Showdown: 2012

Minnesota's state demographer came out with a rather unsettling assessment of the State of the State - no, it wasn't that the country is in a recession - its that Minny may lose a Congressional seat if current population trends hold up in the 2010 Census. 

I'm not interested in the reasons for it, they are relatively straightforward: Baby Boomers, snowbirds, Sun Belt, retirement, the reason all major Minnesota politicians fundraise in Florida and Arizona.  

I'm interested in who its going to take down.  Which leads to the first Degausser prediction for the 2012 race - one that is based almost entirely on caveats.

Fact: MN has 8 Congressional Districts now.  

First Assumption: All current occupants run for Re-Election in 2010; all then-sitting Congresspersons would be Incumbents, beyond their first term - arguably the second toughest electoral fight for a Congressperson after their initial election (or scandal).   

**The First Assumption obviously faces the fact that 2010 will certainly bring a slew of Democratic challengers to Pretty Boy Tim, who may come out of the MN House Delegation**

Fact: The US Census Occurs in 2010 and applies to Redistricting in Minnesota in 2012.

Second Assumption:  The Census shows Minnesota losing population enough to yield a net loss of one Congressional District.  

Fact:  Redistricting Plans are drafted in each house of the Minnesota Legislature, must be reconciled, passed then signed by the Governor - OR - Passed by Each House of the Legislature, Reconciled, Vetoed by the Governor, then a Veto Override Occurs.

Third Assumption: DFL maintains majorities in each of the state houses at least through the 2010 election, and a GOPer retains the Governor's manse.   

Think about this for a minute .... so many plausible scenarios.

Prediction:  The MN 6th and 2nd Congressional Districts are the Fastest Growing Districts, and any reallocation of territory will have to be ceded from these two to the 5th (Minneapolis - Ellison) and 4th (St. Paul - McCollum).   This makes Demographic Sense and Political Sense given the DFL's obvious interest in Weakening the 2nd (Kline) and 6th (Bachmann) districts.

But there won't be enough political capital available for the DFL to run roughshod over the two remaining GOP Congressfolk from MN, so they will shoot for the most delicious victory.  

Bachmann is the mark and gets redistricted into the 8th - when the DFL redistricts her Stillwater home into a now very longitudinal Northeast 8th.  

Oberstar v. Bachmann - 2012 

 - He will only get older; 

 - She will only get more batshit crazy.

Get your tix now.

Last Stop on the Straight Talk Express…

… is New Hampshire! (At least before the campaign does the obligatory return to the home state for photo-op vote and Election night party.)

As the Presidential Campaign winds down into its final 48, this bit of news struck me:

Tomorrow, McCain spends part of the day in Pennsylvania before heading to New Hampshire, where he’ll hold his final town hall of the campaign in Peterborough, a place that McCain regards as something of a lucky charm. He held his first town hall meeting there during his 2000 campaign and wound up there on the eve of his comeback primary victory earlier this year. It’s “where our campaign has been rescued and resurrected many times before,” Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, told reporters yesterday.

Ah yes … you know they call it the comeback.

Q: Will it work?

A: Not a chance.

Despite the grand symbolism McCain is evoking with the return to the resurrection of his campaign during the 2008 GOP primary - which led to the splintering of the fundamentalists between Romney and Huckabee, and let McCain steal the moderates from Guiliani - but even his advisers aren’t buying the prospect of a sequel:

… privately, McCain and his aides are unsure if it will be as lucky this time around. Down by 13 points in the state according to poll released yesterday, McCain and his aides view his stop there as more nostalgic than game changing. Indeed, a senior McCain aide says the candidate and his advisers have gone back and forth in recent days about whether the stop was time well spent in the final hours of the campaign.

The best analogy I can come up with to explain the McCain campaign’s decision is to explain my own decision to draft Tom Brady of the Patriots in my fantasy league this season. The reason: Nostalgia. While the Patriots have become the Evil Empire of the NFL, I’ve had Brady on my team each of the past two seasons - both to my benefit as I performed admirably…nay, heroically with his help. As such, when he was an available late first round pick this year, against good logic, I took him because he’s been good for me. But this is no way to gamble - Brady went down and out for the season during the first game. It’s like betting money on the Vikings on the first game of the twice annual Vikings-Packer matchup, and even after they get trounced in the first game, going back to the trough and betting on them to win the second game - possible even going double or nothing out of state pride.

But it’s no way to run a Presidential campaign, and it leads me to believe that the McCain camp knows it’s over. This is for pride now. To re-visit the battlefield of bygone campaign victories, and be able to leave the field with your chin up. When McCain goes to New Hampshire, where he is 13 points down the day before the election, while Obama tries to run up the score in the West is as obvious a signal as they come.

For me, I’ll have the good fortune to be in Chicago on election night; gotta work my way down to Grant Park to catch a glimpse of history.

-Jeffrey Oak

Star Trib Endorses Coleman for Senate - The Reason?

What happened at the old fountainhead of Yellow journalism, liberal bias - the old Red Star as conservatives liked to call the Minneapolis Star Tribune

Apparently it was his ability to stick his moistened finger in the air and check the direction of the wind that captured the Editorial Board’s collective heart:

Coleman didn’t begin his Senate service as an agent of bipartisanship. But that’s the note on which he wound up his six-year term and which he has sounded repeatedly in his reelection campaign. We like the trend we’ve seen and believe Coleman is capable of taking it further.

Aaron at MN Publius suggests a mildly conspiratorial, though certainly not implausible, reason for the endorsement:

The CEO of Avista Capital Partners, Thompson Dean, not only owns the Star Tribune, but is also on the board. His contributions indicate he only sends to Republicans, including to Rudy Giuliani’s PAC. Coleman is the only Senate candidate to receive money from Giuliani’s PAC this cycle.

Thompson Dean also fundraises for John McCain.

This, mixed with their right-wing editorial positions this cycle and knowing that their primary investments are in oil companies and health care firms, who could possibly be surprised by a Coleman endorsement?

Money - or the promise of making more of it - is certainly a reliable predictor of behavior. MN Publius has catalogued a significant number of out-of-character Editorial positions the Star Trib has taken in the past year, which, in addition to personnel changes on the Editorial board, provide several indicators that this may be a permanent shift to the center-right by the traditionally liberal newspaper.

I don’t disagree with MN Publius - newspapers are a dying medium, and the Star Trib’s continued existence depends on making a fundamental reorganization of its business model. Avista Capital Partners wouldn’t have come onto the scene in the past year if they didn’t have a plan to do so. The only question that remains is what the Star Tribune will look like, as a media outlet, when this transformation is complete. I think we can expect to see the Star Trib follow the PiPress’s lead in trimming the page size to Tabloid-size, more Katherine Kersten, AP wire news, an overall look akin to USA Today and less original reporting like what can be found at MinnPost.

- J. Oak