Maybe MAGA isn’t so winning in the home of the Mayo Clinic- Rochester claims that their Mayo Civic Center arena can fit 5000 for concerts, so tonight Trump’s team had them keep about half the bleachers packed up and curtained off, so by the time they’d set aside room for a security buffer and the media they had room for 2000, maybe 3000 at most, Trump fans. And they may not all have been Minnesotans, as two separate sources reported hearing a lot of attendees with southern accents. Rochester has a pretty capable airport, and I imagine passenger charters are cheap on a fall weekday…

Event attendance is a good way to judge the voter appeal of a candidate- I knew Obama was a winner when I saw him regularly turn out 5% or more of a county’s population for a weekday event. Olmstead County has a population of over a hundred thousand all by itself, and at least another hundred thousand live within an hours drive… Looks like Trump is down to drawing only one, maybe two percent of the locals as his popularity slumps… Wonder how he’ll do in a few years when he’s playing prison lunch rooms?

Heidi could have waited to see the “whip count” before she decided, But despite being in a tight race in double digits +R NoDak she put principles first and announced she’ll vote against putting an accused rapist on our highest court. For that she deserves even the state’s many republican’s votes.

Heidi’s vote is also a win for North Dakota’s large Native American population, for whom the disappearance and murders of dozens of native girls and women is a major issue. Heidi took some heat from young native citizens for her support of big oil during the pipeline protests. Other than that gaff, this is the latest example of Heidi’s strong support of native peoples and sovereignty, and she deserves every native vote in North Dakota for that… And a strong native vote will probably be Heidi’s margin of victory.

Update: Emerson just dropped poll results for KS congressional races, dems up +4% in R+10 KS2 and +6% in R+4 KS3!

This new poll from Emerson College puts the GOP candidate leading by a statistically insignificant 1% in the gov race. 538’s classic and deluxe predictions have Kansas 40% rural R+10 2nd district and metro KC,KS R+4 KS3 ranked as toss-ups and GOP indy expenditures are being pulled in KS3.

This is a further indictment of big D Democratic leadership like the Minnesota’s DFL’s that refuse to target districts that are more republican than R+4… Their cowardice is leaving Red to Blue pickups on the table!

Wensday morning one of our Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor (DFL) party’s most closely guarded secrets was blown- The September campaign finance reports came out giving us a neat list of the 16 districts that had seen over $10,000 in “outside group” spending by the state DFL. That list of favored races included none here in CD7, and after a couple hours my anger had dropped to the point I covered the story in my Sassy Democrat blog. The Cliff’s notes version is that the state DFL targeted every GOP state house member sitting in a seat as republican as R+1.35, and 3 of the 12 GOP held districts further red as far as R+4. Of the 16 targeted seats, 10 were won by Hillary… Talk about setting a low bar! But you’ve got to recognize the “wisdom” of the state DFL- Pick a bunch of easy opponents and it’s easy to look like winners on election night.

Pretty likely these picks were made via the “DFL Index” with a few filtered out because they’d ticked off somebody in the leadership or whatever. The secret “DFL index” is out too, thanks to DFLer Tony Petrangelo who’s reverse engineered and posted it here. Yup, looks like that’s how the state DFL decides which races to blow it’s millions on. Compare that to 538’s explanation of how they make their predictions. 538 starts with a more sophisticated calculation of the “index”, then includes polling, past results going back decades, fundraising, incumbency, and generic ballot polling. After all that as of 6:07 pm today they rate CD7 as a win for DFLer Colin Peterson by a 2.8% margin with their “light” polls only forecast, by a 10.4% margin when they add the “fundamentals” for their “classic” forecast, and by a 12.8% blowout when expert’s ratings are added to produce the “deluxe” forecast. Yup, 538’s predictions produced by a program with 8000 lines of code produce a variance of 9% between their predictions that fluctuates as they update them every few hours… And the state DFL thinks they can target races just by the results of a couple elections two and four years ago?

