Which for a teacher from small town Nebraska via Mankato is really just going home…

The media narrative is that Democrats don’t do rural… Which Governor Tim Walz handily disproved with appearances in Fargo and Fergus Falls. That’s the Fargo media market which covers 14 Minnesota counties with network affiliates hungry for news amidst the flat and boring Red River Valley. Thus this wise campaign move netted almost two minutes earned media on even the Fox affiliate and afternoon drive time coverage on KFGO, a highly rated talk station whose signal covers most of western Minnesota.

And to prove this ain’t no fluke, Walz is on the road again today in Duluth and democratic Secretary of State candidate Steve Simon will be in Willmar and Marshall tomorrow!

And maybe save democracy too?

I won’t bother you with the polls and prognostications, it looks bad. Neither will I waste time on some of the gawd awful strategy some of our Democratic campaigns and party has mis-deployed. At this point the goal is to hang on to enough seats in houses and senates and governor’s mansions to block the Neo-Confederate AKA Republican Party’s planned reign of terror.

It’s too late for major policy shifts which would only look inconsistent at best and pandering at worst. But last week campaign spurts are nothing new- Here in Minnesota in 1990 Paul Wellstone only polled within striking distance of incumbent Rudy Boschwitz in the last weeks of the campaign and a last minute “I’m more jewish that you” remark by Boschwitz probably tipped the election to Wellstone. In the same election the Republican candidate for governor resigned the nomination in scandal and after a court fight Arne Carlson replaced him on the ballot just weeks before the election. Arne put together a winning campaign on short notice and defeated incumbent democrat Rudy Perpich. Eight years later Independent candidate for governor Jesse Ventura was been behind by double digits all summer but after spending the week before the election on a ’round the state RV tour won the three way race by outworking his opponents from both major parties. I was on a democratic campaign tour through Minneapolis the weekend before the election and the last event was a Mexican Day of the Dead celebration, our Democratic candidate knocked off early while County Attorney candidate Amy Klobuchar stayed talking to voters until who knows when, she won a close race and started her unbroken winning streak a couple days later.

So yes, we can still turn close races around- Millions in ad buys can be shifted from saturated markets to races where our candidates are only trailing by low single digits- Iowa US Senate, IA 2&3, NE2, and SD Governor and a bunch of other “undercard” close races, I’m talking about you. And if you live in a competitive district and are able, please get out and campaign!

Half century ago the “Rocky Hour Picture Show” was born in a London theatre and grew up on the big screen, and this work of trans and otherwise -gressive comedy lives on in multiple medias and live on the big screen late Saturday nights. In response to this and other flowerings of progressive culture, the Republicans have declared cultural civil war, cultivating a deadly serious armed to the teeth house of political horrors that threatens to launch a shooting war.

Believe it or not, the Republicans did learn a few things from their enemies during their neo-crusades in Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq: Fire up enough men and a few women with fundamentalist religion, sexism, homophobia and general intolerance and they’ll fight wars for you with no need to arm them or pay them now or in veterans benefits. Indoctrinate over the internet and through a network of allied hate groups and the Republicans have plausible deniability, which comes in handy as the Republican Party has become the “political wing” of a coalition of hate groups including neo nazis, racists, misogynists, and anyone else violently opposed to 21st century science and culture.

This comes in handy for the Republicans as their brand of political backwardness isn’t too popular, resulting in their losing the popular vote in the last five presidential elections. But the republican’s alliance with their coalition of hate intimidates minority democratic voters into urban districts where their votes are often wasted in congressional and legislative elections so the Republican minority can block the will of the majority. And if that fails, they’ve got their armed thugs to scare away voters, threaten and block elections, and asassinate democratic leaders like they just tried.

Halloween and it’s fictional horrors will be over tomorrow, the Republican’s reign of terror will grow until we end it.

Short post tonight- The wound from a “DFL Strategist”‘s pronouncement that Democrats don’t need rural voters is still raw, so I took another look at the stats to see what a Democratic abandonment of rural Minnesota would do, and it’s scary. The democrats win statewide races in Minnesota largely due to excellent turnout in metro counties like Hennepin, in fact of the 7 counties with over 85% turnout in 2000 Biden won 4 with margins ranging from 9% in Washington County to 43% in Hennepin! 11 Counties had turnout under 70% and Trump won 9 of them by 1% to 38%.

