One week later

 As things were happening last week, I wrote a post below that is likely wrong. We know more now. Two things have become clear this week:

1) The local apparat really, really wants to this story to follow an evil MAGA narrative. Julie Nelson, the anchor on the 10 p.m. news on KARE, made a point to call Boelter's activities "politically motivated" every night this week in the opening of the broadcast. It's an assertion, a mantra, and you should not question it. Boelter's letter, to the extent we understand its content, alters the narrative that's being constructed.

2) There's a barely concealed battle going on between the acting U.S. Attorney, Joe Thompson, and Mary Moriarty, the Soros-backed HennCo prosecutor. Moriarty is in trouble because she's been letting criminals loose in the usual Soros style, but she really, really wants to prosecute Boelter. The feds are taking the lead, as they have in the past, because she's feckless. 

An example of how this dynamic has played out: the previous U.S. Attorney under Biden, Andrew Luger, was the guy who actually did the heavy lifting in prosecuting the massive Feeding Our Future fraud cases, in which politically connected Somalis and their friends stole millions of dollars by claiming to feed millions of meals to kids during COVID. The locals let this go on for years. Luger is a loyal Democrat, but he's of the old-school sort and he wasn't willing to countenance the open corruption of this arrangement. These stories are not openly discussed, because they reflect badly on Walz, Keith Ellison (who took meetings with the criminals) and others within the DFL apparat.

It would be unlikely in the extreme that Walz ever communicated to Boelter except in passing; the boards that Boelter served on were advisory and weren't especially political. Having said that, there were some fairly heavy hitters on the boards, including a longtime DFL power player named Myron Frans, who has been a bigwig at the University of Minnesota and was the guy who ran the state government management office under Walz and his predecessor, Mark Dayton. As far as I know, no one has asked Frans what he thought of Boelter and his role. We'd rather not know, apparently.

I don't believe in conspiracies. Boelter has, from what we know, had an, ahem, interesting career. I'd personally like to know more about his work in Africa and whether the USAID cuts affected what he was doing. He seems to have acquired a lot of weapons and although his financial issues have been discussed, he seemed to have enough money to own a big house in the country and a lot of material possessions. Maybe the answers and statements are incoherent, but at a minimum he's a deeply weird dude. I'd prefer to simply follow the story wherever it leads, but you can see the narrative construction team straining mightily at the moment. From that you can draw your own conclusions.

pour encourager les autres

 Politics are too often a blood sport. Overnight this became evident, as Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated: 

Two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses were shot by someone impersonating a police officer, sources confirmed to FOX 9. Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were killed.

Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were shot in the overnight shootings in Champlin and Brooklyn Park. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is "cautiously optimistic" they will survive. 

Hortman was Speaker of the House in the previous legislature, but because of a power sharing agreement with the Republicans, she became the minority leader. The party leaders had to hammer out a budget agreement for the next two years. The results were contentious in the extreme. Hortman was as partisan as anyone in St. Paul, but in this instance she had to side with the Republicans to get the budget passed, so she cast the deciding vote in favor of the compromise proposal. I am guessing that vote cost her life. Donks do not like traitors in the main.

Hoffman cast a similar vote in the Senate [UPDATE - APPARENTLY HE DID NOT], which reinforces my supposition about the motive. We'll probably find out soon who the shooter is, because there's a manhunt underway and apparently law enforcement may have him cornered.

I don't write much about politics any more, because I find it depressing. During her career, I probably never said one good thing about Melissa Hortman. She didn't deserve this. No one does.

Just run, then

I'd be hard pressed to think of a more irritating local politician than Ron Latz, who buys his sanctimony by the 55-gallon drum, but even he would be an improvement over Ilhan Omar:

As Ilhan Omar’s political star was rising last year on her way to becoming one of the first Muslim women in Congress, several Minnesota Jewish leaders invited her to talk privately about past statements they considered anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. Gathering at a state senator’s home, they hoped to get a better sense of her views while expressing their concerns.

Most came away dissatisfied by what they heard.

Those concerns were confirmed this week when Omar suggested on Twitter that members of Congress support Israel for money, igniting a bipartisan uproar in Washington that included criticism from President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“There seems to be a pattern developing which indicates more of an attitude than mistakes,” said Ron Latz, the Democratic state senator who hosted the meeting. “And that’s what’s most troubling. I mean, I’m grateful that she seems to be willing to be engaged in conversations with the Jewish community, but she doesn’t seem to be learning from those conversations.”

