{"id":10073,"date":"2010-04-14T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T17:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=10073"},"modified":"2011-10-20T10:29:48","modified_gmt":"2011-10-20T15:29:48","slug":"into-oblivion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=10073","title":{"rendered":"Into Oblivion"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s hard being a Republican in the Fourth District.\u00a0 The Fourth is one of those places where the DFL could nominate a set of those novelty wind-up chattering teeth and get 55% of the vote; much of the district is first-tier DFL constituencies, government workers and union labor and people who depend on government in one way or another.\u00a0 To be fair to the wind-up teeth, they’d be better representatives than Betty McCollum…<\/p>\n

…but it makes it hard – some might say “mind-numbingly frustrating” – to be a GOP candidate.\u00a0 I’ve seen excellent candidates get into the race, throw everything they had into it, and walk away happy to have been only 15 points off the pace; in the past few bids, it’s been more like 50.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, I don’t believe in karma – but I do think what goes around comes around.\u00a0 And just to the south of the Four, the DFL gets a piece of the same medicine.\u00a0 They\u00a0endorsed a candidate to run against John Kline<\/a>.\u00a0 And the Strib is so underwhelmed that they couldn’t even be bothered to copy-edit the story on the subject.<\/p>\n

The lede:<\/p>\n

Democrats chose a 45-year-old construction worker to challenge U.S. Rep. John Kline in the 2nd Congressional District.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s the lede.\u00a0 And who is this “45-year-old construction worker?”<\/p>\n

Powers, a newcomer to the state’s political scene, defeated former state Rep. Shelley Madore, DFL-Apple Valley, at a Saturday endorsing convention in Chanhassen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Powers.<\/p>\n

Powers?<\/p>\n

Like, Powers Boothe?\u00a0\u00a0 Does the guy have a name?\u00a0 Or is he like “Prince”, a guy with a one-word name?<\/p>\n

That’d be a slick marketing gimmick, really.\u00a0 Maybe Leslie Davis will try it.\u00a0 He’s tried everything else.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But seriously – does he have a first name?\u00a0 Or a last one, maybe?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Any hint in the Strib story?<\/p>\n

“We plan on making hundreds of phone calls a day…” Powers wrote in blog post celebrating the announcement on his campaign’s home page.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nope…<\/p>\n

…despite Democratic difficulties at the polls, Powers said the Lakeville congressman can be defeated…Powers will campaign in a GOP-leaning district that has not known Democratic victory in a decade.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even the Strib’s picture (in the online edition):<\/p>\n

\"Powers\"

Powers<\/p><\/div>\n

You have to go all the way to the story’s last <\/em>paragraph to learn that Powers’ name is Dan.<\/p>\n

Now that’s <\/em>lonely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s hard being a Republican in the Fourth District.\u00a0 The Fourth is one of those places where the DFL could nominate a set of those novelty wind-up chattering teeth and get 55% of the vote; much of the district is first-tier DFL constituencies, government workers and union labor and people who depend on government in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,155],"tags":[161],"class_list":["post-10073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minnesota-politics","category-mn-congressional","tag-mn-cd2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10073"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23790,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10073\/revisions\/23790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}