The dream is over elsewhere, but maybe not here

The newspaper of Walter Duranty has finally noticed that the Leader of the Free World isn't mebbe so popular any more:

As November nears, Mr. Obama and his loyalists are being forced to reconcile that it is not only Democrats in conservative-leaning states, like Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas, who are avoiding him. The president who became the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to twice win a majority of the vote is flying in politically restricted airspace.

Democratic senators in Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia — states that were pivotal to his success and whose demographics reflect his winning coalition of young, minority and female voters — do not want him. Nor does his party’s Senate nominee in Iowa, where Mr. Obama won twice and whose youth-filled 2008 Democratic caucuses vaulted him toward the nomination.

So why is that? Allow Timesman Jonathan Martin to explain:

Last week, speaking at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., Mr. Obama declared that while he was not up for re-election, his “policies are on the ballot.” Immediately, Republicans pounced, putting the clip in videos to link their rivals to the president. Democrats winced, and David Axelrod, the longtime Obama adviser, acknowledged Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the remark was “a mistake.”

A succession of domestic and foreign crises, along with some self-inflicted wounds, has badly tarnished Mr. Obama. And that is on top of the history of the president’s party doing poorly in midterm elections.

Yet here, in Minnesota, these things don't matter so much, apparently. Mike McFadden has been hammering Al Franken about his 97% support of Obama, but the populace yawns. Mark Dayton has been presiding over an administration that makes drunken sailors appear parsimonious, yet Jeff Johnson can't get any traction at all.

The issue is pretty clear -- in order to present an alternative, you need to have a platform to do so. At this point the Republican Party in this state cannot get its message out in a consistent way. Johnson has been just about invisible on the airwaves, while ads supporting Dayton are ubiquitous. Weeks go by and you don't see Johnson's face on local newscasts  -- the John Cromans and Esme Murphys of the world see to that. If it weren't for a few lawn signs here and there, you'd not even realize this is an election year. The only thing we "know" about Republicans in this cycle is that there is some guy named Stewart Mills running for some office or another. He's apparently some rich guy with a mullet wearing boat shoes and that he's wrong for Minnesota, or something. Why wearing boat shoes is a problem remains a mystery.

I've been living in Minnesota for over 20 years, and I've never seen anything like this cycle. The campaign has reminded me of what it's like in Chicago, where effectively there are no Republicans. It takes money to get on the airwaves and the Johnson campaign doesn't have nearly enough to have a presence. The goal of the Dayton campaign has been to make his reelection seem inevitable and to ensure that people don't think too hard about what's happened in the last four years. Unless something changes soon, that goal will be met with ease.