{"id":59719,"date":"2016-07-28T11:30:15","date_gmt":"2016-07-28T16:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=59719"},"modified":"2016-07-28T12:08:28","modified_gmt":"2016-07-28T17:08:28","slug":"the-extreme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=59719","title":{"rendered":"The Extreme"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I left North Dakota for a lot of reasons, I feel a certain fondness for my homestate; a certain homer pride at its economic success (and not just the oil boom, mind you – the state rode out the recession in pretty good shape before the oil boom really started)…<\/p>\n

…and doing it all the conservative way. \u00a0Not as conservative, perhaps, as Utah or Wyoming or even South Dakota – there’s a certain Scandinavian communitarianism in NoDak that makes it a\u00a0little\u00a0<\/em>more Minnesota-ish than some of its fellow red states – but for all that, its government is tiny and unobtrusive. \u00a0And it works – but not too much.<\/p>\n

As a result, the North Dakota Democrat\/Non-Partisan League (Dem\/NPL), the local term for Democrat Party, has gone from contending for power two decades ago, to nearly extinct today; \u00a0their 2016 State Convention was held at the Kroll’s Diner in Minot1<\/sup>. \u00a0 They had to twist arms to put a warm body on the ballot for Governor.<\/p>\n

And as happens when party units hit their death spirals – like American Communists, or Klansmen – the North Dakota Dem\/NPL has become dominated by its hard-core lunatic fringe.<\/p>\n

How fringe-y? \u00a0 They’re too far left for Senator Heidi Heidtkamp<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[13 of the 22 National] North Dakota elected delegates crafted a harsh resolution criticizing Sen. Heidi Heitkamp for endorsing Hillary Clinton.
\nThe resolution claims Heitkamp is being \u201cdisrespectful to the people of our great state \u2026 (and) the political process\u201d by not endorsing the Vermont senator as a superdelegate at the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Sanders carried North Dakota in the state\u2019s primary election in June, earning more than 64 percent of the vote.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sending 22 people to Philly, as well as Heidtkamp to DC, may have left\u00a0the ND\/DNPL with nobody left in the state2<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

[1] Not really, but it’s fun to say.<\/p>\n

[2] No, not that either, really. \u00a0But again, fun to say, and not as inaccurate as you might think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I left North Dakota for a lot of reasons, I feel a certain fondness for my homestate; a certain homer pride at its economic success (and not just the oil boom, mind you – the state rode out the recession in pretty good shape before the oil boom really started)… …and doing it all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats","category-midwest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59719"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59757,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59719\/revisions\/59757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}