il miglior fabbro

I tried to explain this a few posts back, but Kevin Ecker does a better job. In the previous legislative session, the DFL inadvertently screwed themselves. As part of a much longer election post-mortem, Ecker lays out Mark Dayton's dilemma:

The Governor’s seats is still up for grabs. If it’s Emmer than Republicans control all three legs and they get run of the board. But even if it’s Dayton, with Republicans in charge of both Houses, his agenda is a dead stick. But it gets worse for DFL and they have only themselves to blame.

Last session we had the opposite situation, a DFL legislature with a GOP Governor. When the DFL couldn’t come up with a budget they simply passed an unreasonable one and adjourned and made it Pawlenty’s problem. Pawlenty in turn used unallotment. Well the DFL collectively wet themselves and through the courts made sure that couldn’t be done ever again. So now facing a $6 billion deficit, what are Dayton’s options?? Either he agrees to the Republican’s version of a budget, thereby pissing off his base and making the right happy. Or he shuts down the government and calls the legislature into a special session, thereby pissing off his base and mildly annoying the right. The Legislature in turn, if they really want to play hardball can just keep passing the same budget until Dayton relents. After all, what is Dayton’s recourse??? Bitch to the media that the legislature won’t raise taxes??? Yeah, that’ll get sympathy from the public.

That's really perfect. Tim Pawlenty did a lot of things that gave conservatives indigestion, but using unallotment in 2009 was a genius move. And now a potential DFL governor has very few options in dealing with the lege.

Kevin explains a whole lot of other things in his excellent election post-mortem. Read the whole thing.