The Midnight Special: Midwest Primary Hot News

Back in the days of fast mail by rail, many trains left the big city union stations ’round midnight with literally hot off the press election results to be delivered in the morning across the states.

I been worried- Democratic Socialists are not the preferred answer when voters simply want fair pay and reasonable prices. To put it simply, give Americans a union job, pension, and a home of their own and they’ll lose all interest in socialist fantasies, no matter how colorful the unicorns. Thus in normal election cycles democratic socialists are viable candidates only in D+20 or better districts.

Wisconsin is 94% counted and defying the polls, moderate David Crowley is leading Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong by about 3000 votes with most of Milwaukee’s absentee ballots still out. Looks like Wisconsin democrats took a hard look at Hong and decided she’d given the GOP too much ad material to use against her.

Minnesota is 95% counted with Amy Klobuchar easily winning the nomination for governor while the least crazy GOP candidate, Lisa DeMuth, sent Pillow Man back to Texas and endorsed candidate Qualls into 3rd place, ouch! In the US Senate race Peggy Flanagan scored an upset win over Angie Craig by a 20% margin, and on the GOP side former Football reporter Michele Tafoya handily beat endorsed candidate Adam Schwarze and 3 time Order for Protection recipient Royce White.

The governor’s race is pretty much over and Klobuchar will insure that even if the GOP controls the legislature Minnesota won’t sink into the abyss of backward GOP “governance”. The US Senate worries me though- We need to win 4 seats to take back the senate and the Democratic Socialist candidate in Michigan is likely to lose the seat we hold there. We’ve a democratic seat to lose in Minnesota too, and the GOP has plenty of Democratic Socialist misstatements to turn into attack ads against Flanagan.

But with strong turnout even “yellow dog democrats” and Democratic Socialists can win outside of progressive strongholds. In Minnesota the closest analogue to the 2026 race is 2018, and it took about 1,200,000 votes to win that year which we democrats handily did. Despite having two competitive statewide primary races to the democrats one, the GOP side of the primary had about 410,000 votes cast while on the democratic side about 689,000 votes were cast. Most of those will carry over to the general election, giving the democratic statewide candidates about 500,000 general election voters to win over while the GOP needs to win over about 800,000 to win. So while the GOP can spend millions broadcasting baseless fraud charges against Flanagan, Even playing the GOP moderate with no political past Tafoya has to win over nearly twice as many general election voters- That’s a tall order! The democratic turnout advantage will resonate all down the ticket- unsubstantiated charges of fraud, decency to trans folks and immigrants, and making a better state flag are unlikely to succeed when the democrats are turning out half again as many voters as the GOP!

ICE OUT: Minnesota Protests Reach Critical Mass!

They probably didn’t teach you this in school, but in 1934 Minneapolis Teamster coal drivers went on strike over falling wages and other workers and farmers joined them on the picket lines. The company owners responded with the usual collection of armed thugs known as the “Citizens Alliance” and Minneapolis Police. As the strike grew, on July 20th these thugs attacked the strikers in the warehouse district, killing two and wounding sixty seven. The good citizens of Minnesota were so upset that the funeral precession was at least ten kilometers long, simple math tells us that given the 10 meter or so width of Minneapolis streets, at least 50,000 came out to protest that cold blooded murder and demand justice.

Two months ago ICE invaded Minnesota in retaliation for our simply welcoming our immigrant neighbors. Piling on the stupidity, they responded to massive non violent protests by murdering mother of three Renee Good, then denied her medical care while helping the murderer escape. The protests grew, and ICE thugs only became more violent, wounding innocent bystanders and kidnapping 5 year old and even 2 year old children.

As the 1934 Teamsters strike grew and became a general strike the thugs and their business owner bosses became even more repressive, occupying strike headquarters and imprisoning strikers at the state fairgrounds. But the strike fed on repression, and the company owners finally surrendered and signed union contracts, making Minnesota a union stronghold. Today’s ICE OUT march and rally filled 20,000 seat Target Center with thousands more outside, even conservative media estimated the crowd at 50,000. That’s enough bodies to lay siege on ICE, chase them outa Minnesota, and keep our immigrants safe and fed in the meantime. ICE and Trump will retaliate, but just like 1934 we will win.

May they Rest In Power: Teamsters Henry Ness and John Belor, Philandro Castile, George Floyd, and Renee Good

Sassy Democrat Reporting For Duty, Ma’am!

Over the last couple decades I’ve created and mostly abandoned damn near a dozen blogs, most due to lack of interest on my part or readers. The winner has long been GearheadGrrrl.com, focusing on just about anything with wheels and an engine and occasionally horses. But lately the traffic on this political blog sassy.democrat has taken off, so I’ve upgraded it and will be cranking out the content to meet the GOP’s desire to refight the Civil War.

In August 1862 my great great grandfather volunteered for the Union Army and not quite a year later he was dead. Like most of his unit, he died not in combat but from disease, having seen but a few days of combat between long periods of encampments and marching between encampments. This incompetence of Union leadership was fortunately eclipsed by the greater incompetence of Confederate leadership, starting with the stupidity of starting the Civil War in the first place. Never mind that while the Norths competent trades people could accurately bore cylinders for guns or steam engines while even the best rifle would within hours rust to uselessness in the South’s humidity, while the slave labor the South exploited would within a few decades be obsoleted by advancing farm technology. We lost about a tenth of our adult men in that war, fortunately immigrants and freed slaves took their place and continued our nations growth.

So a century and a half later the neo fascists DBA Republican Party have publicly promised to deport a hundred million or so Americans whose skin isn’t as blanco as theirs. Even dumber than the Confederates who went to war to avoid actually having to pay workers, the Republicans are formenting another Civil War to keep immigrants out who came here to work while we have a structural shortage of workers for the next couple decades at least. Compounding that mistake they’ve overfunded ICE, a part of “Homeland Security” we wouldn’t need if the Border Patrol was effective, by billions so they can overpay the nation’s blanco clinically obese incels to play “army” with live ammo between internet porn watching and other grossities. Once past probation we’re stuck with ’em, trillions of dollars of national debt on top of the Republican’s Iraq War that will be collecting pay for no useful work and pensions for pretty much the rest of this century. And like the Confederates, they’ve lost before the first innocent citizen was shot by them- ICE is struggling to deport a thousand a day, and every day over 5000 hispanic and nonwhite babies are born in America.

So again, history teaches us strategies for the current crisis- The Republicans want a useless war and let’s not give it to them. Let their guns and stuck in the snow SUVs rust and chartered planes sit empty while we hide and supply our immigrant neighbors and bankrupt any greedy vendor making a quick billion or so bucks on ICE’s wasteful spending. More on tactics coming in future posts…