Almost all of those Biden high turnout counties are in the metro and almost all of the Trump low turnout counties are rural. I gamed out the effects of increased turnout in those rural Trump leaning counties and if the republicans could have increased turnout there to metro levels in 2018 Walz and Flanagan would have narrowly won and the other 3 Constitutional Officers would have probably lost… Exactly the outcome the polls are suggesting this year! Case closed- Democrats cannot win Minnesota and rural states period without at least a respectable effort in rural areas!

Normally once the Democratic Party slate is set by the primary we democrats unite behind our candidates and put off the petty infighting until after the election. But this year too many Minnesota democrats have forgotten the election and decide having a pure but losing party is more important, demanding that democrats from the grassroots up to a sitting democratic congress member be purged for exercising their freedom of speech.

Um, make that Wellstones, and lots of ’em.

Quote from a best left unnamed “DFL strategist” in MPR News today: “The DFL formula today is you dominate inside the (Twin Cities) beltway, and then you do extremely well, in what I call what college towns” Paul Wellstone blew off that “strategy” and pretty much tore up the whole current Democratic Party playbook when he won a U.S. Senate seat in 1990 from a republican incumbent who outspent him five to one. Then to prove it was no fluke he won re-election in 1996 and was on his way to another win in 2002 when he was taken from us all too soon.

Paul Wellstone’s activism went far beyond the “beltway” and “college towns”- Before he served us in the Senate he fought rural poverty in Rice County, Minnesota. He was arrested while trying to stop a farm foreclosure at a Paynesville, Minnesota bank. Then big business outsiders took over rural electric co-ops and plotted to build a high power line to bring electricity from dirty North Dakota coal mines far beyond the rural co-ops to the big cities of Minneapolis and St.Paul. Paul Wellstone joined farmers, many of them founding members of those rural electric co-ops, in fighting a power line that offered them nothing but ugly obstacles to farm around and potential bankruptcy for the rural electric co-ops they created.

Then Paul Wellstone got elected Senator ’cause the Democratic Party thought the race was hopeless. Listen up, newbie “progressives”- Paul won and won again because he didn’t throw whole groups of individuals “under the bus” like cops for the crimes of a few. Some veterans were reluctant to support Vietnam War protester Paul Wellstone, but he won them over with great constituent service because he didn’t blame the war on the reluctant warriors. In the Senate he continued his advocacy for farmers and rural folks, and unlike too many Democratic candidates today he won by larger margins in rural Minnesota in his second race.

Our democratic FARMER-LABOR party’s roots are as much in rural Minnesota as the metro, if not more. Ignore the 40% of Minnesota that is rural and you will create a republican voting block that will make Democrats a permanent minority party.

And newbie progressives, be like Paul…

A decade ago campaigning became my full time volunteer job about now as we cranked up the GOTV and didn’t slow down until the polls closed. Today, the nearest competitive congressional or legislative race is over a hundred miles away, and less than 1% of Minnesota’s democratic voters are within 50 miles of my southwest Minnesota home so I can’t help our statewide candidates much either. We’ve got the odd door knock going on out here, but this old activists shaky legs can’t go far and doorknocks in general election races don’t accomplish much anyways.

WTH happened?

As recently as 2018 democrats Colin Peterson and Amy Klobuchar won my legislative and congressional district, and it didn’t change much with redistricting. Colin did it with his relentless dedication to agriculture and a rep for conservatism that riled the progressives despite his support for labor, tribal nations, and GLBT rights. Amy did it with similar dedication to agriculture and over $20 million in spending on 3 campaigns didn’t hurt. Down ballot we last won my legislative district in 2012 and now lose by at least 40%. Colin was finally defeated in 2020 by the Trump wave and our 2022 candidate has raised well under $100,000 while her GOP opponent in this safe GOP district has raised well over a million$$$. Down ballot our legislative candidates have raised but 5 digit campaign budgets and are fighting for just name recognition.

Where’d all the campaign $$$ go?

Campaign spending in the Georgia senate race alone is over $200 million and counting, and a handful of other senate races have passed over $100 million in spending. Median spending for a senate race is around $3 million and $1 million for a congressional race, and almost all of these median districts aren’t even remotely competitive. Down ballot competitive legislative races see six figure spending and at least one Minnesota district may go over the million dollar mark this year. And remember one of our most successful candidates here, Amy Klobuchar? Her $20 million plus in campaign spending is around $150,000 per house district, and that’s what we’d need to win out here.

