall meeting?  Cancel your other plans.  Be there.  Be polite, but don’t back down.  They’ll have their goons there, just like The Man had in Birmingham and Selma.  It’s what banana republic tyrants do when they’re scared of those they see as their subjects.

When they have to bring in the goons in the purple shirts, that’s the good news.

So don’t be scared.  What’s in the past is in the past.  What’s important is that America learns its lesson before it’s too late.  We need to not only kick out of office every single person that voted for this abomination; we need to stomp the Democrat party without mercy, until it never gets up again. The urge to socialize America must be not just defeated at the polls; it must be obliterated.  It must be beaten into electoral gunk  that swirls down the drain of American history once and for all.

Politically, naturally.

Am I asking for too much?

Was Ronald Reagan asking for too much when he spoke in the seventies, at the very lowest ebb of America’s fortunes, influence and morale (so far), of ending the USSR ? 

Of course he was.  But doing the impossible begins with the impossible dream.

So don’t be scared.  Be angry.  And let that anger turn into the kind of motivation that wins wars, cures diseases, and sends stupid politicians back to their dingy law offices.

And then be there – at the demonstrations, on the phone, at the town halls.

The Democrats planted the wind yesterday.  We need to make sure they harvest a tornado.

Al Franken is at -6 on the “passion index”, according to Rasmussen via the Strib:

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in Minnesota finds that 50 percent of voters in the state approve of the job Senator Al Franken is doing, including 25 percent who strongly approve. That’s unchanged from surveys in November and January. On the other side of the ledger, 46 percent disapprove, 31 percent strongly.

The reason, of course, is yet more proof of Berg’s Seventh Law; while the Dems routinely tell the world that John Kline, Michele Bachmann and Erik Paulsen went to Washington to promote an “extremist” partisan agenda, Al Franken – “progressive” author and failed “Air America” host – actually did get elected after running a campaign based purely and expressly on being an obstreporous, Kos-friendly extremist.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen found that 67 percent approve of how Senator Amy Klobuchar is performing, with 42 percent who approve strongly. The overall approval rating is a nine-point increase from November. Just 30 percent disapprove of Klobuchar, including 15 percent who strongly disapprove.

A-Klo, on the other hand, realizes the great political truth; that once you’re a Senator, politics is mostly about not losing.  Playing it safe.  Not making the dumb mistakes. Barring the uncontrollable (like Norm Coleman running against a media shooting star in a bad year for Republicans – twice!), being an empty skirt is a recipe for a long career in Washington.

Although it’s more or less dead and gone (unlike, thankfully, its author), I’m going to give a shout-out to Cake Eater Chronicles. The longtime MOB stalwart Cathy the Cakeeater was one of the most sparklingly original writers on the Twin Cities blog circuit.

And then, a few years back, she came down with ovarian cancer, which both led to some of the most gripping blog writing – writing, really – anywhere.

And, unfortunately, and indirectly to the end of the blog.

Oh, the spirit was sure willing:

Yes, that’s right: I made good on my threats to leave the state entirely, and am pleased to say that once I’ve registered to vote in my new homeland, I will be represented in the Senate by people who are not a. Stuart Smalley or b. Amy “I’m a publicity seeking whore” Klobuchar.  Their names rhyme with Fay Gaily Mutchison and Fawn Smornyn.

But it’s not always about spirit:

It’s somewhat of a longish story that I will endeavor to simplify: the chemo-induced nerve damage in zee hands and feet was deemed permanent in August, and since I have a weird desire to be productive in the winters (never mind to go out of doors on occasion) the husband and I, at the end of October, packed up our belongings and moved south to observe and record the wild ways of the Texas hippies of Austin.  After some interesting stops and starts along the way, we’re finally moved into our new place, the husband will be opening his new store tomorrow, and I can finally sit down and get some work done.  I’m more grateful than I can say because the husband decided to upend his business and to, essentially, start over so that I can be as pain-free as I can get.  He’s a good guy and I am not worthy of him.

Enh.  I’ve met ’em both.  They both deserve the best, and I think they got it.

