{"id":28364,"date":"2012-06-05T12:30:39","date_gmt":"2012-06-05T17:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=28364"},"modified":"2020-12-21T05:30:03","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T11:30:03","slug":"an-investment-like-the-brooklyn-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=28364","title":{"rendered":"An Investment – Like The Brooklyn Bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeff Rosenberg from MNPublius<\/em>\u00a0has sent an “Open Letter To Amy Klobuchar” that explains, if nothing else, how little DFLers really understand about their “Senior Senator”:<\/p>\n

Congratulations on your endorsement by the DFL this weekend, and on what looks to be a relatively easy re-election bid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(As a side note? \u00a0Look for a lot of “bandwagon”-mongering from the DFL and the media (pardon, as always, the redundancy). Research shows<\/a> that if you can create a sense in your opponents’ minds that voting is fruitless, they won’t do it. \u00a0They may never say that that’s why the “Minnesota<\/a>” and “HHH<\/a>” polls released right before election day are so inevitably, grossly, comically inaccurate in favor of the DFL<\/a>, especially for close elections<\/a> – but it’s difficult to see how they’d do it any different if if were <\/em>utterly deliberate).<\/p>\n

But I digress:<\/p>\n

You\u2019re the most popular politician in the state by a wide margin, and in your single term as a Senator so far, you\u2019ve built up quite a bit of political capital.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m writing to ask you to invest some of that political capital in making positive change here in Minnesota in 2012. Notice that I\u2019m not asking you to \u201cspend\u201d your political capital, but \u201cinvest\u201d it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because “invest” is always the euphemism DFLers have for “squander on something I’d like someone else to pay for”.<\/p>\n

But, again, I digress:<\/p>\n

With a bit of work, you\u2019ll make it back with hefty interest, making you not just the most popular but one of the most powerful politicians in the state. What is political power but the ability to affect change?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is that, plus many, many other things; the ability to provide for ones’ special interest (“change” be damned) is a key one for DFLers. \u00a0In fact, that’d seem to be the main thing A-Klo does with it…<\/p>\n

…dammit, I just keep on disgressing!<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I\u2019m asking you to devote a portion of your time and energy this year to fighting the harmful constitutional amendments on the ballot this year and returning the DFL to power in the state legislature. Your overwhelming popularity gives you significant influence with swing voters, and your fundraising prowess could transform marginal seats in the legislature into major opportunities. Your involvement could mean the difference between winning and losing all of these fights.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interesting theory – but let’s set a few things straight.<\/p>\n

A-Klo isn’t so much “popular” as she is “not unpopular”. \u00a0She’s cautious. \u00a0She’s taken the popularity she started with – as the daughter of a Twin Cities media icon and some time as a prominent and media-savvy if not especially effective county attorney – and husbanded it carefully. \u00a0She takes no positions that will anger enough Minnesotans to hamper her polling – and counts on her Praetorian Guard in the Twin Cities media to mute any coverage of those things that she has <\/em>to do to not get thrown out of the caucus locker room back in DC.<\/p>\n

For example – Klobuchar supported the Medical Device Tax, which is going to flense and gut Minnesota’s Medical Device industry, one of our great growth industries – but it got less coverage in the Strib<\/em>\u00a0than the Wayzata Middle School girls volleyball game.<\/p>\n

I know your popularity is built, in large part, on your efforts to be a bipartisan figure, so you may want to stay \u201cabove the fray.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Heh.<\/p>\n

But what is the point of amassing this level of support if you can\u2019t use it to make a difference?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because if you “make a difference” in a way that blows that “support” sky high – or erodes it to the point where one has to work especially hard to retain ones power – then it was all as if nothing happened.<\/p>\n

And here’s Klobama’s problem; she can read polls. \u00a0She can see that Minnesotans, even the liberal ones, overwhelmingly support Voter ID, and that the Marriage Amendment’s internal numbers, while lower, lead to an issue so fraught that even the mighty Obama has to “oppose” it in the weakest way possible.<\/p>\n

And she knows that her popularity is a mile wide – look at those numbers! – but an inch deep, a product of name recognition and six years of carefully-cultivated and media-guarded innocuity. \u00a0And a good way to blow all that is to come out against an issue most Minnesotans are definitively for.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s the same reason Paul Wellstone – he, the patron saint of Minnesota “progressivism” and the “1” in countless 99-1 Senate votes – \u00a0supported the Defense of Marriage Act. \u00a0Because he knew all of his “popularity” and “power” could go out the window with one badly-timed position on an emotional issue in an election year.<\/p>\n

Just as A-Klo does.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve earned the trust of millions of Minnesotans, but that trust has little value if you can\u2019t or won\u2019t use it to advance a positive agenda.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And there’s the conundrum, for a thinking liberal (and let’s say they do in fact exist, because they do); A-Klo is popular and powerful – but that popularlity and power is, I suggest, predicated on keeping hands off of the issues that progressives most want.<\/p>\n

And this in an election year when Barack Obama’s going to have all the “coattails” of a T-shirt.<\/p>\n

Senator Klobuchar, I hope 2012 will be a year of great triumph for you. I hope it will be the year you win re-election by an overwhelming margin \u2014 and the year your coattails mean victory in the legislature and on the constitutional amendments.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, good luck with that.<\/p>\n

(Anyone but me think that Rosenberg’s post sounded like a prayer of supplication?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff Rosenberg from MNPublius\u00a0has sent an “Open Letter To Amy Klobuchar” that explains, if nothing else, how little DFLers really understand about their “Senior Senator”: Congratulations on your endorsement by the DFL this weekend, and on what looks to be a relatively easy re-election bid. (As a side note? \u00a0Look for a lot of “bandwagon”-mongering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,24,51],"tags":[208],"class_list":["post-28364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-culture-war","category-liberal-tyranny","tag-a-klo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28364","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=28364"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76177,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28364\/revisions\/76177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}