That’s why we don’t take “indexes” too seriously here in R+12 CD7, given that DFLer Colin Peterson has won the district 14 times straight! Across the Red River 538 favors Democratic Non-Partisan League Senator Heidi Heitkamp to narrowly win in R+17 North Dakota, in R+14 South Dakota democrat gov candidate Billie Sutton is neck and neck in the polls, and in northwest Iowa’s R+11 CD4 democrat J.D. Scholten has out fund raised GOP incumbent Steve King and has pulled within single digits in the polls. The DFL index has little predictive value to target races by… And that’s why here in CD7, every race is a targeted race!

Well, it was a secret until the September campaign finance reports popped today. The  DFL needs to pick up about a dozen seats to have a bare majority, and the reports show they’ve showered over $10,000 in “outside expenditures” into all of 16 races. Most of those races are against GOP incumbents, and they’re not going to win ’em all or even three quarters of them… They need to target at least twice as many districts as they need to take back the majority. And it ain’t like the MN DFL is taking any big risks- nine of those chosen districts have positive DFL indexes, and they didn’t go deeper than R+4 into republican territory. That index is an artifact of the ’16 Trump wave/Hillary failure, and underestimates the historic DFL strength in many districts… The MN DFL should have targeted every district as deep into the GOP as R+5, contesting 25 races and assuring a DFL house majority if they win only half of them. Then add a second tier of races as deep as R+10 to build a durable supermajority. And finally, give DFL incumbent reps like Paul Marquart in his R+5 district and the half dozen DFL reps who survived in districts Trump won some help- The GOP is targeting them.

We have 134 DFL house candidates and their volunteers working hard to win… The MN DFL needs to give substantial support to more than 16 of them!

Tip O’ the hat to Daily Kos Elections for this story:

“IA-01: Medium Buying reports that the DCCC has canceled all of its remaining TV spending in the Cedar Rapids media market, which covers 85 percent of this seat. Its move comes days after Siena released a poll showing Democrat Abby Finkenauer leading GOP Rep. Rod Blum by a hefty 52-37 margin.

The Democratic group House Majority PAC has also been airing ads against Blum, and as far as we know, they haven’t canceled any airtime. Meanwhile, Blum’s would-be allies at the Congressional Leadership Fund and the NRCC have yet to reserve or run commercials to help him.”

With dem congressional challengers in the ‘burbs increasing their leads against incumbent GOP congress members, Look for the GOP to redirect their $$$ to dem held seats in rural areas… MN CDs 1, 7. and 8, heads up!

For over a decade I’ve been pitching an Interstate 29 corridor strategy to any democrat that will listen. Campaigning in western Iowa and the Dakotas I’d noted that the eastern population centers of the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas were trending blue and western Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota had potential too. Here within a days drive are 14 senate seats, a dozen congressional seats, and seven governorships, and most of them were competitive. I envisioned a string of full time dem campaign offices from KC north to darn near the border, swinging these swing seats into the democratic column.

Instead the Democratic Party abandoned most everything west of Minneapolis, Des Moines, and St.Louis and much of that turf turned red by default.  But this year is different- 5 (MN1, IA3, NE2, KS2, and KS3) of the 20 congressional districts 538’s “deluxe” congressional predictions classifies as “toss up” are on the I-29 corridor, and Heidi Heitcamp’s North Dakota seat is one of three in 538’s senate predictions “toss up” category. 538 don’t predict gov races, but surf over to 270’s gov pundit ratings and you’ll find the pundits rate one or two races along I-29 as tossups too.

Normally about here I’d be chastising D-Trip and similar beltway big D Democrats for ignoring the 1-29 corridor, but this year they got the memo and heck, even D-Trip has every one of those 5 “toss up” congressional races on the corridor supported via their “Red to Blue” program. But beltway Dems, don’t forget us… Make those campaign offices and staffers permanent because our I-29 corridor will be a political fulcrum in 2020 too!

Less than a year ago Al Franken apologized for sexual harassment and resigned. By not contesting the allegations through a long investigation Minnesota’s governor was able to promptly appoint a replacement, Minnesota remained represented in the Senate, and the Democratic Farmer Labor party (DFL) and Minnesota’s voters get to affirm or reject the Governor’s appointee in the November elections. In the same period four Minnesota legislators have been accused of sexual harassment, two resigned and gave the voters their right to choose their replacements. A third, Rep. Jim Knoblach, just ending his re-election campaign after stringing along his party through most of a six figure campaign only after the MSM was about to run the story of his alleged sexual abuse of his daughter. All four of these men have other careers they can fall back on so none will starve, and by resigning they have allowed their victims and their own healing to begin.

