What the Mueller Reports Says...and Not

For anyone wanting a clear ending and definitive Hollywood ending and answer in the Mueller
investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 US elections and the role Trump and his campaign had in colluding with them, they will be disappointed.   The final report, based on the US Attorney General’s four-page summary, offers something for everyone, assuring that for now that the issues raised in it will live on into the 2020 US presidential election.
When Robert Mueller was brought on as special investigator, he was given a narrow mandate to determine whether Russians sought to interfere with the 2016 US elections.  On that matter Mueller was definitive–yes.  That conclusion alone is significant because it will have a potentially major impact on US-Russian Federation relations, including putting pressure on Trump to take a harder line toward Russia and Putin.  With members of Congress–both Democrats and Republicans–wary of Trump’s soft approach toward Russia, this part of the report may well unite them in legislation that will go against the president.
If one were to end the report about Russian interference that would cover the core of the Mueller investigation and what it was mandated to investigate.  But the report also looked at whether Trump or his campaign colluded or aided and abetted this interference. Again Mueller reaches a definite answer–no.  It is possible that Trump and his associates did several things to help themselves financially, but as a matter of law they not commit acts that broke the law.
The third issue is whether Trump obstructed justice and the Muller investigation.  Here the report finds evidence on both sides, declaring that the investigation neither proves nor exonerates him.  The reason, presumably, hinges on the nuances of American law which requires proof both that someone engaged in certain acts and they did so with the appropriate mental state of mind or intent.  Here, one can speculate that Mueller found that Trump had done certain acts but could not determine whether his act rose to the level to prove intent of obstruction. Mueller threw this to the Justice Department and regular prosecutors to make that call and they said no. 
This is the point where the politics will kick in.  Democrats will demand the full report and want to talk to Mueller and Justice Department officers to determine if they made the right call.  This  review of conclusions, while entirely legitimate, is wrapped into the middle of partisan politics and a 2020 election that has already reached conclusions on Trump’s behavior, regardless of what the report said.  Mueller, in leaving open the obstruction question, and in the Attorney General not releasing the final report yet, guarantee that the investigation and final conclusions will not go away in terms of issues. 
But whether the Democrats should continue to dwell on it versus move on to other matters is also a good question.  The Democratic Party base will not let this matter go and they were counting on a clear answer of Trump guilt or culpability to help them in 2020.  They did not get that.   Democrats now need to move on to substantive issues to unite them and not simply run against Trump.  Conversely, for Republicans and Trump, the report also guarantees the problems will persist.  It only addressed a narrow set of issues, leaving open other questions about Trump’s business dealings and other matters which are still the objects on other congressional and criminal prosecutions.
Overall, the Mueller report itself, while definitive in what it was supposed to investigate, will hardly be politically definitive and it leaves open many issues unresolved.

From One Minnesota to Won Minnesota: Why Walz and the DFL are in Danger of Losing their Agenda this Year