This post, in particular is one that grabbed my attention – indeed, was where this “around the MOB” series started in the first place.  Breast Cancer has, apparently, the best PR agents in the world – because an alien coming to earth and reading indicators in our society might think that only breasts and lungs ever get the disease.

Cathy’s had enough of it too:

It’s the fifth of October, and I’ve officially had it with the color pink.

Pink, in case you’re an Eskimo and don’t have either a tee vee or the ability to whip down to the grocery store to purchase some seal steaks, is the color of Breast Cancer Awareness.  October is, officially, Breast Cancer Awareness month.  Yesterday, we tuned in to watch the Bears beat the snot out of Detroit, and what were the husband and I treated to?  Pink gloves on the big, badass players, pink ribbons on their helmets, pink towels on the sidelines, pink bills on ball caps, etc.  The other day, while in Austin, I was asked at the checkout line (mind you this was also on the 29th of September.  Not October 1st.) at the grocery store if I wanted to donate money to breast cancer research.  When I went to my usual coffee date at the local Bou with Mr. H. yesterday, the entire store looked like a Pepto Bismol addict had puked all over.  The employees asked me if I wanted to buy a pound of “Amy’s Blend,” part of the proceeds of which would go to breast cancer research, and then they asked me if I would like to donate a pound to a woman who was going through treatment.  I politely said, ‘no, thank you,’ and then walked away.  One of the employees, who has been there a while and knew me when I was bald, shot a very understanding glance in my direction and shrugged.

All of it makes me wonder if anyone cares if I, as an ovarian cancer survivor, live or die because I didn’t get the trendy cancer.

The “good” news is, if you want to catch up with the whole oeuvre, there’s a finite amount.

Anyway – all the best, Cathy, and thanks for a great run!

It’s the fifth of October, and I’ve officially had it with the color pink.

Pink, in case you’re an Eskimo and don’t have either a tee vee or the ability to whip down to the grocery store to purchase some seal steaks, is the color of Breast Cancer Awareness.  October is, officially, Breast Cancer Awareness month.  Yesterday, we tuned in to watch the Bears beat the snot out of Detroit, and what were the husband and I treated to?  Pink gloves on the big, badass players, pink ribbons on their helmets, pink towels on the sidelines, pink bills on ball caps, etc.  The other day, while in Austin, I was asked at the checkout line (mind you this was also on the 29th of September.  Not October 1st.) at the grocery store if I wanted to donate money to breast cancer research.  When I went to my usual coffee date at the local Bou with Mr. H. yesterday, the entire store looked like a Pepto Bismol addict had puked all over.  The employees asked me if I wanted to buy a pound of “Amy’s Blend,” part of the proceeds of which would go to breast cancer research, and then they asked me if I would like to donate a pound to a woman who was going through treatment.  I politely said, ‘no, thank you,’ and then walked away.  One of the employees, who has been there a while and knew me when I was bald, shot a very understanding glance in my direction and shrugged.

All of it makes me wonder if anyone cares if I, as an ovarian cancer survivor, live or die because I didn’t get the trendy cancer.

I had a lot of discussions last year with conservatives who refused to vote for – indeed, fumed with anger against – Norm Coleman; because of one transgression or another (keeping a campaign promise and voting against ANWR drilling being one example), they called him a “RINO”.  It was palpable balderdash, of course; Coleman was as conservative as a Minnesota Senator ever could be on a wide range of issues, including the ones – I am stressing this much more strongly verbally than you can possible tell through my writing – that should matter to conservatives, things like the budget, the war, American sovereignty.

And above that, remember – perfect is the enemy of good enough.  Coleman wasn’t the perfect conservative – but I hasten to add that Minnesota at this point in history is not going to elect a perfect conservative.  Norm Coleman was the best that we’re going to get out of five million people who also think Amy Klobuchar and Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum and Jim Oberstar are just dreamy.

Elections have consequences.  And in the Obamacare debate, we’re seeing those consequences, lining up at our nation’s head like a Russian-Roulette player’s revolver.

