I've been thinking about the DFL endorsement battles, and the battle to get elected in general. It's what I do. I think about elections, and how to win them, and how to organize to win them(among other things, I think about music, good books, and long walks on the beach). We all know that it really is a battle sometimes, elections can be rough.
We, as members of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party have the same general outlook on the issues. We are a big tent, so there is a wide array of viewpoints, a wide array of ideas, and a wide array of how to implement those ideas that flow through the veins of the DFL. It's good to offer a strong defense of one's candidate. It's good to be excited about someone who you think can do all the things you want them to be able to do. But what else do our candidates really need from us and us from them?
I believe, as supporters, our candidates need us to ask them the hard questions, and to tell them the truth rather than painting a rosy picture if the horizon is darkening. Our candidates need us to ask them what they want from us, and we need them to ask for our help. We need to trust our candidates and their staffers' framework for the volunteer work that they ask of us. We need to know that they need us, and remember that they need us so that they can know about that particular thing (issue), or that particular person ("Tiffany, the DFLer from down the road?" "Yeah, she'd be a great volunteer! But don't call her on Tuesday until after 3pm.").
We're the candidates' local connection. Our candidates need us to be a mouthpiece (or keyboard, as it were), but our candidates need us to represent them in an honorable and non-politically damaging ways. I say this in particular to remind everyone that the internet can be unforgiving (there are snipers everywhere). Our candidates need us to listen, and our candidates need to let us in on their strategic thinking at least a little bit, (if we can be trusted (how do we measure that? I'm not sure.)) so that we can understand. We need to level with one another to understand what we want from each other. They need to set our expectations, and we need them to surpass ours. Our candidates need us to be able to think about the "big picture." Our candidates need us, uncommitted and committed alike, to tell our neighbors now why a DFLer is a better choice in a generic general election match-up in the fall.
After the endorsement/primary battle is over, our candidates need us all to work together again to make the phone calls, to walk and knock on those doors. Our candidates need us to come together and drink the wine of a united front rather than sipping on our sour grape juice alone in the corner. They need us, and the party needs us to go out and talk to our neighbors about why it is so important to vote in any election. They need us to help drop "off-year" from the presidential/occasional voter's vocabulary.
These are the things that we need from one another in order to ensure success.
I'm giving this advice to any candidate who wants it. Well, maybe not Republicans, so if you're a Republican, I'm about to prove everything you believe is wrong, so CLICK AWAY NOW!!.
They're gone? Good. OK, candidates, I don't care if you're the gubernatorial candidate I'm backing for endorsement or not because I just want to win the general election. Actually, you don't need to be running for governor, because I'd like to win right on down the ballot. I'm going to suggest a way of avoiding a Martha Coakley moment.
"Martha Coakley moment" is actually unfair, because Coakley was hardly the first candidate to have such a moment. These moments are probably unfair at all, but they hurt a candidate anyway, with fairness not entering into it. I'm referring to those moments when a candidates does something to indicate they don't get what life is like for most people, that they lack knowledge the common people pick up by osmosis if nothing else, and therefore can't represent them. These moments become iconic, and of great use for opponents.
In Coakley's case, it was her inability to not intuitively grasp why Curt Shilling wouldn't be a Yankee fan. You probably don't get that if you're not a baseball fan or not living in Massachusetts, but Coakley was living in Massachusetts. Related to being a senator? No. Shallow? You bet. Likely to hurt? Oh yes.
But perhaps, candidates, you're thinking she was unique, and it can't happen to you?
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Together, we've supported causes and campaigns over the years, many of them near and dear to our hearts. But few campaigns present us with the opportunity to make as significant a change as in Minnesota's 6th Congressional District.
That's why I'm supporting Tarryl Clark in her campaign for Congress. And I hope you'll join me today.
I believe that Tarryl Clark can lead the 6th District in a new direction. She will unite us behind positive solutions - a stark change from the controversial comments and partisan rancor we've seen over the past few years. She will focus her time and efforts on listening to her constituents and turning ideas into action.
She's already done it here in Minnesota. Tarryl is a vigorous campaigner and a tireless leader in the Minnesota Senate.
As a community advocate and then as a State Senator, Tarryl has always stood up for Minnesota's working families. From raising the minimum wage to ensuring our seniors aren't scammed by predatory lenders; from ensuring access to early childhood education to investing in our state's treasured colleges and universities; from strengthening reintegration services for our returning veterans to building our transportation infrastructure, Tarryl has always fought for our families and our communities.
I'm proud to call Tarryl my friend, and I know that she will make a tremendous Member of Congress.
