| But Minnesota's professional media still don't get it; they're still playing catch-up to Mindeman, Immelman, and the Dump Bachmann blog--two Bachmann terms later.
They are catching up, slowly. Some reporters and editors are looking at the election numbers we're sending them and correctly concluding--nearly four years later--that we have a point: the independent voters (NOT the Independence Party leadership) has the "kingmaker" role to play here in the Sixth District. And those voters have been playing that role, and the beneficiary has been Bachmann. Not the Dem in the race, not the independent voters' candidate; that screwball Bachmann is the sole beneficiary of the independent voter activity in these elections.
To you who would truly understand: please note the difference between the Independence Party in the Sixth District (theoretically a "political party" with the ability to deliver votes) and the "independent voters" of the Sixth District. The difference is that the former had very little impact on the outcome of the last race--while the latter had a terrific impact on the last race, and may have the same terrific impact on the next race...
...if the DFL and the IP leadership can't figure out any way to deal with the independent voters effectively, next time around. Here's why I say that.
Last time around, the IP leadership in the Sixth didn't run an endorsed candidate. They did what I and many other people begged them to do in the first race against Bachmann, and cross-endorsed a DFL candidate, Elwyn Tinklenberg. Why did they do that, even though they despise DFL'rs? Because--as was pointed out to them two elections ago--once Bachmann "get in" in a Republican gerrymandered district, there is not much hope of getting her out. In 2006, the IP leadership suddenly accepted the fact: we will never beat Bachmann once she's in, but practically anyone can show strong against a Democrat elected to Congress in this district.
So, they decided to do what should have done in the first place, and throw support to the Dem in the race against Bachmann (because if Bachmann wins again, the IP's marginalized again and for the foreseeable future. But if the Dem wins, the IP can re-strengthen its ranks and run strong against the Dem in some future election.)
So the IP leadership figured that out, and endorsed DFL'r Elwyn Tinklenberg last time. Theory: Tinklenberg's Dem voters, plus some per centage of the IP voters, equals a narrow victory over the screwball Bachmann (whose performance as congressperson for the district is rated "sucks", by more than half the voters in the district, in the last two elections.)
That was the theory. But enter the spoiler: maverick candidate Bob Anderson. A dental technician from Woodbury, ostensibly a member of of the IP, with no experience in leadership, no support within the IP, no money, no powers of persuasion, no reliable campaign organization. He shows up at the IP endorsement event, and is soundly rejected by the IP leadership after announcing that one his priorities is to get God back into the public schools, etc.
So that rejection ends Bob Anderson's attempts to be an IP candidate--right? Wrong. Because it turned the IP leadership was not really a leadership; they "led" little or nothing. It couldn't stop an Anderson "Independent" candidacy. Anderson ran as the "Independent" third party candidate anyway, unendorsed, and took ten per cent of all the votes cast: the independent votes in the district went to this nobody who had been specifically rejected by the IP. (The IP endorsement of Tinklenberg may have resulted in a few extra votes for Tink, but the IP leadership couldn't deliver anything significant for him.)
To put Anderson's vote total in perspective: Anderson, the dental technician from Woodbury who never led anything and was rejected by the IP--did better than previous candidates that actually been endorsed by the IP. (Bitter, bitter laughter here.) Anderson, with no money and no party support and very little public campaigning--did better than previous IP candidates who had the IP endorsement, had the party's backing, campaigned vigorously and articulately.
Anderson tied up 10% of the vote, the IP wasn't able to deliver the three or four per cent of the independent vote that Tink needed to beat the screwball Bachmann--and Bachmann won. And the IP in the Sixth District, revealed as ineffectual, imploded.
That's the background to the last two Bachmann elections. You need to know that, to understand how thick the professional media are being about the next Bachmann run.
Professional reporters are actually going around asking candidates "what they are going to do about Bob Anderson." This indicates that the people who cover politics in the Sixth--still don't get it.
There is no magic about "Bob Anderson." He is not some "political genius" who was able to use his mighty brain to figure out how (without money or political support) to turn the IP's previous seven per cent voter total into a higher ten per cent voter total.
Bob's just a dental technician from Woodbury. He's not a genius, he's no Jack Kennedy. When a reporter asks Bob Anderson whether or not Bob is going to abide by the IP endorsement next time--the answer may be interesting, but the question indicates that the reporter doesn't understand what's going on.
"What's going on" is that almost any person who runs unendorsed, as an "independent" candidate in the Sixth district--is bound to get some percentage of that 10% independent votes available in the district--thus helping the screwball to get re-elected.
So it doesn't matter if Bob Anderson pledges to abide by the IP endorsement or not--because even if he does, that's not a guarantee that the Dem can "count on" the support of the independent voters. They don't do what the IP tells them to do, they don't do what Bob Anderson tells them to do, they don't even constitute a political party or movement. They're potentially available to anyone who asks for their support--and claims to be sick of both Republicans and Dems.
The problem for the Dem in the next race, will be to cut into that ten per cent of independents and persuade some significant percentage of them to vote for her. The Dem's problem be compounded if anyone runs an unendorsed third party candidacy targeting such voters.
If Bob Anderson decides to run again, that's newsworthy and he may be the Dem/IP spoiler again. But even if Anderson decides not to run--*that doesn't end the Dem/IP spoiler problem.* The reporters' questions should go to the potential Dem candidates, not Anderson. The question is not "how are you going to stop Anderson," but "how are you going to stop any third party candidacy from torpedoing your campaign at the very outset?"
The IP has no chance of beating Bachmann in this district next time. So the Dem has to have a strategy in place, ready to salvo, as soon as this thing rears its ugly head again.
And now you know ... how independent voters...(less than ten per cent of the electorate here)...and people with no more credibility than a dental technician from Woodbury...can kick the Dem candidates ass all over the Sixth District...despite the Dem's millions in grassroots/netroots fundraising...and propel the biggest, most hateful screwball in Congress...right back into Congress...next year...too. |