Mr. D at TvM via T  has a gentle reminder for at least 300 “conservatives” who helped put Al Franken in office just as surely as ACORN and MoveOn did:

Congratulations to those “true conservatives” who pulled the lever for Dean Barkley to teach that RINO Norm Coleman a lesson. You really showed ‘em. Congratulations to the Peggy Noonans and Christopher Buckleys of the world, who had every reason to know what the result of their perdify would be. Congratuations to Doug Kmiec, who assured everyone that voting with the Democrats was the best way to preserve life. I hope you enjoy your time as Ambassador to Malta. Maybe you can stay there.

Congratulations to all of you. Elections have consequences. You now get to enjoy the consequences.

And a prediction:

The next big growth industry? Maquiladora hospitals. And remember, you heard it here first.

D makes a good observation; this may be the best thing to happen to the economy of Mexico and Honduras, ever.

Too bad we couldn’t have saved a couple trillion dollars and done it by getting them to overthrow socialism instead.

Minnesota’s Democrats in Washington are  M doing their best to snatch defeat from the jaws of opportunity:

Democratic Sen. Al Franken, who took office in part thanks to the same wave of support that swept Obama in, said last week that he wants to hear more about the rationale behind the plan before deciding whether to support a larger U.S. combat presence in Afghanistan.

In private meetings with top administration officials, he said, they have impressed on him that the surge may be the last chance to reverse the war’s momentum against the Taliban.

He is still unsure the Afghan government is “willing and able to step up to this,” later adding that he wants “to find out through the hearings how achievable all of this is.”

Perhaps he’s trying to bore the Taliban to death?  It could work.

In a reference to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Rep. Keith Ellison, a Democrat, said: “It’s not 2001. It’s 2009. We’ve been through a president asking Congress to support him in two wars. One of them never should have been fought, and the other one was fought about as poorly as it could have possibly been. So obviously you’ve got some highly skeptical people to deal with.”

We’ve also got some not very bright congresspeople to deal with.

Congressman Ellison – to paraphrase your own nonsense rhetoric, it’s 2009, not 2006.  We have a choice; let the Taliban set up another safe haven (and allow them to safely consolidate their safer haven in Pakistan), or deny it to them.

None of your baked wind matters.  Ever, indeed, but especially on this issue.

A-Klo:

“For me, the issue is, do we have good enough partners here?” Klobuchar said. “By asking the questions, you’re not just getting the answers, you’re actually pushing this government policy and the Afghan government to [be] better.”

Klobuchar, a Democrat, said she is “open to this military strategy” as long as there is a sufficient partnership with Afghan civilians.

Um, right.

And how do you propose to get “sufficient partnership” with people who know that if they support us, and we pack up and leave (as you and your party wish) with the job half-done, they will be getting their heads sawed off?

Afghan civilians have been through hell, this past thirty years.  For the entire time, they’ve had to either choose – Soviets/muj, then one militia/another militia, then more of the same, and now US and Centeral Government/Taliban – knowing that if they made the wrong call, they and their families would disappear, and be eventually, maybe found with their hands tied behind their backs, their heads blown or sawed off, if they picked the loser.

And what precisely is it that you are trying to make us, Senator Klobuchar?

Remember when the Democrats held up “unarmored Humvees” as the greatest crime ever committed against US troops?

It all seems so long ago, now:

Afghanistan is a country the size of Texas, with only a handful of major roads. So when the U.S. military wants to haul gear, supply isolated outposts, reposition forces, or evacuate wounded troops, the first, best and sometimes only option is to do so by helicopter.

Which means that the demand for helos at most U.S. bases far outstrips the supply. And the helicopters that do fly operate under unforgiving and often dangerous conditions, as we saw in Monday’s twin copter calamities, which killed 14 Americans. In short, helicopters are the irreplaceable connective tissue of the Afghanistan war effort — and its potential Achilles’ heel. “It’s our strategic weak point,” a defense official told Danger Room.