About now some party hack will chime in with “But we can’t afford to waste money in “red” districts we’re going to loose, we need to save scarce campaign funds for districts we can win.”… Hack, take your “scarcity” argument and stuff it where the sun don’t shine!

Both major parties combined, their candidates, outside committees, dark money donors, and assorted lackeys will spend over $10 billion this cycle, that’s ten billion with a “B” or $10,000,000,000! About 60+% of that will be spent on advertising or $6 billion, which is more than top 10 advertisers Ford and GM spend together. Yup, GM and Ford are being outspent by the two major parties, and while the automakers at least spread that saturation level spend around the country and the year, the parties are funneling their billions of $$$ in a handful or maybe dozen at most “competitive” races for just a few months. Even the dumbest adman or woman will tell you that’s a total waste of campaign donations. The “scarcity” argument is now off the table…

So the big D Democratic Party and it’s wealthy buddies are blowing another hundred million dollars in the Georgia Senate race on top of the millions more spent on the Georgia Governors race and the two senate races and runoffs and presidential race in Georgia last cycle, just to further enrich the TV station owners and maybe add .1% to their candidate’s vote. Meanwhile in Iowa which the Democrats wrote off as “red” our senate candidate is within 3% of finally retiring Grassley and two democratic congressional candidates have thin leads in the polling. Minnesota 1, Nebraska 2, and Kansas 3 are competitive too and being ignored… Imagine what those campaigns could do with a million or three dollars diverted from the thoroughly saturated Georgia media market! Never mind investing a measly million of the Democrat’s petty cash to defeating the republican incumbent here in supposedly “deep red” Minnesota 7 who can only manage single digit net approval ratings from her own party.

So big “D” Democrats, quit asking me to door knock ’til I literally drop in districts you won’t even invest petty cash in. And don’t be surprised when I call you on your metro centric mismanagement, election’s 2 weeks out and I’m just gettin’ fired up!

538 just called it- After better than expected performance in four special U.S. House elections including picking up a seat from the republicans yesterday, Democrats may hold on to the house, senate, and some down ballot close elections too. This will not doubt be a disappointment for Democratic office holders preparing to again be the minority party they knew and loved… But I’m not complaining!

Now this new found electability will surely throw a monkey wrench into the campaign strategies of Democratic leaders who were looking forward to a comfortable election season defending safe seats like MN2 and IA3 instead of evicting republican incumbents from former democratic seats in the wilds of MN1, IA1 and 2, NE2, and maybe even NE1 too. With this good electoral news ad buys should be moving from the metro to rural markets and staffers relocated to these now competitive districts…

I see no such movement- I live less than 30 miles from again competitive MN1 but looking at Democratic candidate Ettinger’s campaign website it’s obvious that their campaign is pretty much ignoring the western 100+ miles of the district I live adjacent to. Same in Iowa, where IA1, dominated by the “Peoples Republic of Iowa City” has been all but surrendered to the republicans. But despite their best attempts otherwise, the Democrats may very well hang on to the House and a bunch of endangered Governorships and Legislatures too.

How the H…?

Despite the billions spent, politics is not the precision PR and ad campaigns we expect from Fortune 500 companies… It’s more like a very amateur baseball game between teams of heavy drinking outa shape middle aged guys who are related to the umpires. Through the innings as the player’s Blood Alcohol Content rises the runs get easier, go into extra innings in darkness and a bunted foul ball can become an inside the park home run.

While the Democratic Party bumbles it’s way to preservation of the status quo, the republicans are a literal hot mess of Neo-Nazi Confederate apologist global warming, election, and 20th century denying certifiably insane armed terrorists. When that truth is exposed the swing voters who really decide elections vote democratic, and we get “blue wave” elections. I don’t expect the Democrats will take advantage of that opportunity…

Please prove me wrong.

Newbie GOP Congress Critter Michelle Fischbach ain’t too popular- a recent Change Research poll for MinnPost gives her the lowest net favorables among Minnesota’s GOP Congress Members. The only net positives she gets are a mere +7% from trump voters and +8% from republicans. Among the independents that swing CD7 elections she’s -22, -16 with rural voters, and -15 with greater Minnesota voters, and her district is mostly rural and entirely within greater Minnesota. DNC and other Democrats with big dollars, why aren’t you all over this race?