But what of the fourth legislator, Rod Hamilton? His accuser is credible and the legislative investigation is proceeding, but none the less Rod filed for another term he may be unable to complete. That’s just the beginning of the threats to Rod’s political future- His “day job” as far as we know is in Human Resources at Christensen Farms, which recently got an uninvited visit from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents bearing warrants and accusing Rod’s employer of knowingly hiring and cheating undocumented workers. Hard to believe that Rod wasn’t aware of that corporate crime, unless maybe Rod has a “no show” job at Christensen Farms and his real job is lobbying for them while chair of a legislative ag committee, a whole ‘nother offense altogether…

No wonder Rod is loudly complaining of all the pain he’s in. Rod, take a tip- I share your MS diagnosis and two decades ago working stress filled 15 hour days in the hell that was Hostess Brands forced me to use a wheelchair too. And not long after I left and started sleeping nights the wheelchair was replaced with a cane, and for the last few years that cane’s been folded up in my handbag, pretty much unused.

So let go Rod, and let the voters elect a rep who can serve them for a whole term. Apologize for what you did wrong, and if you really support immigrants like you say be a good citizen and bear witness to how your employer treated undocumented immigrant workers.

Rod, let it go and let the healing begin.

Then they’ll have ya phone bank ’til ya lose consciousness.

Parade season is over in the midwest, so door to door and phone campaigning have become SOP for Democratic Parties.  The pro’s in the biz of advertising gave up on door to door and phone cold calling decades ago because it’s too labor intensive, but campaigns tend to be amateur hour and assume hordes of volunteers to carry and call in their message to the millions.

Doorknocking re-emerged in campaigns around the turn of the millenia when scientists and campaigns in off year local elections experimented with intense doorknocks in random precincts. The election results showed a measurable increase in turnout in the doorknocked precincts versus the control precincts, and in some cases the results were pretty dramatic. The 2004 Dean campaign adopted the strategy en masse, and I spent many a cold winter day tramping though Iowa snow in the weeks before the Iowa Caucuses… And Dean came in 3rd. But a few months later a thousand of us democrats swarmed South Dakota and doorknocked our way to a narrow 3000 vote special election victory.

So comes 2007 and doorknocking becomes the Obama campaign’s primary strategy and I spent many more weekends wandering Iowa towns. We had so many volunteers and staffers swarm Iowa that by caucus day we’d even knocked farmhouses miles from towns. But as the campaign went nationwide and spread thin we saw the ugly side of doorknocking as staffers desperate to make doorknocking quotas darn near accosted anyone coming in the campaign office door to doorknock. I was riding into North Dakota in the fall of 2008 to check out a deal on a bike and thought I’d stop by the Obama/NPL campaign offices to see how thing were going. Barely made it in the door of the Fargo office before being hit with a demand that I doorknock or phone bank, but at least got to exchange niceties in Jamestown before the push to doorknock. Would have been happy to help, but I had miles to travel. Sadly the deal on the motorcycle fell through too.

Problem is, personal voter contact may be one of the few tools in the democratic toolbox that sorta works, what with a recent meta-analysis study showing that persuasive advertising pretty much fails in partisan elections. Similar research shows that while doorknocking can boost democratic voter turnout by several percent in low turnout primaries and off year elections, in presidential elections like 2008 the effect was barely noticeable though statistically significant. To be honest, I suspect that most of our campaign strategies are ineffective, and have a sneaking suspicion that our candidates are pretty much just surfing the waves of public opinion… But we’ll need some serious stats geeks to prove that, like the statisticians who put Wall Street to shame a couple decades back with their findings that investment managers rarely even outperformed the S&P 500 index.