Apparently we don’t have nearly enough of them:

For years, commanders have complained that helicopters were the one thing they couldn’t get enough of, and coalition forces in Afghanistan have often had to rely on outsourcing to fill in the gaps. “We definitely don’t have enough helicopters,” British Foreign Office Minister Lord Maloch Brown recently said, before issuing a quick “clarification.”…

Most of what I know about helicopters I learned from reading Colonel Charlie Beckwith’s book about the formation of “Delta Force” and its role in the Desert One raid.  And it put me off of wanting to ever fly in a helicopter.  The main point; helicopters are incredibly fragile, and desert sand and dust makes thingsmuch, much worse.

…Even if more military helicopters are sent to Afghanistan, there’s a much bigger issue: Operating rotary aircraft in Afghanistan can be extremely difficult.

 

Earlier this year, Popular Mechanics reporter Joe Pappalardo spent some time with the wrench-turners who keep the helicopters flying in Afghanistan. “Afghanistan,” he concluded, “is hell on helicopters.” Here’s a list of just a few of the things he noted that can go wrong: Temperature extremes that destroy seals and gaskets; “high/hot” flying conditions that reduce engine performance; dust and sand that ruin rotor blades and clog up hydraulics.

Just saying, Mr. President – whenever you get around to deciding what you’re going to do about Afghanistan…

UPDATE:  Welcome, Instapundit Readers!  It’s been a while!  Glad I finished getting the place cleaned up for ya!

Is it more remarkable that the Twin Cities mainstream media is finally acknowledging that Chris Coleman has an opponent in the Saint Paul mayor race – Eva Ng?  The Cities’ media has been famously reticent to criticize the incumbent mayor – perhaps because he’s the little brother of one of their own, former Strib and PiPress columnist and ex-KSTP and Air America host Nick Coleman.  As we noted during the 2006 Senate campaign, being related to a former Twin Cities media eminemento (Senator Klobuchar is the daughter of former longtime Strib columnist and Studs-Terkel-wannabee Jim Klobuchar) guarantees almost as much selective amnesia as, well, being a DFLer does.

Or is it that they’re reporting that Ng is onto something?

MPR’s Tom Scheck, writing at Polinaut:

Coleman’s mayoral opponent, Eva Ng, is calling on Coleman to explain why his campaign committee is spending money on airline tickets, restaurants and hotels outside the city of St. Paul.

Bear in mind that Coleman is putatively running for Mayor of Saint Paul.  I don’t know what the laws are re spending money for one campaign on another race, but… 

Here’s the list compiled from Ng’s campaign:

Travel & Hotels

• 3/12/09 Midwest Airlines for $619.39
• 3/13/09 Orbitz.com for $107.88
• 7/23/09 Alexandria, MN Arrowwood Resort & Conference Center Deposit for $200.00
• 7/30/09 Rochester, MN Kahler Grand Hotel for $452.98
• 7/30/09 Northwest Airlines for $249.19
• 8/17/09 Alexandria, MN Arrowwood Resort & Conference Center Lodging Payment for $107.80

Meals & Restaurants

• 6/18/09 CD7 Dinner for $60.00
• 7/29/09 Rochester, MN Gilligan’s Cove restaurant for $13.00
• 7/30/09 Rochester, MN Kahler Grand Grill for $86.89
• 8/3/09 Granite City Brewery for $35.82 (There are no Granite City Brewery locations in St. Paul: http://www.gcfb.net/locations.cfm) [Although to be fair there is one at Rosedale, maybe a mile north of Saint Paul; not sure if “fairness” covers observing that Coleman should know the difference, whether it’s close enough for county work or not.  Rochester, naturally, is right out  – Ed. ]

Donations to Political Units Outside St. Paul

• 2/7/09 Senate District 32 DFL (includes Maple Grove, Osseo, Rogers) received $50.00
• 6/11/09 Rice County DFL received $200.00

I’m waiting for a response from the Coleman campaign and will post it when they comment.

Let’s try to be fair; maybe the Rice County DFL is going to send busloads of canvassers and door-knockers.

I’ll watch for the comment…

CNN has resorted to cruel, baseless name-calling.

Ms. Klobuchar may not possess the ideal height-weight ratio, but she is not a cow.

(please direct complaints on Johnny Roosh and/or this tasteless, racist, cruel-to-animals post to feedbackinthedark at yahoo.com)