Slightly more than two months into the 2019 Minnesota legislative session it is becoming more clear
that “One Minnesota” has morphed into “Won Minnesota” and that the DFL strategy to move its agenda is premised less on consensus than on the belief that they won the 2018 elections and their agenda deserves to be enacted.  If that is the case then the DFL will get little of what it wants.
Tim Walz ran successfully on a “One Minnesota” slogan and platform.  It was an effort to appeal to unity  both during the DFL primary to bring together various parts of the party to support him, and to overcome polarization that grips the US and the Minnesota. It is unclear how much this message elected him and Democrats to take control of the House or whether it was the trickle-down effect from an unpopular President Trump, a weak GOP gubernatorial candidate, and a significant money advantage the DFL had.  Yes, Walz won 54% of the statewide vote but only 22 of 87 counties.  He won the same places where Tina Smith, Amy Klobuchar, the other state-wide DFL candidates and House candidates won.  The state is geographically polarized.
Based on a majority vote, he claimed a mandate, as all victors do.  He then appointed a cabinet exclusively DFL and mostly Metro-centric.  Since taking office he and the DFL-controlled Minnesota House have pursued a largely urban-liberal agenda, although there are strong elements that appeal to the suburbs.  In many and most cases pursuing a “to a victor belongs the spoils” or arguing that  one is in the majority means you get to move the agenda is perfectly acceptable in a political system premised upon majority rule.  Yet in the case of the Walz administration there are several problems.
First, even if the Walz-DFL agenda has elements that appeal to Republicans and rural Minnesota, it has failed to articulate that.  It has failed to make the case to rural Minnesota how and why the gas tax, legalizing recreational marijuana, or regulating guns are to their advantage.  Narratives and messaging matter, and the Walz administration and the governor have done a bad job here.
Second, there seems to be a belief by Walz and the DFL that their issues are widely popular (and they maybe), fair, and correct, and therefore Republicans should simply do the right thing and go along with the DFL and vote for them.  Maybe in a different era this might happen, but in the polarized “winner take all” or zero sum game politics of today that is not the reality.  Simply have the right issues will not cut it.
Third, even in an era which was much less polarized, having the right issues was not enough.  One had to do the heavy legislative work of building consensus, horse-trading, or developing coalitions to get the votes needed.  Walz and the DFL are either not doing that, or not doing it effectively.  Think about the recent defeat of legalized recreational marijuana in Minnesota.  Walz  seemed indignant that the Senate did not support it.  At some point he and the DFL need to ask what is it the GOP needs to support it beyond just saying they should vote for it because polls indicate  public support.  The same crash of reality will soon hit when it comes to the ERA, guns, the gas tax, and a host of other DFL items. 
One needs to ask what incentive the GOP has to support them and then figure out what deals are possible to be able to move closer to that.  Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka represents 35 GOP senators who have constituencies back home who do not necessarily support the DFL agenda. To get it though the Senate and secure GOP votes he and the other senators have to be able to tell their constituents what is in it for them.  This is the real art of legislating, and so far this work or effort seems to be missing.
There are about two months to go in the 2019 legislative session.  A lot can happen and agreement on much legislation is still possible.  But already we see how the DFL is losing on many issues, and may well get far less than it thought it would this year.  Its strategy of “One Minnesota” may have changed to we “Won Minnesota,” thinking that straight majoritarianism would be enough to move a legislative agenda. However, with divided government and a political system that balances majority rule and minority rights, this approach is a recipe for failure.

Trump v. Omar: The Psychology of Fear, Prejudice, and Ignorance in American Politics

The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I was taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side