But to get there, she needs your support today.
I hope you will join me in supporting Tarryl's campaign for Congress. Your contribution of $250, $100, $50, or whatever you can afford will help ensure Tarryl's campaign is off to a strong start.
Minnesota has a long tradition of electing people with a deep-rooted belief in public service. Tarryl Clark will continue that tradition, and I ask you to join me in supporting her campaign.
Sincerely,
Walter F. Mondale
p.s. Tarryl's first fundraising deadline is tomorrow - September 30th. Please join me in supporting Tarryl's campaign and make your contribution today.
In evaluating candidates for govenor, one of my criterita is how well that they run their campaign. This is important for both winning and running the state government. Hiring good people, making good campaign choices and effectively putting out a campaign message can easily be translated into running the state government well. I am super impressed with the way that Matt Entenza campaign has run its announcement. Here is why:
A theme has been picked which works for me: "Community matters. Dreams matter. Opportunity matters. "
The announcement/press releases went beyond the major media folks to people like me. In an endorsement race, my coverage can be critical.
The anouncement was done in several locations on the same day, throughout the state, ensuring coverage by local media throughout the state including Worthington, Duluth, Fargo-Moorhead,
Grand Forks and Sioux Falls.
Although Matt has not quite felt present on facebook, he did publish a letter there making it easy for his supporters to follow him and be involved. Unfortunately, you must log on to facebook to see it. Still many people are on facebook!
Check out the press kit available including headshot (I used it!), video, biography and useful background. Kudos to Bridget Cusick on the Entenza campaign.
While this is great, I think we could be ever doing better in getting news coverage. My ideas after the fold!
In any campaign season we are constantly reminded by this or that candidate that are endorsed by this or that group. But, what is really involved in that? What do these groups do when they decide to endorse someone? Well, from my experience only, here is what I have seen groups go through to make these endorsements.
First the group decides to do endorsements. They have to determine that making an endorsement in a given race would benefit their mission and their organization. These can be two separate questions. While the seat in question may not be directly relevant to their issues the fact is that most candidates for higher political office start out in down ticket offices. It benefits your mission to expose them to your issues as soon as possible. Additionally, every time a candidate lists your endorsement on their literature is publicity for you.
John Marty may have the key element to a successful race by championing the cause of providing health care. John Marty champions single payer health care which lowers health care costs by using a single insurance plan, run by the government. By using cross country comparisons, we know that private market health care insurance adds a roughly 50% burden to health care. Before the economy blew up, health care was listed as the second most important issue behind Iraq for Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike. Corporate media has mostly treated this issue as invisible. With the economy taking jobs, that means missing or very expensive health care coverage. With the economy needing more jobs, the high burden of health care insurance is huge discentive to add jobs.
In choosing a candidate, people look for representation on the issues, for trust and integrity to keep one's word, for the ability to do the job of governor well and for the ability to run a campaign well. John Marty is correct in saying that the values and issues that he has championed have now become popular, John Marty has a long record that demonstrates trust and integrity, with long experience in the legislative process, including oversight of the executive branch work. People who work with or for him, have spoken well of him as a leader. So the place where John Marty should be making his case is proving that he has the ability to run a campaign well.
"I have got the courage and the integrity to do what's right, to stand up for making sure that we get health care for everyone. even if the insurance industry fights it, even if the pharmaceutical industry says they are not going to accept it!
We need to look at what people need, what is important in people's lives:
good jobs, healthy communities, safe communities
a good health care system, a good education system, a clean environment!
Those are basic basic! essentials that everyone of us needs. And our kids are going to need them. And our grandkids are going to need them.
We can't have a governor who says. "Well. you know - we'd like do that, someday, we would like to give health care for everyone." We have to recognize the time is now! We have to fix the problems now! We don't need a tinkering governor, we need a Floyd B Olsen!
Mainstream media normally provides a few minutes highlight of an important event like the Minnesota Senate Recount. Complete live coverage was only being provided by a Internet news coverage of the Uptake. While not every minute of every one counting was covered, several locations were covered. It was possible to review coverage of the places that had been taped and see no double counting. It was possible to see and review every single decision of the Minnesota Canvassing board. That makes "spin" much harder to do! At almost every press conference the Uptake as well as other citizen journalists were being snubbed. The happy ending to the story is the Uptake story, "Coleman Campaign Finally Admits (Sort of!) That We're Media".
