St. Cloud Times and the Barkley endorsement, here. St. Cloud Times and the Tinklenberg endorsement, here. The tradition is to endorse and in the editorial explain the thinking. I will endorse here, but we all know enough about how things have unwound, about the choices, that I will not argue my choices as much as state them with only a part of the thinking presented.
Let's be truthful. In the Senate race and in the Sixth District race, there is no Paul Wellstone. This post is dedicated to his memory - whenever you talk candidates there has to be a political gold standard, and for Minnesota that is Paul Wellstone. He was closest to what I would want in a federal government responsive to the need to protect the poor from the ravages and indifference of the wealthy, and then to protect the wealthy from each other. When such protection is lax or removed, when regulation is deregulated, the ravaging of the worse of the wealthy and their motives has been seen - an economic meltdown of unusual proportion, led in part by creation of casino-like derivatives, "swaptions" and such, with mortgage-bundling and securitization to where the underlying quality of long term mortgage debt was ignored to produce more of it because it was not held by the originator but fobbed onto investment outlets such as pension funds and insurance coverage trust pooled money. It was Wall Street running amok. And then it was the former head of Goldman Sachs, having made himself a mid to high nine figure wealth that way, coming forward as the George W. Bush Secretary of the Treasury and saying, "We have taken your economy hostage and will kill it if not paid a $700 billion ransom." The ransom was paid, via, as our trusted and loved government will do, taking the three page Paulson ransom note and producing a pork-laden 450 page bill.
Into that morass, we need to reintegrate the kind of integrity that Wellstone had and that now seems missing. We need the compassion for the little guy that Wellstone had. We need another Wellstone.
The closest we have is Franken.
Franken at least can and does make the promise to respect and follow the Wellstone legacy. To me that is decisive, because I look when he says it and I believe it is sincere. I believe the stories of Frannie Franken's family surviving on Social Security but doomed without it, are part of a background different from Norm Coleman's and his spouse's. I believe Franken will be true to family roots.
In the Sixth district, with the public's regard for Congress now at an all time low, we can see why that is. The two party system has totally failed us. We could have had a two party system give us quality and brains - Bob Olson from the DFL, Aubrey Immelman from the GOP. Instead party bosses and ideologues present their sorry shadow people - revolving door lobbyist Elwyn Tinklenberg, theocrat and neo-McCarthyite, Michele Bachmann.
It is tempting to say, give me a third choice. Barkley is that, but little different than Tinklenberg as a crypto-Republican running as something else; they have common roots and common ties through the history of the IP and each is close with the IP bosses, Barkley being one.
Barkley is not a reasonable alternative to much of anything. A second Republican to Coleman, ideologically, and tainted via the Tinklenberg endorsement the IP pulled off after the DFL had made an identical mistake.
So Franken for Senate, is how I will vote.
Immelman, the write-in choice for the Sixth Congressional District is my other choice and has my vote for Congress. While I expect he differs with me on the reproductive rights and choice issue, he is refreshing as a conservative with a pragmatic and humanistic view against war as an instrument of policy and a tool to enforce a national will upon other nations. He completely rejects the neocon view that we have an unmatched military so let's bully somebody, or bully a few others.
Surely a write-in has to be seen as having little chance of being elected. But there is more to voting than picking a race horse and betting money.
Surely Bob Anderson, the IP ballot choice election day has a better chance than a write-in, and he has the appeal of not being either Tinklenberg or Bachmann.
Bob Anderson is to be commended for how he stood up to his party bosses and said no to the Tinklenberg arrangements, and ran.
However, the governing motive for a voter should always be - pick the best person, the one you believe would best do the job, the one whose integrity and capability you most trust.
Based on that: Aubrey Immelman for Congress is how I will vote.
Also, based on picking the best of what's offered regardless of polling or other indicators, I will vote for Al Franken for Senator.
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This might be my final word this way, because once you've said, "Here's my choice," there's little to add. Poll-chasing and local media endorsements of one candidate or another carry little weight in my forming a judgment. I might note endorsements, as I have done, and some might give them weight in election decision making. I like to know what the papers say and why, but it has little or no true influence on my vote. Each person has his/her way to decide, and there is good reason to have a secret ballot. And there might be major breaking news in the last week before balloting.
If you know what you are doing vote. If not, stay home. You can only mess things up by ignorant voting. And the chance of ignorant or insufficiently informed voting increases for contests lower on the ballot.
That is why I will post separately on city council choices.
Everyone knows Obama-Biden vs. McCain-Palin, and has thought before reaching a final choice. But city council, or judicial candidates or county commissioners, that part of the ballot is where name recognition alone or incumbency alone might be too big a factor.