Latz is correct about almost nothing, but he's accurate about Omar. So Latz ought to primary Omar. So should half the ambitious DFL pols in CD-5. Start cleaning up the mess.

Bad blogger

Didn't bother with the State of the Union address last night, since it's easy enough to get plenty of reactions from both sides of the aisle. Beyond that, I had dishes to dry and a chance to talk with Fearless Maria instead, which seemed like a better use of my time, especially following an awful 2-hour commute home through the latest snowstorm. Nonetheless, a few observations:

• Wearing white was supposed to be sort of political statement, but in the age of Photoshop it's too easy to manipulate the images. I saw at least a dozen pictures where the congresscritters in question were given Klan hoods. Dumb.
• It also sounds like Amy Klobuchar is going to run for president. I'll have more to say about that when she makes the formal announcement, but she really ought to understand one thing -- no one south of the Iowa border gives a damn who her father was, nor does anyone east of the St. Croix, for that matter. She'll have to stand on her merits, and there aren't many of them.
• I'm really enjoying the knife fight among the Democrats in Virginia. What an embarrassing lot.
• Best news of the day? Jason Rarick won the special election for the Minnesota Senate seat, taking away a seat that has been in DFL hands since Father Hennepin trod the land, thus ending the Lourey family fiefdom. Republicans now hold a 35-32 edge in the upper chamber, which will make a big difference in holding off Tim Walz and the Metrocrats in the House. 

Drizzle

Not really a lightning round. Just a few random things:

• So the DFL is going to try to brazen it out on Ellison. They'd better hope Karen Monahan doesn't have a tape. I expect Tina Smith and maybe even the never-to-be-challenged Amy Klobuchar will get to answer a lot of questions in the coming days. The DFL will have a chance to do some message testing at the State Fair and if it breaks badly, you may yet see some maneuvering.
• We're getting ready to travel again, as Fearless Maria will begin studies at Saint Louis University next week. SLU has been in the news lately because it will be the first school to put an Amazon Echo Dot in every residence hall room. Is it Big Brother? Is it necessary? I'm guessing students will use the devices here and there, but it would not surprise me at all if most of them are unplugged and thrown in a desk drawer before too long. It's not particularly difficult to get information from other sources, so I'm guessing it won't be a big factor in FM's life.
• I get the sense that our favorite president (he says so himself) is about to flip the chessboard on the Russia game. That September 1 deadline his attorneys gave Robert Mueller has a larger meaning, I suspect. It could get interesting.
• The NFL has to figure out their rules about hitting the quarterback. My stance on the Anthony Barr hit on Aaron Rodgers was that it wasn't illegal, but it was unnecessary. The penalty called on Vikings linebacker Antwione Williams in Saturday's preseason game was frankly bizarre. Either you get to tackle the quarterback, or you don't, especially if he still has the ball. 

Ellison in the spotlight

Keith Ellison may be about to get Torricellied:

“I was listening to my podcast and he walked in, he said, ‘I need you to take the trash out.’ And I kept, I was on my stomach, I heard him and I … shook my head [in acknowledgement]. And he looked at me [and] goes, ‘Hey! You f—— hear me?’ And then he looked at me, he goes, ‘B—-, get the f— out of my house!’ and he started trying to drag me off the bed. That’s when I put my camera on to video him,” Monahan said.

That's Karen Monahan, the former girlfriend of Ellison, looking right at the camera. And there's more:

The two broke up, but Monahan claims they met before he announced his attorney general run in June. He was allegedly concerned she would go public about the incident that she says happened in 2016.

“At this point in time, I’m grounded and I know who I am. I have healed for a year and a half. I looked straight at him, I said, ‘I never ruined your career, I didn’t choose to do the things you did, I didn’t choose for you to drag me off the bed, call me a b—-, tell me you hate me. I didn’t choose that,'” Monahan said.

She has chosen to come forward and tell her story, and the DFL apparat is nervous:

With just 82 days left until the November election, DFL party leaders say they are still looking for answers from their candidate.

“The DFL party takes any allegation of domestic abuse seriously. It’s a fluid situation, it’s still developing,” said Minnesota DFL party chair Ken Martin. “We believe that Keith Ellison should answer the questions that have been posed to him, and he should address those questions head on.”