–With God on Our Side
Bob Dylan

Fear, prejudice, and ignorance make people do stupid things.  They are the trinity combustant for hate and intolerance, used as a match to fame the flames of discrimination to label some as disloyal Americans who cannot be trusted and deserve to be denied respect and rights.  One lesson of US history is that  appeals to Un-Americanism have been leveraged both by those on the left and right who claim God is on their side or that their cause is correct, thereby invoking an “end that justify the means” logic to dissenters that is dangerous.
America is a beautiful nation, often filled with hope and promise of a better life for us and our children. Yet this country has an ugly side to it that we often forget and ignore.  We often cloak fear, prejudice, and ignorance in the flag and persecute minorities or those with whom we disagree as the cause of our insecurities.  If only others thought like me, dressed like me, shared my values, some promise, then we could root out witches, communists, disloyal Americans, homosexuals,  immigrants, and terrorists and make the country safe for the rest of us real loyal Americans.
It was fear, prejudice, and ignorance in 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, that led to the death of 24 accused of being witches.  Or over 125,000 Japanese-Americans forcefully interned during WW II.  Or to the McCarthyism and the blacklists of the 1950s. Or the beatings of civil rights protestors at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 or Stonewall Inn in 1969.  Or to all Muslims, Middle Easterners, and even Somalians seen as terrorists post 9/11.  Or to transgender individuals seeking to use the bathrooms of their choice as perverts.
There is something hardwired in American culture that celebrates fear, prejudice, and ignorance into virtues.  Perry Miller’s Errand into the Wilderness, dissecting the Puritan mind, captures the fear of the earliest white settlers to North America.  It was persecution that drove them from Europe, a desire to for a new “city on the hill” as John Winthrop would call for;  founded on Christian values, that led them to the new world.  But they confronted one with strange new people and customs, a world seen lurking with danger, and a fear that the devil and evil was waiting to corrupt their enterprise. 
It was a Manichean bipolar world of good and evil, God or the devil, grace or sin, and either you are part of the saved or part of the damned, with no middle ground.  Difference, the inexplicable, the other as existential philosopher John Paul Sartre once said, were to be feared.  For the Puritans, as told brilliantly by Arthur Miller in The Crucible, the other were witches.  Richard Hofstadter, both in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, uncovered the distrust for facts, learning, and intellectualism and intellectuals.  From these Puritan origins, the us or them, loyal or disloyal, true American or Un-American ethos emerged.
But America’s story is one where each generation saw a different other as a threat, where  the new was scary, where relying on nativism, populism, and the fear of the masses justified intolerance.  The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 aimed to silence critics of President Adams and the Federalist party, Anti-Irishism and Anti-Germanism fueled discrimination in the nineteenth century along with fear of the Chinese.  The No-Nothing Party of the 1840s, later renamed the American Party, feared Roman Catholics and immigrants.  Anti-syndicalism acts targeted labor unions and dissenters to WW I.  Sauerkraut during WW I and french fries after 9/11 became liberty cabbage and freedom fries in response to anti-German and French attitudes.  John Kennedy was feared disloyal as a Catholic, Barack Obama seen as Un-American because of his name and lies that he was Kenyan and, even worse, a Muslim.
The Scope Trial of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee put  science on trial as some feared Darwin would defeat God.  The Smith Act of 1940 along with the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joseph McCarthy found communists to be threats, along with the interned Japanese-Americans during WW II.  The list unfortunately marches on–fear, prejudice, and ignorance have  left no group, cause, or idea unscathed.
Common sense wisdom is truth, what me and my friends know at the local bar or in my garage is the logic of truth.  We all live in the smug bubbles of our beliefs, convinced we, as Bob Dylan once mocked, “have God on our side” and therefore we must be correct.  Anything we do, even attacking others, is permitted as revealing the truth and virtue of our cause.
The point is that at critical points in American history fear, prejudice, and ignorance have  justified hate and intolerance.  And the same is happening now.  Donald Trump draws upon fear, prejudice, and ignorance on a daily basis to justify his policy agenda, with Fox News and Twitter serving as his microphone and his supporters cheering him on. White prejudice, privilege, intolerance, should not define orthodoxy. In fact, as Justice Robert Jackson powerfully declared in West Virginia v. Barnette,  319 U.S. 624 (1943) (a case about declaring Jehovah Witnesses as Un-American because they would not cite the Pledge of Allegiance): “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein”.   The Jehovah Witnesses of 1943, the civil  rights protestor of 1950s, or the gay and lesbian at Stonewall in 1969 are the Colin Kaepernicks of today.
But as wrong as Trump is, so is Ilhan Omar.  Some will contend there is a false equivalency here, but it is hard to find how either Trump, Omar, or their supporters can claim the high moral ground here.  There are lots of good reasons to question US- Israel foreign policy and treatment of Palestinians, but labeling Jews  as Un-American is not the way to start and win a debate as some are now arguing.  “The end justifies the means, the words have gotten us to raise the right questions, so some say.”  But opening the door to fear, prejudice, and ignorance does no one any good.
Can one ever think of a time when appealing to them made us a better world, society, or individuals? Post 9/11, questioning the loyalty of Muslim or Somalian-Americans as Un-American was wrong.  Omar should know better that the weapons of hate directed at her and her family were wrong and do not justify her use of similar tactics.   Words matter, as  many say, and sticks and stones along with names may not just break our bones but hurt in other ways.  If one is going to take offense at words, then trying to understand how they effect others is  a first step in political debates. Turning the oppressed into the oppressor by stealing the weapons from former to be used by the later does not make it right.
The weapons and language of the oppressor are no more justified in the hand of the oppressed or the weak, and the rhetoric of hate from the right does not make it virtuous and correct when coming from the left.  It is just as wrong to label Omar as Un-American and scorn her with hate  as it is for her to do the same to others.  Fear, prejudice, and ignorance should have no place in American politics.  But the sad reality is that it has, and even worse, that it has been effective and defended but those from a variety of political perspectives who see in themselves justified in using the three to suit their goals.

The Minnesota Budget Surplus that Never Existed

Minnesota’s fiscal forecast released on February 28, 2019 indicated that it dropped from

approximately $1.5 billion in November 2018 to barely $1 billion now.  The result is that it has changed the politics of the 2019 legislative session.  The reality is that the news should not have changed anything, the surplus never really existed yet everyone at the Capitol has entertained this fiction for political purposes.