The capital D Democrats and their big donor allies are MIA in MN7 because they’re lousy tacticians. The GOP campaigns smarter- a few cycles back when conventional wisdom gave Democrats damn near ownership of northeast Minnesota’s labor heavy CD8 the GOP noted rising dissatisfaction with the Democratic incumbent… So they threw a little money into that cheap media district and flipped it! We democrats flipped it back and the GOP flipped it back again, but with redistricting cutting labor’s influence and the Democratic candidate a mining cancelling environmentalist while much of that labor block are miners, the district will stay GOP until democrats pick a more suitable candidate.

While the Democrats pretty much invest only in safe districts that they’d probably win anyways, the GOP picks races like venture capitalists- They know they will lose far more often than they win, but when they do win the payoff is so huge it more than makes up for all the losses. In this years congressional races where each party will spend hundreds of millions, they can easily invest $100K in spare change into CD7 and give Democratic Farmer Labor candidate Jill Abahsain’s campaign critical mass.

DNC and big dollar Dems, I dare ya…

It’s early am on February 14, 2023 and a cold wind blows through the capital grounds as the Guard warms up in their HUMVEEs and APCs. After days of lobbying and demonstrations the Guard with enough tear gas to sicken residents a mile away cleared the grounds and the legislature came back into session. The floor sessions in both chambers were short as what seemed like the wildest red state abortion restrictions, bans of transgender health care, restroom use, sports participation, gay adoption, wholesale repeal of the Human Rights Act, creation of a bunch of new felonies, restoration of capital punishment, and finally elimination of the Board of Medical Practice were all crammed into one omnibus bill from hell and quickly passed and signed by Governor Jensen.

What the hell…?

I came out a half century ago and I’ve been reviewing the queer history of that era, when Jack Baker was physically attacked at a Democratic Party event while a state grant funded “experimental” gender confirming health care for about 20 trans women at the U of M. Minnesota’s stealthy first pride march loudly snuck up Nicollet Avenue, a trans Minneapolis high school student was allowed to switch schools over the summer and transition, conservative United Way funded it’s first gay social service agencies, and my friend Terry was beaten to death in Loring Park. But progress was being made as Minneapolis then St.Paul adopted gay and then trans inclusive civil rights laws followed by Minnesota in 1993, same gender marriage was finally legalized, and we got pretty smug…

So comes the 2022 election season and given that most of us Minnesota gays had experienced legal equality for all our adult lives, we kinda assumed it was a given. We democrats happened to be pretty much the party in power when Russia started a war and stole our hard earned pay with inflation, and thus we democrats got the blame. By pride time all the warning signs were there- Congressional democrats behind 2% on the generic ballot, Governor Walz slipping in the polls, and fortunately Biden wasn’t on the ballot. Local Democratic Party units put most of their efforts behind their local legislative candidates even though 80% of the races weren’t competitive, our gay electeds campaigned for at least the 4th trans legislative candidate and the 1st that will actually be elected thanks to a deep blue district, and the party’s official Stonewall DFL caucus pretty much ignored Governor Walz because he wasn’t progressive enough for their litmus tests. Come Election Day a republican wave and democratic apathy result in democrats losing both the state and federal house and senate, while low democratic turnout and progressive’s apathy defeat Governor Walz and all the statewide democratic candidates. It gets worse- the Biden victory denying republican Secretary of State will certify Minnesota’s electoral votes for Trump in 2024, no matter who wins.

After half a century of fighting for our rights I should be able to retire instead of having to fight these battles again. And the bigots are getting worse, stealing trans children from their families much like the nazis stole and murdered children with disabilities following the sad example we set when we stole native children from their families. The republicans know they have one chance left to wholesale wipe out gay and women rights and they’ll move quickly, and we democrats with our smug apathy, discord, and just plain disorganization are going to let them.