It's worth remembering there are earlier allegations against Ellison from another woman. Could a third woman be out there? If so, that would be the end of him.

The DFL has held the AG's office for over 50 years. Ellison could lose the election and damage the entire ticket. Do you think Tim Walz wants to spend his time talking about Ellison? How about Tina Smith? Watch what happens at the DFL central committee meeting this weekend.

(Less than) One week out -- Attorney General

While the governor is ultimately more consequential, the attorney general of a state has a lot of power. The incumbent AG, Lori Swanson, lost her endorsement at the DFL convention and decided instead to run for governor. That opened up the door for a bunch of candidates on the DFL side. Of this group, the most prominent is Rep. Keith Ellison, who is giving up his seat in Congress to run for the office. Nearly everyone on the right worries about Ellison, but many do for the wrong reason. Ellison is a Muslim, so some think he'd try to impose sharia law or something like that. That's silly, of course. We have over a decade of evidence to weigh Ellison and it's pretty clear -- the only thing Ellison wants to impose on the people is, well, Keith Ellison. And that is reason enough to oppose him. His dim identity politics and Farrakhan footsie are simply tools in his quest for self-aggrandizement. He wants out of Washington because he couldn't be the big kahuna at the Democratic National Committee. If he can control the power of a state attorney general's office, he can indulge his impulses, including harassing Donald Trump. And he may get his wish.

The other candidates in the field include the guy who won the DFL endorsement, political newcomer Matt Pelikan. Pelikan is a straight-up SJW type and could finish last, because there's no compelling reason for his candidacy. Tom Foley was once the Ramsey County Attorney but hasn't been active in politics for nearly 25 years now, making him well past his sell-by date. Mike Rothman and Debra Hillstrom both come from the more moderate wing of the DFL and would likely conduct themselves in office similar to the way Swanson and her predecessor, Mike Hatch, ran the show. Rothman was Mark Dayton's commerce commissioner and he got an endorsement from the Star Tribune, but he's almost a complete unknown. Hillstrom has been in the Lege for nearly 20 years and has also been a prosecutor in Anoka County. She'd probably do the least harm of the five, but she's not going to beat Ellison in a primary where the key advantage is name recognition. Advantage: Ellison.

On the Republican side, the endorsed candidate is Doug Wardlow, who served one term in the Lege and has subsequently been mostly in private practice. He's a typical Republican candidate -- rock solid on understanding the role of government and more interested in protecting the citizenry than in mounting noisy crusades. He would be great. Wardlow first has to fight off the surprise candidacy of Bob Lessard, who was a big wheel DFLer on the Iron Range since the beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch. Lessard is a big outdoorsman/conservationist and well-known in the state, but is remembered mostly by people who are approaching retirement age. People who know who Lessard is will also know he's not actually a Republican, so in the end I suspect Wardlow will win the primary. It will be interesting to see if any of the big money comes into Minnesota to support his candidacy, especially if Ellison gets the DFL nod. Stay tuned.

What you see

Back home after a quick trip. A few random observations:

First, Ann Althouse again gets points for stating what should be obvious, but apparently isn't:

Isn't it interesting that therapists are seeing the reaction to Trump as a disorder?! And that Politico framed it that way.

Maybe mainstream media is noticing a lot of people who feel the way I do, that the antagonism to Trump is so over-the-top that it's weirder than Trump. We turn away... and toward the man we originally resisted because he was too weird.

Emphasis in original. People get into a sputtering rage about everything Trump says. They aren't even paying attention to what he's actually doing. It's a bizarro world version of this scene in the movie "Miracle":

There's one exception, of course -- the sputtering rage is motivating ongoing stupidity, not improved performance. It's the aside at the end of the scene that matters.

Closer to home, you might have seen Erin Murphy's campaign ads on television over the weekend. I had to grab a screen image of the ad, because it fascinates me:

All the white people clap your hands on the four, now

The woman over Murphy's shoulder is her lieutenant governor candidate, Erin Maye Quade. Throughout the ad, she's flashing this strange rictus grin. There's something really off about her that goes beyond her political views. I don't know what it is, but Murphy and Quade are frankly pretty creepy. As an introductory ad, it's quite effective -- for their opponents.

Calliope, Part Two -- The Race for Attorney General

While the race for governor is certainly the most consequential of this election cycle, the attorney general matters quite a lot, too. And it's going to be interesting now that Lori Swanson has decided to run for governor.