Minnesota’s biannual budget in part is premised on two fiscal forecasts for the state–November and February.  The state economist does her best job in projecting the future of the state economy and based on that, predicting tax revenues that will accrue to the State of Minnesota.  These predictions are really best-educated guesses, replete with many variables.  As the state economist repeatedly emphasizes, the state economy is more heavily dependent on national and international variables than many think, especially given how globalized the Minnesota economy is.  Trade policy, immigration, tariffs, worker shortages, consumer confidence, and a host of other factors impact estimates.  Additionally, ascertaining how these and other unforeseen factors in the future might play out all make the fiscal forecast and revenue (tax) estimates difficult.

One should treat the forecasts as having margins or errors built into them of several percent, or perhaps hundreds of millions or perhaps a couple of billions of dollars.  Yet legislators and the governor’s office treat them as real perfect numbers, which they should not.  They budget to the penny, it seems, based on these forecasts, which is hardly prudent because if the forecast changes even slightly, then so do revenue projections and, therefore, the state budget is off.  The problem is complicated even more if the state makes structural decisions or obligations.  That is, making longer term spending decisions as opposed to one time choices.  Structural decisions are permanent tax cuts or ongoing spending choices.

Last November when then forecast projected at $1.5 billion the State economist warned also that there were signs of a slowing economy.  In fact, her projections beyond this biannual  warned of potential looming problems.  But there was another problem too.  Back in 2002 when Roger Moe and Tim Pawlenty were running for governor and the state had a multi-billion dollar deficit, they and the legislature sold out the state and changed state law to codify a legal cooking of the books that persists to this day.  When making fiscal forecasts, inflation is counted  for the purposes of revenue but not for state obligations.

This rose-colored glasses gimmick inflates the state’s positive fiscal picture while glossing over the negative.  If back in November inflation were considered for both revenue and obligations, the $1.5 billion surplus would have dropped to $400 million, given an estimate of $1.1 billion in inflationary costs the state was facing simply if it did nothing more than enact the same budget as before.  A $400 million surplus in a nearly $50 billion budget is less than a 1% margin of error.  For those in business, a contingency of less than 1% in a budget is unwise–standard practices range closer to perhaps 5%.
The governor’s office and the legislators know or should know all this but act in denial.  Politically it makes sense to assume a more positive forecast so as to justify spending or tax cuts.  It is in the collective short-term interest of everyone to indulge the belief that there was a surplus this session when it fact it never really existed.  Thus, the news on February 28, should not have changed anything really.

What is Democratic Socialism and does Trump Need to Protect Us from Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez?

What does it mean to be a Democratic Socialist and are Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez supporters such that Trump needs to protect us from them as he declared in his State of the Union speech?

The simple answer is that historically democratic socialism meant democratic ownership and control of the means of production or of the economy, including major corporations.  Democratic socialism is not simply providing government benefits such as Social Security or health benefits.  This is enlightened capitalism or welfare state capitalism but certainly not socialism.  Conflating all this with democratic socialism is simply another effort to Red bait anyone who believes in government helping others.


 In 2015 Sanders declared:
And what democratic socialism is about  is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of 1 percent in this country own almost 90 percent - almost - own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.  That it is wrong, today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent.

That when you look around the world, you see every other major country providing health care to all people as a right, except the United States.  You see every other major country saying to moms that, when you have a baby, we're not gonna separate you from your newborn baby, because we are going to have - we are gonna have medical and family paid leave, like every other country on Earth.

For Sanders, economic justice and leveling the opportunity and income gap between the rich and poor is what part of what it means to be a democratic socialist.  Yet historically the term has meant  more that economic justice, it also included democratic control of the economy.

Democratic socialism emerges as a political movement in response to Karl Marx’s criticism of capitalism in the mid nineteenth century.  To simplify, Marx had argued that the core problem of capitalism was  a class exploitation and struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat where the latter sells labor power which is extracted as surplus value by the former.  The bourgeoisie own the means of production and over time in their race to maintain profits they increasingly replace human labor power with machines, they drive down wages placing more and more individuals into poverty.  This process creates an economic crisis, intensifying class struggle, and eventually creating conditions for a capitalist struggle.  As the theory was eventually amended by Engels, it suggested an economic inevitability for the revolution.  With Lenin, the communist party would serve as a vanguard movement to lead the revolution.  As further amended by Stalin, this party in practice was highly undemocratic.

Starting in the late nineteenth century individuals such as Eduard Bernstein in Evolutionary Socialism argued that the revolutionary tactics and economic inevitability of the revolution were not  practical or certain.  He and others agreed with much of the basic criticism of Marx but instead tied the future of a classless society to parliamentary democracy.  Specifically, the emphasis was upon linking universal franchise to socialist ideals with the hope that socialism could be brought about by elections.  For Bernstein, socialism was an ethical imperative, it was about treating everyone with respect, and it was grounded in the French Revolution ideas of promoting “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.”  It was taking the ideals of political liberalism and translating them into economic democracy.  In effect, workers would have democratic control not just of the government but of the economy.