Please prove me wrong…

Getting a full nights sleep is increasingly difficult for us democrats, and for good reasons. Just ran across an interview of one of the forgotten heroes of the GLBT(add letters to taste…) movement here in Minnesota, Margaret O’Hartigan. Despite being unable to afford law school Margaret successfully sued the state of Minnesota to pay for her gender affirming health care way back in the 70s, lobbied for trans inclusive civil rights laws back when the pure white G&L ignored the B and was happy to kick the T under the bus if it got them their full measure of white privilege back. After a stint as a legislative staffer Margaret moved to Washington and now Oregon and brought her activism with her and she’s largely responsible for the passing of trans inclusive laws out there as well as leading an inner city neighborhood organization. Margaret’s nearing 70 and sharp as ever, and she’s damn worried- The extremists who have taken over the former Republican Party are already trampling the rights of trans citizens and even children everywhere they can. Fortunately they can’t in Minnesota… Yet. Given that almost every Republican candidate who is replacing a retiring Republican incumbent is more radicalized and wants to take America back a century if not three, we can expect they’ll act quickly next year to make abortion a capital crime and send gays back to the closet if they can’t get to Canada.

Look at any decent polling site and the trend is clear, due to gerrymandering (some of it self inflicted by democrats clustering in big cities) republicans have at least a 2% advantage in controlling the U.S. House, and in the generic ballot we’re 2% down and dropping. A mere 2% shift of votes to the republicans averages out to the loss of 20 Democratic U.S. House seats, and we’ve got a mere 10 seat majority, and in the Senate we only have a majority because Vice President Kamala Harris can cast tie breaking votes in our favor. Here in Minnesota our democratic Governor Walz has a shrinking to almost nonexistent lead in the polls and re-election of the rest of our statewide slate that trailed Walz in the last election is even less likely. The republicans already control the Minnesota Senate thanks largely to environmental extremists driving a couple sitting democratic senators from mining areas out of the party, and even a 2% shift of votes in the republican’s direction will probably wipe out twice our democratic 10 seat majority in the House. It gets worse… Here in western Minnesota’s R+19 7th Congressional District the Republican incumbent has a bare +8% net approval from republicans but whole hog herds will take flight before DCCC will chip in a dollar of the millions it would take to win this seat. Down ballot we’ve got a whole two competitive legislative seats, and they’re seats we’re defending as democratic incumbents are retiring. We’ve got a bunch more districts that democrats won as recently as 2018, but many of our candidates are scrambling to get their campaigns going and raise the $3000(House) or $6000(Senate) to qualify for state campaign funding, never mind the six figure campaign war chest needed to be competitive.

The iconic legend of the “runaway train” is real- Heavy trains are so efficient due to their low air and rolling resistance that they’ll pick up speed on a barely visible down hill, and if not slowed in time will reach speeds far beyond what the brakes are capable of stopping them from. That’s why you’ll see trains slow before a long downhill, to get the speed down to where electric resistance braking will control the train’s speed and the brakes can be kept fresh in case an emergency stop is needed. Thanks to a pandemic that refuses to leave and inflation we didn’t cause but the party in power gets blamed for, this is a wave election going the wrong way and the political equivalent of a long steep downhill track with tight curves and a junction at the bottom.

Now if our Democratic leaders up in the locomotive were “on the ball” our DC Democrats would have started fighting the inflation that’s impoverishing us months ago instead of trying to ignore it. Instead of ‘splaining, they’d expose the Republicans for the haters and traitors they are. Here in Minnesota we’d put everything behind our most winnable race, re-electing Governor Walz so he can veto Republican attempts to criminalize reproductive and trans health care. Instead I’m seeing multiple daily tweets of campaign events from the Republican candidate increasingly known as “Dr. Death” with barely a peep from the MIA Walz campaign. Maybe because while the Minnesota Republican Party is broke but has thousands of fired up MAGA volunteers, the Democrats have millions in the bank but can’t seem to grasp that their target young athletic campaign workers can find better than the $15 an hour with 15 hours of mandatory overtime temp campaign jobs they’re offering. And back here in the “caboose” of Lyon County in rural western Minnesota, they’ve cut our parade presence to the “prettiest” float which has $500 worth of custom graphics… I ain’t rich enough for that competition. While we democrats should be campaigning hard there’s little for us to do, and I suspect I should prepare for the inevitable and take an extended Canadian vacation, maybe shop for an affordable prairie Province small town home too?

Democrats: If you decide to get a campaign together call me, I’ll be on the road…