The big fish on the DFL side is Keith Ellison, who has been in Congress for six terms and until recently served as vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee. The term "problematic" is overused, but that's Ellison. He's never quite gotten around to disavowing his previous support of Louis Farrakhan and he's mostly gotten by with a compliant local press burying his misdeeds. A guy who likes to skirt the law ought not be Attorney General, but he has to be the favorite, even though there are plausible alternatives. The endorsed DFL candidate, Matt Pelikan, has no chance, despite the value of the endorsement. He's a DFL activist from Northfield who was able to run Swanson off by trashing her intermittent support for gun rights and by being more woke generally, but he's a silly candidate in every other respect. There are also three other plausible candidates on the DFL side, including Rep. Debra Hillstrom of Brooklyn Center, who is an Anoka County prosecutor for her day job. Hillstrom would likely perform in office like Swanson has; if you have to have a DFLer in the position, she'd be competent. Another candidate, Mike Rothman, served as commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Commerce. He's a bright guy but he's coming out of the bureaucracy and it's not clear he has the presence to get past the other candidates. Also in the race is Tom Foley, who was Ramsey County Attorney years ago. He could certainly do the job, but he's getting long in the tooth. Ellison has to be the favorite, but he'd be a disastrous pick for the job. It would have been better if Rothman and Foley had dropped out, leaving Hillstrom to run, but that didn't happen. Advantage: Keith Ellison.

On the Republican side, the endorsed candidate is Doug Wardlow, who served one term in the Minnesota legislature. In an ordinary year, he'd be the latest Republican sacrificial lamb, but he might have a chance, particularly if Ellison is the candidate for the DFL. Wardlow is a bright guy and a solid conservative; if he could win, he'd be great. Just before the filing deadline, Wardlow got a challenger, the longtime state senator from International Falls, Bob Lessard. Lessard is a legend, but he's a legend because he's 87 years old. While I have great respect for his service to the state, he's past his sell-by date by at least 15 years. Advantage: Doug Wardlow.

We'll look at some more races in the coming days.

Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match

This amuses me:

The CD8 DFL had a very long convention on Saturday,  After ten ballots, everyone promised to go to the primary.

Nothing especially unusual htere.

The unusual thing?  The DFL trucked a bunch of Latino activists from the Twin Cities to canvass for the Metro DFL’s chosen candidate.

CD8 is pretty vast -- it extends from the far northern suburbs all the way to the Canadian border. But it's primarily a place where the local politicians that matter are from Duluth or the Iron Range. So, of course you'd want Alondra Cano to pick the candidate. Hit the link for more -- it's Mitch Berg, so you know it will be a fun read.

The Jester's Thorny Crown

Before you consider the fate of Al Franken, it's worth looking what the accusation was, directly from the his accuser, Leeann Tweeden:

When I saw the script, Franken had written a moment when his character comes at me for a ‘kiss’. I suspected what he was after, but I figured I could turn my head at the last minute, or put my hand over his mouth, to get more laughs from the crowd.

On the day of the show Franken and I were alone backstage going over our lines one last time. He said to me, “We need to rehearse the kiss.” I laughed and ignored him. Then he said it again. I said something like, ‘Relax Al, this isn’t SNL…we don’t need to rehearse the kiss.’

He continued to insist, and I was beginning to get uncomfortable.

We are talking about events in 2006. We are talking about a man who had been married for 31 years and was 55 years old at the time. Back to Tweeden:

He repeated that actors really need to rehearse everything and that we must practice the kiss. I said ‘OK’ so he would stop badgering me. We did the line leading up to the kiss and then he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth.

I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time.

I walked away. All I could think about was getting to a bathroom as fast as possible to rinse the taste of him out of my mouth.

I felt disgusted and violated.

Not long after, I performed the skit as written, carefully turning my head so he couldn’t kiss me on the lips.

55 years old, remember. Franken wasn't done:

Other than our dialogue on stage, I never had a voluntary conversation with Al Franken again. I avoided him as much as possible and made sure I was never alone with him again for the rest of the tour.

Franken repaid me with petty insults, including drawing devil horns on at least one of the headshots I was autographing for the troops.

But he didn’t stop there.

The tour wrapped and on Christmas Eve we began the 36-hour trip home to L.A. After 2 weeks of grueling travel and performing I was exhausted. When our C-17 cargo plane took off from Afghanistan I immediately fell asleep, even though I was still wearing my flak vest and Kevlar helmet.

