Still pissed at how I damaged two cars yesterday just backing out of the driveway, and tonight I had to reset my modem again, so I'm kind of on red, therefore I guess I'll just talk about how the DFL'ers are about to piss away the governorship.
Did you know that the Democrats -- technically they are the Democrat-Farmer-Labor party in Minnesota -- haven't had a governor in 24 years?? The way things are going now, that drought's going to be extended to 28.
I don't want to link to all the stories, but in summary they show that the prick Republicans running the Tom Emmer campaign have already hit Mark Dayton with everything they've got -- and it seems to be working.
As soon as Dayton beat out Margaret Anderson Kelliher and Matt Entenza for his party's nomination, the Republicans sent out a press release calling him "erratic." This is an underhanded attempt to note that Dayton has admitted he has suffered from depression in the past. But this is also the guy who, as U.S. Senator, was the only one to shut down his office for about a month in 2004 because he thought the Senate Building was going to be the target of a terrorist attack. In his one term in that position, Dayton was called one of the worst Senators in the chamber by TIME.
And in line with his personality -- deliberate, thoughtful, but overwhelmed in the forum of competition -- he has looked slow, timid, and, unfortunately, stupid. His campaign has been running ads about Emmer's sponsor of a bill that would reduce sentences for DWI's (which is stupid, especially because he has two himself) and for skipping votes. Not bad. In fact, it's par for the course, or at least it should be.
But Emmer has shot back with a guerilla tactic: People following him around with cameraphones taping his every move. One of them already has caught Dayton looking bad by shooting him phoning his aide to open up the windows in the car for his dogs, whom he put there in the stifling heat we had for the past two weeks. So that was dumb.
What it was even more stupid was the press conference he held a couple days ago proposing that all of them declare a truce on cheap shots. The Republicans, unfortunately, are correct in mocking him. First of all, Dayton and his supporters have already run attack ads, so their argument that Dayton only wants to play nice after he started to play dirty has some water. Second, this happened after these goddamn video stalkers began tailing him, so Dayton now looks reactive, if not a wimp. Finally, there is no fucking way anybody in their right mind would go for this.
I heard a little of today's gubernatorial debate held up in Nisswa. Emmer was screaming at me like a jackass about "taking back government" even though his party have had the governorship the last eight fuckin' years, and Independence Party nominee Tom Horner had a really pronounced lisp. But Dayton sounded like a stammering idiot, and worse of all, he sounded weak. That's the claim Republicans have always slapped on DFL'ers, and I have to admit, in this case, it's working.
I didn't vote in the DFL primary; I lean Democrat, but I don't want to be tied with them. Being in groups with people and stuff ... yish. But I was afraid that the DFL would spit out their most vulnerable candidate. And turns out they have in Dayton, who has not hit the ground running. The strongest candidate probably was Kelliher, who, besides being a major presence in the state Legislature, was an unknown and therefore had a chance to define herself and her fairly powerful track record. Entenza has the weakness of his HMO wife and a lieutenant governor who was once a TV anchor, but at least he doesn't have to answer for the failure of his only term in the U.S. Senate.
With his past, his bad demeanor and his sheepish whining as the general election heats, Mark Dayton is about to squander the best chance the DFL has to unseat the Republicans and make the state governorship blue for the first time in a quarter-century. And it'll be pathetic.
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