{"id":3088,"date":"2008-08-16T06:00:27","date_gmt":"2008-08-16T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3088"},"modified":"2008-08-16T07:06:29","modified_gmt":"2008-08-16T12:06:29","slug":"hopefully-he-saved-his-ape-suit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3088","title":{"rendered":"Hopefully He Saved His Gorilla Suit"},"content":{"rendered":"

…or was that Jim Belushi<\/a>?<\/p>\n

In any case, I was listening to the radio the other morning and an Al Franken ad came on, telling the listener how hard Al Franken has been working for blue collar workers or some other crapola. How has he been working for anyone? He’s never held public office and looks certain to continue his loser streak.<\/p>\n

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NY Sun<\/a>: When Democrats this spring sized up Al Franken’s bid to win a Senate seat in his native Minnesota, they saw plenty of promising signs: an engaging and famously funny candidate familiar to voters, a stockpile of campaign cash, and a vulnerable incumbent Republican.<\/p>\n

Less than three months before Election Day, however, the Republican seat held by a former New Yorker, Norm Coleman, looks safer than ever<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Franken campaign has been a comedy of errors from day one. Normally I’d feel bad for the guy…actually that’s a lie. Al Franken is a putz and I couldn’t be happier that his candidacy is looking more and more like a painfully awkward standup comedy act, rehashing material that wasn’t funny in the first place.<\/p>\n

Coleman may very well have been vulnerable but the Democrats blundered badly in their endorsement of Al Franken, grossly dismissing his vulgar and easily recalled “work”. Franken’s transparent attempts to disassociate himself with his musings on pornography and rape were ineffective and Minnesotan’s are increasingly dismissing his candidacy.<\/p>\n

The Wellstone\/Dayton legacy of most embarrassing Minnesota Senators is safe from being superseded for now.<\/p>\n

\n

Looking to bounce back, Mr. Franken shook up his campaign staff last month and brought in a group of veteran Washington operatives, including a former aide to Senator Schumer and John Edwards, Eric Schultz, and a top adviser to Senator Clinton, Mandy Grunwald.<\/p>\n

But political analysts in Minnesota say the damage may be too great. The race, they say, has become a referendum on Mr. Franken rather than the incumbent \u2014 an ominous sign for any challenger.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Franken’s fairly justifiable claims (if you take Coleman’s voting record at face value) that Coleman is a pawn of the Bush administration, has failed miserably to gain traction. Rather,\u00a0Franken’s now well documented trail of failure, incompetence or fraud, depending on how charitable you are, has taken the wind out of his sails.<\/p>\n

\n

Mr. Franken emerged as the star of Air America Radio, hosting a talk show on the liberal start-up network, which struggled to find a foothold.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Fairness Doctrine wouldn’t have saved it either. And the hits kept not<\/em> coming…<\/p>\n

\n

First came the disclosure that he faced $25,000 in penalties for failing to pay workers’ compensation for the corporation he had set up in his name in New York. Then, following a story broken by a Republican blogger, Mr. Franken in April announced that he was paying $70,000 in back taxes and penalties to 17 states.<\/p>\n

All the while, Mr. Franken continued to be dogged by off-color jokes and writings from his career as a satirist. In particular, Republicans pounced on a sexually explicit parody he wrote for Playboy, titled “Porn-O-Rama.” Also unearthed was a 1995 article from New York magazine, which reported that Mr. Franken once proposed a joke for “SNL” about raping the “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

News Flash: Failed SNL material apparently doesn’t play well in Minnesota. Yuck it up, Al.<\/p>\n

\n

With Mr. Franken’s campaign seemingly sputtering, a little-known St. Paul attorney, Priscilla Lord Faris, announced in July that she would challenge Mr. Franken in the DFL’s September 9 primary. Initially a supporter of Mr. Franken who had contributed to his campaign, Ms. Lord Faris said she concluded he was unelectable.<\/p>\n

In an interview, she attributed Mr. Franken’s problems to his long absence from Minnesota. “It’s the total package. We kind of call it the New York City problem,” she said. “The root of it is that he’s been out of touch with Minnesota for so long that he didn’t understand that we don’t talk like that here.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

All may not be lost. Maybe Kathy Griffin is looking for a warm-up act. Don’t let the barn door hitcha on the way out Frankenfreak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…or was that Jim Belushi? In any case, I was listening to the radio the other morning and an Al Franken ad came on, telling the listener how hard Al Franken has been working for blue collar workers or some other crapola. How has he been working for anyone? He’s never held public office and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-08","category-democrats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088","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\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}