It wasn’t until I was back in the US and looking through the CD of photos we were given by the photographer that I saw this one:

I'm your handyman

Tweeden's reaction? Well, what do you think?

I couldn’t believe it. He groped me, without my consent, while I was asleep.

I felt violated all over again. Embarrassed. Belittled. Humiliated.

How dare anyone grab my breasts like this and think it’s funny?

It's not funny. In the least. But what do you expect from a guy who would say something like this in a major publication?

In the New York Magazine article, dated March 13, 1995, entitled "Comedy Isn't Funny: Saturday Night Live At Twenty--How The Show That Transformed TV Became A Grim Joke" Franken veers off of a discussion of a skit involving Andy Rooney, and proposes a skit involving the drugging and rape of Lesley Stahl.

Franken: And, "I give the pills to Lesley Stahl. Then, when Lesley's passed out, I take her to the closet and rape her." Or, "That's why you never see Lesley until February." Or, "When she passes out, I put her in various positions and take pictures of her."

The punchline became reality, I guess. You'll notice that the source of this anecdote is City Pages, from back in 2008. It's worth remembering, my fellow Minnesotans saw fit to elect this guy in 2008, and once again in 2014. Yes, the 2008 election was probably stolen, but we don't get to unring that bell, and Franken won a second term comfortably in 2014, when he ran against a painted sheet metal office credenza. I don't think that's exactly who he defeated, but it's been a number of years. It wasn't close, though.

So what do we make of it? My preliminary thoughts:

• Even before I heard of this incident, or read the City Pages piece back in '08, I was pretty sure Franken was a creep. He's always had that vibe. As we entered this time of tumbrels, if I'd had to predict which senators were most likely to be sexual miscreants, Franken would have been in my top 5 choices.
• The continuing saga of Roy Moore complicates Franken's career prospects. If the Democrats needed Franken, they'd have circled the wagons around him by now. They don't need him, though. If Franken were to leave tomorrow, Mark Dayton would have a replacement ready, most likely Lt. Governor Tina "Madame Abbatoir" Flint Smith, who was an executive with Planned Parenthood before she went into the retail side of politics. She would easily have use of the hagiography brigade that has served Amy Klobuchar so well over the years.
• The reason Moore matters is simple -- for the Democrats to claim any moral high ground, they need to appear tougher on their reprobates and more full-throated in their denunciations than the professional Republicans have been with Moore. It's more difficult to tut-tut Moore if you're simultaneously protecting Franken. Once Franken gave the Democrats the 60th vote for Obamacare, he's always been living on borrowed time. The moment you are no longer valuable to Chuck Schumer et al., you get this action:

• But wait -- doesn't Franken have value to the DFL? Not as much as you'd think. He ran well behind Barack Obama in '08 and he did nothing to lift the overall ticket in 2014, as Dayton and everyone else in the DFL won their races comfortably. And while it hasn't been fashionable for the DFL rank-and-file to bash Franken, there are more than a few people in the party who view him as something less than a team player. Some of the Metrocrats are hyenas, too.
• If I were to bet, I'd say Franken only survives if no one else comes forward. But if I were to bet, someone else will come forward. Franken was a reprobate long before he became a politician and if there's value in dropping on a dime on him now, and there's every reason to imagine there is value, we'll have more accusers. Some may even have pictures.

The Local Scene -- Endgame

The election in New Brighton is tomorrow. I honestly have no idea what will happen. For the better part of a dozen years, the dynamic in the New Brighton City Council has been Gina Bauman vs. the Machine. For a few years, I wrote for a blog called Truth vs. the Machine. The underlying premise of that blog was to detail how Republican candidates had to fight against the political machine that is the DFL. The guy who ran the blog, Gary Miller, has long since left conservative politics and is now something of a anarcho-capitalist, which historically are not two great tastes that taste great together, but back then he was on to an important notion -- the left is machine-like, especially in Minnesota.

The way the dynamic plays out in New Brighton has been fairly predictable. The key player in New Brighton isn't anyone in elected office, but rather the city manager, Dean Lotter. Lotter, like most city managers, wants to ensure he has all the money he wants to pursue whatever agenda he deems necessary, so his goal is to find citizens who will serve in municipal government as rubber stamps. There's nothing particularly unusual about this dynamic; you see it in a lot of suburban enclaves. For the past dozen years, Gina has refused the ceremonial role and has been digging into how things are run. She asks tough questions and often challenges the prerogatives of the city government and its employees. Not surprisingly, these folks dislike Bauman for it.