There was serious debate over whether parliamentary socialism was possible, with writers such as Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Kautsky, and Leon Trotsky reaching various conclusions.  But the core argument about what constituted democratic socialism centered on democratic control of the marketplace–it was democratic control of capitalism.  It was about ensuring that workers and not capitalists made decisions about what to invest, not letting the choice simply remain in the boardrooms of corporate executives.

The dividing line between democratic socialism and what we might call enlightened capitalism or liberalism is significant.  John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy argued that social injustices could be addressed by simple redistribution of economic resources–the classic welfare state.  Here the government would tax the rich and redistribute economic resources, or use its power to improve the economy.  Eventually this would be the Keynesian economics of the New Deal and Great Society.  It is state capitalism for the benefit for middle class and poor, but it is still capitalism.  Yes, the government can act and manipulate the economy for the benefit of the people, but it can also do that for the benefit of the rich.  This is what the US government has essentially done for the last couple of generations, and this is the criticism that Sanders is leveling.

In so many ways, Sanders is a left liberal following Mill and Keynes–we can use state capitalism to augment  economic redistributions–but he is not a democratic socialist in the classic meaning where the emphasis is upon democratizing both the political and economic systems.  It is about subordinating market choices and the free market to serving democratic imperatives.

Michael Harrington was perhaps America’s finest theoretician of democratic socialism.  He was one of the founders of the Democratic Socialists of America.  His book The Other America in the early  1960s is one of the clearest criticisms of American capitalism and it inspired many.  But in his Socialism Past & Future he crisply defines democratic socialism as:

[D]emocraticization of decision making in the everyday economy, of micro as well as micro choices.  It looks primarily but not exclusively to the decentralized, face-to-face participation of the direct produces and their choices in determining the matters that shape their social lives.  It is not a formula  of a specific legal mode of ownership, but a principle of empowering people at the base...This project can inspire a series of structural reforms that introduce new modes of social ownership into a mixed economy.

Democratic socialism is not the central state planning of the economy where the government owns  all the businesses.  It is as Alec Nove describes in the Economics of Feasible Socialism a variety of business types, but all are connected by the idea that there is democratic control over basic economic choices.  What China has with its state-owned enterprises is not socialism, it is state capitalism, and mostly to the benefit of a few.  Few Chinese have much say over the economic choices being made in that country, one where there is a sharper and sharper class divide.

Democratic socialism for Harrington, and Dorothy Day, as well as Norman Thomas, Eugene Debs, and Emma Goldman, is also as Bernstein argued, infused with ethical imperatives about respecting human dignity and the banner of individual rights as articulated by classical writers such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill. Democratic socialism would assail  the power of the rich and of corporations in America, contending that is not enough just to tax them and redistribute wealth.  Instead, it is about saying they do not get to make the political and economic choices that govern the rest of society.  It is saying that the people get to own the economy and decide for themselves.  Capitalism does not dictate how democracy operates, it is vice-versa.

This is what democratic socialism has historically meant. Sanders may or may not be one or he may be redefining what the term means.  But orthodox democratic socialism is something different than what Sanders described in 2015, what Trump disparages, and what so many think of when the discuss matters such as free health care, college education, or other programs.

Klobuchar Sexism and the Day the Walz-DFL Agenda Died

For Amy Klobuchar, Tim Walz, and the Minnesota DFL, it was a week ripped from the opening line of A  Tale of Two Cities–It was the best of times and the worst of times.  As Klobuchar prepares to declare her presidential candidacy and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and the DFL House majority prepare to move their agenda, reality is settling in to derail them.

