It was five years ago today that Paul Wellstone’s plane crashed, killing his wife, daughter, some campaign aides, and the flight crew.<\/p>\n
I remember it very well, of course; I was working at a contracting job and listening to my radio in the headphones when I got the word (and posted something immediately<\/a>).<\/p>\n Of course, the tragedy provoked both a political fistfight in getting ready for the upcoming Senate election – and an outpouring of angst<\/a>, occasional paranoia<\/a>, some surprising reaches across the aisle<\/a>, and a bit of electoral sturm und drang, “Paulapalooza”<\/a>,\u00a0that may have altered history the exact opposite<\/em> of the way intended (as well as helping to put this blog on the map):<\/p>\n If you don’t live here, it’s hard to describe. Maybe it’s like this elsewhere in the country. All I know is, it’s totally on the sleeve of this state, and showed in spades last night. It’s something that started as a vague sense of unease seven years ago, when I first started becoming active in politics in Minnesota. It grew to a more coherent notion in 2000. It whacked me over the head when the mob booed the assembled Republican senators.<\/p>\n Hatred of Republicans is part of the majority, *mainstream* DFL culture in Minnesota.<\/p>\n Not dislike. Not disagreement. Hate.<\/p>\n You see it in bits of day to day life in this state: women theatrically holding their noses when talking about Republican candidates at the coffee shop; people who put “No Republicans Need Apply” at the top of personal ads; a mob of 15,000 mainstream, work-a-daddy, hug-a-mommy Minnesotans baying at the moon at the recognition of Republicans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’m not one of those Republicans who will ridicule Democrats for continuing to mourn Wellstone; indeed, many dear friends of mine, liberals mostly, had good reason to admire the guy.\u00a0 I’m still lamenting the too-early demise of Keith Moon – I’m not the one to talk.\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, the death (and Paulapalooza) highlighted the corrosion of the part of civil life in this state that Wellstone didn’t <\/em>control in the DFL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was five years ago today that Paul Wellstone’s plane crashed, killing his wife, daughter, some campaign aides, and the flight crew. I remember it very well, of course; I was working at a contracting job and listening to my radio in the headphones when I got the word (and posted something immediately). Of course, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507","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=1507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}