The other politicians who serve on the city council are lefties for the most part. The mayor, Val Johnson, is very nice as long as you agree with her, but if you don't, she gets nasty and personal in a hurry. I posted the video of her outburst at a recent city council work session last week, but a repeat seems in order:





While Val Johnson isn't running against Bauman directly, that's the actual dynamic involved. The other members of the council include Brian Strub, who shares a similar mindset to Johnson (with more emotional control). He is not running for reelection. The machine has its candidates, Graeme Allen and Emily Dunsworth, who if elected would ensure that Dean Lotter's life would be much easier. Bauman is running as part of a de facto opposition slate, along with Susan Erickson and Sharon Doffing, who is Johnson's actual opponent. If elected, Doffing and Erickson would shake things up. The other two members of the city council, Mary Burg and Paul Jacobsen, aren't up for election in this cycle, but both have grown comfortable being Lotter's pal.

If I'm reading the tea leaves correctly, the machine is set to prevail this time. While Mayor Johnson's behavior has raised a few eyebrows, most of her supporters see the world the way she does and don't mind it much if she calls people racists without justification. It adds a little flavor to the stew and makes them feel better about living in Trumpland. Bauman has fought this machine for over a decade and deserves a chance to continue the fight. I hope she gets it. And further, I hope she gets some reinforcements in Erickson and Doffing. The city is a better place if we don't let it run on autopilot.

Actually, I appreciate her honest expression of her opinion

Melissa Hortman is a DFLliberal politician. At least she's honest about it:

The DFL's leader in the state House of Representatives is not apologizing for a crack about white men during a floor speech that led at least one Republican colleague to demand on Tuesday she resign from her leadership post.

"I hate to break up the 100 percent white male card game in the retiring room, but I think this is an important debate," House Minority Leader Melissa Hortman of Brooklyn Park said during a House session Monday evening.

Hortman then praised several speeches by female colleagues, including several women of color, that some members missed as they relaxed in the lounge-style room reserved for members just off the House floor.

Of course it was a cheap shot. It also reflects precisely why Hortman and her pals in the DFL are now a minority and why, outside of places like Brooklyn Park, people who share Hortman's views have difficulty getting elected.

Keep talking, Rep. Hortman. Tell us all about your world view. Shout it from the housetops. Fill thy horn with bile.

If only we could draw the maps

It is an article of faith among a lot of lefties I know -- if only those nasty Republicans didn't gerrymander things back in 2010, the Democrats would be in charge of a lot more. Is it true? Walter Russell Mead wonders about that, using the example of our neighbors to the south:

1990s-era Democrats still had a strong presence in rural areas. But as the party moved to accommodate a more urban and liberal electoral base, its support outside of major metropolitan areas faded, especially during the Obama years.

Territorial representation penalizes parties for failing to build geographically broad political coalitions. So matter how lopsided a majority the Democrats can build in places like Des Moines, they will always be hamstrung if they can’t win compete less-densely populated areas as well.

You can tell this trend is happening by what happened here in Minnesota. No one thought Tim Walz was in trouble in the 1st CD, but he nearly got beat, winning by less than 3000 votes, against an opponent who he'd beaten by 19,000 the time before. It was less than comfortable for Collin Peterson in the 7th as well; he won his district with 60% of the vote in 2012, but only 52% in 2016. And Rick Nolan barely hung on in the 8th.

I live in the 4th CD; you could put the DFL label on a potted plant and it would be elected to Congress; we've demonstrated that conclusively by sending Betty McCollum back to the Hill nine times. It's easy for the DFL to control my district, but they don't have very good arguments outstate. As we look at the new legislature in St. Paul, and the new Congress, it's the same issue. Iowa and Wisconsin were both blue states less than 10 years ago, but that's changed. It could change here, too, if the DFL learns the wrong lessons from the election.

A tidy summation

Walter Russell Mead, making essentially the same point I've been trying to make recently:

President Obama will no doubt have a lucrative and high-profile retirement. He’s younger than most Presidents, and he will be staying in Washington for the time being. But his immediate legacy is clearly a disaster for Democrats: in early 2017, the Party will control a minority of state houses and no branch of Federal government. With so little, it’s very difficult to regenerate and develop a farm system. The Democrats’ bench is already extremely shallow; it probably won’t get much more crowded over the next few years.