Klobuchar’s Management Style: Sexism or a Legitimate Criticism?
During her 2016 presidential run I posed a quiz when it came to Hillary Clinton’s campaign:  What percentage of voters would never vote for her because she is female?  I suggested 30% and most everyone thought I was way too high.  Post 2016, I think I was too low.  Going into 2020 there is still a high percentage of voters who will never vote for women for president and sexism will be the fate any female candidate confronts, whether from the voters or the media.  The same will be true for Amy Klobuchar.
A barrage of stories have emerged from the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed that Klobuchar had horrible relations with her staff  both as US Senator and back to her day as Hennepin County Attorney.  These revelations may be news to Minnesotans but have been dirty little secrets and knowledge among insiders for years.  Klobuchar’s ability to massage the local media largely kept these stories from appearing.  Yet now that she is running for president, Klobuchar is facing the rough and tumble reality of a national media which she has not similarly been able to control.  As long as Klobuchar was simply Minnesota’s Senator, making carefully crafted statements on Rachel Maddow or in a Brent Kavanaugh hearing, she was not going to be attached.  But run for president and nothing is out of bounds.
The question is how much of the reporting is legitimate or sexism?   No doubt many men in Congress are terrible bosses and work poorly with their staff yet little or none of that is reported.  There is a double-standard when it comes to female leaders and Klobuchar is confronting that standard now.  But also for so long she has enjoyed an extended honeymoon with the press, and many of the grumblings and criticisms of her have been suppressed.  Do her personnel policies speak to her fitness as a leader?  Klobuchar’s media honeymoon is over.

The Day the Walz-DFL Agenda Died
The most important and overlooked story in Minnesota politics this week was the Senate District 11 special election where Republican Jason Rarick defeated DFLer Stu Lourey.  With the  exception of one story by Channel 5's Tom Hauser, few appreciate what happened, and even then  Hauser underestimated its significance.
Senate District 11 was a solidly DFL seat for eons, held by Becky Lourey and then her son Tony Lourey.  It was part of the coalition of Senate seats at or near the Iron Range that historically help anchor the DFL majority statewide.  With prior to Tony Lourey’s departure to head Health and Human Services in the Walz administration, the MN Senate was split 34-33, with Republican majority.    Governor Walz, the DFL House majority, and Tom Baak dreamed of picking off at least one Republican Senator to move their agenda.  More specifically, the DFL message to Republicans, especially in the suburbs, was that if you do not support our proposals, especially our top-ten bills, you will be vulnerable and we are coming after you in 2020.  That logic ended on Tuesday.
First, in losing the seat, the DFL goes from 33-34 to 32-35.  Picking off two Republicans is harder than one.  It was already going to be difficult to pick up one Republican vote–the GOP had strong ideological reasons to oppose the Walz-DFL agenda.  Why should they support it and give the Democrats victories?  The DFL promulgation of their top ten bills gave the Republicans their list of the top ten things to oppose.  Frustrate the DFL in their core agenda and then run in 2020 against it.
Second, losing this seat takes away the Democratic threat of 2020.  How so?  If Democrats planned to say to suburban Republican senators vote for our bills or else in 2020, Republicans can now say that we are coming after rural, Iron Range, or greater Minnesota Democrats in 2020.
Third, in losing a solidly DFL seat, it continues a nationwide pattern too seen in Minnesota where there is a big political sort going on.  Greater Minnesota and the Iron Range are becoming more Republican, including perhaps permanently shifting the Eighth Congressional District into the  GOP camp.
Finally, all of this questions the wisdom of Walz picking Tony Lourey for HHS and the DFL thinking a third generation of Lourey’s would do the trick.  Minnesota DFL politics has been dynastic for generations–think of the names Humphrey, Mondale, Freeman, and Klobuchar.  Times change and running on familial connections does not always cut it.
The special election loss portends a near fatal blow to the Democrats successfully get much of anything they want this session, and the 2020 electoral threat has been significantly undermined.  It is too early to say deadlock in the 2019 Legislative session or government shutdown, but it is not premature to declare that the Walz-DFL agenda died last Tuesday.