So here we are in 2018 with big D Democratic parties and campaigns demanding that campaign staffers and offices meet daily contact quotas. So my e-mail and FB events page is full of doorknock demands, and I drop by the local democratic party campaign office for a meeting and get handed a list of voters to phone while another candidate tries to talk me into yet another doorknock! I can understand the desperation- When you’re the only campaign office in a district of 40,000 voters behind 20,000 doors that you’ll have to hit at least 5 times to catch maybe half those voters home those 100,000 contacts would make you kinda desperate. Especially when you have no paid staffers, maybe 20 volunteers, and voting starts in 4 days!

So staffers and overbearing volunteers, back off! There is no way we’re going to knock every door, so lets prioritize and knock the doors where we can have the most impact. And let’s make this a truly coordinated campaign- I’ve had three demands from different campaigns and party groups to knock and phone what is essentially the same “turf”- Can we at least put together a coordinated campaign? And lose the “ability shaming”- I’ve doorknocked for a couple candidates this cycle and my MS addled 68 year old body wouldn’t let me finish the last one. Quit hoping I’ll “rise to the challenge” of multi mile walks, instead let me pick out a bite size turf sheet by sheet. And that “Mini Van” app on the smart phone… Do you really want this farsighted gimp trying to enter data while stumbling along? I’ll take an old skool clipboard and I’ll be happy to enter the data back at the campaign office afterward. And from the state party chair who demanded to know how many doorknocks I’d done this cycle on down, don’t disgrace your party’s commitment to inclusion of differently abled citizens by ability shaming me because I can’t walk as fast and far as your 20 something staffers!

We’ve a couple more polls in MN, the toplines are predictable so here’s the “internals” of the Survey USA poll and some of the internals from the Strib/MPR/Mason-Dixon poll. Survey USA is an A rated pollster and Mason-Dixon B+ rated by 538, so no junk polling here, with MOEs under 5%. Like the previous polls of the MN senate and gov races, the dem candidates lead by MOE or greater in most tests, so those races are pretty much over. So no surprise that the RGA (Republican Governors Association) has cancelled TV time in Minnesota. That’s probably just the beginning of GOP and GOP friend’s money migrating out of Minnesota and especially out of the metro districts in the Midwest.

Take a look at 538’s “best in the business” U.S. House predictions- As of this morning GOP held suburban MN Congressional Districts (CDs) 2 and 3 were rated “Likely D” while rural Dem held MN1 was rated “Lean R”, MN7 “Likely D” and MN8 “toss up”. There’s a similar trend in Iowa where more northeast IA GOP held CD1 is rated “Likely D” and more rural southwest IA CD3 is rated “toss up”. Further down the I-29 Corridor GOP held seats NE2 (Omaha) is rated “Lean D” and KS2 (suburban KC,KS) is rated “toss up”. To a lesser degree this pattern is seen nationwide, with 538 predicting “likely D” outcomes in about a dozen GOP held districts, mostly in the suburbs. Take a look at 538’s U.S. Senate predictions- They show control of the Senate coming down to two “toss up” states, and one of them is North Dakota. If I ever get halfway rich I’m gonna buy a NoDak TV station before election year so I can get really rich!

Clearly the GOP needs firewalls, lifelines, and downright miracles at this point, so we can expect the GOP and their wealthy friends to pull their millions of ad $$$ out of suburban districts they’ve already lost and try to block the blue wave by winning rural districts like MN1 and MN8. Even MN7 where Democrat Colin Peterson survived the Trump wave and is rated “Likely D” by 538 is a likely GOP target, what with the district being rated R+12. Unfortunately the MN DFL is playing right into this GOP strategy with the much vaunted DFL bus being a no show at the big Worthington Turkey Day Parade in MN1 Saturday. Fortunately the local DFLers and governor candidate Walz didn’t get the memo and along with the UFCW local union turned out a block long parade contingent.

So “big D Democrats” and wealthy friends, get with the program: The electoral battle has shifted to the countryside, now move your massive resources there and breech the GOP’s “firewall”. At ground level, in MN and many other states many rural voters will start getting mail in ballots later this week and early voting begins Friday… We dems need to concentrate on these mail ballot precincts to get democratic votes “banked” before the GOP attack ad onslaught begins!