Meanwhile, President Obama’s signature policy initiatives are withering on the vine. The Iran Deal looks unlikely to survive the next four years. Obamacare will likely be gutted early next year. The President’s international climate change frameworks aren’t supported by the incoming administration or the incoming Congress. His nuclear non-proliferation efforts failed. Dodd-Frank’s regulations may be repealed. His free trade agenda has stalled. His immigration reform efforts have led to a backlash that will make life even harder for the people he tried to help. The list goes on…

Darn shame, right? The largest problem Democrats face is the bench Obama leaves behind. Politics is largely about showing up and, in a lot of places in the country, Democrats don't show up. You have a surfeit of political figures in larger metropolitan areas, but in smaller towns and exurban enclaves, Democrats don't have much traction. The DFL wins statewide elections in Minnesota because there are enough like-minded people in the metropolitan area to offset the lack of support DFLers get elsewhere. Well over half of the state's population is in the metro area.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, what power Democrats have is largely limited to Milwaukee and Madison, which together fall well short of having half the population. Wisconsin's population is spread out across a larger number of communities and many of them trend conservative. The Democrats have a difficult time winning arguments because the people making the arguments are all concentrated in the same places, which leads to groupthink. I'm not sure how the donks can solve this issue.

A reminder from afar

We'd rather not talk about our governor in Minnesota. Sometimes it takes a reminder from an outside observer to make the point. Here's Victor Davis Hanson:

In our new age of racial polarization, few have been quite as crude as Minnesota governor Mark Dayton, who lashed out at any Minnesotans who questioned the wisdom of allowing into his state mostly unvetted refugees from Somalia, a few with demonstrable Islamist ties: “If you are that intolerant, if you are that much of a racist or a bigot, then find another state. Find a state where the minority population is 1 percent or whatever.” Then Dayton zeroed in with contempt for the white working class: “Our economy cannot expand based on white, B+, Minnesota-born citizens. We don’t have enough.”

I suppose if Dayton would stop insulting them and taxing the snot out of them, we might have a few more, but I digress. Hanson brings up Dayton in service of a larger point:

White progressive elites also explain much of the disparagement. By focusing on the supposed racism of the working classes, they find exemption for their own often exclusionary lives. Paula Deen’s long ago insensitive racial epithet was nearly a career-ending gaffe, whereas the nation simply shrugged off the more recent and racist characterization of Barack Obama in 2008 by then senators Joe Biden and Harry Reid. Saturday Night Live, worried about the appearance of its nearly all-white cast, just hired a “Latina” comedian who in preemptory fashion deleted 2,000 tweets that had illustrated her own racial stereotyping of black men and Asians in general.

Those with real “white privilege” can both alleviate guilt and navigate around the ramifications of their own racialist ideologies by expressing outrage at supposedly unrepentant Confederates and hillbillies — and, more recently, Trump supporters. I know hundreds of working-class whites in rural central California and have not heard racial slurs from any of them. But then again, none stereotype other white people as “deplorable” in the fashion of Hillary Clinton in 2016. Maybe because none ever traffic in the race vocabulary of “white people,” in the fashion that Hillary Clinton did in 2008, they now feel no need to do so to demonize them.

We all need our Other. And we all need our expiation. It's a lot more tolerable if you can dump your sins on someone else. Back to Hanson:

Cowardice too plays a role. It is much easier to blast faceless white supposed Neanderthals from afar when proximate whites are frequently the sensitive metrosexuals and pajama boys of the Yale campus, in the MSNBC green room, or among the Washington press corps. When a Princeton environmental-studies major confesses to her white privilege, she seeks exemption for her own apartheid by suggesting that white racists are epidemic in places she has never visited.

Speaking truth to power is not chastising those of the same elite class but rather venturing to a Bakersfield NASCAR race or a rural Ohio fairground to blast “white privilege.”

And if you want to know why Trump is still hanging in there, even though every major media outlet around is issuing full-throated denunciations of him, it's behavior of this sort that explains it. Hanson sums it up quite nicely:

In a new world of racially segregated dorms, racially safe spaces on campus, and racial preferences for the children of Eric Holder and Jorge Ramos, one needs a quite unattractive white working class other than the sympathetic multimillionaire cadre of a John Kerry, Chelsea Clinton, or George Soros. In that context, the Clingers, the Deplorables, and the B+ers of America’s vast loser interior serve well enough.