Klobuchar for President? Her Chances Are Less than Most Minnesotans Think

More than likely, Amy Klobuchar will announce on February 10, she is running for president. As
Minnesota’s most popular elected official, winning her last US Senate campaign with 60% of the popular vote, everyone in the state thinks her presidential prospects are terrific.   But living in the state it will not be popular to say what this, but her prospects of being a successful candidate are against her and contrary to received wisdom in Minnesota, she faces enormous obstacles either as a presidential or vice-presidential candidate.
There are many problems Klobuchar confronts as a presidential candidate, some unique to her, some to coming from Minnesota, some given the direction of the Democratic Party, and in many ways all three of these items are connected.
Consider first Klobuchar first as candidate.  Yes she is well-known in Minnesota but nationally she is still barely a blip in public opinion polls.  A recent Washington Post poll among Democrats gave her only 2 % support.  Other polls at barely 1%.  Outside of Minnesota she remains largely unknown. Part of that problem is that Klobuchar comes from the Midwest–flyover zone for those on the coasts–outside of the major media markets where candidates such as Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren come from.  They simply have higher name recognition given their states.  This geographic isolation of Minnesota has historically been a challenge for Minnesota presidential candidates.
Second, Klobuchar is not a rock star exciting persona, instead a classic more subdued Minnesotan.  The personality that might play well in Minnesota politics does not necessarily play well on the national level.  Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Tim Pawlenty, and Michele Bachmann resonated well in Minnesota but not so well nationally.  Minnesotans like their politicians, but the state’s exceptionalism in politics perhaps means that a different skill set and persona are needed here compared to the national level.
Third, Klobuchar faces a narrative problem.  All candidates need a narrative or message and reason for running.  Hillary Clinton’s problem both in 2008 and 2016 was that she had no narrative beyond she was not Bush (in 2008) or Trump (2016) and it was her turn now.  What is Klobuchar’s narrative?  Simply being against Trump is not enough–all the Democrats running in 2020 will be that.  Klobuchar needs to be more than that, and it is not clear what her narrative is, or it is one that may not play.  By that, most of Klobuchar’s tenure as Senator has been in the minority where she has had little chance to make substantive policy in a polarized partisan environment. Her rel record of accomplishment is thin.
Klobuchar’s major selling point is that she can reach across the aisle and work with Republicans.  It is not clear this is a selling point with a Democratic Party–especially during the primaries–that is moving to the left.
Klobuchar is running as a centrist and that is not where Democrats are now, and rarely has  “Running to the right” been a winning strategy for them at the national level.  Campaigning with the endorsement of George Will does not cut it with liberals.  Clinton in 2016 said her strength was going to be winning over moderate Republicans and winning white southerners (as she did against Sanders in the primaries), and look how well that strategy worked.  The US is even more polarized now and it is less clear that now a Democrat can garner Republican votes.  Orthodoxy in the Democratic Party is now for Medicare for all, free college education, and other big idea economic redistributive ideas.  Is this where Klobuchar is?
Klobuchar’s narrative is her experience–again much like what Clinton ran on in 2008 and 2016. She is a former country attorney and three-term Senator.  But Kamala Harris is a former state legislator, San Francisco prosecutor, California Attorney General, and US Senator; equally if not more impressive credentials, even on the topic of law and order.
Klobuchar also seems to be relying on an Iowa strategy to energize her political campaign.  First, it assumes that because Minnesota is next to Iowa and part of the former’s media market extends into the latter, people in Iowa know her.  Second, since Jimmy Carter in 1976, candidates  look to Iowa for a win to capitulate them into a subsequent victory in New Hampshire and beyond.  There are several problems with this strategy, assuming it has worked and that it will be winning formula in 2020.
Bachmann and Pawlenty thought the Minnesota-Iowa connection would work for them and it did not.  Second, since 1972, there have been 10 Democratic and eight Republican contested caucuses. Only six of the Democratic caucus winners and three of the Republican caucus winners have gone on to win their party’s nomination–only 50% does the Iowa winner go on to capture the party nomination.
But in 2020 things also change in a dramatic way–California and Texas move up their primaries to March 3, and the early voting for the former will start about the same time as the date of the Iowa caucus scheduled for February 3.  Moving up the California and Texas primaries changes the importance of Iowa and the logic of campaigning.  Relatively speaking running in Iowa was cheap by comparison to California and Texas which will take millions of dollars and lots of name recognition.  Kamala Harris for one, will be advantaged by the early California primary and if she does well there and Klobuchar not, Iowa may not matter at all no matter how well the Minnesota senator does.
Finally, what about the theory that Klobuchar’s real aim in running for president is to be I’ve-president?  Contrary to all the folk wisdom (and empirical political science including mine supports this), few if any vice-presidential candidates really matter to tickets or voters.  There is a belief in geographic or other balance with vice-presidents as running mates, ut one has to ask what would Klobuchar add to a presidential ticket?  Will she help a Democrat carry Minnesota?  Will she pick up votes in New York?  Is she a pit bull or attack dog like some Veeps are?  Simply being a nice person whom everyone likes in Minnesota does not make one a strategically good choice for vice-president.
Perhaps Amy Klobuchar will defy the odds and win.  One can wish her well.  But an honest appraisal suggests the odds are against her.