The Minnesota DFL Meltdown: Why it matters, why it is overdue, why it is mostly good

The meltdown of the Minnesota DFL was entirely predictable.  It is  also overdue and mostly good.  The roots of  this implosion  can be located in its failure till now to address significant changes in Minnesota, ranging from structural forces in the state to demographic ones.  But simply the cause is that the DFL failed to gradually reform, forcing an abrupt crisis that is happening now, at a most critical if inopportune time.
The DFL implosion parallels one found with the national Democratic party.  Nationally the Democrats are facing their failures to rebuild the lost New Deal coalition that linked labor unions, working class, and people of color.  Unions are all best decimated and will meet their final fate in a few weeks when the Supreme Court kills them off in Janus v. AFSCME, in part because when given the chance, Obama and the Democrats took them for granted and did nothing to change the law to help them modernize.  Democrats long ago abandoned working class when they became a corporate party chasing Wall Street and rich donors while ignoring the growing gap between the rich and poor in America. Now a new generation expresses disdain for these Reagan and now Trump Democrats, seeing them as ignorant, racists who are not worth courting.  And while yes Democrats still appeal to people of color for votes, how much they really deliver for them versus take their vote for granted is a matter of serious debate.
The crisis of the national Democratic party is one lacking a compelling narrative, it is one  of having a one-size-fits-all campaign strategy well suited to run in urban settings but largely ineffective in rural and often suburban areas.  It is a party facing an existential crisis as the aging Baby Boomers and soon Gen Xers  exit politics and it is unable to talk an agenda relevant  to Millennials and soon Gen Z.  It is a party whose divide and problems surfaced in the 2016 clash between Clinton and Sanders, where many Democrats stayed home because they could not stand to vote for another neo-liberal.  It is a party whose problems are summed up by saying that their rationale or narrative in 2016 was that “We are not Trump,” and who may, if they are lucky, this year, squeak out a victory in 2018 on running against something and not for something.  This is the problem of the national Democrats.  Trump is only the latest external threat to the Democrats, both externally and internally.
The Minnesota DFL faces similar challenges.  It is a party still living in the past, assuming  that the political landscape of the state is the same as it was 20, 30, or 40 years ago when the DFL  was the majority party.  The statistics fail to show that.  It is a Blue state gone Purple and maybe headed Red.  It is a state where the party still pays homage to fallen and past party leaders and lives in their shadow.  Yes Humphrey, Wellstone, McCarthy, and Mondale were great figures, but they represent a different political area.  The Minnesota DFL is an insular party where its one-size-fits-all campaign strategy has reduced its political base to a few  urban cores and no more than maybe 10 or so counties.  It is a party occupied by an ideology of Baby Boomers and some Gen Xers, and it is a party with a leadership looking backwards and not to the future.  It is a party facing an existential crisis.
Political scientist Walter Dean Burnham wrote in his  Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics that every 30 or 40 years American politics and parties are characterized by a critical realignment.  Driven by economic or political crises, American history  demonstrates the need for parties and political to change, forcing changes in party labels, coalitions, and alignments.  For too long too Democrats nationally and the DFL in Minnesota have needed to  critically realign.  Changes in the economy and political changes, driven by racial and generational  demographics, necessitate the DFL to change.  This is what is happening now.
The DFL change began five years ago in Minneapolis with Betsy Hodges.  It was a DFL without the F and L.  Hodges had an opportunity to ride the wave of change but she was simply too inept to manage it.  Jacob Frey and Melvin Carter are a second wave of the change, how they respond is too soon to tell.  Now what has happened over the last few days is another sign of a party torn in lots of directions.  Murphy, Walz, and Swanson at the gubernatorial level represent three wings of the party, three ideologies, and three strategies on how to campaign in the state and forge winning coalitions.  The divide played out at the DFL convention with the fight over the attorney general nomination and subsequent filings for the office, and it plays out in replacing Keith Ellison. 
Much of this is destructive.  Many of the candidates running appear to be in it for themselves and not for the party of state.  Many seem to lack the experience or qualifications for the job, and many in choosing to run seem to have conceded that the State House of Representatives is a lost cause and are abandoning it for higher office.  All of this is unfortunate, coming at a time when control for so  many institutions and levers of powers in Minnesota are at stake. 
But much of this behavior is also understandable.  It comes at a time when the party has sat on reform and change for too many years and where new leaders are demanding that the party reflect  their generation’s interests and needs.  Short term it is not clear how well the DFL navigates  this meltdown, longer term it is too soon to tell the results.   But this meltdown matters, it is overdue, and maybe mostly good.