https://emptywheel.net/2026/10/22/open-thread-someones-not-living-in-fascist-reality-with-us/ is a thread criticizing James Carville's standing too deep in the hole corporate-establishment Dems have dug themselves. They - Carville types from the 1990's need to grow up.
That said as a preliminary matter, the focus of the post is represented by: https://www.twincities.com/2026/11/04/lt-gov-peggy-flanagan-wins-minnesotas-us-senate-seat/ -- stating in part:
Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan has won the race for Tina Smith’s U.S. Senate seat, according to unofficial results late Tuesday, Nov. 3.
Democrat Flanagan, 47, of St. Louis Park, had 54% of the vote to Republican Michele Tafoya’s 43%, with 2,749,612 votes counted by 12:12 a.m. Wednesday.
Tafoya, 61, of Edina, conceded the race to Flanagan late Tuesday night.
In her victory speech late Tuesday night, Flanagan said Minnesota “just beat Donald Trump again” and that “America did too.”
“You said no more war, no more healthcare cuts,” she said. “No more taking food away from children and seniors. No more selling this country off to the highest bidder. And you said no more masked goons shooting our neighbors and terrorizing our communities.”
In her concession speech, Tafoya said the “voters spoke, and so we’re going to respect the voters.” She said, “Now we’ve got to move on.”
“One thing that we did do in this race, folks, is we made it very clear that there should be consequences when you deceive the people of a state, when you rob the people of the state, when you do not serve the people of the state,” she said. “We didn’t see those consequences the way that we wanted to tonight, but we’re going to continue to send that message.”
Tafoya asked her supporters to hold their heads up high with her and pointed to the blue wave seen around the nation Tuesday.
“We fought like hell. We did the best that we could do in the circumstances, and as has been seen all over the country tonight, the circumstances were tough,” Tafoya said.
It was a grueling campaign that led them both to election night.
Flanagan centered her campaign on affordability and pushing back against President Donald Trump, saying Tafoya would be a “rubber stamp” on Trump and attempting to tie her opponent to his policies.
Flanagan was kinder to Tafoya than Crabgrass has been, Tafoya looking here to be a simple opportunist.
No real issues position, jumping on the "fraud" bandwagon in a crass way. No future because there was no substance. Opinions can differ.
UPDATE: Readers, and the nation as a whole need to also remember, Flanagan decisively won her primary against a more vanilla establishment type, Angie Craig. Craig was not a bad choice. Just not the best choice. Again, establishemt Dems need to grow into an understanding that if you stand for giving regular people a fair shake, you can win. Money in politics is not all it's about. Schumer can show an upward sloping learning curve. Gillibrand too. Amy as gov - will she be the same as Amy as Senator, or can we hope her learning curve is also upward sloping to where people get a good feeling enough so that she will have earned a second term as gov.
_____________FURTHER UPDATE_____________
Crabgrass is taking the liberty of republishing here the post Dan Burns wrote at left.mn
Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan won the US Senate race in Minnesota by about nine and a half percent. This was after much of Minnesota’s corporate media claimed the race was tight, though they did back off on that somewhat during the last week or two. Yeah, we were really supposed to believe, for a while there, that a massive upset could be brewing. And to believe that on behalf of a slick, smug, privileged phony like Michele Tafoya.
The election in Minnesota was never primarily about wildly overblown, racist dog-whistle rants about fraud, however much Republicans and their media allies, especially the StarTribune and MPR, tried to make it that. It was mostly about entirely, absolutely, unequivocally deserved loathing of and contempt for both the policies and the person of Donald J. Trump, and of the MAGA GOP, among a solid majority of Minnesota voters as in much of the rest of the country.
And there’s no reason to believe that that wasn’t the case all along. We were subjected to the same kind of crap before the primary election, which Flanagan ended up winning quite handily over Rep. Angie Craig.
And, maybe, hopefully, we’re finally seeing the long-awaited shift in the electorate really start to manifest, as the most important part of the GOP base goes to their eternal rewards in increasing numbers. Note how the 2022 midterm was supposed to be a huge Republican blowout according to much of corporate media, and instead was in some ways the best midterm for a sitting president’s party since 1934. A lot of people realize they made a big mistake in 2024, and I for one am pretty confident that many won’t make such a mistake again. They’re finding out, all too often in hard, personal ways, that voting against wingnuts in every election does matter. And that far too much of our traditional media really is just absolutely full of shit these days.
This rant is not about the actual boots on the ground in corporate media in this state. When I was a civil engineer, and before that learning to be one out in the field, I regularly played a role in wetlands destruction and urban sprawl. So I have no business criticizing others for doing their jobs that they need. The problems with corporate media go a lot deeper than that. They always have.
And there you have it. Burns appears to have a similar Tafoya opinion as held here. Moreover, his focus upon the corporate media here wanting to suggest a horse race when there was none is a sound lesson to Crabgrass readers in Minnesota, the nation, and internationally.. There is a media problem here.
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