Until they don't.

You can vote for The Donald after all

The DFL gets shut down:

Donald Trump will be on Minnesota’s ballot this November, despite a DFL Party legal maneuver to try to keep him off.

In a six-page decision issued Monday afternoon, the state Supreme Court dismissed a petition filed last week in which DFL leaders argued that the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, should not be listed on the ballot because Republicans had not properly selected alternate electors.

The court said the DFL waited too long to lodge its objections to what it characterized as a technical error.

My two cents -- this was a strategic error from the get-go. Despite everything that's been going on in recent days with Hillary Clinton's health, or at least what little we have been able to learn about it, she is still highly likely to win in Minnesota. Had Trump been removed from the ballot, it would have been a national story and it would have played into "the election is rigged" zeitgeist that Trump and his team have been orchestrating. This is an outsider election and any evidence showing insiders using technicalities against Trump would not redound to Mrs. Clinton's benefit. We'll just leave it there for now.

The easy way to #NeverTrump

So, you don't want to vote for Donald Trump? DFL honcho Ken Martin wants to make it even easier:

In a bold escalation of its effort to have Donald Trump and Mike Pence removed from the ballot in Minnesota, the DFL Party has taken its argument to the state Supreme Court.

Ken Martin, the party’s chair, late Thursday filed a petition with the court asking it to order the Minnesota secretary of state to strip the Republicans’ names off the state’s Nov. 8 election ballot.

There is urgency in resolving the issue, because early voting will begin in Minnesota Sept. 23.

The petition names Secretary of State Steve Simon as the defendant. It says Simon erred when he accepted a “certificate of nomination” filed about Aug. 25 by the state Republican Party after its Executive Committee met to select and approve alternate presidential electors. According to state law, electors and alternate electors must be nominated at an official state convention.

The DFL approaches voting in the same way Henry Ford reputedly viewed color choices for the Model T -- you can vote for anyone you like, as long as the candidate is a Democrat. Getting people bounced from the ballot is a proven strategy. Such rules do not apply to Frank Lautenberg, however.

Lightning Round -- 081016

Too many topics, not enough time. Let's start, shall we?

• One of the advantages of being #NeverTrump is that you don't have any obligations to take up the cudgels on his behalf. Having said that, I don't take the hyperventilating about his "Second Amendment people" remarks very seriously. He's not calling for anyone to assassinate Hillary Clinton and "Second Amendment people" wouldn't do it, anyway. There are dozens of reasons to oppose Trump; we've discussed many of them in this space. This latest incident is not one of them.
• And in case you've forgotten, Hillary Clinton has a history of thinking out loud as well. The cries of anguish that were directed against her comments then were similarly self-serving.
• And because Trump is too busy saying stupid things, it's easy for the media to ignore things they shouldn't ignore. And other things, too. We'll be coming back to the matter of Shahram Amiri in another post, as his case underscores the real world consequences of Hillary Clinton's extraordinarily reckless behavior.
• Looks like Jason Lewis won the primary in CD2. I used to listen to Jason's radio show quite a lot on the afternoon drive home, especially in his first incarnation as "Minnesota's Mr. Right"; he's a very bright man and does an excellent job of presenting the conservative worldview. It's going to be a close race in CD2, which is significantly more blue than it once was, but he should have a good chance of winning. The DFL candidate, Angie Craig, will have a lot of money and institutional support behind her, but I'm not seeing much of a rationale for her campaign other than to be a slightly less tone-deaf version of Betty McCollum. We already have one of those.
• Meanwhile, Phyllis Kahn is finally done, after losing her DFL primary against newcomer Ilhan Omar. Kahn has been in the Lege since 1973. That's a long run. What was perhaps more surprising is that another Minneapolis DFLer, Joe Mullery, went down last night as well. Understanding the machinations of the DFL in the city is difficult at best, but on balance getting rid of tenured deadwood is usually a positive step, and Kahn and Mullery won't be missed.
• And over in Wisconsin, Paul Ryan edged his primary opponent by about 70 points.
• And before we forget, let's also remember the sorts of guests who attend Hillary Clinton rallies. No word yet on whether Zubeidat Tsarnaeva will be turning up at a Clinton rally in Boston.