Last Saturday, several boring hours preceded the actual counting of absentee ballots at about 5PM. Yet every moment of that counting was the realization that more votes were being added to the Franken tally than the Coleman tally. So even though the Coleman campaign could look up voters by name and veto probable Franken voters, the votes were still more for Franken than Coleman. Over 2,000 people were watching live. The room could have never held that many people. So new media, the Uptake is finally bringing truly transparent government into reality.
I would love to be a fly listening to the decision making happening right now in the Coleman camp. First of all assume that numbers of over 200 for Franken are true, then here the decisions that Coleman camp has to make:
1) Does the Coleman camp open the Pandora's box of absentee ballots and hope for a Hail Mary pass? Republicans would be then guessing if those votes are mostly Coleman votes who voted absentee, with some minor error not legally allowed to stop the vote. This is assuming the Coleman camp has the power to block if they want to.
2) Does the Coleman camp put more last minute smokescreen challenges up like the duplicate ballot issue and try to run out the clock, with the hope that Pawlenty can appoint? This would probably be combined with "Stole the election" Republican spin stories. This has a strong chance of angering Minnesota voters who might then take down Pawlenty in the next election, and possibly strongly inspire people to petition the senate to not accept Pawlenty's pick.
3) Does the Coleman camp realize that Coleman with multiple impending ethics investigations is damaged goods anyway and graciously withdraw, building good will for the next election?
Remember the Coleman camp has repeatedly shown that they are NOT for "every vote counts" principles. One of the reasons that Republicans believe that elections are rigged, is that is what Republicans do to rig elections.
(Kudos should be given when our government works well, as well just criticism for when government is broken. - promoted by Grace Kelly)
I wrote my original draft the last week of October. Clear the Recount details out of your brain, and send your mind back two months ago.
The power of a vote is an informed vote. I realized that the moment I proudly cast my first vote, and my heart sunk when I knew a fraction of the candidates and issues. I vowed to pay attention and be more informed the next election. My personal sample ballot wasn't available then, so I used reliable sources like the StarTribune. In recent years, the StarTribune has fallen by the wayside, hardly even covering big ticket races like the Senate. Some community newspapers have done more articles. In the past few years, the surprising new good sources for voting information have been Minnesota's election Web sites.
I forget which year, but the Minnesota Secretary of State's Web site had an option for me to type my address, and get a text list with the name of every government district with jurisdiction for my address. A year later, that Web page expanded to a text list of the elected officials' titles listed on my personal ballot. In 2006, the Web site had a text list with all the candidates' titles and their names, which made a Google search easy for finding information on my candidates, including the elusive Soil and Water Conservation Districts.
The Obama campaign's video player technology doesn't play nicely as far as making embedding easy, but luckily your humble blogger is a technical genius of sorts.
And what exactly did that suspension mean? McCain ads attacking Democratic nominee Barack Obama appeared last night during prime time TV in the Twin Cities market. I wonder just what this so-called "suspension" actually meant. Political theater? McCain has tried that before and gotten a big F from his Republican colleagues.
(MtkaDem gives us a great summary of what's going on regarding the rough time Sarah Palin's had in the national spotlight -- make sure you watch that Daily Show clip, though. Srsly. - promoted by Joe Bodell)
Sarah Palin's credentials and credibility are in a freefall, and at the same time, dragging down the credibility of Republican strategists and analysts that are publicly defending her qualifications and her integrity. Joe Bodell has previously visited this topic, and more examples of ideological hypocrisies have come to light since then. Thom Hartmann has summarized the questions for which the answers will be flushed over the coming days here, and asks the main stream media to pursue these alarming issues.
Why is Sarah Palin involved with AIP? Several days ago the chair of the AIP, a secessionist party, said that Palin attending the 1994 convention. "she was there."
To be clear, I believe the media frenzy over Bristol Palin's unfortunate situation should not imply any judgment towards Bristol herself. Democrats are much more understanding and compassionate towards those in such situations, and she should not be dragged through the national gauntlet. The reason it is an issue that garnered attention is because her mother espouses an ideology that leaves no forgiveness for those in such situations, and claims to hold the solution (abstinence) that she would otherwise push as national policy if elected. Sarah Palin cut funding to homeless mothers of illegitimate children. Given that Palin herself was apparently involved in a shotgun wedding (check wedding dates vs. birthday of her first born), one would think she might have more compassion and insight into a better avoidance policy. Again, the judgment here is not of her situation, but of how she, her party and her ideological base publicly denounce and condescend to those in similar circumstances. The hypocrisy, lack of empathy, and inability to learn from mistakes, are disturbing for a potential executive office position.
At least as disturbing is the purported membership in the AIP, or Alaskan Independence Party. If she was indeed a member of a group that wanted secession, or a similar withdrawal, that could only be read as, at one point, she did not want to be an American. This should be worse than, say, a communist charge -- or at least have much deeper implications than any statement Michelle Obama made about pride. I would expect that the minimum requirement for a Presidential ticket to have never wanted to break from our great nation.
So, to end on a lighter note (or at least a light as blatant hypocrisy in media and government can be), be sure to watch the following from yesterday's Daily Show. This could stand as one of the greatest today vs yesterday clip montages ever -- if only the legacy or main stream media would do the same:
So, June is Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) Pride month. In the Twin Cities that means that we will have the third largest GLBT Pride Festival and Parade in the nation at the end of the month. But, a word of warning, if you are the political type it may not be the most welcoming atmosphere this year.
It seems that the Pride Committee has returned the check from Stonewall DFL and will not allow them to march in the parade unless they can guarantee that no one other than SDFL members will march in their contingent.
In other words, if candidate A shows up with two people wearing t-shirts they are to be forced to pay a separate $300 fee. Anyone who has worked in party politics knows that one of the functions of a local unit , operating as a coordinated campaign, is to get slots in local parades and invite all candidates to march with them, and this is what SDFL has done in the past (full disclosure, I am a former Chair of SDFL). SDFL did offer to pay a higher fee to compensate for the inevitable add-in candidate but that offer was rejected.
Obviously $300 is prohibitively expensive for many candidates, especially those who have agreed to obey spending limits. It was only in the past few years that candidates from some more "purple" areas have been willing to march in the parade, a $300 fee is going to guarantee that those candidates do not march. These are the future elected officials who are the margin in many GLBT issues.
The committee is offering current elected officials a free parade slot. A nice offer but probably illegal since it would be a gift because they are charging $300 for non-elected political organizations and candidates. Definitely over the gift limit.
Perhaps just as important as a candidate's position on the issues or his/her charisma and speaking ability is the way they manage their campaign. I firmly believe that the way a campaign is run has a lot to say about how that candidate will govern if elected. Additionally, a well-managed campaign can keep a candidate on offense, while a poorly-managed one will put the candidate on defense, giving them a poor chance at success in November. Over this past week, I've been struck by two examples of campaign management, one good and one bad.
One of the best examples of campaign management in a long time has been Barack Obama. Time Magazine had an interesting article on "How Obama Did It." In the article, Karen Tumulty shows how Obama's steadfast leadership brought the campaign to victory:
About 200 of his biggest fund raisers were meeting in Des Moines, Iowa, and among them, near panic was setting in. His above-the-fray brand of politics just wasn't getting the job done, and some of his top moneymen were urging him to rethink his strategy, shake up his staff, go negative.
Obama made an unscheduled appearance that Sunday night and called for a show of hands from his finance committee. "Can I see how many people in this room I told that this was going to be easy?" he asked. "If anybody signed up thinking it was going to be easy, then I didn't make myself clear." A win in Iowa, Obama promised, would give him the momentum he needed to win across the map - but his backers wouldn't see much evidence of progress before then. "We're up against the most formidable team in 25 years," he said. "But we've got a plan, and we've got to have faith in it."
Obama's campaign hasn't been perfect, by any means. But through strong leadership, Obama managed to keep his campaign focused on the principles he had laid out. Partially because of his "above-the-fray brand of politics," even his worst gaffes and scandals have not caused much lasting damage. The Time article has some other great examples of how Obama's management-style has led to his success.
On the other hand, one of the worst-managed campaigns I've seen is Al Franken's Senate campaign. I've heard Franken speak a number of times, and he's great. He's entertaining, thoughtful, and he has a great grasp on the issues. But he'll never be able to stop playing defense long enough for anybody to listen to him. Franken's Playboy scandal has now been in the news for twoweeks, and the campaign doesn't seem to have even made an effort to stop it.
Franken's history has always been his biggest weakness, but his campaign has insisted that the voters will understand that his past work was satire. But if the campaign can't put this ridiculous non-issue to rest, how can we ever expect them to defend Franken against the more substantive attacks he'll face once September rolls around?
I hope that more of our Democratic candidates can learn a few lessons from Obama: 1. Don't compromise your principles. 2. Minimize "drama" within the organization. 3. Respond to attacks quickly and re-focus the debate.
In evaluating candidates for govenor, one of my criterita is how well that they run their campaign. This is important for both winning and running the state government. Hiring good people, making good campaign choices and effectively putting out a campaign message can easily be translated into running the state government well. I am super impressed with the way that Matt Entenza campaign has run its announcement. Here is why:
